Home Loan Pre-Approval: The First Step To Start Home Hunting

11/05/2026 11/05/2026

Patrick Wang

Home Loan Pre-Approval: The First Step To Start Home Hunting

A pre-approved home loan gives you an idea of your potential buying power and approximate price range, so you can house hunt, or plan your build, with confidence.

What are the benefits

.A pre-approved home loan is free for home buyers. You do not have the obligation to take it up. Generally it has a 90-day expiry term. When it expires, you can have another 90-day extension. Therefore, you can make use this pre-approval to find your ideal home within these 180 days.
A pre-approved home loan will assess your financial affordability to give you an indication of how much you can borrow for your home purchase. Knowing what you could borrow means you can start house hunting or planning your build in purpose.
A pre-approved home loan gives you confidence to attend auctions. Nowadays, quite a lot of properties go to sell on auctions. With a pre-approval in hand, you will know your bidding power and price cap.
A pre-approved home loan shows you're serious about buying your home. Real estate agents and sellers are more happy to help you and work with you.
A pre-approved home loan will speed up the process for getting full loan approval. Only a few conditions to meet to a full loan approval. At this full loan approval stage, you are already home owners.

Steps to follow for a pre-approved home loan

To get an offer of a pre-approved home loan, lenders will normally require the following supporting documents:

Proof of your identity and address. These include a valid photo passport or driver license. If you are not a NZ citizen, you need to provide passport and visa page to verify your eligibility.
Proof of your deposit. It is ideal to have a 20% of deposit for most lenders. If you are the first home buyer, this deposit can be 10%. deposits can be saved money, KiwiSaver withdrawal, and gifted deposits, usually from parent.
Proof of income. You will need to provide payslips, bank statements, employer letter or employment contract. If you are self-employed, you will need to provide two-year financial statements, preferably through your accountant.
Your living expenses and your debts. Bank statements and debt (loan) statements (if you have) are required to assess your living cost and debt servicing ability. Bank statements are ideally in PDFs.

How to apply

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