Property Tax Calculator

The effective rate is the heart of any property tax calculator, and it’s the one input most homebuyers get wrong. The number you want isn’t the millage rate the county prints on the tax bill, and it isn’t the nominal rate quoted at a closing. It’s the effective rate, which is the actual annual tax paid divided by the true market value of the property. A property tax calculator that doesn’t make that distinction will mislead you by 20% to 50% in either direction.

Start with how counties actually assess. New York City uses four tax classes. Class 1 covers one- to three-family homes and the assessment ratio is 6% of market value. Class 2 covers co-ops, condos, and rental buildings, and the assessment ratio there is 45% of market value. The nominal Class 1 tax rate is around 20.085% for fiscal 2026, but because you’re only taxed on 6% of market value, the effective rate on a Class 1 brownstone in Brooklyn ends up at roughly 0.85% of market value. A property tax calculator that takes 20.085% at face value will hand you a number ten times too high. The NYC Department of Finance publishes the class rates each July, but you have to do the conversion yourself.

New Jersey works differently. The state publishes effective rates directly, and they’re brutal — the statewide average sits at about 2.20%, and towns like Demarest, Tenafly, and Princeton cross 2.5%. A property tax calculator for a $1.5 million home in Tenafly returns roughly $37,500 a year in property tax. The same home in Battery Park City, taxed under NYC Class 2 rules with the abatement, might pay $14,000. Texas runs 1.6% to 2.2% depending on county, with Travis County (Austin) at about 1.81% effective. California is capped at 1% under Proposition 13 plus local add-ons, so San Francisco runs about 1.18% effective — but only on the assessed value at the last sale, which can be wildly below market for long-tenured owners. A good property tax calculator handles all of these mechanics, not just an averaged rate.

The data source matters too. Smart Asset, ATTOM, and the U.S. Census American Community Survey all publish median effective property tax rates by county. Those are decent starting points but they’re median values for the whole county, which can mask huge variation within a single ZIP code. A property tax calculator pulling from Census data will give you the right ballpark for a generic home in Westchester County, but if the property is in a village with its own school district add-on (Scarsdale, Bronxville, Larchmont), the actual rate can be 30% higher than the county median. The calculator needs to drill to the village or school district level, not stop at the county.

One thing every property tax calculator should flag but most don’t: assessment lag. Most counties reassess on a 1-, 2-, or 5-year cycle, and the assessed value tends to lag actual market value by 12 to 36 months after a hot market. A property tax calculator using last year’s assessment in a market that ran up 15% will quote you a tax bill that’s about to climb. The opposite is also true — in a falling market, the assessment lag protects you for a year before catching up. We tell real estate clients to look at three years of tax history on a property, not just the current year, because the trajectory matters more than the snapshot.

Here’s the surprising piece most calculators miss: two homes on the same block can have effective rates that differ by 30% because of how long the previous owner held the home and which exemptions transferred or expired at sale. California’s Proposition 13 is the obvious case — the assessment resets at sale — but New York City’s STAR, SCHE, and DHE exemptions also expire when the property changes hands. The buyer’s first tax bill is often dramatically higher than the seller’s last one. A property tax calculator that quotes you the seller’s effective rate is quoting you a number you’ll never see.

The next layer most calculators skip is the school district tax. In New York, school taxes are billed separately from county and town taxes for properties outside NYC, and they often make up 60% to 70% of the total property tax bill. Westchester villages like Scarsdale, Bronxville, and Rye each have their own school districts with their own millage rates, and those rates can shift 0.4 to 0.8 percentage points between adjacent zip codes. New Jersey is the same story — Princeton, Millburn, and Tenafly run school tax rates that drive the bulk of their high effective rates. A property tax calculator pointed only at county-level data misses this entirely. The right calculator either drills to school district code or asks the user to input the school district directly. We tell clients to pull two years of full tax bills from the seller before they go to contract, broken out by jurisdiction, so the calculator has clean inputs.

Special assessments and front-foot benefit charges round out the picture. Many counties layer flat per-parcel charges on top of the percentage-based property tax. NYC’s Class 1 homeowners pay a separate emergency repair charge and water frontage charge that don’t show up in the rate calculation. Long Island towns add ambulance, library, and lighting district fees. New Jersey municipalities add sewer and refuse fees as separate line items on the tax bill. None of these scale with property value — they’re flat dollar amounts — so they hit lower-priced homes proportionally harder. A property tax calculator that quotes only the value-based tax can understate the actual bill by $500 to $2,500 a year. Run your numbers based on a reassessment to current market value, not the last paid bill, and ask for the full tax history including all the line items. If you want a second pass on the math before you write an offer, our tax strategy consulting team handles this for clients regularly.

Because price and tax aren’t actually related. The market price is what a buyer will pay today. The property tax is based on the local assessor’s estimate of value, the local effective rate, the property’s tax class, any exemptions in place, and any abatements running on the building. Two homes listed at $1.5 million can have annual property tax bills of $9,800 and $34,000, and a good property tax calculator will show you exactly why.

Take a real comparison. A $1.5 million one-family limestone in Park Slope, Brooklyn falls under NYC Class 1. Effective rate around 0.85% of market value, so the annual property tax runs about $12,750. Same $1.5 million spent on a Class 2 co-op in the same neighborhood with no abatement might run 1.0% to 1.2% effective, or $15,000 to $18,000. Same $1.5 million spent on a new-construction condo in Long Island City with an active 421-a abatement might pay just $3,500 the first year, climbing to full taxes over a 25-year phase-in. The price tag is identical. The annual carrying cost differs by $14,500 a year in extreme cases. A property tax calculator that doesn’t ask about tax class and abatement status can’t surface this.

Move to the suburbs and the gap widens. A $1.5 million colonial in Greenwich, Connecticut sits in a town with about a 1.1% effective rate, so $16,500 a year. The same $1.5 million home in Tenafly, New Jersey runs about 2.5% effective, so $37,500 a year. The same $1.5 million in Scarsdale, New York with its village + school district stack might hit 2.6%, so $39,000. Same price, three jurisdictions, $22,500 spread per year. Over a 10-year hold, that’s $225,000 in pure tax differential before any inflation adjustment. A property tax calculator that strips out the jurisdiction-specific rate and asks for true effective rate is the only one that catches this gap reliably.

Abatements and exemptions widen the gap further. New York City has several stacked benefits that can crater the tax bill for the right buyer. The co-op and condo abatement runs 17.5% to 28.1% off the taxable value for primary-residence owners of co-ops and condos, depending on assessed value tiers. STAR, the Basic School Tax Relief, knocks several hundred dollars off the bill. SCHE, the Senior Citizen Homeowners’ Exemption, can cut the assessed value by 5% to 50% for qualifying owners over 65 with income under $58,399 (2026 threshold). DHE does the same for disabled homeowners. A property tax calculator that just asks for market value and rate won’t catch any of these, and the listing’s quoted property tax often reflects an exemption that doesn’t transfer to the new buyer.

Then there are the new-construction tax abatements: 421-a, J-51, and ICAP in NYC, plus PILOT agreements in other states. A 421-a building in Long Island City might charge property taxes that are 70% to 85% below what the same building would pay at full assessment. That’s the seller’s number. The buyer inherits the remaining abatement period, which can be 10, 15, or 25 years depending on the version of the program. Once the abatement burns off, the tax bill jumps to full freight in 5 equal phases. We see this every year: a buyer signs for a condo with $4,200 in annual property tax thinking that’s the carrying cost forever, only to learn 8 years later the abatement is expiring and the bill is heading to $19,000 within the next 5 years. A property tax calculator that doesn’t model abatement burn-off is a calculator that lies to you.

Here’s the line that catches most buyers off guard: two identical homes a mile apart on either side of the Bayonne-Jersey City line can owe $6,000 apart in annual property tax — the calculator catches this before the closing does. Bayonne’s effective rate is around 2.7%, Jersey City’s is closer to 1.6% thanks to a different mix of commercial tax base. Same $800,000 house, $8,800 difference per year, $264,000 over a 30-year mortgage.

Land share matters too. In NYC, a Class 1 row house in Cobble Hill might have the same market value as a detached single-family in Bayside, Queens, but the underlying assessment math weights land and improvements differently. The Cobble Hill row house sits on a narrow lot with high land value, but Class 1 assessment growth caps protect the owner from rapid tax increases. The Bayside detached home has more land but lower per-square-foot value, putting less assessment pressure on the bill. Same price, same Class 1 status, but the trajectory of the tax bill over a 10-year hold can diverge by $25,000 to $40,000. A property tax calculator that doesn’t surface land share is missing a critical variable for any longer hold.

Co-op buyers face the worst data quality problem. Co-op property taxes aren’t billed to the individual unit owner — they’re billed to the building and then allocated by share count. The listing’s quoted monthly maintenance includes a property tax component, but the calculator can’t directly model it without the building’s tax bill and your unit’s share allocation. We tell co-op clients to pull the building’s tax bill from ACRIS or the NYC Department of Finance, multiply by their share percentage, and use that figure as the property tax calculator input. The number printed on the offering plan is almost always outdated. A property tax calculator that asks for tax class, share count, and abatement status is the difference between a clean buy and a deal you regret. If you’re looking at properties across the New York metro and want the math run cleanly before you start writing offers, the real estate professionals and high-net-worth investors we work with come to us for exactly this. Our full calculator suite includes rent-vs-buy and mortgage payoff tools that pair with the property tax math.

A real property tax calculator should, and the good ones do. Most generic online tools skip exemptions entirely and quote you the gross tax bill, which is how buyers end up overestimating their carrying cost by 10% to 40%. Exemptions aren’t small money, especially in jurisdictions like New York, Texas, and Florida where the homestead concept does heavy lifting.

Start with the easy case. Florida’s homestead exemption knocks $50,000 off the assessed value of a primary residence ($25,000 from all taxes plus another $25,000 from non-school taxes). On top of that, Florida’s Save Our Homes cap limits annual assessment growth to 3% or the CPI, whichever is lower, once you claim homestead. Over a 10-year hold in a hot market, Save Our Homes can save a homeowner tens of thousands in cumulative property tax. A property tax calculator built only for Florida should ask whether the property is homesteaded and apply both pieces. A generic calculator won’t.

Texas runs a similar program. The general residence homestead exemption knocks $100,000 off the assessed value for school district taxes (as of the 2023 amendment), plus additional local-option exemptions of up to 20% of value in many counties. Travis County (Austin), Harris County (Houston), and Dallas County all stack additional exemptions on top. A $600,000 home in Travis County with full homestead and a 1.81% effective rate goes from a $10,860 unmitigated bill down to roughly $7,500 after exemptions. The property tax calculator has to ask the homestead question, or the number it spits out is fiction.

New York City has its own ecosystem of exemptions, and this is where the math gets dense. STAR, the School Tax Relief program, comes in two flavors: Basic STAR for owners earning under $250,000 (a school-tax credit worth roughly $300 to $1,500 depending on the school district within the city), and Enhanced STAR for seniors 65+ with income under about $107,300 (worth $700 to $2,400). The co-op and condo abatement, separate from STAR, runs 17.5% to 28.1% off taxable value based on assessed value tier — primary residence required, no income limit. A property tax calculator covering NYC needs all of these inputs.

Then there’s SCHE, the Senior Citizen Homeowners’ Exemption. For qualifying owners 65 or older with combined household income under $58,399 (the 2026 threshold, adjusted each year), SCHE reduces the assessed value of the property by 5% to 50% on a sliding income scale. The reduction tops out at 50% for incomes under $50,000. Pair SCHE with Enhanced STAR and a co-op abatement on a $1.2 million Manhattan condo, and the annual property tax can drop from roughly $13,500 to under $5,000. That’s a $100,000 lifetime savings over a 12-year hold for a retired owner. A property tax calculator that doesn’t model SCHE is useless for any client over 60 in NYC. DHE, the Disabled Homeowners’ Exemption, runs parallel rules.

The catch with all of these exemptions is that they don’t transfer at sale. The seller’s tax bill reflects their personal exemptions. The buyer’s first bill won’t include any of them — the buyer has to apply, qualify, and wait for the next tax year. A property tax calculator that uses the seller’s last bill as the input is showing you a number you can’t actually achieve in year one. The buyer needs to estimate based on the full tax burden, then apply for exemptions and see relief starting in year two. The lag matters when you’re planning the first year’s cash flow.

Veteran exemptions stack on top of everything else. New York offers the Alternative Veterans Exemption with three tiers (basic, combat, and disabled), each cutting a percentage off the assessed value, capped at dollar amounts that vary by school district and locality. A combat veteran in a Long Island town can save $400 to $1,200 a year on the property tax bill through this exemption alone. Texas runs a parallel disabled veteran exemption that can fully exempt the homestead for 100% disabled veterans. A property tax calculator that doesn’t ask about veteran status misses these, and most do.

California’s exemption system is smaller in dollar terms but has the assessment-cap mechanic that runs parallel to Florida’s Save Our Homes. Proposition 13 locks the assessed value at the purchase price plus a maximum 2% annual inflation adjustment, which over a 30-year hold can put the assessed value at less than half of true market value. The $7,000 homeowner’s exemption is small (saves about $70 a year), but the Prop 13 cap is the real benefit, worth tens of thousands a year for long-tenured owners. A property tax calculator built for California has to ask whether you’re modeling a new purchase (full market value as the base) or a long-held property (capped assessed value). Two homes on the same street can have property tax bills that differ by $20,000 a year because one transacted in 1995 and the other in 2024.

Income-based exemptions deserve their own warning. SCHE in NYC, the Senior Citizens’ Real Property Tax Exemption in upstate New York, the Senior Freeze in New Jersey, and the Tax Ceiling for Seniors in Texas all use household income to scale the benefit. If your income is variable (retirement distributions, capital gains, Roth conversions, large bonus years), one big year can disqualify you for the entire benefit. A 65-year-old in Brooklyn earning $58,000 most years qualifies for full SCHE. A single $20,000 Roth conversion pushes income to $78,000, which is above the threshold, and the SCHE benefit disappears for that tax year. A property tax calculator that ignores income variability lets seniors stumble into this trap.

Here’s the counterintuitive piece: in NYC, an aggressive co-op or condo buyer can actually create a small windfall the first year by combining the residence abatement with timing. Closing in late February means the abatement application can be filed by March 15 for the upcoming tax year starting July 1, so you catch the abatement in your first full fiscal year of ownership. Close in April and you miss the deadline, paying full freight for a year before the abatement kicks in. That’s $3,000 to $7,000 in avoidable property tax depending on the unit. A property tax calculator with timing logic catches this; almost none do. We walk clients through the application timing as part of individual tax return work each year, since SCHE and STAR are also reflected on the state return. Reach out before closing, not after, so we can sequence the paperwork.

This is the most common cross-river question we see at The Reed Corporation, and a property tax calculator is the right tool to settle it. Brooklyn and Hoboken are 5 miles apart but they sit in different states with different tax classes, different exemptions, and very different effective rates. A buyer comparing list prices alone will pick wrong half the time.

Start with the effective rates. Brooklyn, under NYC Class 1 (one- to three-family) or Class 2 (co-ops, condos, rentals), runs about 0.85% effective for Class 1 and 0.95% to 1.2% effective for Class 2 after the residence abatement. Hoboken’s effective rate is roughly 1.85% — lower than the New Jersey state average of 2.20% because Hoboken has a strong commercial tax base from the waterfront. Same $1 million home: Brooklyn Class 1 bills around $8,500 a year. Hoboken bills around $18,500 a year. That’s a $10,000 annual swing on the tax line alone before you touch anything else. A property tax calculator that just averages national rates won’t show you this. You need the calculator pointed at the exact municipality.

Then layer in the New York State and New York City income tax penalty. A Brooklyn resident earning $300,000 pays NY State income tax (6.85% in that bracket) plus NYC personal income tax (3.876% in that bracket). A Hoboken resident pays NJ state income tax (6.37%) and no city income tax. For a $300,000 household, the income tax differential is about $9,500 a year favoring Hoboken. Combined with the $10,000 property tax differential favoring Brooklyn, the total tax-cost gap narrows to about $500 a year. The property tax calculator alone won’t surface this, but our companion New York income tax calculator pairs with it to give you the full picture.

The federal tax interaction matters too. Property taxes are deductible on Schedule A as part of state and local taxes, and for 2026 the SALT cap is $40,400 rather than the old $10,000. For a Brooklyn buyer with $8,500 in property tax plus $12,000 in NY state income tax — $20,500 of SALT in total — the full amount is deductible now, as long as household MAGI stays under $505,000. A Hoboken buyer with $18,500 in property tax and $7,000 in NJ income tax is also under the cap at $25,500. The cap only starts biting again once income climbs past $505,000, where it phases down toward $10,000. IRS Topic 503 spells out the deductible-tax rules. The calculator flags your SALT-capped deductible at the MAGI you enter, so you see the after-tax cost, not just the gross bill.

Commute and lifestyle aside, the property tax calculator has to model two more things: assessment trajectory and abatement status. Hoboken reassessed in 2017 and conducts cyclical revaluations. Brooklyn properties under Class 1 have a 6% assessment increase cap per year and 20% over 5 years, which strongly favors long-term holders because the assessed value lags actual market value significantly in a rising market. A Brooklyn Class 1 home bought in 2015 for $1.2 million might be worth $1.8 million today but still taxed on an assessed value tied to a much lower base. Hoboken doesn’t have an equivalent cap, so your tax bill tracks closer to current market value. The Brooklyn buyer gets a built-in inflation hedge on the tax line; the Hoboken buyer doesn’t.

If you’re in a new-construction condo on either side, abatement status changes everything. Several Hoboken and Jersey City buildings have PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) agreements that fix the annual payment for 5 to 20 years below the full assessed value. A PILOT condo in Hoboken might run $6,000 a year instead of $18,000, then jump to full freight when the agreement expires. A 421-a Brooklyn condo runs similar mechanics. A property tax calculator that doesn’t ask about abatement or PILOT will quote you the wrong number by a factor of 2 or 3.

Resale liquidity is the next variable the property tax calculator should at least flag. Hoboken’s property tax bill is set in late spring and adjusted in the third quarter, so buyers who close in May or June often inherit a partial-year tax shift that wasn’t visible at contract. Brooklyn Class 1 owners get a fiscal-year tax bill running July through June with two payment due dates, and the assessment notice arrives in January with a 60-day window to appeal. Buyers closing in February have just enough time to file an assessment grievance before the tax roll locks. Buyers closing in May have to wait a full year. The property tax calculator should account for which jurisdiction’s appeal window is open, because a successful grievance can knock 8% to 20% off the assessed value for the next tax year.

Insurance and flood zoning amplify the cross-river math. Hoboken sits at low elevation and has significant areas in FEMA flood zones AE and X. Brooklyn waterfront sections (Red Hook, Sunset Park, Coney Island) have their own flood exposure. Property tax and flood insurance aren’t the same line item, but together they form the carrying-cost picture a property tax calculator should pair with. A Hoboken brownstone in a flood zone might add $3,500 to $8,000 a year in flood premium on top of the property tax bill. Brooklyn waterfront in a flood zone runs similar. The buyer comparing list prices alone misses the full carrying cost. We pair the property tax calculator output with a flood-and-insurance estimate for clients before they get to contract.

Here’s the surprising piece most buyers miss: the lower-property-tax option (Brooklyn) often loses on total tax cost when you stack the income tax on a high-earner. The higher-property-tax option (Hoboken) wins on income tax for the same household. The cross-river decision isn’t about property tax alone — it’s about your specific income profile. For a retiree with low ordinary income but a large taxable estate, Brooklyn wins on every dimension. For a working couple in the 32% federal bracket earning $400,000, Hoboken often wins on combined tax cost despite the higher property tax bill. The property tax calculator is necessary but not sufficient. We walk high-net-worth clients through this decision regularly. If you’re staring at two listings, send them over and we’ll run the full cross-state comparison before you go to contract.

Before. Always before. The mortgage pre-approval is a lender’s view of how much debt you can carry. The property tax calculator is your view of how much house you can actually afford on a monthly basis. Running them in the wrong order is the single most common mistake we see first-time buyers make.

Here’s why the order matters. A mortgage pre-approval letter gives you a maximum purchase price based on debt-to-income ratios. The lender uses an estimated property tax number to back into the DTI calculation, but the number the lender pulls is usually a generic county average or an outdated MLS-listed amount. It’s a rough guess, and lenders deliberately err on the low side because they want the pre-approval to look attractive. If the real property tax is higher than the lender’s estimate, your actual DTI is higher than the lender thinks, your real housing cost is higher than the worksheet shows, and your monthly cash flow is tighter than the closing documents suggest. A property tax calculator run before the pre-approval lets you set your own ceiling based on real numbers.

Run a basic example. A Manhattan buyer is pre-approved for $1.4 million on a $300,000 household income. The lender’s worksheet assumes property tax of $14,000 a year on a $1.4 million condo. The buyer falls in love with a unit in a building with no co-op/condo abatement and a recent assessment refresh — the actual property tax is closer to $22,000 a year. That’s $8,000 more in annual carrying cost, or $667 more per month on the escrow line. The lender’s DTI math doesn’t catch this until the underwriter pulls the title-company tax history, which usually happens 2 weeks before closing. By then the buyer is emotionally committed, the mortgage commitment is in hand, and walking away costs the deposit. A property tax calculator run before the offer would have surfaced this within 5 minutes.

Lenders also use a different escrow structure than buyers expect. Most mortgages with less than 20% down require an escrow account where the lender collects 1/12th of the annual property tax with each monthly payment, then pays the county directly. The escrow analysis happens at closing, and the lender typically requires an additional 2 to 3 months of property tax held in reserve. On a $25,000 annual property tax bill, that’s $4,200 to $6,300 in upfront cash beyond the down payment. A property tax calculator should flag this so you can size your cash-to-close correctly, not just the monthly payment.

The federal tax planning side adds another reason to run the calculator first. Property taxes deduct on Schedule A as state and local taxes, capped at $40,400 for 2026 under IRS Topic 503 — up from $10,000, and phasing back down above $505,000 of MAGI. For a buyer who already has $8,000 in state income tax, the next $32,400 of property tax still earns a federal deduction, a real change from the old $10,000 ceiling that capped that same buyer almost immediately. A high earner over $505,000 watches that room shrink back toward $10,000, so the planning answer depends on income, not just the tax bill. A property tax calculator that shows after-tax cost makes this visible. Most don’t.

The pre-approval letter also influences the buyer’s negotiating posture. If the pre-approval says $1.4 million is the ceiling, most buyers anchor to that number and look for homes at or near it. But the ceiling assumes a property tax level that varies by neighborhood. The actual sustainable purchase price might be $1.25 million in a high-property-tax neighborhood (Yonkers, Bayonne, Tenafly) and $1.55 million in a low-property-tax neighborhood (a Class 1 brownstone in Brooklyn with a low assessed value). A property tax calculator lets you adjust your ceiling neighborhood-by-neighborhood before you go shopping. Most buyers don’t do this and end up with a property they can’t comfortably afford in the high-tax town.

Here’s the counterintuitive piece: the property tax calculator should also be the tool that tells you when to spend more, not less. A buyer who looks at a $900,000 condo with $3,500 in property tax (active 421-a abatement) and a $1.05 million condo with $14,000 in property tax often picks the cheaper sticker price. But the abated condo will reset to full taxes during the buyer’s hold period, while the fully assessed condo won’t move much. Run a 10-year carrying-cost comparison through the property tax calculator and the higher-priced unit often wins on total cost. The pre-approval letter never makes this comparison; only the buyer can, and only with the right tool.

One more wrinkle on order: the lender’s good-faith estimate (now called the Loan Estimate or LE) shows a property tax line, but the LE is based on the lender’s data feed, which is often a year or two stale. The buyer sees a number on the LE and assumes it’s accurate. It usually isn’t. The closing disclosure (CD) issued 3 days before closing is where the corrected number lands — sometimes thousands higher than the LE. By the CD stage, the buyer can either accept the higher carrying cost or walk and forfeit the deposit. Running the property tax calculator with current-year data before the LE means the buyer’s expectations are set correctly from day one, and the CD shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Self-employed buyers face an extra layer. Lenders typically require 2 years of tax returns plus a year-to-date P&L from any self-employed applicant, and they income-average the returns. If property tax expense reduces taxable income (it can, on a Schedule E rental or via a home office on Schedule C), that lowers the qualifying income the lender will use. Run the property tax calculator before you decide which entity will hold the property, because the choice of personal name vs. LLC vs. S-corp changes how the property tax interacts with your other returns. For our business owner clients, the entity question is sometimes more important than the rate question.

This is exactly the kind of conversation we have with high-net-worth buyers and our real estate professional clients before they go to contract. Our tax strategy consulting service includes the property tax math, the SALT cap math, and the abatement math as part of any home purchase review. If you’re in the offer stage and want a second set of eyes on the numbers, run the property tax calculator first, then send us what you find. The pre-approval can wait until you know what you’re actually buying.