---
title: "Do I Need a Lender Approval to Use Padzilly? (B1124-012)"
description: "No — but here is exactly what changes when one arrives."
url: https://homes-support.padzilly.com/en/articles/21-do-i-need-a-lender-approval-to-use-padzilly-b1124-012
collection: "General"
updated: 2026-10-01
language: en
alternates: [es]
---

# Do I Need a Lender Approval to Use Padzilly? (B1124-012)

No — but here is exactly what changes when one arrives.

**No.** You can start using Padzilly straight away without a lender approval. It just works better once you have one, and it is worth understanding the difference.

* * *

### Starting without an approval

When you create your account, Padzilly asks you for two figures:

-   **Your maximum monthly payment** — the most you are comfortable paying, taxes, insurance and HOA included
    
-   **Your available funds** — your cash for the down payment and closing costs
    

From those, Padzilly builds a **Temporary Loan Profile**. It assumes a **conventional loan with 5% down** and uses your two numbers as the limits.

That is enough to make the whole platform work: the search filters, the payment and cash figures on every listing, OfferPro, AutoQualify, favorites, comparisons and saved search alerts.

**One thing you do need: an account.** Browsing as a guest does not give you a profile, and the payment and cash filters stay locked until there is one.

* * *

### What the estimates are and are not

They are arithmetic done properly on an assumption. The assumption is a reasonable one, but it is still an assumption:

-   Your real interest rate will not be the assumed rate
    
-   Your real loan program may not be conventional
    
-   Your lender's own rules — such as a minimum qualifying property tax — are not being applied
    

So the numbers are useful for narrowing down neighbourhoods and learning what your money buys. They are not the basis for an offer.

* * *

### What a real approval changes

Ask your loan officer to upload your approval through **LoanLink** — it is free for them, and you invite them with just their name and email.

The moment they do:

1.  **Your actual terms apply.** Your rate, your loan program, your limits.
    
2.  **Your lender's rules apply.** Including any minimum qualifying property tax, which can raise every payment you have been looking at.
    
3.  **Homes outside your approval drop out.** The filters start measuring against a real decision, so you stop spending evenings on houses you were never going to get.
    
4.  **Qualification letters become real.** Calculated from your approval, which is the document a seller's agent takes seriously.
    
5.  **The profile card changes** from Temporary Loan Profile to Pre-Approved Loan Profile, so you can see at a glance which one you are on.
    

* * *

### The honest recommendation

Start today with the temporary profile. Explore, save homes, learn the market.

But get the approval in before you make an offer. An estimate tells you a house is probably possible. An approval tells a seller you can actually close — and those are very different conversations.