Trying to buy a home in a FL

[Janola]

I have a unique situation I wanted see if anyone had any advice for.

My husband is trying to qualify for a 2nd home in a different state (FL)with challenging credit. Scores are 585 fico 2, 580 fico 4, and 544 fico 5. The plan is to move there once closed but we need to use his income from a current job in our home state of Wa.

Im the only one on the mortgage of the home we currently live in but do not plan on going on the 2nd home because of a job situation change but I do have a 730 credit score but lots of revolving debt under my name (mostly because of the mortgage) and he will need to qualify based on income and credit score. We Have a substantial down payment of 25-30% but sort of flexible there. DTI isn’t a problem at all at the moment.

we are in the process of improving his credit score- cleaning up old collections, disputing what we can, opening a secured card, and adding him as an authorized user to my oldest cards (4 and 13 years) with large limits (56k and 13k). I just don't know if it's enough to get him to 620.

Do you guys know of any programs we aren't considering or lenders that are more lenient with credit scores since we are

putting a good amount down? Should we also think about opening a secured loan with our credit union to help his fico? 

[Revelate]

Not precisely versed with what you need but why not go FHA at 3.5% down and use that cash for your other debts?

Since you already opened up a secured card, if he doesn't have any installment loans on his profile you can tack one on... there is a cute trick, soon as it funds pay it down to like 8%; might get an extra handful of points on EX FICO 2 that way in my experience.

That said if he does have installment history and especially if there is an open installment loan, skip that idea.

[Janola]

He actually has paid all of his debt so there is nothing to pay down. He had history of an installment auto lease which were all paid on time since it was joint with me but those have since ended. I was toying with the idea of opening a secured shared loan but do you think it will improve his score since he has closed auto loans already on his report?

Ideally we would want to do FHA because of the credit score leniency but we can't since it's not his primary home. It will ultimately be his primary home though- we basically just want to buy before we move to make the transition easier.

since he has the prior closed accounts on his report with the auto loans, do you think it would be worth it for us to open an SSL with our credit union to improve his credit? Thanks again for your reply. 

[Revelate]

It probably won't do much honestly.  I would certainly clean up everything I could before trying SSL games, leave it as a somewhat desperate measure but he's probably going to increase non-trivially already if he had nothing but installment lines there.

Not sure you're excluded from FHA: my understanding is being married you both need to have the same primary residence, which does mean convenient to place of employment.  That's a little strange in today's world vis a vis for me I'm remote or on an airplane anyway, but the other big thing is you have to take residence within 60 days of the loan's funding.

How long were you expecting this transation to take?  Also it might not hurt for you to wait as well, rates seem to not be headed up like at all at this point looking at world economy and coronavirus and the mixed data here in the US, guess I'm not seeing the value in pulling the trigger super early but I'm not the best judge of such things: 6 days ago I decided I'm moving to Houston and already under purchase contract. 

[Shooting-For-800]

I would get everything settled, rent for a year, then start looking at buying.

Just too many obstacles.

Time also allows you to find the best house and terms.

GL!

[homeloanexpert]

You have several options available to you with the above scenario. Don't give up just yet.