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fGetting preapproved for a mortgage in the UK means getting a mortgage in principle, and the first hurdle is that nobody agrees what to call it. Agreement in principle, decision in principle, mortgage in principle, AIP, DIP, pre-approval. Six names, one document. It is a lender’s written indication of what it would lend you, based on what you have told it and a quick look at your credit file.
Estate agents ask for one before they take your offer to the seller. Auctioneers expect you to have your funding lined up before you raise your hand. And plenty of buyers get one, treat it as a yes, and then discover months later that it never was.
Here is how to get one, what the lender is really checking, and what to do when your case is not the tidy salaried purchase every high street calculator is built around.
What a Mortgage in Principle Actually Is
It is an indication, not an offer. The lender takes your income, your outgoings, your deposit and a credit check, runs it through its affordability rules, and tells you roughly how much it would be prepared to lend. Nothing has been verified at this stage. No payslip has been read, no property has been valued, no underwriter has looked at your file.
That still makes it useful. It tells you your realistic budget before you fall for a house at the top of your search. It shows an agent you are a serious buyer rather than someone browsing on a Sunday. In a competitive situation it is often the difference between an offer being put forward and an offer being ignored.
What it does not do is commit anybody to anything.
How to Get Preapproved for a Mortgage
What you need to hand
Have this ready and the whole thing takes minutes rather than days: three years of address history, your income (payslips if you are employed, two to three years of accounts or SA302s if you are self-employed), your deposit amount and where it came from, your monthly outgoings and any credit commitments, and ID.
The deposit question catches people out. Lenders care about the source, not just the size. Gifted deposits need a letter from the person giving it. Money that has been sitting overseas or in crypto takes more explaining, so start gathering the paperwork early rather than when the lender asks.
The credit check
Most lenders now run a soft search for a mortgage in principle, which is visible to you but not to other lenders and leaves no mark on your file. Some still run a hard search. It is worth asking before you apply, because several hard searches in a short window make you look like someone being turned down repeatedly, whether or not that is true.
Check your own file first. Errors on credit reports are common, and they are much easier to fix before an application than during one.
How long it takes
Online, with a high street lender, you can have one back in ten minutes. Through a broker on a case that needs a bit of thought, allow a day or two, because the useful work happens before the submission rather than after it.
What comes back
You get a figure and a validity period, usually somewhere between 30 and 90 days depending on the lender. Read the conditions attached to it. That is where the lender quietly tells you what it has assumed about your income, your credit and the property, and each of those assumptions is something the full application will test properly.
What Lenders Check Before They Give You One
Four things, in roughly this order.
Your income and how it arrives. A salary is easy to assess. Self-employed profit, dividends, bonuses, commission, contract day rates and rental income all get treated differently by different lenders, and the spread between the most and least generous is wide.
Your credit file. Not just the score, which lenders do not actually see, but the history behind it: missed payments, defaults, CCJs, how much of your available credit you are using and how recently you applied for anything.
Your deposit. Size sets your loan to value and therefore your rate. Source decides how much paperwork follows.
The property. At this stage the lender knows nothing about it, which is precisely why an AIP can come apart later. A flat above a takeaway, a non-standard construction, an ex-local authority tower block or a property with a short lease can all be fine with the right lender and an instant no with the wrong one.
Why an AIP Is Not a Yes
This is the part the lender pages skip over.
A mortgage in principle is based on unverified information. When the full application goes in, the lender reads the actual documents, instructs a valuation and puts the case in front of an underwriter. Any of those can change the answer. The valuation comes in below the purchase price. The bank statements show a commitment you forgot about. The property turns out to be something the lender does not lend on.
An AIP can also be withdrawn if your circumstances change. Change jobs, take out a car loan, open a new credit card or miss a payment between the AIP and the offer, and you may find the number moves or disappears.
Treat it as a green light for house hunting, not a guarantee of funding.
When Your Case Is Not Standard
Every high street AIP tool is built for the same customer: employed, paid monthly, buying a home to live in. If that is you, the process above will serve you well. If it is not, an instant online decision often gives you a misleading answer, because the calculator simply does not have a box for your situation.
Self-employed and contractors. Some lenders take an average of your last two years, some take the most recent year, some work from day rate, and a few will use retained profit as well as salary and dividends. Same accounts, wildly different borrowing figures.
Adverse credit. A default from four years ago rules you out with one lender and is barely a conversation with another. The high street calculator will not tell you which is which, it will just say no.
Buy-to-let. A buy-to-let mortgage in principle works on the rent rather than your salary, with lenders testing that the income covers the payment by a margin, commonly 125% to 145% at a stressed rate. Buying through a limited company, running an HMO or holding a portfolio all narrow the lender pool further. Our buy-to-let mortgage page sets out how those cases are assessed.
Commercial and semi-commercial. There is no AIP button for these. You get indicative terms from a lender based on the business, the tenant or the lease, and they are negotiated rather than generated. More on our commercial mortgage page.
Anything with a deadline. Bridging finance works to terms in principle that can come back the same day, which is what makes it usable when a purchase is racing a clock. If you are buying at auction, you want your funding agreed before the hammer falls rather than after, and our auction finance page covers how pre-approval works inside the 28 day completion window.
Common Mistakes That Cost People the Purchase
Collecting AIPs. One or two is sensible. Five, each with a hard search, starts to do real damage to your file at exactly the moment you need it looking calm.
Letting it expire mid-purchase. Conveyancing regularly runs past 90 days. Diarise the expiry and renew it rather than discovering it lapsed the week the lender wants to issue an offer.
Treating the maximum as the budget. The figure is what a lender will consider, not what you can comfortably afford once rates move. Those are different numbers.
Changing anything after the AIP. New job, new car finance, a credit card for the sofa. All reasonable decisions, all capable of undoing the mortgage.
Assuming a decline is final. A no from one lender is one lender’s rules, not a verdict on you. It is very often a case that was put to the wrong funder.
The Clever Way to Get Preapproved
If your case is straightforward, a high street AIP will do the job and you should get one before you start viewing.
If it is not, the answer you get from an online form is worth very little, and a decline you did not need is worth less than nothing. Self-employed income, past credit issues, a limited company purchase, a portfolio, a mixed use building or a deadline measured in days: those cases need putting to a lender who works with them daily, packaged properly the first time.
That is what we do. Tell us what you are buying, how you are funded and when you need to complete, and we will come back within 24 business hours with a straight answer on where you stand and which lender fits. Send it over and do the Clever thing.
Your property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage or any other debt secured on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Usually between 30 and 90 days, depending on the lender. If your purchase is still going through when it expires you can normally renew it, though the lender will recheck your circumstances first and the figure can change.
A mortgage in principle takes minutes online. The full mortgage offer that follows typically takes two to six weeks, depending on how quickly the valuation is booked, how complete your paperwork is and how busy the lender is. Specialist cases can be faster or slower, because they are underwritten by a person rather than a system.
A lender's written indication of what it would be prepared to lend you, based on the information you have given and a credit check. Nothing has been verified at that point, so it tells you your likely budget rather than confirming your funding.
AIP stands for agreement in principle. It is not a type of mortgage, it is the pre-approval stage that comes before the application. Different lenders call the same document an AIP, a DIP or a mortgage in principle, which is why the terms all appear interchangeably online.
You use it to make offers. Once an offer is accepted you submit the full application, the lender verifies your documents, instructs a valuation and underwrites the case. If everything holds up you receive a formal mortgage offer, which is the point at which the funding is actually committed.
Yes, though it is assessed on the rent rather than your salary, with lenders testing that the income covers the payment by a margin, commonly 125% to 145% at a stressed rate. Limited company purchases, HMOs and portfolios use a narrower pool of lenders.
Most lenders run a soft search, which only you can see and which has no effect. Some run a hard search, which is recorded on your file. Several hard searches in a short period can count against you, so ask which type a lender uses before you apply.
Yes, at two points. The lender can decline to issue one, usually on affordability or credit history. And a mortgage in principle that has already been issued can still fail at full application if the documents, the valuation or the property do not support it.