Not really looking just yet (saving for a down payment), but I wanted to know whether I can get approved with my current credit issues or need to address any of them prior to applying. If all goes well, I would like to buy in 6mo-1 year.
Currently, my FICO's are 624 (Exp), 644 (Eq), 647 (TU). Based on the calculator, the EQ and TU should be over 660 (possibly up to 680+) with 6 more months of paying bills on time and reducing my current CC usage to 20% from the score time 60% (down to 40% now, major expenses from getting married which I've been paying monthly with large balance tranfers). Approximately 10K in savings right now, which will be about 35K in 6 months, most of which would be available for down payment/closing costs.
Positives: good job ($105k/year), paid all bills on time in the past 3 years. Job history is solid for the past 3 years (same employer), with good income progression (from 75k/year - current 105k/year). Two car loans (275/mo, 475/mo) both of which are paid on time for over a year now.
Negatives: was laid off during the massive telecom bust in 2002, spent most of a year searching for another job (wound up retraining into a different specialization which is substantially less dependent on a single sector of the economy). Racked up some major debts that went to collections. Paid some of them off, however, I have about 4 collections still on account. One of them that I am hoping to avoid paying off is listed for 22K (hoping to avoid it, as they are one of the worst CA's out there to deal with, original creditor debt was ~10k, they've tacked on outrageous fees and interest to push it to 22k and have refused all attempts to settle for at/close to original debt, attempted to sue me last year to gain a default judgement, and finally dropped their case after stonewalling my attorney's attempt to get them to validate their debt and justify their fees). The rest of the debts are small by comparison (total about 2k), and am willing to pay those in full if needed (hopefully with a pay for delete). All the original debts are 4+ years old and outside the SOL now.
The main question I have for the mortgage pro's here is whether I would qualify for an FHA loan (or other type) for an approximately 325-350K condo either with or without paying that one large collection account? Would I need my wife's income to qualify (she has substantially lower FICO scores than mine - low 500s, due to not having any significant revolving or installation debt history until we married recently) - she makes approximately 30K/yr?
