What are my options?

[Delmas Edwards]

I contacted a broker and he connected me to his wife that works Quicken Loans and she is trying to get a pre-approved. She did the application and stated with my information that I gave her with me grossing 32,000 annually and adding my DTI, she could see if she could try to push for 60-70K house. I told her I'm looking for a 50-60 K house so if my wife or I lost one of our jobs then one person could still make payments to the mortgage. She stated that those types of houses you have to be careful with cause anything could be wrong and that why I told her I could get an inspector and check for all that but she kept pushing for me to get 60 to 70K houses saying they would be better. I then told her no way I've seen house 70-200K houses and things were still wrong with them. She told me I needed 5K for everything like closing and etc in reserves. This will be my primary residence.

[Ryan Gillette]

She's not pre-approving you because of the purchase price? The two things that might be going on are that she may not be able to do a loan amount less than $50K. Or genuinely in your market, properties in the 50-60K range typically are deficient for financing. That is, there's something wrong with them you may not care about (like chipping/peeling paint), but that a lender would care about. But typically that's not our area as loan officers to comment on.

That said, stick to your guns. Keeping an affordable payment in case either of you lose your job deserves a round of applause. If she's not willing to pre-approve you on because you don't want to go over your budget, shop around to another lender or two. You might have better luck in an small credit union or local bank if your loan amount is under $50K (like you buy a $50K house and borrow $40K).