For today’s video tutorial, Misty Weaver from the Dream Weaver Real Estate Team discusses the importance of getting pre-approved for a mortgage loan by your financial institution before you start undertaking your home search.  The bottom line… it could be the difference between getting into the home you desire or missing out on an opportunity because of the time it takes to get approved for a mortgage!

Video Transcript:

Hey, guys! Misty here and I wanted to come and do a video today on why you need to get pre-approved for a loan to buy a house or lot or whatever you’re going to buy. And there’s a couple of reasons, and I’m actually going to start with one that I would usually save for the last. And for me it’s kind of personal because I feel like we don’t talk about this stuff and it makes agents feel awkward, and we shouldn’t. Because this is our job. And just like you, we expect to get paid to do our job because this is how we feed our children and keep a roof over our own heads. So I don’t want to continue to apologize for this. I’m going to put it out there as the first thing.

The first reason that you need to be approved before you even look at a house is because we only get paid if you actually buy a house or a lot or whatever you’re getting the loan for. If you don’t buy it, we don’t get paid. So every time we take you to see a house; every dollar of gas that we use; every hour we meet with you; all of that is us not getting paid. We don’t get paid until you actually buy the house, close, have the keys. Then we get paid.

So if you’re not qualified and if you can’t get qualified; if you have credit issues that you need to work on; you need to increase your income, whatever the deal is; or you won’t be able to qualify for as much house as you want — maybe you’re only actually qualified to buy a $150,000 house and you are looking at $300,000 houses — you’re not going to be able to buy them.  That also means that all of that time and all of that money that we spent showing you houses comes straight out of our pockets. We get nothing. So I’m not going to apologize for that anymore. I don’t think any agent should feel awkward about that because this is how we make our living.

We are not tour guides. We do not get paid per door we open for you. The seller does not pay us, we do not get a dollar until you actually buy a house. So you need to be pre-approved. We need to know that you are serious and you are qualified to buy the house that we are going to show you. Okay? So that’s the big one, honestly.

Let’s kind of start now back where I would normally start.

The seller wants you to be qualified because you can’t buy their house if you’re not. So they don’t want to have to clean their house. They are still living in it. They don’t want to have to leave the house. They don’t want to take all of their children and all of their pets and make sure that everything is perfect for you to see the house if you can’t actually buy it!

And I have a lot of people that say, “Oh, I just want to look. I’m looking, you know, it’s going to be a couple years, but I just want to see what’s on the market now.”

That’s great. Sellers don’t care. We don’t care. I’m just trying to be really honest here. If you think about it, when you go to sell your house, do you want to have to do all of this stuff for someone who is coming in to see who can’t buy it? Why?  It’s a lot of time. It’s a lot of work, guys. Sellers do not want to do that.

I know, this is really harsh, and I’m not going to apologize because this is real life. This is what you need to do to buy a house. If you are serious, you will sit down with a lender or you can do it online or you can call them, you can text them all of the info. Seriously, guys, there’s so many ways and it takes literally 15 minutes. So you need to get qualified.

And if you’re scared that you’re not going to qualify, you still need to talk to a lender! That way you know what you need to do to get qualified. So they will literally put together a whole plan for you. They’ll say you need to pay-off this debt; maybe you need to open an account because you don’t have enough trade lines for the loans that you would potentially qualify for; maybe you need to get a secured credit card. Maybe you need to get something out of your name; you own a house with someone else that they are now paying for, but it’s still showing up because you’re on the loan. Maybe you need to get them to refinance.

Whatever the issue is, the lenders that we work with can put together a plan for you. And I know it’s scary if you have something in your history. Trust me, I’ve been there. But it’s okay. Everyone has something. They will work with you. They will get it done.

The sellers want you to be qualified!

The third reason, because we started from the last one first, is you don’t want to fall in love with a house that you can’t afford. Again, if you end up only being able to buy something at $150,000 and you’ve been looking in the 300s, your dreams are going to be crushed, and you’re never going to be satisfied with the house that are at $150,000. So knowing that up-front and being able to say, okay, here’s what’s really on the market; what can we kind of take off of your list? What can we do? What can we look at? So that is number three.

And number four is really to get your offer approved quickly. So if you are in the lower prices ranges, especially right now in the Winchester market that’s up to 200s, even 250s right now, it’s pretty competitive. There aren’t many homes coming on the market, so you need to be approved before you see it so that if you fall in love, we can write that offer, submit it right then, and get it approved.  If you wait and then you have to go to the lender and put everything together and do that, someone else has already put in an offer and you’ve lost the house. Not fun when you find something that you love and you can’t get it.

So there are your four big reasons. And I am done apologizing, so if you call me I’m going to give you the straight dope — you need to get approved before we see a house. We’re not going to go out. We’re not going to see a million houses and wait for you to fall in love with one before you get approved. There’s no reason and it’s not protecting anybody, including you.

You need to get approved first. It’s not going to hurt your credit. You can still shop lenders, so you can look for the best rates as long as we are going to the lenders within 30 days of each other, it’s not going to look like a bunch of hits on your credit. They know that you want to shop rates.

Let me know if you are thinking about buying. I love working with first-time buyers. If you haven’t been through this process, we will go over everything with you. And I know that you don’t want to hear that you need to talk to a lender first, but guys, you need to talk to a lender first. So let me know. Bye!

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