VA Jumbo Loans

[Anonymous]

Where are you buying? I assume you have checked the county loan limits.

We do a lot of education on VA not only with borrowers, but realtors also sometimes.

[Anonymous]

In the Atlanta northern metro area.  The limit here is 417k, but the property we are buying is 455k.  We are putting down 25% of the difference in the two prices.

I was going to try to contact lenders near the 2 military bases in the Southern Atlanta area, because they likely have more experience working with VA loans.  I am going to give it a little while longer with the current lender I'm working with.

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

This is a pretty basic guideline - sounds like you just are talking to lenders who are too conservative or have no clue what will actually happen when things are run.  I waited 1 year and 9 months to finally check a Veteran's credit as his spouse had a foreclosure in early February of 2009, the trick is for VA's underwriting system is if it says you had a foreclosure within the past 24 months it'll automatically give a "Refer" recommendation and needs to be manually underwritten, and VA's underwriting system can't differentiate between if a foreclosure was on February 1st or February 28th, so if the credit is run in February of 2011 or if the automated underwriting system is run in February of 2011 that person would get a "Refer" 100% of the time and would require to be manually underwritten... so credit & VA's automated underwriting both needed to be done in March.  Evidence was conclusive, with a credit report & VA's AU both run in February, it came back a "Refer", when both were run on March 1st, it came back as an "Accept".  Obviously you need to be well qualified, as they were, low debt to income ratio, payment was similar to what they were currently paying, and so the underwriter didn't have any issues.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the information, it's a tremendous help!!!

My foreclosure was January 08 (actual foreclosure was August 07, but bank didn't sell home until Jan 08 so that is the date on the credit report).

Hopefully since I am more than 24 months out, we might be able to get an "accept" instead of a "refer."

Our DTI (including PITI) is about 32%.  Our mortgage payment is doubling from our current rent amount.  Our middles scores are 690 and 652.  Possibly one 30 day late payment in September 2010 (I talked to creditor and they agreed to remove it, but said it will take a few weeks to report).

Thanks again for all your help.

[Anonymous]

I would suggest you ask them what their credit score requirements are for VA jumbos. Most lenders that will do a VA Jumbo, require a minimum 660 mid score for all borrowers, regardless of AUS findings.

[Anonymous]

They said 640 was the minimum for a jumbo.  

I do have the option of paying down one of my credit cards (currently a 49% utilization rate) to 9% (or zero) and having the lender do a rapid rescore.  Hopefully that would get me the 8 points if the score needs to be higher.  Two of my other credit cards have a zero balance and another one has a 9% utilization.

I should have a clearer picture of where I stand on Wednesday, when my file is supposed to be submitted to the underwriter.

[Anonymous]

Good luck and let us know how it goes...

[Anonymous]

Thank you, and I will keep you posted.

Have a great day!