Date Assigned vs Date of First Delinquency and trying to get an FHA loan

[bluevalentine78]

I have a collection item that popped up on my credit report back in Feburary  from CONVERGENT OUTSOURCING INCf or an account I had with T-Mobile back in 2011.  Balance is $1500.  My credit report shows a date of first deliquency as 10/2011 and a Date Assigned of 02/2016, which is when, I'm assuming, the account was sold to the collection agency .   When trying to get our mortgage (we're hoping to go FHA as we'll only have about 5% down with a mid score of about 620), is this going to be a huge issue?  Do most lenders look at the DOFD or date assigned?  

[Anonymous]

Date of first default. Date assigned means nothing.

[bluevalentine78]

Thanks.  So since that date is, according to my credit report, Dec, 2011,  I should still be fine in qualifying for FHA, even if the collection agency bought it and put it on my report only 5 months ago?

[Anonymous]

Since it is under 2,000 and not recent you can still get an approval automatically. However, be prepared with a letter of explanation as to what happened, and share it only if asked.

Do you have any other collections? If any push you over that 2,000 you might be asked to pay them. Keep funds available to do so, but only pay if asked. I'm all for paying off debt, it's just that paying it could cause a drop in score.

[Anonymous]

A waiver to my comment - I have no idea what your file looks like otherwise, this is all assuming that this is the only item in question. Also, lenders have overlays that I can't predict. Your lender is going to see it, so just ask.

[bluevalentine78]

Perfect. Thanks!  My file isn't great but this and a couple of small medical baddies put me JUST over the 2k mark.  I'm fully prepared to pay it should I be asked to by my LO . $22,000 saved so far and we're looking in the 100-130k range for houses, so 5% down plus closing plus reserves are pretty well covered.  Putting away 2k a month currently and we're hoping to start the process in about 3-5 months.  I knew that any collections less than 12 months old were pretty much an automatic "no" so that was my biggest concern -- that this almost 6 year old debt would be seen as a 6 month old debt.