Pre-Approval Process

I wanted to do a video to show you how to get pre-approved on my website. Which as you can see here is getloans.com. There’s an ‘s’ on the end of that.

Before you get pre-approved

Before you choose to get pre-approved, which you would start with the “Get pre-approved” button, you might want to click on the About button. And you can see some different things about me just to learn a little bit about me before we start on the pre-approval process together. Always good to know who you’re working with. There’s an About Me page, my average day, which is a short video. My business philosophy, a short video. And then you can see all my reviews. Many, many reviews on Yelp and Zillow and Google and Redfin. That will take you to a page that is an aggregation of all of those reviews.

The Pre-Approval Process

Once you’re ready, you again would click on the Get pre-approved button. It would take you to a separate pre-approval application for which there’s no fee, nor obligation. It’s just a way for me to capture data and do all the necessary number crunching to tell you what you’re pre-approved for. You would click on the link, fill in all the data. Simple fill-in-the-blank, upload some documents, basic financial documents. And then I would pull credit and do all the number-crunching.

After pre-approval

Then we would get a phone call scheduled and discuss all the results. And go over credit score, down payment, debt ratios, property type, go over a lot of different questions related to title insurance. Appraisal contingencies and financing contingencies and different things that you might need to get educated on. And then after the call and we go through all of the results. I would send you a pre-approval email with all of the documents to support that. A pre-approval letter that would be up to your maximum pre-approved amount. Not that you need to spend the maximum. But it would be good to know what your limits are.

I’ll send you spreadsheets

Spreadsheets, good-faith estimates that go over estimates for interest rates, closing costs. Everything’s broken down and itemized to all parties, lender, title company, state and county or city. And prepaids, which are escrows for property taxes and homeowners insurance. Everything is carefully itemized and color coded so you’ll know exactly what money is going into this transaction and where and to whom it’s going. After you start your house-hunting process we’ll stay in touch and also discuss further educational topics when you make an offer and get under contract on a new home.

Locking-in an interest rate

That’s the point when you’re first able to lock in your interest rate. And I would use what we call the pricing engine software, web-based, where I plug in all the different data points. Because there’s different things that will impact your rate quote. Your credit score is a big one, loan size, property type, debt ratios, different things will impact your rate quote. It’s not one-size-fits-all with interest rates. So I would plug in all the data points, and click a button. It would sift through all the different lenders that we work with and it tells me who’s got the best deal that day, that time. Because interest rates can even change during the day.

Certainly, they can change every day. So while you’re house-hunting, just be aware that rates can change. Once you’re under contract I would log into our pricing engine, tell you what I see for pricing. We would obviously discuss that before getting started. Then I would lock in your terms.

Going to settlement

Then at that point all we’re really doing is converting your pre-approval to the final approval. And then scheduling the closing date. That’s a pretty good high-level overview. There’s a lot more detail to it. And there’s a lot of education to it, and a lot of content that I’ll push your way. But for now, that’s a little bit about me, the website, getting pre-approved, and how to start the process. That’s the Pre-Approval Process! I hope that helps.