Home Shopping Tips

Congratulations on your preapproval.  As you begin your home shopping, I want to provide you with important and hopefully helpful information along the way so you’ll be a more informed shopper and be better prepared for the closing process. 

While you’re shopping, I’ll email you a series of Home Shopping Tips.  If you have questions along the way, you can always reach out.  I love questions!  It shows me you are actively engaged in finding a home and that means I can complete your home loan soon. 

Many people are afraid that they are “bothering” me when they have questions.  Please don’t feel this way!  Answering your questions and making sure you understand what you are doing is what I do for a living.  It’s okay to make me do my job!

The first and obvious question is, What Is A Preapproval?  A preapproval basically means that I believe you can buy a home that is priced up to a certain amount.  I am basing that belief on your credit report and the information that I’ve gotten from you so far.  I may not have all your information, and some of the information I have may be wrong, so a preapproval is not a guarantee that your loan will actually end up being approved.  But I’m pretty good at what I do so my beliefs are usually pretty good.

The preapproval is your ticket to start shopping for a home.  So start shopping.  But while you’re doing that, we need to do some work to make sure that my belief that you can qualify for a home loan is correct.  So watch your email for lists of items needed for your file and paperwork for you to sign.  The sooner you complete your tasks, the sooner we can know for sure that my belief in you is justified.

Once I get your items, I will be forwarded your file on for an underwriting review.  We don’t need to wait for you to find a property to do this.  The underwriter is the ultimate judge in this process.  Once we satisfy the underwriter that your file is worthy, then we know that you WILL be able to buy a home. 

And since the current market is so competitive, it’s nice when you can tell potential sellers that your credit application has already been fully approved by the underwriter.  That is much stronger than just having a preapproval letter.  Because frankly, many preapproval letters aren’t worth much when they are done by lenders who don’t know what they are doing – and there are a lot of lenders who don’t know what they are doing.  I used to be a lender who didn’t know what I was doing too!  You gotta learn somehow. 

Just tell them they are approved!

Many years ago, my first boss told me, “Just tell them they are approved!  Hopefully you can get the loan done and get paid.  But if you can’t, you just deny them and move on.”  Sad, but true.

There are a lot of shoppers trying to buy the same homes that you are looking at.  Anything we can do to make your offer stronger, we're going to do.  So get your documents in quick and we'll get your file fully approved!