FHA & existing TLs

[_NERD]

DW has one revolving TL in her own name and no other TLs to her own name. She is an AU on 3 of my revolving TLs. Her TL has 3 years of excellent payment history. I understand my accounts won't be counted on her mtg reports. I have a total of 7 TLs of my own with under one year of payment history. AAoA is 4.2yrs on 2 CRs and 2.4yrs on the third CR. Her AAoA is about 1 year old.

She has over 10years with the same employer. No collections or charge offs (me neither). By this time next month she'll only have $1 util reporting. Everything else will be paid off.

My question: with her being the primary source of income, is an FHA still possible?

[Anonymous]

FHA is definitely possible. There isn't a minimum number of tradelines needed. You all should be fine. Worse case would be using nontraditional credit which would be showing a 12 month pay history on a utility or phone bill for her. You probably wouldn't even have to do that.

[_NERD]

I give her cash to use her bank account to pay my TLs. If we can prove her bank account has been used to "pay my bills" for the last six or so months, would that suffice as non traditional pay history?

She sometimes paid the phone and electricity after the due date. Not due to financial problems, just forgetfulness. Oh gosh, I anticipate scrutiny for revealing that (=

EDIT: the water/sewer/garbage was never paid late. I hope that is a qualifying utility.

[Anonymous]

The best advice from me...I'm a realtor...talk to a lender...it sounds like you're worried that you won't qualify for an FHA loan or she won't...FHA loans are easier to get and working with the right loan officer can eliminate the guess work...A good lender will offer to peek at your current credit and advise you things they know will cause a question mark in underwriting and walk you through correcting them. For the most part from what you've typed if both of you are employed...same field at least 2 to 3 years (supports stability) if you have TLs and she does both of you have a Fico/Emperical score...have a lender do a pre-approval not a pre-qual...that will give you real numbers. 

As the other response said..it's not how many TLs it's the payment history...My DW did our mortgage with 2 TLs and 2 collections..One was his truck and the other a credit card that was less than 6 months old...the key thing was he had scores to work with...Albeit the interest rate was high...at exactly a year we refinanced and went down to from a 5.99 to 3.99 since his scores had improved so much more by then.

[_NERD]

tamaralig: you got me. I am worried. When the PIF TLs update on our CRs, we'll talk to a lender.

You you both for your input.

[Anonymous]

I am a lender.  If you are applying jointly and you have 2-3 tradelines between you both you will be fine.  Probably won't need non-traditional credit to get it done.  It really just depends on what the automated underwriting system says.  I would say you have nothing to worry about.  I just mentioned the non-traditional traadelines as a wosre case scenario.  If you want to take a look at a pre-approval just let me know.  I would be happy to help you all out.  Let me know if you have any other questions.