Help!!!! homeowners/future homeowners

just keep in mind that the process is VERY different now and can take longer than it used to take. I made this mistake of going by how it used to be. The more banks having problems the harder it will be go to get a loan bc now other banks will take longer to give loans and wont give them out as much

A few years ago when i bought my apartment, the process was quick and we closed within 2 months.

NOW i am selling this place and its been a nightmare. Many places have to go through more procedures now than they used, for example in the past once you were approved for a mortgage you were automatically approved for the pmi, there was no process for this. But now there is a whole new process that just started very recently, and you have to get approved for this too and its all done by a computer and if youre off by one point you won't even get approved.

Another problem we came across is that we looked at DH's credit score and it was very good but they look at more than just this. They also look at how much youre in debt, EVEN if you have good credit, bc they subtract your debt from your income and as you know they look at your income. Dh still had college loans and CC's. The problem was that the mortgage broker showed us what was on his statement and there were things on there that shouldn't have been. There was a CC for $25,000 that he had when he was 19 so 10 years ago, and it was his parents, he just had a joint account to it in case of emergencies. We had to go through alot to take it off, even after showing letters from American express saying this card has been closed for years and to take it off, these companies are messed up and take forever, and we had to wait 2-3 months JUST for this to come off and couldnt do anything until they did. So remember that you might have a situation where it takes longer than somebody else bc everybody is different. The mortgage broker(which we changed) had only showed us that card but there were 3 cc's on dh's credit report that had been closed for years and paid off but showing as active, after the 2-3 months of waiting to take off that 1 card, we found this out and had to do the same with the other cards. Dh recently paid off his HUGE college loan and cc's. So now that after all this was finally taken care of, we just got approved this week. Its been a big headache. Even though he has high credit score bc although he had debt he never missed a payment. ANd although his income was above what they wanted, they still focused on the debt.

we bought a co op in whitetsone wow its guna be 3 yrs lol..time fliesss

i love it here, but i also hat ethat we cant have a dog..not even have a dog visit us on the front steps..or else you get a fine of like 150$... its horribleeeeeeee

u cant bbq after a certain date..u cant take out ur garbage b4 a certain time... u cant breath a certain way... but other than that its great.

take your time finding a place.. start now on criagslist..see whats out there.. and sit down with hubby..decide wat u want and wats inportant to u.. # of bedrooms... school district.. etc..and see what you can afford....

once u own a home..the fun is over... life with a mortgage suc--s lol

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Posted by grrulz

wow!! thanks a lot! this has been soo helpful...:) thanks

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definitely look up your info and make sure everything is in order from now, so this way it wont hold you up when you are in the middle of trying to get a place.

Like i said, Dh had 3 cc's that weren't supposed to be on his credit report and all 3 together were about $40k which you can see why it caused problems, they were all closed for years. I found out that many companies do this, and hope they can go a while without you noticing and will leave it on as active. Theres even a show on showtime, a documentary discussing how credit card companies do this and its horrible. I even checked my credit report and there were things on there that shouldn't have been. So get all your things in order, speak with a broker and they can look this up for you and a good broker will sit with you and tell you exactly what you could do to fix any problems and suggestions he can make to help you get a loan quicker. Hopefully you wont have any of these problems. But dont let them check your credit report too much bc each time somebody checks your credit report it takes points off of your score. We had this one company who kept checking and didnt tell us each time they checked, and we were upset bc it lowers your score. We even got a letter saying that since dh's credit report was checked so much it brought down his score. So tell them you wont to know each time its checked and to please not do it alot. If they do it without you authorizing it, you can write a letter to the credit report companies that you didnt authorize it and they will take it off.

Also, like i said its not just about having good credit, they look at more than this. THey also look at your debt to income ratio. So lets just say for example if you make $80k a year but youre $30k in debt, then they will look at it as you have $50k a year.

Also someone else posted about making sure everything is ok with the house youre buying. Ask if they had an appraisal done recently, and ask to know about any problems up front. SOME real estate agents will tell you straight up what needs to be fixed while others wont tell you. Look at the pipe work in the house, electrical. When we went to look at places, DH knew about these things so he always looked and some places he said that the pipes and electrical were so old and would need to be fixed and how expensive it was gonna be. So if you know anybody good with these things, then bring them along to look at a place. DH and i went alone to look at most places, when we did see one place we loved, i brought my parents bc they know alot about this. My dad owned a construction company and brought him so he could look at things and see if work needed to be done, which unfortunately it needed ALOT of work and in the end wasnt worth it,