Having a pre-approved mortgage before you have started to look for a new home is a solution that will give you the opportunity of knowing which options you can afford and will also guarantee your interest rate over a period of time. A pre-approval ensures that you will not waste your time skimming through properties that do not fit the budget you have set for yourself. This will also give you the tools necessary to negotiate the terms you can afford. In terms of what your realtors will want is to know whether or not you have a pre-approval in place so that they can arrange one of the first steps in buying your first home.
Once you have been pre-approved for a mortgage this will helps you during the negotiation of the price of the property and it will also provide you with a clear idea of whether you can afford the homes you’re looking, specifically when you are looking at multiple offers. By resolving your mortgage financing issues beforehand, you will have the advantage when negotiating with the vendor. In order to save you some time and money, a lot of lenders will try their best to pre-approve a client.
Here you can see a short list of items that could very well be required for a pre-approval, for as long as you are looking around the market for a purchase or only looking to get ahead of the renewal, then it would be a good idea to start to gather the following documents. Be advised that although lenders will be looking for recently updated personal information, you should be able to provide it when it is less than 3 months old and in many cases less than 30 days old. For reference purposes, here is a list of items that will be requested when applying for a mortgage.