I think I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask anyway. We got a pre-approval for $120,000 FHA loan from Quicken in January. A few weeks ago the LO called and said the credit score requirement had changed and that we'd have to bring it up to 620 before we could be approved. We knew that would happen soon so we just put Quicken on the back burner. We weren't really planning to go through them anyway. Well we got pre-approved for $85,000 through a local lender yesterday. But that won't get us far in this area. I have another lender working on putting a pre-approval through underwriting for $110,000. He said that we're likely to get the approval because we can document that what we've been paying in rent for a year and a half is pretty close to what our mortgage would be for a $110,000 house. He said it might be into next week before it comes back from underwriting. I'm getting our documents back to him as quickly as possible so he can get that going for us. Well, today I heard back from the Quicken LO who said our credit's looking great and we could definitely move forward on getting a house. I didn't speak with him (he left a message) so I'm not sure on the amount, but I would guess he would say $110 or $120,000 would be no problem since that's what he pre-approved us for before.
But of course his pre-approval didn't go through underwriting. I've read mixed reviews on Quicken. I know that they do have a $500 fee to go ahead and apply; we haven't paid that. We're going to see a place tonight and it's tempting to get the pre-approval letter from the Quicken LO so that if we loved the house we could put in an offer...but I don't know if that's a good idea. I'm just nervous to wait until next week for the "real" pre-approval because this house is such a good price...but at the same time, I don't want to lose my $1000 in earnest money if something came up, and that's less likely to happen if we get a pre-approval that's been through underwriting.
So confirm my suspicions...would it be dumb to use a pre-approval letter from Quicken to put in an offer while we wait for this other lender to get us the "real" pre-approval"?
