06/06/2022
One of the only question marks remaining after the First Look is the status of your credit history and anyone else who might be included in your report (for example: if you co-signed for a car loan, or your spouse’s history if you’re married).
And no, this credit report isn’t exactly what you see on websites like Credit Karma.
At any point during or after the First Look, once you’re happy with your options, you can choose to run your credit with your lender and finalize a “pre-approval”. This pre-approval is proof to sellers that you are officially qualified to purchase a home.
A pre-approval is generally required by a seller to view their home, so you’ll need this before we can start scheduling showing appointments. You do NOT want to make the mistake of many inexperienced home buyers and start looking at homes before your approval is complete…
Multiple things can happen when you skip steps in the home buying process, and viewing homes before you’re pre-approved is by far the biggest offender.
The first, and WORST, outcome (that I’ve unfortunately seen first hand) is the home meets EVERY single expectation you have in a dream home for your family. Then you start the qualifying process, and right when you’re finally ready to write the offer with your new approval, another buyer swooped in and grabbed the house.
It is absolutely the worst feeling watching a family go from the highest high to the lowest low all because they didn’t do things in the right order.
Another issue is you go through all of the falling in love only to find out there is a red flag on your pre-approval, and something that could have easily been addressed is now going to cause a delay, meaning you can’t submit a clean pre-approval with your offer, which will lead to the seller choosing another offer over yours (or just flat out rejecting yours because of the likelihood of your loan falling through).
This is why I always recommend to have a lender run a pre-approval long before you’re ready to start looking, that way you’re prepared if there’s still work to be done.
