But submitting prequalification applications to a number of online mortgage sites can be counterproductive.
The WHO has a "prequalification" scheme that authorises cheap, good drugs for aid programmes.
Ms. Land said that the company has about 40,000 registered contractors who have passed a stringent prequalification procedure.
Mortgage experts say that borrowers should ask lenders, early on, exactly what their preapproval process entails, and push for a preapproval — not prequalification — especially if the lender is running a credit check for a prequalification.
Unless some dramatic change occurs, Mr Bush will have earned that prequalification with the vast majority of voters.
Major energy companies, including the U.S. giants ExxonMobil and Chevron and Total of France, are among 52 to enter prequalification talks.
The prequalification of medicines programme (PQP) of the WHO, launched in 2001, was set up to assess the quality of the generic medicines for HIV and other diseases made by companies in India, China and elsewhere.
"There are banks that can do a statement of prequalification based on certain things happening in, say, six months or two years," said Danielle Babb, the author of "The Accidental Landlord" (Alpha Books, 2008), which discusses these transactions.
All the valuations were done in conjunction with automated underwriting, which analyzes such things as an applicant's credit and collateral in determining whether to make the loan, and prequalification, which takes into account income, assets and liabilities.
Mr. Donovan said the bank no longer preapproved buyers for a mortgage but gave them what he called a "prequalification" to tell them what type of financing was available to them.
Buyers working with a broker should also ask which lenders the broker knows are issuing which kinds of letters, and whether having just a prequalification will affect their chances of putting in a winning bid on a property.
