What mortgage lenders look at is DTI - Debt to Income Ratio. But they don't look at actual total debt, unless it's way out of line to your income. What they look at the required debt payments divided by your income to calculate the DTI. For credit cards they use the minimum payment, and for most CCs that's only 1% of balance, so it's likely that the minimum payment required on your CC balances will be lower than the monthly payment on an installment loan to pay them off. I'm in the pre-approval process for a USDA mortgage and I just did the opposite of what you're considering - I have a 36 month Prosper loan at 11% APR with monthly payment of $163. Current balance is just under $3800, so I app'd and was approved for a Barclay NFL Extra Points card w/CL of $5k (I raised it to $7700 by transferring part of my CL on another Barclay card). That card has a 0% interest for 15 mos, for balance transfer made within the first 45 days, so I just did a BT for my Prosper loan. I should be able to pay it off in 15 mos., and for my mortgage DTI Barclays's minimum 1% payment of around $40 is 1/4th of my Prosper loan payment.
When you say the loan will save you a couple hundred a month then your CC interest rate is high - maybe app'ing for a new CC with 0% introductory offer for BTs would be a better way to go? The standard (and good) advice is to not apply for new credit within 6 mos of applying for a mortgage, but if you explain the new CC was to transfer your CC debt to 0% on the new card so you can pay it off more quickly they should like that.
