How to choose a lender

[Andrew Quinn]

I am currently living in the Kansas City, MO area. I am planning to purchase a property to house hack within the next 6 months hopefully. I have not reached out to any agents yet to assist me in finding property however i do have a pre-approval letter from commerce bank. I want to compare interest rates and closing costs between at least 3-5 lenders before choosing one instead of just going with the first approval i get. I have excellent credit and a reasonable down payment so getting approved is not my concern. My 2 concerns are first the person i have been speaking with at Commerce bank was very responsive the first 24 hours of my application. I applied online and within 12 hours i was contacted. He answered all of my questions promptly. However, I asked about interest rates and he gave me a ball park of mid to high 3's but could not give me an exact number i guess until I decide to make an offer for some reason. Also when i asked about closing costs he said he would get back with me on that with a breakdown of their fees. It has been 2 days an i have not heard back from him. Should I be concerned that he has not reached back out to me???

Also, my final and MAIN question is, in order to compare rates with different lenders do i need to actually go through the pre-approval process with each one? or can i just simply ask them and give them some basic info over the phone or something. I wanted to at least get a pre-approval letter so agents will take me seriously but i dont want to go through that process 2-4 more times if I could get the info i need over the phone. If i find that another lender has better rates and fees than commerce I could simply go through the pre-approval process with them. The main reason I ask is because according to credit karma, I have only 14 days (12 left now) to apply for other loans without getting another hard pull on my credit. My score dropped from 806 to 802 when Commerce ran my credit. I know my credit would still be good even if i did need to apply again past the 14 days but if I could keep my score above 800 that would be great. 

Any input is greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot BiggerPockets community.