A pre-approval is one of the greatest assets a home buyer can get.
Pre-approval is a written assessment of your worthiness for a loan. When you seek pre-approval for a home loan, your lender will assess your ability to pay, as well as your credit history, to decide how much they are willing to lend you.
Although you can make an offer and go through to the start of property settlement without having pre-approval, smart home buyers get pre-approval before they make an offer.
Really smart home buyers get pre-approval before they even start going to home opens.
Here’s why you should, too:
1. You get a better choice of properties. When you visit a home open and talk to a real estate agent, letting them know that you have pre-approval is a sure-fire way to get them to take you seriously as a buyer. Once a real estate agent knows you’re serious about buying, they’re likely to call you about potential properties before they’ve even hit the market, giving you a better choice of properties, and potentially cheaper deals.
2. You get a better deal. To sellers, pre-approval is almost like a guarantee that the deal they strike with you won’t fall over. Sellers want certainty because if the buyer they choose can’t get finance, the seller will have to start marketing their property all over again. To them, this certainty is worth money – I’ve seen plenty of deals where the seller has accepted a lower offer because that buyer had pre-approval and the higher offers didn’t.
3. You won’t waste time looking at homes you can’t afford. Getting pre-approval will give you a much better idea of what homes are within your price range, so you’ll know in advance which properties are too pricey to waste your time on.
4. You won’t have your heartbroken. Imagine falling in love with a property and even going so far as to make an offer on it – only to find out that it’s out of your price range! Save yourself the disappointment of having a deal fall through by knowing in advance what you can (and can’t) afford.
If you’re planning to buy a home, get a pre-approved home loan from your chosen lender. Your seller, real estate agent, and settlement agent will thank you for it – and you’ll be glad you did.
If you found this article handy, you may want to read: 6 Ways to Negotiate a Better Deal
