@Carrie_in_Pa wrote:
@topa wrote:Just got pre-approved for an FHA loan.
We are excited - and looking forward to moving to the next step in our home search. We almost gave up on searching - and had even thought about putting it off until next year. Thanks my MyFICO friends!
Congratulations on the approval !!!
Thanks Carrie!
Hope all is working out with your home search also. Were you able to find another 3 acre property? 
Starting Score: 600 (Jan 2014)Spoke to Equifax yesterday and requested a score update - got the alert today. My Equifax score is currently at 709 - still below my expectations but pretty good. We are also looking to see if we can work around the USDA limit - by using a workaround for a bonus we recieved this year.
Pulled my scores directly from the bureaus - as I read that these are the ones used by the lenders. All pulled today.
Transunion FICO Classic 04 - 740
Equifax Beacon 5.0 - 682
Experian FICO v2 - 706
Could be that my scores had not updated when my LO pulled it, but my middle score is over 700 according to these scores - my LO gave me a 681 middle score. I'll leave this alone for now - but we'll ask my LO to refresh the score if we end up having to close on a home.
@topa wrote:Pulled my scores directly from the bureaus - as I read that these are the ones used by the lenders. All pulled today.
Transunion FICO Classic 04 - 740
Equifax Beacon 5.0 - 682
Experian FICO v2 - 706
Could be that my scores had not updated when my LO pulled it, but my middle score is over 700 according to these scores - my LO gave me a 681 middle score. I'll leave this alone for now - but we'll ask my LO to refresh the score if we end up having to close on a home.
Wow I just read your journey and I am inspired as I begin my journey to credit redemption. Great job and thanks for sharing your adventure
This will be a quick update, but I'll modify later to include further details.
My scores went up into the high 600s, low 700s. My LO pulled my middle score at 681 as of about a month ago. We found a home we love, we went back and forth in terms of offers and counters and almost felt like giving up last night. Law and behold, the sellers countered this morning and we countered back immediately - we got the home. I am now doing further due diligence to secure a good mortgage rate. We've been pre-approved already, and went through underwriting - but we still need to get through the next few weeks and secure a conventional loan. We are extremely excited - will keep you posted.
Good luck to you. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything works out the way you want it to.
Hello all,
Apologies for the delay in posting any updates on this board. I owe everyon on this blog our success in purchasing a home this year. We were able to get pre-approved by a small lender after all and we ended up closing on the home. That was a huge deal for us, for the simple reason that I had 30, 60 and 90 day lates all within the last year. After confirming with mortgage pros on the boards, I thought my chances were pretty slim to none. We paid off all credit cards just before we found our home, which helped boost our scores. Lessons learned below:
On the approval process:
A prequalification is not the same as a pre-approval, and pre-approval does not guarantee you will get the loan. Lenders give prequalifications based on the information you give them, there is no due dillegence to confirm any of the data. Lenders will perform additional due dillegence to give a pre-approval, but will not confirm some of the information, such as salary, assets, etc.. Lenders will confirm salary, assets, etc. to provide the final approval.
On mortgage terms:
The process gets extremely stressful towards the end, specifically after you have spotted the home you want. Keep in mind that initial terms provided by the lenders is not necesarily what you will get at the closing. After signing the real estate contract, we asked our lender for the final details of the loans and found that our terms had changed. We went out to 4 other lenders and ended up going with Citi. What we found is that the terms provided by the lenders were confusing, and would run in circles when asked for the APR. I think every single lender out there will tell you that the APR is a useless measure and that you should focus on your interest rate. Perhaps that is a correct statement, however, every single lender had difficulty giving a final APR while all of them would easily provide the interest rate. So at the end of the day, we went with the lender that provided the lowest possible rate for the lowest possible APR. So have a few lenders lined up as you get near closing, because you will want to compare the rates versus APRs.
On the home search:
The process is extremely stressful, and more so if you are moving more than 1 hour away from your current home. We were moving about 1.5 hours away, so going there was an all day event. It also limited the number of homes we viewed. We were pretty fortunate to have a really good realtor that helped answer a multitude of questions we had on every single step along the way, so get a realtor you can trust. Knowing what we wanted really helped us in the end. We wanted a home with a decent size, over 2500 square feet, we wanted a decent school district, we wanted to be away from the city with ample space, we wanted no HOA. Although we thought this was impossible multiple times along the way, we ended up getting exactly what we wanted.
On the issues:
We faced multiple issues along the process. We had the late payments on my credit (30, 60, and 90 days) and were unable to remove them via good will letters (we sent many). We could not find a home to fit our needs, most homes were in an HOA (which we didnt want), we found some that weren't HOA but had other major issues (like a power line in the yard), or taxes were too expensive. After finding the home, it was difficult to settle on the price and we ended up going back and forth abour 7 times. The selling realtor made it alot more difficult, stating that our response to inspection was expected to have zero requests. After sorting through all this, our lender found an issue with one of the sellers and was almost ready to reject the loan. We basically had to prove that the bank's process was incomplete (and we actually did). All these things went on up until closing - suffice to say, we were a wreck by closing day.
Persistence:
After almost wanting to give up through the process, we looked forward and we are now extremely happy in our new home.
