Thoughts, Comments and Concerns about Lender Issue

[Colin Caporal]

Hi everyone,

I signed a contract on my first house in Fort Worth with a new build company, Bloomfield on Sunday (4/24). This process of finding my first home as a primary residence took a while because I wanted to find a perfect area for me to live in to do a house hack and also I needed to save more money in the meantime for the down payment. I was pre-approved by a handful of lenders back in January/February (when rates were much lower). I had some lenders say up to 400k, some say 350k some say 375k. So in my mind, I had 400k as the maximum when I was searching in DFW this past weekend. We barely found this new build home at $375k and I was almost forced to take it because everything in the area was sold out, except for this one that was a fallout. I signed the papers and sent my earnest money.

Problem now is that my realtor has communicated with our preferred lender (who pre-qualified me up to 350k) and they are saying this may be too high of a price for today's interest rate and for the amount of money I have available to put down. I originally wanted to do 5% conventional (about $20,000; I am not even a year of college so this is pretty much all I have). Both lenders I've talked to are in the process of "seeing what they can do". Some have mentioned I may have to do 15-20% down now so that it will bring my monthly cost down to be affordable for me. They said FHA will probably be the same amount down. I'm scared to tell them I will have roommates that will cover the expenses. I don't think that will apply because they want to see if I can pay the loan on my own along with the other expenses.

Guys, I am panicking. Does anyone have any recommendations for me or would be willing to give advice? 

[David Kelly]

Hopefully the lender has done their job and looked over the liabilities closely and excluded everything they could. Are there any student loans? If so, are they using Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac? Are there any installment loans that have 10 months or less? (not on a car lease however). Is there a credit card that has a small enough balance that you could pay it off during this process and exclude that payment from your DTI? Try shopping around for other homeowners insurance to lower that monthly obligation. The list goes on! Feel free to reach out directly with any questions.