How long is my pre-approval good for?

My name is Evan Kaufman, your VA originator here to help explain that nice letter that you get from us.

How long is that going to be good for when you’re going out to search for homes?

So, pre-approval in the first place: difference between pre-approval and pre-qualification.

Pre-qualification is where you might have told us a lot of your information, so we said hey, we are qualifying you based on what you’ve told us.

Pre-approval means you’ve given us a lot of documents.

Typically, you’ll have provided, at that point, your pay stubs (or LES for military folks), bank statements if we’re needing to verify some funds, maybe your orders for if you’re moving, or new job letter.

We’ve collected those documents upfront and reviewed them. So, we’re pretty confident to say hey, this loan’s going to be good to go, we’re pre-approving you.

So, pre-qualification – based on what you’ve told us.

Pre-approval – based on what you’ve given us.

But now you’ve given us all that stuff and we’ve issued you the pre-approval. A big part of that is that we’ve typically pulled your credit by that point, and so if we run your credit, that’s good for a certain window.

Now, our pre-approval letters are going to be generally good for 90 days.

Now your credit when we pulled it though, that’s typically good for 120.

So why the difference? Well, your bank statements and pay stubs and all that good stuff that we’ve collected, that’s generally good for 90 days before we got to refresh.

But even once we get under contract, we’re typically going to refresh it anyways.

So, the reason why we have it at 90-day windows, versus that 120, is to give you a little bit of buffer room just in case you’re going to be looking for homes.

If you get an under contract within that 90-day window, typically it takes time to close that home, and that can take anywhere from 20 to 40, 50 days to close on the home.

So, it gives us a little bit of wiggle room before having to re-run that credit.

Because if we get outside of that 120-day window from when we’ve run your credit, that’s where we got to do a re-pull again to check credit and make sure nothing major has changed on your credit report.

So, your pre-approval’s good for 90 days, typically.

It’s what you’re going to see in most instances, but there’s a little bit of extra buffer room there when it comes to having to re-pull your credit report from that initial pre-approval.

We really get about 120 just in case, but that’s what gives us room for when you’re under contract. 90-day pre-approval with the ability to refresh if needed.

My name’s Evan Kaufman, VA loan originator. Hope this helps you go out there and win at a home with the VA Loan. Take care.