Navy Fed or BB&T?

[Anonymous]

I was thinking of doing a mortgage pre-qual. I am just not sure who to apply with. BB&T is my primary bank, but I am also a member of NFCU. Who do I try for? I am really just trying to figure out how much of a house I can afford. The mortgage calculator on Zillow says a lot more than I think I would actually get. My annual income is $29k. The only debt I have is $36.77/mth payment on a student loan, of which the total balance is $3,800. My mortgage scores are 727,735,738 as of 02/11/16 when I pulled them last.

Where do I start?

[Anonymous]

Navy Fed have good rates, I dont know about BB&T.  You should try to get pre qual both BB&T & NFCU so see how much you can qualify and compare rates. Pre qual will not hurt your credit score anyway ...What kind of mortgage loan? Conventional is strict with DTI 28/38 depends on the Lender. FHA/VA you can go up higher DTI. I would avoid FHA because of high mortgage insurance. I prefer navy fed because they offer first time buyer loan with no PMI and no downpayment. I think NFCU conventional loan doesn't have prepayment fee. If your not qualified for VA, I would go with Conventional. 

[Revelate]

The calculators are pretty good, and the lenders will be pretty much the same for the most part since the mortgage products are dictated by others unless we're talking jumbo loans or the near-unicorn-rare portfolio lender.

From what you've stated you can basically afford 1K / month for house, taxes, insurance based on quick stupid math, if that's what the bank rate calculators are showing, that's basically what you can afford, might be some increase if you do FHA or similar as I just calculated off a relatively standard 43% (or at least that was standard 8 months ago at any rate).  You don't have to spend that much... and I'm not a big fan of stretching to the ragged edge of DTI limits but YMMV.

In your shoes I'd look at my two institutions and maybe one of the correspondence lenders off Zillow or similar who on the whole have been very successful as you're probably looking for a generic product and it'll come down to rate and their not screwing something up... but if you're purchasing an affordable house, decent credit, if no other random flags waiting should be fine.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for replies. I decided to postpone for now. After sleeping on it, I decided that buying a forclosure as a first house is just too terrifying. I don't have the warm and fuzzies about it. The house was nice but I think it's not the right time. I think I'll wait until the end of next year to look, which was my original plan.