Loan pre-approval & Your credit score

[Chad Gaither]

I'm looking to get a baseline for the financing I can potentially get approved for to help narrow down my search criteria. I asked a broker at a local real estate meetup last night if a pre-approval application would impact my credit score. He responded that they could do a "soft" pull that would not impact my credit score but to get a more accurate/full pre-approval they would have to do a "hard" pull on my credit which would have an impact.

For a newbie investor, how would you recommend shopping various brokerages to get the best financing while minimizing the impact on your credit score?

Thanks!