Yes. You do have to send in all of your documents in order to get a "real" pre-approval. I do recommend shopping the loan provider before you finalize your rate issue. The better LO's on a service basis will also be market competitive. The key is closing, not rate. If you then find the right lender, knowing that the rate will be roughly equal to what everyone else is offering, your cross approval can be handled professionally during the offer / negotiation process.
A pre-qualification is simply a gentle discussion on what you might qualify for. It's pretty much meaningless to a Realtor if you're pre-qualified. A pre-approval means that there have been substantive reviews of your actual data. That's mission critical to have done. A conditional approval is completed with the contract, preliminary title report, HOA data and other data required to know if a deal is close-able. Final approval requires the appraisal and any follow up conditions that the Underwriter has.
Hope this helps.
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