Do you have a car loan? If so, you should look into refinancing over a longer period of time than is remaining on the current car loan. For example one of my clients had a $800/mo car loan that was 1.5 years away from being paid off, but their debt to income ratio was 4-5% too high for the program they wanted to qualify for... so I had them go down to their credit union who held their car loan and they were able to refinance into a new 5-year car loan with payments less than $300/mo and then they were able to qualify. The interest rate was even lower what they were previously paying, and so they just kept making the $800/mo payment on the car and paid it off over the same 1.5 years they had on the original loan.
Otherwise tooleman is probably correct that if you want to pay off that credit card and exclude the payment from your debt ratio, you'll probably have to also close that account. That isn't a USDA requirement, but often is a lender requirement. You can ask your loan officer if they'd require you to close the credit card account or not.
41.7% is pretty close to the 41% level though, so they may just give you some leeway and accept it, particularly if you have some compensating factors (such as money in the bank available after closing, or if your current housing payment is similar to the new housing payment, or if there is likelihood of a pay raise in the next 12 months, etc.)
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. Di they budge or is there a way we can lower it without paying something major off I.e. car loan. Could we pay off a credit cars only reporting 20$ reporting a 25$ payment???
