Buying a Home with USDA

[BayRaider510]

I'm planning to buy a house with a USDA Guaranteed Loan. Do you guys think the following will suffice/is wise to buy a house? Will be buying and living on my own. 

[b]income:[/b] $40,000

[b]Credit Scores:[/b] 730+ across all bureaus.

[b]Credit History:[/b] Very Thin, two tradelines. First tradeline is a credit card that is 2.2 years old. Only reports to TransUnion though, would this be a problem? My other tradeline is also a credit card at 1.2 years old but this one reports to all three bureaus.

[b]Savings:[/b] Only about 4K but plan to get seller to pay closing.

[b]Price Range:[/b] Plan to look in the $140-$160K price range for a home in Stanislaus County in California. 

Thanks for any advice, sorry if I didn't include anything. 

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

Assuming your credit card payments are low (or $0), then your debt ratio should be fine for USDA... $160k would be close your max though.  It'd put the housing ratio right about 32%, and for USDA the highest I've seen get approved lately is 34.99%.

USDA doesn't actually require traditional credit, and can use non-traditional credit (such as rental history, utilities payment history, etc.) but since you have over 2 years of credit history then you should be fine in that department.

With USDA, if the home appraises higher than the purchase price, you can get a loan amount up to the appraised value for the purpose of including closing costs into the loan amount.  So that may be an option if the seller isn't willing to pay them.  Probably only looking at about $4,500 total in settlement costs that would need to be covered one way or another.

[Anonymous]

Did you try for the loan?