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Shopping Around for Rates?
We've been tracking the housing market for the past year or so and are getting to the point where we're going to start going to open houses. We would like to find something by early next year.
We have not gotten pre-approved yet. We have two joint accounts now, 1 at my local bank and the other at a local credit union (we had each had our own separate accounts at two different banks and just added each other onto them - haven't decided about consolidating sometime down the road).
My MIL really wants me to get pre-approved at my husband's bank because they're also members and supposedly they got something in the mail offering really low rates.
I was checking rate quotes and my own bank seems to have lower rates with less closing costs (although in some cases has less points).
Should I get pre-approved at this point? I'd like to find rates from more than one place, although I don't want my credit report pulled too many times because that affects your credit score. Should I just contact banks/credit unions with our information (estimated purchase price, down payment, town, credit scores, etc)?
Re: Shopping Around for Rates?
Why only one place? I was planning on getting three differrent quotes and then going with the best one.
We shopped around to 3 different lenders, chose the 2 whose personalities and work styles we liked the best, and got pre-approved by both. Once we went under contract we bid both lenders against each other to see who could give us the absolute best deal (rate, points, closing costs).
Definitely work with 2-3 lenders all the way through the process. Just because a lender promises you a sweet deal upfront, that does not mean that they will deliver on said promises in the end. Keeping your options open is always good. And when the time comes, don't be afraid to ask the very simple question, "Is that the absolute best deal that you can offer?" It's amazing what that question can do for you.
But don't bother getting pre-approved until you are actually ready to buy. There is no sense in having your credit report and scores pulled right now. Credit pulls are grouped. Andthing that is pulled within a 30-45 day timeframe by similar requesters (banks) is grouped into a single pull, which means it won't affect your score much. But if you ask one bank to do a pull now and a few other banks do pulls when you are ready to buy, it will show up as 2 pulls, which hits your score more than 1 pull would.