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First time home buyer roller coaster ride

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Anonymous
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First time home buyer roller coaster ride

Hello everyone so in the beginning of November I decided after many failed attempts that it was time for me to buy a home. At first I was skeptical because this isn't the first time I've walked into a lenders office just to have my credit pulled and kicked right out the front door. my first attempt happened in July of 2014 my credit was about a 580 and I had Little to no money down but at the time Wells Fargo was all about helping people within this criteria but due to open collections and little to no credit / bad credit I didn't qualify for the program and was told to come back in six months well I didn't go back in 6 months I returned about a year after to the same agent who had helped me the first time  and what do you know once again I was told my income had met the standard but due to my credit and my petty three thousand dollars saved they were unable to help me so once again I took the long walk. As time went on I was trying to build my credit paying all my bills on time car, credit cards, overdraft loans, heck even my cable bill etc. I did this ritually for all of 2015 and 2016 and about February of 2017 I once again returned to a lender but this time I said the heck with "w" hells Fargo they denied me twice and never followed up with me to give me the credit guidance they promised so that whole experience led me to go to a local lender here in Fresno. So Feb 2017 I go to my appointment with the agent he runs my credit and income and what do you know he says that I qualify for an FHA loan on a house for up to 300,000. after reviewing my finances and taking a closer look into my credit  unfortunately for me I qualified for the fha loan but not for their down payment assistance program that I needed due to low savings of about 4k but this agent didn’t give up on me he said " hey look if you had 9k dollars right now you would be on your way shopping for a home as long as they covered the closing costs but you don’t so were going to make a plan" he then told me to keep all my finances in order and to continue to pay all my bills on time as I have been doing. but starting that day to create a savings plan till I reached my goal of 9k and he said I can almost guarantee when you return your credit score will be high enough to qualify for the down payment assistance and if it isn’t well then you would have already accumulated your 9k needed for the down payment making you ready no matter what the next time you walk through that door. So once again I took the ever so familiar walk but this time it was different given a somewhat conditional approval. well about 9 months after that meeting its now November 2017 I show up to the agents office again with an appointment of course and we go through the same process again credit run and evaluation of my finances w2s tax returns etc. so apparently my credit score did not improve from the last visit and it actually went down 5 points leaving my  mid score at about 625 that was most likely due to a new vehicle I had to acquire in march and a late payment on a credit card that is now on automatic payments but hey life happens J  but none the less I had saved up the 9k he told me to and I was given the green light to start shopping for a home at this point he paired me up with a local realtor at my request and we hit the market with guns blazing. the next afternoon we went to view a property that I had my eye on for a while on Zillow and something about that house I just knew it was the one I’m sure the excitement of the whole new experience played some part in my decision but after viewing other properties I just couldn’t let go of the first house that  we viewed my realtor quickly caught onto how much we loved the home and we put in a bid and as luck would have it there was another party interested in the home and three days later we were asked to send in our highest and best offer. The house was selling for 232,500 and we put in an offer at 238,500 but we asked for 3% for closing costs as I only had about 9k saved up and would not have been able to cover the 3.5% down for fha plus the closing costs. So a couple days go by and yup you guessed it we got out bid by the other buyer who gave them their asking price of 232,500 but did not ask for closing costs. This was a big letdown for me but I called it a loss and we continued to look at other houses. Oh wait it gets better......  so after scrolling through some houses we finally see something in my price range and in the neighborhood I was interested in and the house happened to be vacant so we go to take a look. The house was nice but defiantly not something I wanted to get into. down the block we happened to see an open house and I said why not go check it out and I’m glad we did because the house was awesome and it was on the way low end of my price range at 215,000 but what we failed to realize is the house was not FHA approved due to the 90 day rule aka the flip rule I was really interested in the home so my lender tried to go conventional for me but the digital underwriter was not having it so we said our goodbyes and moved on.  It’s now getting close to December and after seeing all the homes on the market with our limited option due to the 90 day rule I’ve noticed for a house built in 1980-2001, 1500 sqft,  3 bed 2 bath and a long history of who knows what your easily shelling out at least 220,000-245,000 here in Fresno, CA I said screw it and decided to take a leap and go shopping for new construction homes. After doing some research I found a perfect home 3bd 2 ba 1440sqft at 249,900 made by Dr Horton. I went down to look at the model home and once again had that feeling of I got to have it.  I reached out to my realtor and told him forget all the other homes I’ve been sending you I found the one. He then got in contact with the sales manager to see what we could possibly do about the closing costs and it finally looks like my luck is turning around because they are giving a seller credit of 5k to go to closing costs if you use their preferred lender DHI which is a sister company of dr Horton so my realtor sent me back to their sales office with the instruction of giving them a 2500 dollar check for earnest money locking us in with the house  but what my realtor is in the process of doing is trying to have them beat or match our current rate with my current lender then we would go ahead and use DHI ”In house lender” but if they were unable to match or beat it hopefully we would still be able to use our current lender and still receive the seller credit of 5k. I’m in the process of submitting all my paperwork to DHI but they’ve already done a credit check and pre-qualified me based on the accurate income that I have provided to them hopefully by Wednesday 12/6 we get a response.

Message 1 of 18
17 REPLIES 17
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride

Good Luck on your journey. Come back and update once you hear from DHI

Message 2 of 18
redE2move
Frequent Contributor

Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride


Omg what a journey.  Well as the saying goes nothing great comes easy.  Seems you've been through a lot in just a few short weeks but your perseverance will pay off in the end.  It's scary but exciting and I can't wait to hear your happy ending!

Message 3 of 18
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride

Wow, such perseverance.  Good job and let us know how it goes with DHI.  I will be following.

Message 4 of 18
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride

Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride
Good Luck on your journey. Come back and update once you hear from DHI.


Thanks for that. Definitely i will also be adding pics every week as the process moves along.
Message 5 of 18
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride


@redE2move wrote:

Omg what a journey.  Well as the saying goes nothing great comes easy.  Seems you've been through a lot in just a few short weeks but your perseverance will pay off in the end.  It's scary but exciting and I can't wait to hear your happy ending!


Yes it has definitely been a journey. i will definitely be keeping up with posting my process as i go along and will continue to do so no matter the outcome. 

Message 6 of 18
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride


@Anonymous wrote:

Wow, such perseverance.  Good job and let us know how it goes with DHI.  I will be following.


Thank you I will keep everyone posted as soon as i hear something. 

Message 7 of 18
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride

Ok everyone heres the update on the process. Just three days ago i finally received the approval from my loan agent that they will match the apr at 4.25% qualifying me for the preferred lender credit yay! as well as a Good faith Estimate from DHI I also received a conditional approval yesterday a couple of the conditions were dec bank statements etc nothing major. I submitted all the documentation that they asked for and am waiting to hear back again. As far as the the house goes they got the first layer of stucco up and all the drywall has been textured on the inside. they set me up with an orientation date of jan 25 so we shall see how the process goes from this point moving forward it seems we have a change in luck but nothing is certain till i have the keys in my hand
Message 8 of 18
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride

Hello everyone back with another update. I had the walk/ orientation on 01/31 everything looked great there was some things that needed to be touched up on the paint and the granite for the slot of the stove was too small so they had to recut it. But other than those issues everything looked great today 2/2 i met with the escrow holder and signed docs as well as gave them a cashiers check for the remainder of the downpayment minus the earnest money the grand total being 9500$ ouch... My funding date is 2/6 and keys on 2/7 “5days” to go its been a crazy ride and we are on the cruising end of this roller coaster i wish i knew how to post photos from mobile ios thanks everyone for the support and as usual i will be back with an update
Message 9 of 18
Anonymous
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Re: First time home buyer roller coaster ride

Today is closing day, good luck to you!

Message 10 of 18
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