how long does it take for a home loan approval

[Crazybean]

these days? I'm not talking about a pre-approval. I'm talking about the approval that the bank is confident they can loan you X amount so that you can submit an offer on a house (bank owned so they need to know you have the funds upfront)

Any good banks and good loan rates out there?

[mightymoo]

Originally Posted by Crazybean

these days? I'm not talking about a pre-approval. I'm talking about the approval that the bank is confident they can loan you X amount so that you can submit an offer on a house (bank owned so they need to know you have the funds upfront)

Any good banks and good loan rates out there?

1 to 2 weeks in my experience. We bought our house off a builder and because we were having him customize the house for us, he wanted a 10% deposit which would be non-refundable if it fell through for any reason (including financing), so we wanted full on approval before agreeing to it and that took about a week and a half.

[angie7]

Like the pp, about 1-2 weeks. We got ours in 1 week. Our first offer was on a foreclosure and we applied on a Thursday and was approved by the following Thursday (we lost the house in that time but bought another one.) We went with a FHA loan. I can give you our loan officer, he was amazing!

[cristeen]

It totally depends on the bank you're going with, your credit scores, income and the amount you're trying to borrow. As a general rule: the larger/busier the bank, the longer it'll take. The lower your scores, the longer it'll take. The lower the ratio of income:loan amount, the longer it'll take.

[kriket]

i don't think we had the 100% number until we were signing closing papers. we were 19 and 20 when we bought our house, and had a FHA loan and had to have things inspected and what not before the loan would clear to cover the house. it seemed like we had to find the house then get the loan.

[mightymoo]

My brother just got an FHA loan on a bank owned property and it was a nightmare for him. They kept giving him the runaround on needing just one more thing and one more thing and they didn't end up closing until a week into the penalty period (the agreement to purchase apparently had a date they had to close by or the selling bank started charging penalties - luckily the selling bank waived them). If you are going FHA, I recommend really quizzing the broker on what the bank could possibly want from you and presenting as much as possible up front, or at least have it ready.

They wanted things like an explanation why his license was still out of state, proof he didn't own the house listed on the license (it was my parents house), they weren't happy with his bank statements showing where the down payment was because they were printed online. Each of these things though seemed to take a week to resolve and suddenly they would come back with another thing. He did close in the end though.