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As a REALTOR it is my teams policy to only show buyers that have a pre-approval in hand houses that meet their criteria. We will never put a buyer in our car or show a home if the buyer does not have a pre-approval.
As a REALTOR it is my teams policy to only show buyers that have a pre-approval in hand houses that meet their criteria. We will never put a buyer in our car or show a home if the buyer does not have a pre-approval.
As a BUYER, I find that policy both offensive and intrusive.
I don't think anyone has any business knowing how much home I can technically afford, as every realtor we've ever dealt with has always pushed the highest end of what we tell them anyway.
Can't even imagine what they would have done had they actually known what we'd been approved for.
As an agent it is our responsibility to only show homes that our clients are qualified to buy. They either need to show a pre-approval with their chosen lender or proof of funds. We want to make sure that they can actually able to purchase the home. When we talk to our clients we ask them what their comfort range is within their pre-approval amount and show them listings based on that.
Requiring a pre-approval before showing houses is the smart thing to do for the agent and for the buyer for a couple of reasons.
One is, as mentioned above, a safety issue. If someone has a pre-approval letter, they've had to give information to someone and have it checked. That improves safety for not only the home owner, but the agent. (There's way too many stories out there of agents being assaulted and even killed showing homes to someone they don't know anything about.)
Another is that it helps prevent people who are not in a position to buy, or who even have no intention of buying, of wasting the time of both the agent and the seller.
Having a note that only pre-approved buyers should be shown the house might lessen your pool of buyers to those who are actually in a position to purchase your house. A couple might not want to see if if they have to actually prove they are in a position financially to buy a house, but for the most part you're only going to exclude those who either are not in a position to buy or have no intention of buying.
This does not mean that every listing agent is going to actually see how much you can pay, or the preapproval letter at all. It simply means that your buyer's agent, who does need to know that you can purchase the houses they are showing you and will need it when making an offer, anyway, is assuring them that they have one on file from you.
Here, preapproval letters are usually required to be submitted with the offer. The first step in looking for a house is getting that so that you know for a fact how much you can spend, and from that you can decide how much you want to spend.
Anyone who refuses to be preapproved sends out a big red flag in my book, unless they are paying cash and have proof of funds. At the very least, they're likely to be wanting to steal my time.
As retirees that will be cash buyers of our next home, we would fall outside of the usual pre-approval, pre-qualification process. As for having a letter of sufficiency of funds from our credit union in hand to initially look at a property, we would decline and would move on. As others have said, I wouldn't necessarily want just anyone to know how much cash we have on hand or have set aside for a purchase, the two numbers being quite a bit different from each other.
You can ask your realtor to help screen people that view your home to avoid nuisance showings but be cautious about restricting it so much that you eliminate good buyers especially if no one wanted to take your listing in the first place.
Here, preapproval letters are usually required to be submitted with the offer. The first step in looking for a house is getting that so that you know for a fact how much you can spend, and from that you can decide how much you want to spend.
Anyone who refuses to be preapproved sends out a big red flag in my book, unless they are paying cash and have proof of funds. At the very least, they're likely to be wanting to steal my time.
Pre-approval for an offer makes perfect sense to me. A seller should not have to waste time dealing with negotiations on a house with someone who can't afford the home and will never get a loan.
And I understand what you're saying about wasting time and the whole safety issue (though anyone could forge a piece of paper and attack anyone at any time), but my finances are nobody's business - least of all a couple of people who stand to make more money based on having me spend more money (including a buyer's agent, who I really don't know from Adam and at best will be a pleasant acquaintance passing through my life).
And depending on how long it takes to buy a house, how many pings on your credit score is having multiple pre-approvals done?
As retirees that will be cash buyers of our next home, we would fall outside of the usual pre-approval, pre-qualification process. As for having a letter of sufficiency of funds from our credit union in hand to initially look at a property, we would decline and would move on. As others have said, I wouldn't necessarily want just anyone to know how much cash we have on hand or have set aside for a purchase, the two numbers being quite a bit different from each other.
You can ask your realtor to help screen people that view your home to avoid nuisance showings but be cautious about restricting it so much that you eliminate good buyers especially if no one wanted to take your listing in the first place.
Any good, busy realtor is going to require his buyer have a pre-approval before showing them ANY house anyway, so if I were the OP, I wouldn't so much worry about it nor do I think it limits an incredible list of people.
And I think you're confusing a pre-qual and a pre-approval. The pre-qualification anyone surfing the internet can get simply by putting their unverified income into an engine and pushing send, essentially. The pre-approval can take up to a week and a lender associate goes over actual bank statements and income receipts of the buyer. Not just anyone can get that and it does hold water. (I think you confused it with a pre-qualification, which doesn't hold any water.)
Thanks for clarifying. Yes, I meant pre-qualification letter.
Actually, because we waited so long to find the perfect house, we wound up collecting a much larger down payment and we were able to both buy a more expensive house AND not affect our lifestyle one iota.
Yes...we are the samesies.
Our plan was to make our housing expenses not even blip on our radar...because we like to save, invest, etc...and when we do buy something, we like really nice things (like vacations).
Yeah... I think we are headed that way. If some great deal on a house pops up now, we will take it. If not, we will wind up saving for awhile and getting something more expensive.
As a BUYER, I find that policy both offensive and intrusive.
I don't think anyone has any business knowing how much home I can technically afford, as every realtor we've ever dealt with has always pushed the highest end of what we tell them anyway.
Can't even imagine what they would have done had they actually known what we'd been approved for.
S'truth. We'd be looking at houses about 300k more than what we wanna spend. Oy!
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