When is too early to look for preapproval?
Our current condo is getting too small for our growing family and we’re hoping to buy a house in late 2027 early 2028. I’m a hospitalist and my wife just transitioned to being stay at home with our newborn. We’re looking in a HCOL area where homes are easily $1 million plus. We currently have enough to put a down payment of 20% and excellent credit but want to wait a little bit longer to make some more money to have in preparation for renovations and other major savings. I know there’s also physician loans too in case I don’t want to pour all our money into a down payment.
Anyway, I was talking with my friend who is not a physician but has experience in real estate and he was highly recommending I talk to at least one lender now just to get preapproval and see more concretely how much loan and home I could theoretically get now, and if it’s not enough then I could better plan the next year how to optimize my finances.
Caveats to this obviously being this is gonna do a credit pull but I can’t imagine that’s that devastating with my credit, and that I have no intention to use it yet so it will expire in 90 days.
Has anyone else here ever done this? If or if not, what would you recommend?