Buying A Home
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
when did you get pre-approved?
Our realtor has been bugging us about this - but we are not yet committed to buying within the next 3 months. We realize that this means if we come across our dream house then we may not get it because of the time it will take to get the pre--approval before making an offer, BUT we also hate the thought of feeling rushed into the buying process.
So, at what point in searching did you decide you were ready for pre-approval? Any stories of regret with your timing?
Re: when did you get pre-approved?
We started the pre-approval process before we started looking. But we also knew we wanted to buy within 3 months, really this month. Most realtors want you to be pre-approved before putting in an offer on a house. It makes your offer look stronger compared to others.
The pre-approval process shouldn't take more than a day. We were pre-approved/pre-qualified, whatever they're calling it, within hours of calling the bank. Our realtor had a pre-approval letter that same day. If you don't find a house within the 90 days, you can always get re-pre-approved. All they need is to pull your credit again and more paystubs and bank statments.
I don't regret our timing at all. It allowed us to make an offer on the house we wanted and get it accepted quickly.
I lost the first house I bid on because I wasn't pre-approved yet. I wish I had started the process sooner, but I didn't, because I didn't expect to find something I wanted so quickly.
From a seller's perspective, an offer contingent on financing when the buyers aren't even pre-approved, isn't that appealing. They may think you're not serious, or that you are too risky.
we aren't in any rush either, but we got pre-approved as soon as we started looking. we had more to lose by not getting pre-approved than not.
IF a house had come up right away (as it seems to do for many on this board), we would have been ready to make a strong offer made even stronger by our pre-approval. without the pre-approval, especially in our market, we probably would have lost out.
even though we still haven't found anything to even offer on yet, pre-approval gave us confirmation that our credit was in good shape, what interest rate we qualified at, and one broker even gave us an in-depth analysis of what our monthly costs (PITI) would look like at 3 price points.
the only negative to getting pre-approved is a slightly lower credit score temporarily, but even that is not a big deal as banks will see you're house/loan shopping and won't hold those inquiries against you.
My Valentine Bookends (2~13~13, 2~15~09)
We have always done things a little backwards. With the last 3 houses we found and bought, we did the house hunting first, pre-approval second.
We knew we'd get approved, so it wasn't a big deal. And our market is about as cold as ice right now, so there was no rush.
We did it before we started looking - you really need to so that you can accurately say what you can afford. Agents like it because they don't get paid unless they find you a house, and no one wants to work for free.
Spring market is coming and will be more competitive than the winter months. You'll definitely want your pre approval in hand so that your offer is taken seriously.
Our first house, we actually made the offer without pre-approval and the seller accepted. We weren't even really looking and just happened upon the open house.
Our second house, the mortgage broker got our pre-approval within a couple of days of us finding the house, which worked perfectly because it allowed for us to have a second showing, too.