Wife and I are preparing to purchase our first home in four to six months or so.
I have been working on improving my Fico scores using the forum's advice and am up to 784(TU) and 804(EQ). Wife is recovering from BK ('05) and has scores currently at around 700. She's permanently disabled due to MS and is collecting SS. I make around 57k/year hourly wages and have been with current job for around 9 years. I assume it would be more favorable for us to apply for mortgage under just my name?
Last month, I established a new account with a CU with whom I plan to apply for our mortgage. They offer an array of mortgage options - I think we're interested in conventional 30-year fixed. Are there any major advantages/disadv. between mortgages from CUs vs Banks? We have saved about 11k to date and should have around 19k early next year. We have one car payment opened in March at 338/mo. with 29 months remaining. We do not have revolving balances on our CCs although I do allow one to report around 400/mo before PIF. Would this count against DTI ratio?
We are looking at houses selling under 120k so if we buy at that upper range, I probably won't have the 20% down to avoid PMI. What sort of DPs are acceptable under conventional 30 year fixed rate loans?
We haven't discussed anything with a LO yet. I'm just looking for advice, so anything you have to offer, I would appreciate. Thanks.
