I get it. You’ve looked at real estate pictures online until you feel like you know every house as well as the people who live there. You’ve figured out which town has a coffee shop you’d like, where the best grocery store is, and which community has a drive-in movie theatre or some other attraction that might be open even during COVID restrictions.
And if you live in an overpriced shoebox in a city, you are soooo ready to move.
But do you know what you can afford? If you have to get a mortgage, do you have a pre-qualification letter?
If you’re heading to upstate New York and the Catskills or Hudson Valley in particular, you need that. You are going to find yourself competing with other buyers who have their financials in an immaculate spreadsheet, with copies of their mortgage pre-approval in triplicate. They may have even set them to music. They’re going to look like a better bet to a seller.
Some sellers won’t even show their properties to potential buyers without that advance work done. They want to weed out the folks who show up on the weekend, and figure it might be fun to look at a few houses. They’re going to sell their houses this year and they aren’t wasting time.
There’s another reason not to look at houses until you know what you can afford — you’ll save yourself some heartache. There are few things sadder than finding the house you know is made for you, and not being able to pull together an offer in time.
If you know you want to move, get those bank statements together and talk to your favorite mortgage officer. It costs you nothing, but it can pay off.