Hi there. DH and I are still trying to decide when to apply for a mortgage - hoping to go with FHA, possibly USDA. We both have scores around 700. My credit report is perfect - no lates, no collections. DH is perfect except one paid bill for $80 to the library (lol). Our only issue now is stupidly high credit utilization. We are both in the mid-50% range (went to that from about 10% in less than a year after having several costly crisises with cars, dental, etc). We are now focusing on paying these down, and always pay on time, pay more than the minimum, etc. It's going to take a while, however, because we're talking around $11,000 total here - I'm also a little concerned because I work at a college, paid only during the academic year, and we may need to use credit occasionally this summer if cash gets low (I'm looking for a summer position, but not particularly interested in working at the local amusement park, so...lol...we'll see how that goes).
So my question is, does FHA care what your percent of utilization is if your score is still over 640? I know they'll factor in our monthly payments when calculating a loan amount. We'd love to get into a house this summer, but worried we should wait because of utilization...
I'd also mention here that rent payments where we live tend to be higher than what we would pay for a mortgage payment, so I don't think we're nuts to try to get into a house before getting totally out of debt.
