How soon should I find a lender?

[Anonymous]

I'm planning to buy a house this summer, ideally closing in early August. However, I'm still working on cleaning up my credit reports so I'm not ready yet to approach lenders. But I know that my reports will be as good as they can get by the beginning of June. With some persistence and luck, I might be ready as early as April.

If I want to be able to make a serious offer in June, when should I plan to find a lender to begin the pre-qualification process?

[NC_Mtg_Loaner]

Yesterday.

No seriously, get a referral from a friend or family member and reach  out to discuss your plan and goal.   This might qualify as a qualification, but you may want to see about getting a pre-approval now.   Heck, any month waiting is opportunity lost, but  you want to proceed when you are ready, but the more you learn about the process, the better prepared you'll be as you shop.

Congrats and go for it!

[nhlbluesgirl]

I’m in the same boat as you. I’m looking to move late July/early August and decided to contact a loan officer now. She’s going to pull my report and give me advice on getting my score where it needs to be by summer. Fingers crossed for both of us!

[Anonymous]

I am in the same boat. My only concern is them pulling my report and it being a hard hit

[iced]

My case may not be typical, but we're casually looking for our next home with a tentative deadline of 2019 sometime. Early last year (2017), we were already talking to banks about prequalifications and letting them run hard pulls of our credit. As they expired, we'd go back to re-pre-qualify with the one who was most to our liking.

I don't think you can start on this process too soon, especially if you're in a market where you won't have time to wait for approvals once you find a place you want to put an offer on.

Most pre-qualifications are good for around 6 months, so you're already in that window.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the input!

I know it's always best to start early. I was mostly wondering how 'late' I could wait and not screw myself up. I still have a few derogs to clean up, and need a few months to season some recent bank deposits.