What is the difference between pre-qualifying and pre-approval?

Jeff Thomas: Hi, I am Jeff Thomas with Family Lender Inc. I am Mortgage Advisor. Today, we are going to discuss the different parts of how to purchase a home and the process you go through to find a home. To tell you little bit, about myself, I have been in the Mortgage industry for 15 years. I recently co-authored a book with Todd Ballenger called Borrow Smart Retire Rich. There are seven parts of the book which we will go over at the end of the video. Today, we are going to discuss how to apply for a Mortgage?

Host: What s the difference between pre-qualifying and pre-approval?

Jeff Thomas: There is a big difference being pre-qualified and being pre-approved. Pre-qualified is just basically two people sitting down, I would sit down with the client either on the phone or in person and just basically ask them what their income is? Ask them what there debts are, ask them what they think their credit scores are and basically run through a couple of calculations and come up with a couple of numbers and say it looks like you are approved, you could pre-qualify it for x number house payment and that equates to this value of a home.

Being pre-approved is a lot different. It s actually taking your information, we are going to sit down and take the application. I am going to review your income, I am going to review asset statements, I am going to review your credit report and then I am going to take that information and we are going to verify it and we submit it through our Automated Underwriting System or to a manual underwriter and we are going to get an approval or a variation of approval with maybe conditions, and once we have that we know that you are approved for x monthly payment or x interest rate and the value of the home that equates to both of those.