Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa Real Estate Investor Magazine - April 2017 | Page 21

Step 3: Making a Plan
B
y now you should be well on your way to getting ready to buy your first property investment or home.
You’ve done a credit check to assess your financial fitness, put your finances in order by following a strict
budget, or a debt management plan (if your credit score is less than favourable) and are actively building
up your savings for a healthy deposit on your upcoming property purchase. So, what’s next?
Remember to keep an eye out for these symbols in the articles to know when a piece of content is specific to a
first-time homebuyer’s or investor’s journey:
First-Time Home-Buyer
First-Time Property Investor
Step three on the first-time Homebuyers and Property Investment Journey is to ‘Make a Plan’. This involves
getting pre-qualified for a home loan.
The benefits of having a pre-qualification certificate
While a pre-qualification certificate doesn’t guarantee that your bond will be approved by a lender, it does give
you a good idea of the bond amount you can apply for, plus what the interest rate on that bond and the bond’s
monthly instalment amount might be.
A property buyer’s negotiation power and deal closure ability is also vastly improved with a pre-qualification
certificate in hand. Property sellers are more likely to enter in a property sale transaction with a prequalified
home buyer than a buyer who only starts the home loan qualification process after the sale agreement has been
signed.
New technology now automates the pre-qualification process
The traditional pre-qualification process has, up until now, been a manual one, completed through a bank
or bond originator of choice. Documents required for a manual application include a completed and signed
interview form and Power of Attorney letter, your latest payslip, a copy of your ID, a three-month bank
statement, proof of your address and copies of your existing rental agreements.
Advances in digital technology are fast changing the property investment landscape, however, and you can
now complete your pre-qualification application online. Platforms that offer online pre-qualification services
include My Bond Fitness (MBF) and ooba (through a process co-developed with MBF).
MBF’s user-friendly portal allows prospective property buyers to create an online profile using their email
address and password. All the information and documentation necessary for a pre-qualification can then be
captured and uploaded online. This kicks off a free credit check, affordability check, and the generating of a free
pre-qualification application certificate.
“Working with ooba enabled MBF to provide an online, home loan pre-qualification calculator that provides
an accurate, paperless and speedy outcome for clients, based on the same affordability and credit ‘scorecard’
that is used for a normal (i.e. manual) ooba home loan application and prequalification,” says Meyer De Waal
of MBF. “The entire process is now just fully automated,” he adds.
MBF Steps
A key feature of the MBF platform is that it integrates with and aggregates information from a user’s personal
bank account(s), using a secure log-in (to provide an accurate overview of their monthly income and expenses)
and a budget calculation that is fully compliant with the National Credit Act and acceptable home loan lending
practices.
www.reimag.co.za
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