You never know if you are going to full in love with the 15th home you walk into or the 1st home you walk into. But either way, you better have you duck in a round if you want to be the owner of that home. Almost all Realtors in Tampa Bay require at least a pre-qualification with every contract where the buyer is getting a mortgage loan.

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Hi everyone. This is your Tampa Bay realtor Lance Mohr and in this video, I'm going to talk about a question I get a lot. That's, why do I have to get pre-qualified for a mortgage before I go out start looking for a house. I’m going to address that question and even peel back the onion a little further about pre-qualification and pre-approval and how you can make even more money when you buy a home.

So first off when you start looking for a home, you never really know when you're going to find a home. I've had people in my car maybe we looked at 15 homes and I've actually had a lot of people that they found a home the very first time they went out and of course always advise people to get pre-qualified. I really wanted to get pre-approved before we even start working out looking at homes and there's a reason why. First off, if you look at home and your pre-qualified and you find the home you like you present, we present an offer to the agent, the agent looks at it there probably not even going to give it to the seller without at least a pre-qualification letter. So what is a pre-qualification letter? Basically a letter from a lender that says I’ve pulled your credit report. I've worked over on the application you gave me. Your income, your debt, your assets all your stuff and based off what you told me your pre-qualified for this amount of money. Well a pre-approval letter means is basically a step further they pull your credit, they verified your employment, they verify your bank account, you’re pretty much a cash buyer.

So the thing is this and I always tell buyers. I say, look at it from a sellers point of view. Everybody knows it’s a market right now and then in your price range, there's a very good probability that you may be in a multiple bid situation and if you aren't a portable bid situation it may come down to who's the most qualified buyer. Actually, it may come down to who's the most qualified buyer even before who are offering the most amount of money because most sellers will take the most qualified buyer and counter back to them for a higher price because they want to work with a more qualified buyer.

So I says to the buyers is this, let’s say another buyer is pre-approved and the agent goes up to the seller and say, hey I want to buy your home for whatever 300,000 dollars and I talk to you when your 2 weeks ago and it pre-qualified me for 300,000 and they said I’m good to go. And then we walk in and say, we want to buy your house. We are already fully approved for the mortgage. Everything's been verified, credit, income, assets and basically a cash buyer. We want to buy your home for $300,000. Who do you think they're going to take? In probably about a hundred, in a hundred cases or even a thousand out of a thousand they are going to take the pre-approved because they know they’re a slam dunk. It's like a cash buyer. Even if we came in at 390 and the other person was, I mean 290 then the other buyer was at 300 they would probably counter us back because they want to work with us more but they're going to go with the pre-approved buyer over pre-qualified.

So definitely get things going. Get a good mortgage lender, get pre-approved, get a good real estate agent, go out and find your home. In this way, you have everything on the rope. The last thing you want to do is get out in your car find your perfect home not be pre-qualified or even pre-approved or anything and then lose the home and then compare every other home to that home. If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out, give me a call (813-317-4009). If you're in the Tampa Bay area I’d love to work with you just let me know how I can help you. Have a wonderful day. Thank you very much.

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If you're interested in buying a condo in Marco Island, please contact our friend and professional Realtor Dan Boyle at (239) 963-6268. He’s a great Realtor that has been in the business since 2010 and will take great care of you and your family.