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Get a Prequalification before Home Search

Published: Feb 8th, 2010 | Author: Alex Bhaswara Add Comment

Everyone dreams of owning a house. To achieve this dream, much time, effort and energy could be wasted when you rush around hunting for a home that is beyond your price range. Disappointment and frustration could be avoided if you take the time to determine your exact price range or the kind of home you can afford. Prequalifying can help you in determining this.

A pre-qualification is informal discussion between your lender and you. The lender will compute an estimate of the amount you could afford for home buying based only on the information of your income and assets.

The following are required to get pre-qualified:

1. Get a referral from family or friends for a mortgage lender.

2. You also have to submit these documents such as your gross monthly income, minimum monthly fees for credit cards, monthly car payments, child support or any other payments you make every month.

3. Your lender or you could add all your debts and compare the total amount to your income to be able to come up with a total debt-to-income ratio. The percentage must be below thirty-six to get the best rate of interest. The lower the number, the better chance to qualify.

4. Secure an authorization for your lender to get your credit report. Your report also includes your FICO score, a credit scoring system used widely by lenders. A score of 680 or above is considered an excellent score with good ratios, and other positive factors will be able to give you the best rate of interest.

5. Request a prequalification letter from your lender. It should state that your financial information and initial credit were reviewed well and looks good; nevertheless, the letter should also state that it is not an assurance of a loan granted.

It is necessary to consider that a pre-qualification is the simplest document coming from your mortgage lender. This letter does bind the lender to a loan for a home sale. This will determined your chance to get a loan, but the documents you submitted are still subject for verification by the lender.

When you find a home and are ready to make an offer, get the pre-qualification letter from your mortgage lender solely for the loan that you are seeking. It is not necessary to use the same lender; you could look around and compare rates from among the many choices available.

A prequalification is different from a pre-approved. When you try to purchase in a hot market, you must secure a pre-approval before making an offer. The pre-qualification is just one way of determining the amount you can afford to purchase a property. It serves as an estimate of your purchasing capacity. Nevertheless, after getting a pre-qualification letter and after hunting for a home, the next thing you have to do is to proceed on securing a pre-approval letter for home purchase. This will give you security to purchase and gives the seller confidence that you have the capacity to purchase his or her home.

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