Buying Tips #1: Seeking Pre-approval

Welcome back! Our first Real Estate 101 Buying Tip is about seeking pre-approval from a finance company for you to purchase a home.
Let’s start at the very beginning: questions about buying your own home.

When you want to buy a home, the best place to start is knowing how much you can afford. Unless you’ve got quite a bit of money in the bank, the best way to do that is to go and talk to your finance people: your broker or bank manager.

They’ll ask you a series of questions like:

• Do you have a job?
• What sort of money do you earn?
• Have you got any savings or equity? (We’ll talk about that in a later video)

By the above questions they are really trying to determine the answers to these other ones which they won’t ask:

• Are you a worthy risk?
• Should I give you some money?
• Will I ever see it again?

When the finance body you’re dealing with gives you pre-approval, you generally receive a letter to indicate the specific price range of homes you can buy in. You now have the green light to go to display homes, open homes or some private inspections, confident that you can afford to buy in a particular price bracket. This is called finance pre-approval. If you’ve got that, you’re all ready to go, and that’s where the fun begins… Until next time!