The purpose of this site is to provide you with the tools and
resources you may need for the purchase of your
first home/condo or investment property.
The resources included here are intended to
provide you with background on real estate and
its terminology. Please contact if you have
any questions or would like to request for more
information.
To
learn more about buying real estate,
select the appropriate link below.
Why Pre-Qualify before buying?
Why
get prequalified and then preapproved for a mortgage
before you begin your search for a home? Because there
are 3 people who will benefit from your preapproval:
You, your Agent, and the seller from whom you eventually
buy a home!
You:
The
most important beneficiary, of course, is you. One of
the most common questions we get from users of this site
goes something along the lines of "Please let us know
how much house we can afford." We're stumped! Why? There
are simply too many variables--credit history, income,
debt, special mortgage programs and variations in
qualifying guidelines between different mortgage
types--to answer that question. The only sure way of
getting the question answered is through
prequalification. The mortgage prequalification step is
a relatively simple one, but it is an important one. It
begins the process of formally applying for a mortgage,
and it gives everyone involved--especially you--a clear
sense of the direction they should be headed.
Your Agent:
By knowing what your financial parameters are, your
Agent can spend more time looking for houses that "fit"
and less time pursuing dead ends. No matter how much you
might
want
a 4000 square foot home for $275,000, if your
qualifications say $125,000, your qualifications say
$125,000. When it comes to mortgages, "yes, but" doesn't
carry much weight!
The
Seller:
Want to strengthen your bargaining position? Get
prequalified. Want your offer to stand out in a case of
multiple offers for the same house? Get prequalified.
Look at it from the seller's perspective. If you had 2
offers on the table for your house, one from a fully
prequalified buyer and the other from an "I'll get
around to that soon" buyer--to which offer would you
devote the most attention? Even if the prequalified
buyer's offer was $1000 less, would you take the chance
on the buyer that perhaps may not be qualified? When it
comes to a seller evaluating offers, "a bird in the
hand..." definitely applies.
Loan pre-qualification does not
typically include an analysis of
your credit report or an in-depth look at your
true ability to buy a home.
You can be pre-qualified by a
lender, by a real estate agent or
you can do it yourself. The term
means that someone has taken a
general look at your income and
expenses and plugged them in to a
debt-to-income
ratio formula.
Pre-qualifying yourself before you
start looking for a home gives you a
general idea of the price
range you can afford. Our
friendly agents can assist you with
pre-qualifying yourself in less than 10
minutes. Get Pre-Qualified today!