I have a question. What are the general mortgage requirements for purchasing a vacation home? It's a stand alone, lake front, single family home outside of the state in which I reside.
Is it similar to buying your primary residence? Meaning you still have to have both mortgages fit within specified DTI percentages? I'm assuming FHA won't allow for it... would we have to go with a conventional mortgage?
We just bought our first home 3 months ago and since then our FICO scores have gone up 50ish points. My wife's middle score is TU at 700 (lender pull up from 646 when we closed 3 months ago) and mine is EX at 683 (up from 626 when we closed... 683 is lender pulled by Amex a week ago who denied me, and my recon request... lest I digress) and we have a large increase in AGI this year. We're planning to refinance our primary home in February. My wife has a BK that will drop off by then. And as a result of the BK her car was repo'ed and I was the cosigner. That drops off in 3 months (presently at 7 years, 3 months since reported). We figured with the big boost in FICO scores, big swing in AGI / DTI, and deletion of a couple major baddies, that our FICO scores might maybe possibly hit the magic 720 threshold and that it might then be a good time to look at buying a vacation place and refinance the primary residence. We won't be taking any equity/cash out of the primary when we refi, just looking to move it from an FHA to conventional to lower the PMI and get the APR down from our current 4.5% fixed 30/yr to something 4% or below hopefully.
Any wisdom shared will be greatly appreciated. The one and ONLY reason our FICO scores have gone up so far in the past 1.5 years (we're each up about 100 points in the past 18 months, give or take) is because of the information I learned that was shared on these forums. Thank you again to the entire community.
