Prequalification is not the finish line. It is the point at which you can start looking seriously. Here is what happens next, in order, and what tends to go wrong at each stage.
1. Prequalified, then pre-approved
The two words get used interchangeably and they are not the same. A prequalification is based on what you told me. A pre-approval means I have looked at your documents and run the file through underwriting. In a competitive market, a prequalification letter is worth very little and a real pre-approval is worth a great deal.
Get the second one before you write an offer. It costs you nothing and it changes how your offer is read.
2. You find the house and go into contract
Send me the address and the executed contract the same day. The clock in the contract starts immediately and every day matters from here.
3. The appraisal
The lender orders an independent appraisal to confirm the home is worth what you agreed to pay. Most come in at or above the contract price. When one comes in low, you have options: renegotiate, bring the difference in cash, or dispute the appraisal with better comparable sales. It is not automatically a dead deal, and panic at this stage is the most common unforced error I see.
4. Underwriting
An underwriter reads the whole file, and this is where the document requests come from. They will feel repetitive. Some of them will feel absurd, like being asked to explain a deposit you have already explained.
Answer them fast. The single biggest cause of a late closing is a borrower sitting on a document request for four days. Everything else is usually recoverable; lost days are not.
5. Conditional approval, then clear to close
Conditional approval means yes, subject to a short list of remaining items. Clear to close means the list is empty and the lender is ready to fund. That is the moment the deal is genuinely safe.
6. Signing and funding
You sign at escrow, the lender wires the money, the deed records, and you get keys. In California recording usually happens the day after signing, so plan your move around recording and not around signing.
The things that derail files
Almost every problem after contract comes from the same short list.
- New credit. Do not finance a car, a sofa, or a phone. Underwriting pulls your credit again before funding.
- Changing jobs. If it is unavoidable, call me before you resign, not after.
- Large unexplained deposits. Every deposit that is not payroll needs a paper trail. Cash is the hardest of all to document.
- Moving money between accounts. It feels tidy and it creates work. Leave it where it is until we close.
- Slow document returns. The one thing entirely inside your control.
Do those five things and most files close quietly and on time. That is the goal: a boring closing.
This article is general information, not financial advice. Your situation is specific, so let's talk about it.
Get Prequalified