The ''pre'' stuff verifies two critical elements in credit approval: your ability and willingness to repay a mortgage. Ability and willingness go hand in hand. While you can make enough money to be able to afford to pay back a loan, if you don't have the willingness to do so, then it won't work. And, of course, there are certainly a lot of people out there who may have the willingness to pay someone back, but they just don't have enough money to do so.

Before you get into any agent's car, the first thing you'll be asked is if you've applied for a mortgage and been prequalified or preapproved. Those terms may sound similar, but it's critical that you know the difference. Aprequalification is typically no more than a conversation with a loan officer who asks about your job, how much you make, and what kind of car payments and so on you might have. If the new house payment is below a certain percentage of your gross income and your total debts (for home, car, student loans, etc.) are under yet another certain percentage of your gross monthly income, then voila, you're prequalified. 

Have you ever heard a real estate agent say that it's a bad time to buy? I haven't. It's either ''The market's hot, buy now before prices go up even further'' or ''It's a buyer's market right now, make an offerwhile thedealsaregood'' Come on, agents need to make money, too, right? A good time to buy is when you, and only you, decide that it's right.

That's easy. Start doing some research on your own on the Internet, even before contacting a real estate agent. If the Internet was invented for any particular industry it has to have been for real estate. Before the World Wide Web was born, one could typically locate houses only in the newspaper on the weekend. If you saw a house that you liked, you'd contact the agent selling the home. Then came the endless cycle of driving around in a real estate agent's car looking at houses until finally, finally you found a home you wanted to buy.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to determine if it's better to buy or rent is to sit down and calculate the financial advantages of owning versus renting. This is commonly done online with a ''rent versus buy'' calculator found on the Web.

One way you own the roof over your head, and the other way, you don't. If you've always rented or otherwise never owned a home, one of the things you'll discover is that when things go wrong with your house there's no landlord to yell at. There's no superintendent to comefix your leaky faucet. If your hot-water heater is busted, you're the one who has to make the trip to your appliance store to shell out another thousand bucks or so just so you can take a hot shower in the morning.