What is the minimum documentation asked for by mortgage lenders?

[axxy]

My scores from Score Watch and Discover are both 816.  My income is small but steady and easy to prove.  I have about half the price of a house in the bank.  What documentation do I have to provide, besides income and bank balance?

My main concern is that my finances are actually a lot messier than they appear.  The more documentation I provide, the more the mortgage company is going to want to investigate.  The end result of such investigations is that they would approve me for the mortgage, but it would be too late, because their investigation would take too many months.  For that reason, I only want to provide minimal documentation.  Just enough to prove my income and bank balance, without providing enough to get them bogged down in complicated investigations.

Do mortgage companies require tax returns?  Or just proof of income and bank balance?  How many months of bank statements do they require?  The more months I provide, the more likely they will get bogged down investigating the details.  If I try to explain things like why I wrote some large checks, my explanations will make them want to investigate more.  So I only want to provide bank statements that don't show anything interesting.  How many months should I accumulate such statements before I apply?  Assuming they don't ask for tax returns.

[juggalo9er]

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@axxy wrote:

My scores from Score Watch and Discover are both 816.  My income is small but steady and easy to prove.  I have about half the price of a house in the bank.  What documentation do I have to provide, besides income and bank balance?

My main concern is that my finances are actually a lot messier than they appear.  The more documentation I provide, the more the mortgage company is going to want to investigate.  The end result of such investigations is that they would approve me for the mortgage, but it would be too late, because their investigation would take too many months.  For that reason, I only want to provide minimal documentation.  Just enough to prove my income and bank balance, without providing enough to get them bogged down in complicated investigations.

Do mortgage companies require tax returns?  Or just proof of income and bank balance?  How many months of bank statements do they require?  The more months I provide, the more likely they will get bogged down investigating the details.  If I try to explain things like why I wrote some large checks, my explanations will make them want to investigate more.  So I only want to provide bank statements that don't show anything interesting.  How many months should I accumulate such statements before I apply?  Assuming they don't ask for tax returns.

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in my case 2 years tax returns, 2 months bank statements, last two pay check stubs and an explanation of inquiries on credit report

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

You don't have to provide tax returns unless you are self-employed, but the lender will pull tax transcripts anyway.  If there is something on the tax transcripts that the tax returns will be needed for, then the tax returns will need to be provided. 

Lenders usually don't care about what kind of checks you are writing.  You'd want to go over whatever your concerns are with your loan officer though, that way you can figure out if it'll actually be an issue or if you are just being overly cautious.  What you may think is "interesting" could be completely mundane to the underwriter.

What is actually needed for the underwriter to review is:

W-2's for 2012 & 2013

Paystubs for the most recent 30 days of pay

Bank/asset statements for the past 2 months

In order to be properly pre-approved you'd want to also supply your loan officer with the last 2 years of tax returns though (and after all of that is reviewed you may need to provide additional documents/explanations too), the last thing you want is to go under contract based on a pre-approval letter that is not even worth it's weight and then find out in the middle of the process that more documents are needed.  That is how your mortgage process turns into a mortgage nightmare - providing just the minimum and the underwriter doesn't know what to ask for because they didn't have the big picture, so they require one document at a time, which another needed document stems from, and then another, and then another, etc...  One of my cohorts, who insisted they didn't need any help pre-approving someone, is going through that right now and I feel so bad for the clients... they are days away from their closing date and the final approval is nowhere in sight.