Before you visit any apartments, unless you intend to pay all cash, it is important that you are pre-qualified with a mortgage lender that regularly lends in New York City. Please note that because New York is such a unique market (primarily because of the prevalence of co-ops), many of the large national mortgage lenders are not active in New York - please contact us by completing this form and we can help you get a free mortgage pre-qualification. There are several reasons why it is important that you are pre-qualified:

• You will have a better understanding of the actual price range that you will be able to afford, thereby allowing you to focus your search. Often, buyers can actually afford more than they initially believe and therefore they waste time looking at apartments that do not actually meet their criteria.

• Due to the competitive nature of the market, when you make an offer and if it is backed up with a pre-qualification from a recognized mortgage lender, the offer will then be much stronger than others from buyers who are not pre-qualified. In other words, by being pre-qualified you are giving yourself a competitive advantage over other buyers. Of course, this also means that if you are not pre-qualified, you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage vis a vis other buyers.

• Once your offer is accepted, having been pre-qualified will speed up the closing process. If you had not been pre-qualified, it is possible that various surprises might pop-up and threaten the deal.

•	You will have a better understanding of the actual price range that you will be able to afford, thereby allowing you to focus your search. Often, buyers can actually afford more than they initially believe and therefore they waste time looking at apartments that do not actually meet their criteria.
•	Due to the competitive nature of the market, when you make an offer and if it is backed up with a pre-qualification from a recognized mortgage lender, the offer will then be much stronger than others from buyers who are not pre-qualified. In other words, by being pre-qualified you are giving yourself a competitive advantage over other buyers. Of course, this also means that if you are not pre-qualified, you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage vis a vis other buyers.
•	Once your offer is accepted, having been pre-qualified will speed up the closing process. If you had not been pre-qualified, it is possible that various surprises might pop-up and threaten the deal.