Non-purchasing spouse with bad credit

[deg757]

I pulled my scores this morning and they have climbed above the 640 mark so I made the call to the mortgage broker. I am a nervous wreck waiting for him to call me back with the actual credit scores. Here is my question. Will my husbands bad credit report keep me from obtaining a mortgage? I was told that if he wasn't going to be on the mortgage then all they needed from his credit reports is information for DTI. I'm nervous that his unpaid collections will hurt us. We live in Louisiana, which as I understand it is a community property state so he would be on the deed. My DTI is fine (even if they only use my income to calculate) and the only collection on my report was paid in full 3 years ago. No late payments for 13 months. He has a bunch of late payments from a couple years ago and 3 unpaid collections which I think are out of SOL but I'm not 100% sure on that.

[tooleman694]

I was denied because of my non purchasing spouse here in Texas. Because of her recent late payments. My scores were good.

[jinca]

In my case, they ran my wife's credit and her student loans were used in my DTI. She has no credit to speak of other than the loans. We closed without issue. 

[pizzadude]

I believe that the answer will vary based on if you live in a community property state.   Assuming that you don't then your spouse's credit report shouldn't have to be pulled at all.

[Anonymous]

I live in Missouri and my husband just got the pre approval yesterday from Wells Fargo. I know my scores are too low and when we talked to our loan officer we told him that up front. He never even ran my scores. My husbands DTI works out just fine so they weren't worried about it. Now this is just a  pre approval so I don't know if something will change before the final close. But out LO wasn't worried about it at all, so this tells me we are good to go with just my husbands income and credit.

[deg757]

I just talked to the lender and he said nothing on his credit report would affect me being approved other than the monthly payments on his debt. They could cause my DTI to be too high since he can only use my income. But, my husband doesn't have any debt on his own so no problems there. I'm sending documents over this afternoon.

[mkm77]

FHA Loans are where this can be an issue and based on a 640 I'm guessing that's what your applying for. But typically (I'm here in Texas) a spouses debt is counted and they can't have issues with a Mortgage recently. 

[tooleman694]

Yeah thats what we ran into, my wife had a late payment on her mortgage in the last 12 months. They wouldn't let me buy a home, I have to wait till March.

[Anonymous]

I have heard of instances where the non borrowing spouse signs an affidavit stating that the borrowing spouse is purchasing the home solely and the N.B. spouses waives interest in property and it doesn't affect DTI ratio.  Is that true?

[SJ02]

Yes, that is correct!  I live in LA and our 1st and 2nd homes were purchased in my name only.  At the signing, the mortgage attorney had my husband sign the forms.   When appyling for the loans we never had any problems.