When you start to look around at potential houses to buy, it’s a good idea to also start getting your pre-approval sorted. This means firstly talking to your bank or mortgage broker to let them know that you are looking around.
The bank or lender will ask you a number of questions about your income and how much you will be personally contributing towards the purchase. They might then issue you a pre-approval for a loan for a property. The pre-approval will tell you how much you are able to lend from them but the pre-approval will likely be subject to conditions. These conditions could include paying off your credit-card or car loan or getting a valuation on the property.
Until all the conditions on your pre-approval are satisfied, you will not be able to confirm your finance. This means that when you’d like to make an offer on a property, you will likely need to include a finance condition with your offer even though you may already have pre-approval from your bank. Most banks will still need to see that your offer has been accepted by the Seller before they will confirm your loan approved.