TIL my lender's preapproval letter expired after 60 days, missed out on a house in Austin

I spent a full month looking at places with my preapproval from March 15th. Found the perfect 3 bed 2 bath near Mueller last Tuesday and put in an offer. Seller's agent comes back and says my letter expired on May 15th. I had no clue they had a date on there. I had to redo my whole application with a hard credit pull and lost the house to another buyer. Has anyone else gotten burned by an expiration date they never noticed?

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ivan_perez12d ago

Wait, is anyone actually reading the fine print on anything anymore, or are we all just trusting the system to work until it doesn't? That's the real kicker here, cause this ain't just about mortgages, it's like everything now. Phone contracts, gym memberships, even those free trial apps, they all hide these little deadlines and traps in the small text nobody reads. I swear, we're all so used to clicking "agree" without looking that we forget these papers have real teeth. You learned the hard way, and honestly, that's how most of us learn, cause no one sits you down and explains the hidden calendar on every offer. It's messed up that a house gets decided by a date on a letter you forgot existed, but that's the world we live in now, so now you know for next time.