Mortgage paperwork - What do they ask for?

[nycsimone]

When you apply for a mortgage what kind of paperwork do they generally ask for? Will they always require a W2? Or will paystubs be enough? If you provide a W2 will they use all your deductions against you? For example, I travel a lot and i'm able to deduct additional travel expenses...so will they subtract all that to determine my actual income or can I just get them to go off my last paystub of the year? I'm planning on doing a pre-approval in January...so i'll have my paystub from Dec 31st which will shot the total year to date as well...but I won't have filed my taxes just yet.

[StartingOver10]

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@nycsimone wrote:
When you apply for a mortgage what kind of paperwork do they generally ask for? Will they always require a W2? Or will paystubs be enough? If you provide a W2 will they use all your deductions against you? For example, I travel a lot and i'm able to deduct additional travel expenses...so will they subtract all that to determine my actual income or can I just get them to go off my last paystub of the year? I'm planning on doing a pre-approval in January...so i'll have my paystub from Dec 31st which will shot the total year to date as well...but I won't have filed my taxes just yet.

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Depends on the loan.

Most lenders require 2 years tax returns, some lenders can work with one year only.

W-2's required, 2 months bank statements (all pages), asset statements (401k's or retirement accounts), 30 days of paystubs.

If you are 1099 or self-employed expect to provide more documents.

[Anonymous]

Don't want to thread jack, but on a related note, when you provide full bank statements, what do they actually look at? Do they care about your expenses (e.g. $700/mo on dining, $500 entertainment, etc.)? Does that affect any of their decision-making?

Also, are they using bank statements to look at your net income? If someone is purposely withholding more tax, they wouldn't know it. Could that affect the lender's decision?

[hapagrrl]

Sorry to respond to the post-jacking, but I just went through this (closing on Friday) and I did ask about this. I was told that they don't care about the actual expenses -- the are concerned about whether the sources of money match up with where I said it all came from, and that the amounts match up. For instance, I borrowed from my 401k and had that money wired into my  checking account - but there was a fee to do that. So I had to show a very clear accounting of that amount being paid as a fee before it went into my checking, from both the 401k administrator AND from my bank. They also wanted both statements to show exact dates. Ultimately, I had to provide lots of bank statements (daily activity statements for 30 days - twice, then the last 40 days, etc) several times.

I was glad I asked, because I was getting paranoid about my $10 lunch salads, lol!

[Anonymous]

They wanted the following from me:  1) Proof of employment (letter of employment from my HR dept) 2)last two tax returns 3)last three pay stubs 4)Most recent bank statements  

[StartingOver10]

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@Anonymous wrote:

They wanted the following from me:  1) Proof of employment (letter of employment from my HR dept) 2)last two tax returns 3)last three pay stubs 4)Most recent bank statements  

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Just so you know, the ^^^above is usually true. All the verifications are done by your loan processor before your file hits underwriting. Some of the things that are verified include verification of deposits, verification of employement, verification of income, verification of rent (sometimes) etc. Most borrowers have no input or knowledge of the verification stage. It is a normal part of processing the loan.

[hapagrrl]

StartingOver is totally correct (of course). And I just want to add that I was asked for *a lot* of other verifications on top of the standard stuff. My guess is that it all depends on each individual's case. The great thing is that everything I needed to provide was available through my online accounts, so I was able to hand stuff in very quickly (like within minutes). The other thing I learned is that my broker and his office are apparently a little anal-retentive, and asked me for stuff that they *thought* the underwriter might ask for. They were right! The underwriter ended up asking me for just one small thing which, again, I was able to hand in very quickly. Because of that anal-retentiveness on the broker's part, I felt like things went very quickly and smoothly.