Derek Tran
New member
I am soon to be a first time home buyer hopefully. So as such, am very naive as to all of these processes. I went to a mortgage banker today (note: banker, not bank or broker - I still don't fully understand the differences completely between broker and banker). We sat down and he explained a bunch of things to me, then we sat down with my tax returns, bank statements, etc and we did some numbers just to get a general sense of what my purchase price range might be. Then he asked for approval to run my credit at the end of the meeting and said he's going to run my credit and all of that and then send me a pre-approval letter (I believe he specifically said pending the underwriters approval). I'm not sure how far a pre-approval letter gets me. I know it will make it a lot easier to get agents to take me more seriously and what not. But say in the next few weeks I find a place I love and am ready to buy. Do we have the recheck/do underwriting for all my numbers, credit report, bank statements, etc a second time if they just underwrote me for the preapproval? Or will the first underwriting be enough?
Basically I'm asking, in a short amount of time, is a preapproval more or less the same as an approval for a loan as long as I act on it? I realize there will be additional work that needs to be put in past a pre-approval, but is that step more or less useless beyond knowing what I can hypothetically afford and getting a RE agent to take me more seriously?
Basically I'm asking, in a short amount of time, is a preapproval more or less the same as an approval for a loan as long as I act on it? I realize there will be additional work that needs to be put in past a pre-approval, but is that step more or less useless beyond knowing what I can hypothetically afford and getting a RE agent to take me more seriously?