Mortgage pre-approval
A pre-approval turns your budget from an estimate into a number a seller will take seriously. It belongs before the search, because it changes what you look at.
Pre-qualification and pre-approval
A pre-qualification is a conversation. You state your income and debts, and a lender gives you a rough range in minutes. A pre-approval is an application. The lender verifies the documents, pulls your credit, and holds a rate for a set window, commonly sixty to one hundred and twenty days depending on the lender. Only the second one carries weight in an offer.
What a lender is looking at
Four things carry the decision. What you earn and how steadily, what you already owe, your credit history, and the down payment with proof of where it came from. The property itself is assessed later, which is why a pre-approval is conditional on the specific home you eventually choose.
Why the approved amount is lower than a calculator suggests
Lenders qualify you at a rate higher than the one you are offered, so the payment they test you against is larger than the payment you would make. That is deliberate, and it is why a payment calculator and a lender can produce two different budgets from identical inputs. Our calculator shows the payment. The lender sets the ceiling.
What to have ready
Proof of income and recent pay statements, a T4 or notice of assessment, two years of filings if you are self-employed, ninety days of history on the down payment, photo identification, and a list of current debts with balances and payments. A complete file on the first pass is the difference between an answer in days and an answer in weeks.
What to leave alone once you are approved
The approval is checked again before funding. Between now and possession day, leave the credit file untouched. No new cards, no financed furniture, no vehicle lease, no large deposits you cannot document, and no job change if you can help it. Each one of those can undo an approval days before keys.
Then bring the number back
With a rate hold in hand you can search against a real ceiling and write a shorter financing condition, which sellers notice. Start the search, or tell us where you are at below and we will pick it up from there.
Rates, program figures, qualification rules, and payment math belong to a licensed mortgage professional. For your numbers, talk to a mortgage professional.