While I stare down the clock as it ticks the seconds away until settlement on my mortgage (9 days to go!), I've been busy making post-closing plans. One of which is that we'll need to secure some funds to pay for an interior railing replacement for our new home. The contractor we're working with gave us a $7000 estimate for the labor and materials, and has requested 50% upfront to procure the materials. In order to get the work done prior to move-in during mid-April, we'll want to have the funds ready the day after close so that the contractor can order the materials (takes about a week from ordering to receive, he said).
DW has been getting targeted offers from Wells Fargo lately to do a personal loan, so we're leaning heavily toward that route since we have a good banking relationship with them (two credit cards for her, one credit card and one personal loan from me). The targeted offer was pushing a $10,000 loan, so we're planning to ask for that amount since it should be enough to cover the estimate, plus possible overage, plus some extra to help with moving and other related expenses. But, this'll be our first time appling for credit as official homeowners, so naturally I have some questions!
- I know it'll be some time before our mortgage shows up on our CRs. Is it going to have an effect on the personal loan app if we say to the LO that we just bought our first home, but it doesn't show on the CR when they do the pull?
- Would we want to apply using our current (old) address since we won't have updated all of our creditors with the new address yet (and thus the new address would not be reflected on our CRs when apping for the personal loan)?
- When they ask for monthly housing payment, do we give our current rent amount since we're still paying rent for April and will not have a mortgage payment until June? And, in general, when lenders ask for mortgage payment amount, do we give just the P&I amount or include the monthly property tax amount too?
- We're planning on initially having DW app for the personal loan solo since she carries less debt and has smaller DTI than me (and if she's declined on her own, we'll attempt to have me co-sign with my higher income). In our experience as renters, we've been able to report shares of rent payment proportional to income when apping for credit that required us to use only our individual incomes -- for instance, my income is roughly 2/3 of our total household income, so when I apped for a WF personal loan last fall, I was able to claim my share of the rent payment as 2/3 of the total rent payment. Can we still do this practice with a mortgage payment, or will DW have to report the entire mortgage payment while being restricted to only her income if she apps on her own?
Thanks! Now back to staring at that second hand *tick tick tick*... 
