Interesting...maybe I had a unicorn loan officer, but she didn't even tell us, on purpose, how much we were approved for.
We told her how much the offer was, then asked for a pre-approval letter so our realtor could provide that to the listing agent. We had to call her back because she listed the max we were approved for, not the asking price of the home, like we asked.
There was zero discussion to get us to spend more money (we did that on our own, but that's a different story).