Are You Pre-approved, Pre-qualified or Pre-ticked

By: Lisa Gray
Submitted: 2008-10-07 18:09:28
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You have gone to all the trouble of contacting a mortgage company, and have faithfully answered all their questions to get their letter saying you are pre-qualified, so why is it not enough for the real estate agent that you are working with?

If your real estate agent wants you to press on with your mortgage application until you can get pre-approved, do not be offended, he is simply working in your best interests. To make an offer for a home that you wish to buy, it is much more advantageous to be pre-approved than to be pre-qualified.

Why is that, you may wonder, and why did I bother to get pre-qualified? Well, in some ways, one is just a step on the way to the other. Generally speaking, a pre qualification is by word of mouth, (i.e. it is often over the phone) and back up paperwork is not requested.

There are some commonalities, i.e. both letters will give you the amount of the mortgage loan and the purchase price of the property on which it was based; this gives the seller, the buyer and the real estate agent some firm facts to go on.

Also, in order to get either a letter of pre-qualification or pre-approval, you must have given permission for a credit check to have been carried out - and presumably approved!

Several discoveries can be made after the pre-qualification has been granted which may actually 'unqualify' you. Most, if not all, of these hitches will be uncovered if you apply for pre-approval .

For instance, when your mortgage broker, who has already pre-qualified you, has to approach different mortgage institutions, they all have varying requirements.

Some may request the last two years worth of proof of income. Others may not like the look of your charge card statements and still others may balk if they realize that your down payment is a loan.

All these question and answer routines take time, and in the wait for your pre-qualification to become a pre-approval, you may lose the house that you have put an offer on - it depends on whether a counter offer has come in.

While neither is a cast-iron guarantee of a mortgage, a pre-approval brings you closer and cuts out the time required to be approved once you have selected the property that you want.

Also, the pre-approval will show you to be a serious buyer, and one who has done much of the paperwork, and can therefore bring the deal to a close quicker; all these points stand in your favor as a buyer.

Article source: Expert Articles