Are Student Loans Ruining Our House Dreams?

[Anonymous]

What's your reason for going that route?

[Anonymous]

When I spoke to the lender they said FHA had to take 1% of my student loans, no way around it which blew my DTI out of the water when combining our other debt. With conventional there's more latitude in how they view the loans and our DTI was much better, plus we could qualify for more house. Unfortunately living in San Diego, we would only qualify for around $350,000 - you need at least $450k-$600k for anything halfway decent. Bummer.

[Anonymous]

What's holding your qualification figure down?  DTI?  What if you increase down payment?

[Anonymous]

That and the lender suggested eliminating as much of our revolving and installment debt as possible, starting with our biggest monthly payment on down. That would get us to a better spot, luckily its not really astronomical so with some dilligence we can work on it, of course we have to do this while saving up for a little bit bigger deposit. It will be worth it

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@Anonymous wrote:

What's holding your qualification figure down?  DTI?  What if you increase down payment?

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[Anonymous]

Revolving debt for sure should be at AZEO before applying for a mortgage.  This is a strong rule.

Installment debt I'd say attack the smallest balance first, pull mortgage FICOs, and then attack the next one.  Not easy to do, though.

[woodsie1]

I was in the same boat when applied for a mortgage. I was informed that conventional would be the way to go in order to have my ACTUAL IBR payment used in calculations. I was approved through NFCU with my mortgage scores being around 711.