Should I be worried?

[whoathere]

So I'm in underwriting for my first home. To give a little background, I signed a contract for my town home back in April. We set the closing for June 29. the reason for the delay was because my student loans were in the process of consolidating so 90 days should have given me enough time.

Fast forward.. In may I discover a program for a free 3% towards closing the IHDA. In order to take advantage of this you must have a certain credit score (640 required my middle score is 757 or something) and a certain amount of cash, as well as a DTI lower than 45%. After paying off all credit cards and refinancing my car, I was down to 44.3%. However, my banker kept coming up with 45.1%.

I'm an accountant and I know how to do these back end ratios and how to calculate DTI so I trust that my #'s are correct. I signed a bunch of paperwork and the application on June 6, with the task of getting a letter from my student loans about what my future payments will be.

Turns out they can't give you any official document stating what future payments will be, and besides I'm under the 45% anyway! I send the LO my spreadsheet showing income, debts and a 44.267% DTI. He doesn't respond. This was on June 7, the day after meeting with him to sign all of the paperwork and fill out the app.

I still have heard nothing. Just yesterday I received a letter from Direct Loans about my student loan consolidation completing and my new payment some $140 less than it was before. My DTI is now 41.2%. I send him a PDF of this letter as well as another spreadsheet showing my new, much lower, DTI

I had also emailed him Monday asking if there was anything I should be doing, or if there were any hang ups. No response. No response from yesterday's email. The appraisal is tomorrow and closing was bumped to 6/28 and I have heard nothing in over 2 weeks. Just getting a little nervous that something isn't right. If we don't close on the 28 then we have to wait til August as the builder is going out of town for a few weeks.

Any thoughts?!?!

[FrugalRican]

All this has been through email?

Have you called or gone to his office?

[whoathere]

I called yesterday before sending the email. To this point, all of our correspondence has been through email. Unfortunately, my hours are the same as his so it's difficult to get to his office without having an appointment scheduled ahead of time.

[K_J]

I think you should go to the office, sacrifice some time, If this is important to you and you shouldn't let anyone mess it up for you for any reason.

[tooleman694]

I would tell him your pissed off at his lack of communication and you want to speak with his boss or you are going to find a new LO..

In the mean time, try to find out who his boss is and give him a piece of your mind.. That will spark this in to action..

[Anonymous]

Find out who is his manager is and contact them. Unfortunately with interest rates so low, lenders are backlogged, but that is no excuse for poor customer service or lack of communication from your LO. If you do not get a response from the manager by days end, you should probably go with another lender. Make sure you use a company that is local in your state. You probably have all the required documentation together, which will expedite approval, however you may want to extend your contract period just to be safe and not loose your earnest money deposit.

[whoathere]

Well, I got a call today. As I said before, the LO wasn't able to get my DTI below 45%, which is beyond me, but after sending the letter about my student loans he was able to get it down to 44%. My calculations show 40.52%. Rather than argue with him, I just let it slide. The issue now is that the assessment was supposed to be done tomorrow and unfortunately they want a new contract to be written up and signed with new dates. By the time the assessment happens and comes back it will be after next Thursday. So, looks like a late July closing for me.

I'm still boiling a bit about this DTI. It's a simple calculation and their inability to do it properly has wasted so much of my time, and could possibly lose the house.

/rant

[Anonymous]

You are calculating your debt to your credit and not your actually income, correct? For example, if you have only one single credit card for $1000 and your balance on it is $100, then you have a 10% DTI, regardless of your income. The only other thing I can think of is if you have any collections (which I doubt with a high score like that!) When I was preapproved, I had one single medical collection from 6 years ago for $115 that they added into my debt to income ratio. I wasn't expecting them to, but I guess it IS DEBT to income, Lol! I'm so glad to hear that it's working out for you regardless of the discrepancies. Best of luck!

[JonRun]

"You are calculating your debt to your credit and not your actually income, correct? For example, if you have only one single credit card for $1000 and your balance on it is $100, then you have a 10% DTI, regardless of your income"

I'm pretty sure DTI (Debt to Income) is just that; your monthly recurring debt (credit cards, installment loans, mortgage, etc) divided by your monthly gross income.

What you're talking about is Debt to Credit.

[StartingOver10]

Is it possible you left out the PMI or HOA (if applicable) fees from the housing expense? Or did you calculate your payment based on the new UFMIP, if any?

BTW, I'm not doubting that you know the figures! Remember, there are all kinds of LO's - from excellent to far less than average   It's possible your LO didn't complete the calculations correctly, but unfortunately those are the figures that will be used...