VA Loan/Studen Loans

[MrChairman]

My wife and I were preapproved by SunTrust and we signed our contract for our house yesterday. The question no one could seem to answer for us is this: My wife is currently in school and will need to take out a studen loan. We are buying new construction and we won't close until Feb or March of 2013. My question is that can she take out more loans if they are deferred and will they count in our DTI ratio even though there are no payments being made?

[Elcid89]

VA guidelines allow deferred student loans to be excluded from DTI calculations if the start of repayment date is greater than 12 months from the expected closing date. That said, lenders can (and some do) implement overlays (additional lender requirements over and above the VA guidelines).

So, the short answer is: it depends on SunTrust's policies.

[MrChairman]

Ok thanks.

[Elcid89]

The easy answer to this one seems to be: did they count her existing student loans? If so, then they'll count the additional ones IF those show up on her report and IF SunTrust does another pull prior to closing.

[MrChairman]

During the preapproval the Suntrust rep asked us about them but since they were deferred she didnt even include them in the calculation. I was wondering if something was diffeent from the preapproval process vs the actual mortgage app process.

[Elcid89]

My gut would be that you should be fine then.