I'm currently in the process of buying a home under construction, to be completed this summer. I am working with a LO who came highly recommended from the sales agent at the housing development.
I have been having some concerns with the broker and would like to get feedback as to if to if these concerns are valid, or if due to the stress of buying a house, I am over-reacting.
My credit isn't perfect. I have a 605 due to a few (five, to be exact) collections account, most which are over 3 years old. There are two collection accounts that are recent, but both are medical collections. On the positive side, I have a revolving credit card, which was at 90% balance, now paid down to 49%, and I hope to pay it down to 29% by June. His advice was simple: pay off my collections, including the medical.
I do have enough for savings for a down payment for a FHA loan, with a little extra for cushioning. The medical bills are over 3k, which is more than I had anticipating on spending to pay off my debt. (The other collections were less than $500 total). I had heard that when buying a home, there are ways to dispute medical collections and asked the LO about this. He just ignored my question and told me that in order to elevate my score, I needed to pay off everything in collections, including an account which last activity was dated 10/2004. That was issue #1 (He also didn't tell me about PFD -- which I learned about here).
I paid everything off except for two items, which I thought to be duplicates. The account numbers were different but they were the same amount and were from the same place (Comcast cable), but from two different CA. I emailed the LO and asked him how to approach this, which CA to pay. His advice was to pay everything off my credit report!!! I asked him again, and bolded the part that they were probably duplicates, and he then changed his advice and told me to pay one and we could check later if the second one popped up. Issue #2 (note, it took it 13 days to reply to this email. I emailed him on a Wednesday. He didn't respond until almost two weeks after that, he was on vacation for Easter break, and I kinda gathered that, after he didn't answer me, but he made NO mention of going on vacation or being away)
After this, I was apprehensive about him, but since he came highly recommended, I thought I was probably just making a big deal out of nothing.
His other advice was to add myself as an authorized user to a credit card with a high limit and low balance. My fiance was able to help me, however, when we did this, the credit card company did not ask for my social security number or date of birth. I found this odd and wondered how it was going to help me if they did not have this information. I sent the LO an email and got no response. He never replied. I found, through reseraching on the internet, that certain credit cards report authorized users to the credit bureaus and some did not. The card I was added onto does not report authorized users. Issue #3
I figured, maybe that was a stupid question to ask, (since in restrospect, the answer was obvious). So I brushed it off.
And then this last week, I emailed him and asked him about closing cost. The builder is providing me with 3% for closing cost, and since I spent 3k paying off debt, I wanted to make sure I would have enough to cover all my expenses. I didn't want any surprises at the end. I asked for his advice if the 3% would be enough and no response. Friday morning I emailed him again (maybe he read it but forgot to reply).
If I don't get answer this week, should I find another LO who would be more willing to help me? Or I am expecting too much? What should your LO help you with? Am I asking the wrong person? Should I be asking my sales agent these questions. Unfortunately, we do not have a real estate agent.
Sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum. Any advice would be greatful
**edit to add, I have zero debt, not even a car loan and making 50k/year, have 10k in savings now (after paying off debt and putting down a holding deposit on the house) the house I'm buying is for 198k
Message Edited by maxmyfavorite on 04-26-2009 11:52 PM
