FHA or Conventional- what are my chances?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm trying to prepare my package to apply for a mortgage, either now or within a year from now. Currently, my Equifax score is 701 and TransUnion is 677. I do not have my recent Experian score. The above scores are from myfico.com. When I compare the accounts listed on 2 reports, all the accounts are almost the same. On both reports, I have a 30 day late payment on a Toyota auto loan from August 2009. The only other negative account is BofA 2nd mortgage which was a joint account with my Spouse and it was "modified under a government plan". That's correct and that's how it listed on Equifax along with A 90+ days since April 2011. OnTransUnion, it listed as 120+ days late since March 2011 with no statement regarding the modification.

Currently I have 2 credit cards (AMEX & Chase) which have been  always current with balance < 30%. My mortgage payment is $107. My 3 auto loan accounts (I co-sign with my spouse and sister on 2) are for a total of $1,410. My name is not on the first mortgage, only my spouse is. So my current DTI is only 15-16%. My spouse's income is well qualified to pay for first mortgage, which was modified as well, by herself and it's only under her name.

What can I do to increase my Transunion and overall credit scores? I would like to bring my lowest score among the 3 bureaus to be at least 680-690, in case I need to go with a conventional loan. 

My annual income on W2 is 120k. I also do 1099 jobs with additional 10-15k yearly. I'm at my current job since September 2008. I'm aiming for FHA or conventional loan with 5-10% down on a 550k single family in CA on my name only. Does my package look promising to get a good interest rate? I'm aware that the BofA mortgage account is what can kill my chance at obtaining a decent mortgage but we went through a tremendously difficult time when this occurred. If I wait until this modification is at least 2 years old, will that make a big difference? I really want to take advantage of the low interest rate and to not pay rent since the other house is 3 hrs away from our job. 

[Anonymous]

I had two 30 day late payments listed on my credit report. I called the creditor and explained that I was in the process of buying a house and would they remove the late payments from my credit report, and they said yes. They sent me a letter to put in my file stating that they were removing the lates and my credit score went up 60 points. This is one thing you could try, the worst they can say is no and it stays the same, but it's worth a shot.