One of the tools we offer home buyers here at First Residential Mortgage is a mortgage pre-approval letter.
When you apply for mortgage pre-approval, we run your credit to generate an estimate of how much you qualify to borrow.
We then print up a statement which you can show sellers as you conduct your home search.
We recommend that every homebuyer get pre-approved early on in the process of shopping for a home. Below are some reasons why.
How To Apply For Mortgage Pre-Approval
- Find out how much home you can afford. The first advantage of mortgage pre-approval is that you find out how much you are likely to be able to borrow. This gives you an idea for how much home you can afford. You can then start budgeting realistically around that amount.
- Learn what interest rate you may qualify for. Something else your mortgage pre-approval letter will tell you is what interest rate you would qualify for if you were closing on a home today. This number may be subject to change, since mortgage rates are constantly fluctuating. If factors change with respect to your borrower profile, that also could lead to the final interest rate you qualify for changing. Still, even having a ballpark estimate for your interest rate can help inform the financial decisions you make when buying a home.
- Shop the right houses. If you do not know how much home you can afford and what interest rate you may be paying over the years ahead, it is not easy to know which houses are within your means and which are not. But after you are pre-approved, there is a lot less guesswork, allowing you to identify realistic prospects when you are shopping homes on the market. Not only will you save time, but you also are less likely to fall in love with a home that you ultimately discover you cannot purchase. So, the home buying process can be smoother financially and emotionally.
- Negotiate from a position of strength. When you do find an exciting home on which you may want to make an offer, you will have the benefit of proving to the seller that you can afford the home. You can show them the pre-approval letter to assure them. This may make you more competitive than other buyers who do not have such a letter. A seller will probably take your offer more seriously than theirs. In some situations, it also might give you more negotiating power to buy the home more affordably.
- Close more rapidly. Getting pre-approved also benefits you in making for a more streamlined process from beginning to end when you are purchasing a home. You can therefore close more rapidly than you might be able to otherwise.
Get Pre-Approved Now
Ready to shop for a home in Virginia with a pre-approval letter from First Residential Mortgage? Click here to get pre-approved today or call us at (540) 838-5868 to schedule your consultation. We can even help you to lock in a low interest rate.
