Last month I had a buyer fall in love with a place on Parks Avenue in La Mesa. Great block, walkable to the Village, priced right for the area at $625,000. They wanted to write an offer that afternoon.
I asked if they'd gotten pre-approved. They said yes. Then I asked who their lender was and whether they'd shopped rates with anyone else.
Silence.
This is the step first-time buyers skip almost every single time. They get one pre-approval letter and treat it like a finished task. Check the box, move on, start scrolling listings. But that one letter could be costing them real money.
Here's what I mean. The difference between a 6.75% rate and a 7.1% rate on a $500,000 loan is roughly $125 a month. Over 30 years that's about $45,000. And I've seen buyers sitting on quotes that far apart without realizing it, because they never bothered to compare.
I tell every buyer I work with to talk to at least two lenders. Three is better. Credit unions, local banks, online lenders. Get actual loan estimates, not just rate quotes over the phone. The loan estimate is where you see the full picture: origination fees, discount points, lender credits, all of it.
Some agents don't push on this because it slows things down. I disagree with that approach. A couple extra days comparing lenders saves your client tens of thousands of dollars. That's worth a short delay.
In markets like El Cajon, where you can still find starter homes in the low $500s near Greenfield Drive, buyers are already stretching to make the numbers work. Getting a better rate isn't a luxury. It's the difference between comfortable payments and being house-poor.
One more thing. Lenders know you're shopping when multiple mortgage inquiries hit your credit report within a 14 to 45 day window. The credit bureaus treat them as a single inquiry. Your score isn't going to tank because you compared three lenders. That fear keeps people from shopping, and it's based on a misunderstanding of how the system works.
So before you start touring homes and falling in love with somebody's kitchen, sit down with your numbers. The house you can afford looks different depending on who's writing the loan.
What rate are you sitting on right now?