---
title: "Set Up Your Loan Profile & Homebuying Budget (B1124-028)"
description: "Your lender supplies the loan profile; you set the budget — and both limits can be lowered."
url: https://homes-support.padzilly.com/en/articles/4-set-up-your-loan-profile-and-homebuying-budget-b1124-028
collection: "Using Padzilly"
updated: 2026-10-01
language: en
alternates: [es]
---

# Set Up Your Loan Profile & Homebuying Budget (B1124-028)

Your lender supplies the loan profile; you set the budget — and both limits can be lowered.

Padzilly combines two things to decide which homes to show you:

**Your loan profile** — your loan program and its terms. This comes from your lender.

**Your homebuying budget** — your comfort limits. This comes from you.

Together they power your search filters, the what-if scenarios in **SearchPro**, and the offers you build in **OfferPro**.

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### Your loan profile comes from your lender

You do not upload your approval yourself. There is no document to attach and nothing to scan. **Your loan officer uploads it from their side**, and it then appears in your account automatically.

To get that moving, go to **Profile**, find the **Your lender** section and use **LoanLink**. You enter your lender's **name** and **email address**, and Padzilly handles the rest:

-   If they already have a Padzilly account, you are linked
    
-   If they do not, they get an invitation; the link completes when they register
    

There is also a **Copy link** option if you would rather send the invitation by text.

While a request is pending the section shows **Request pending** and an **Expires in** countdown. If that countdown is running low and you have not heard back, call your loan officer — the invitation is usually sitting unopened in an inbox.

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### Until your lender uploads it

You are not stuck waiting. Padzilly gives you a **Temporary Loan Profile**, which assumes a conventional loan with 5% down and uses the budget figures you entered. It is enough to search with real numbers from day one — it is just not a pre-approval. There is a separate article on what it can and cannot do.

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### Your homebuying budget

Two figures, in **Profile → Homebuying Budget**:

**Max Monthly Payment** — the most you want to pay each month, taxes, insurance, mortgage insurance and HOA included.

**Funds available** — your cash for the down payment and closing costs, less any credits such as a seller contribution or down payment assistance.

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### The rule once an approval is connected

Both figures are **locked to what your lender approved**, and Padzilly says so on screen: _Locked to your loan-approved cap of $X. Toggle the checkbox below to use a lower limit._

**Both of them can be lowered.** There are two checkboxes:

-   **Search with lower payment** → then set your own payment limit
    
-   **Search with less available cash** → then set how much cash you want to use
    

So you can shop at $2,400 a month when you are approved for $2,900, and you can tell Padzilly you only want to put $15,000 in when the approval assumes $25,000.

**Neither can be raised.** The ceiling is your lender's decision, and no setting in Padzilly moves it. What you decide is whether to use all of it.

Searching below your approval is not a limitation to work around — for most buyers it is the better way to shop.

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### What else lives in the budget

The same section records **credits** that reduce your cash — lender credit, realtor credit, builder credit, employer credit, buyer assistance, down payment assistance and other credits — and your **age-restricted communities** preference: include all homes, exclude them, or search only those.

If you have been told you qualify for down payment assistance, put it in. It changes the cash-needed figure on every home you look at.

* * *

### Save before you leave

Nothing applies until you save. Then go back to the search and your results, your filters and every payment figure will reflect the new numbers.

* * *

### Why connecting the real approval matters

Once your lender's approval is in, your rate, your loan program, your limits and your lender's own property-tax rules all start applying. The payment on a property page stops being an estimate and becomes the number a lender has effectively agreed to — which is the only number worth making an offer on.