Are your student loans federal (Direct Loans, Stafford, FFEL, Perkins) or private loans? Are you in default status?
Current Score: TU: 674 | EQ: 722 | EX: 717 | Last Inq. 2/16/15...Locked Up in The Garden
@JMMD wrote:They are direct loans and are in deferment, but we are making payments anyway. The deferment ends in July. We had 7 lates from the end of 2012 into the beginning of 2013.
Refinancing isn't going to give you much mileage scorewise. You might consider consolidation if you have multiple student loans at varying rates of interest just to simplify things. You might try for a GW. Even if you were to consolidate the lates would still be on your CR. What else is on your credit report besides the BK?
@JMMD wrote:This is what I thought. I don't see how consolidating is going to help us score wise. Besides the BK and the SL lates, everything else is in good standing now. We have some old loans and closed CC that we paid on time. Some new credit that we recenly established. We were hoping to buy a house next spring but the SL lates are going to hinder us the most. We plan to try a GW letter after we have made 12 on time payments to show good faith on our part.
Keep paying things on time, garden your new credit. Start saving for your down payment and closing costs now so you will be ready when the time comes. Also, I'd get another mortgage banker/broker because this is a very basic situation that they should not be giving bad advice about. You can get an FHA loan 24 months after you discharge a CH7 BK. Also, every state has something called a Housing Finance Agency (HFA) which underwites mortgages at slightly higher rates but often have no mortgage insurance, friendlier to past credit issues including BK, and often manually underwrite loans. Many of them have special products for 1st time homebuyers that include a downpayment assistance loan in a forgivable second mortgage. Here's the website to find your state's HFA http://www.ncsha.org/housing-help