Improve Your Home Buying Power
Before you start deciding how many bedrooms and bathrooms you need, it’s crucial to sit down and determine how much house you can afford. Once that’s done, we give you a Certificate of Pre-Approval, which is a document that tells your realtor and the seller of any home you’re interested in that you’ll likely be able to get a loan to do the deal. It’s really difficult to get buyers interested in your offer with it.
To get there, an Ark Mortgage Advisor helps you to work out a budget. We consider your net income and subtract your current debt while leaving wiggle room for unforeseen expenses. That determines your Maximum Affordable Payment (MAP) for your mortgage, which in turn tells us what amount loan you’ll be likely to be approved for. Your Ark Mortgage Advisor will also tell you about various ways you can maximize your purchasing power.
How much mortgage can I afford?
The first step in buying a house is determining a realistic budget. Start with this handy calculator to get an estimate of how much you can qualify for, and how a home loan will fit into your monthly payments. The calculator takes into account your income, the purchase price, and total monthly payment. Try a couple scenarios to see how it might affect your finances.
Pre-Approval FAQs
The measure of how much mortgage you can afford is called your Maximum Affordable Payment (MAP). That in turn determines how much you’ll be able to borrow. Determining your MAP is the first step in home buying. Use the calculator on this page to get a rough idea of your MAC.
A mortgage pre-qualification is a simple calculation to see what you can afford based often on verbal communication of your income/debt ratio, assets, cash available for a down payment, employment history, and estimated credit score. You can get pre-qualified quickly but since the information hasn’t been verified by documentation, it won’t hold much weight when negotiating with sellers.
An Ark Certified Pre-Approval, on the other hand, is a written, conditional commitment from our company, valid for 60 days, stating you are pre-approved for mortgage financing up to a specified amount based on submitted documentation. Of course, you’ll still need to complete a loan application, get an appraisal of the purchase property, and supply other documents to get your actual loan underwritten.
It’s a simple process in which we review your income and assets and review your credit history based on the documents you supply. It’s guaranteed for 60 days. Considering the weight a Certified Pre-Approval carries over a pre-qualification, it’s a no-brainer to get one before your start house hunting.
Once your loan application is submitted, it normally takes less than 24 hours to receive your Certified Pre-Approval from Ark Mortgage.