If you are considering buying a home in Los Angeles please don’t think we agents are being difficult when we tell you there is no point in starting the process until you have spoken to a lender.
This is not personal. YOU CANNOT MAKE AN OFFER ON ANY HOUSE WITHOUT A LETTER FROM YOUR LENDER. Or if you are paying cash, without showing that you have the funds in place.
You may have the best credit out there, which is good. You may have way more money in the bank than you need. Great. Someone may be helping you with the purchase wonderful. But your offer is not going to be considered unless the seller and his or her agent sees that lender letter.
Why? you ask.
Getting a loan when buying a home in Los Angeles is not a slam dunk. You will be surprised to learn what can surface during the approval process. Maybe your credit took a hit for a reason unknown to you. A collection you didn’t know about. Or you might recently have made a purchase which knocked your score down a little. You may not be able to get your hands on needed paperwork in a prompt manner. There are lot of things that can go wrong. There are also things that can go right, and maybe you can afford more house than you thought.
A colleague of mine compared getting a home loan with getting a car loan. They are miles apart. When you are buying a car, the salesman is going to do everything in his power to get you into one and then get you the loan. When buying a home the reverse is true. You are not getting that house without that pre-approval. Some agents even require that the loan is underwritten before they will accept an offer. This is a little overkill but it stresses the point of the importance of having everything in place. Too many deals have fallen through because the funding was not approved.
So, when buying a Los Angeles home, please know that when your real estate agents tells you they are not going to take you out until you have that lender letter in place, they are working with you, not against you.
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