Sent to USDA during pre-approval

[jerbysmom]

So I'm talking to a couple of lenders about getting pre-approved for a USDA loan. One is the LO at our own bank. He was supposed to call Mon or Tues, but it's Wed and all I got was crickets. The other is a lender my sister referred me to. He called today saying they had a meeting with several people in the office about our file and they decided to send it to an underwriter at USDA to see what they say. I'll say here that my husband's income was $15,300 last year (self-employed) and we're trying to buy a $65,000 house. No matter how I run it through different mortgage calculators payments always stay below $500, and since our rent is $600 it would be EASIER to pay the mortgage than our rent. His credit is decent at 689. So what is your take on this? Are they wanting to make sure USDA will OK it before they tell us yes? I've never heard of this happening in all the months of research I've done on this loan program. Would you say this is hopeful sounding or no? I'm just weirded out.

[pinkbetty]

My educated guess would be that they do not often take on loans with such low income and low cost of home,/small loan and because the USDA underwriter will be much more familiar with that situation, they're basically sending your file to an expert.

Which strikes me as being a Good Thing and good service on their part.

[jerbysmom]

I think you're right about them not usually dealing with such low income. My sister and her husband used them for their loan (also USDA) but they make crazy good money. When I called originally the receptionist said they work on referral, so without their names to drop we probably would have been shut out. They've been very helpful through this whole thing when they could have by all rights laughed in our faces and hung up. By contrast, the LO at our own bank has been a disappointment. He told me last week 7/3 that he would be in touch Mon. or Tues. at the latest. It is now Thursday and he didn't respond to an e-mail sent yesterday and when I called today I got a voicemail box that was full. To top off the situation, we found last night that the house we want dropped from 65000 to 50000. We got all excited and called our realtor for her to tell us she doesn't think it would pass an inspection, which is hard to believe. We've crawled over every inch of the property and seen as much as possible without actually walking through it and I can't imagine what the issue could be. This is the perfect house for us. We're going in tomorrow so I guess we'll see what's up soon enough. In the meantime I have a stress-induced headache and I'm sure I have an ulcer forming. *facepalm*