Is pre-approval letter required when making an offer?

[Anonymous]

What a joke.  She won't issue one unless my wife's employer sends her a letter stating what she will be making when she gets her raise......and my wife's employer won't do that.  What a pain in the ass.

I'd go to someone else, but at this point, I'm sure I'd have to submit past W2's along with verification of student loan payments and go through the entire process again before they would be willing to write a pre-approval letter.

[Lel]

Well, if your wife's employer won't provide documentation of the expected raise, then maybe your loan officer's hands are tied.

[Anonymous]

that sounds normal to me.  ALot of employers will not provide this type of information as it puts them in a legal bind if for any reason the exepcted raise is dropped or changed.  It also is not unexpected for a bank to requre that information if you need that extra income to qualify for the loan.  Most lenders do not want you shopping until you have cash in hand (if you know what I mean).  There are just too many variables and things that could get messed up that could cause a deal to go through.   

[Anonymous]

Just a thought here...we're assuming that you don't qualify until mid-February. 

We're doing that on the basis of the pre-approval written by the person who we're calling crabby / unable to help.  What if you qualify now?  It's not uncommon for pre-approvals to have some variance from LO to LO. 

Is the raise that substantial?

[Anonymous]

$10 an hour raise.  I took the advice above and shopped it around a little and have found a couple other lenders a little more lenient with their letters. 

Hopefully I can get this done...but I doubt the bank is going to like an FHA offer with seller paid closing costs and contingent upon a february raise. 

[Anonymous]

Larry,  I definitely agree with your concern about the February raise contingency.   Personally, my concern is different.  I don't think they care about the subject to of February.  If I'm a seller, I look at your financing letter.  If you're working with someplace so small that everyone has a word doc with custom pre-approval letters, your offer is weak based on the lender--not the February contingency.  

The seller-paid CC is zero issue...they just deduct that from offer to calculate net sales offer. 

Has anyone run your actual current DTI and/or what does the $10 raise (awesome btw) compare to?