Yesterday Ross and I meant with a mortgage lender at Bank of America. IT. WAS. FRUSTRATING.
As Ross put it, a colonoscopy would have been less painful.
It started off like a doctor's appointment...waiting. Even though we had an appointment time. Do they do this because they can? There wasn't anyone else there; I didn't feel like all of Ausitn was out to get a loan. Sigh, but finally we were in the lender's office.
I had two folders full of financial paperwork. And apparently I still didn't have what we needed. In fairness, I was told to bring two years of our W-2's and could not find Ross' 2007 W-2's so I knew that one was off. But everything else that I was told to bring, I had. However there were things we needed that I was not told about and that was killer. I could have brought them; I have them. I have statements from my retirement plan, if only I was told I needed them. I can print bank statements, no problem. I must have looked as frustrated as I felt because at one point when the lender walked out of the room, Ross made a point to calm me down. (Did practically throwing my pen on the table when asked for yet ANOTHER document I wasn't told to bring give it away?)
However, when it was all said and done, it wasn't my paperwork issues that are holding us back. Here's the scoop - I have bukus of college loans. My mom is co-signed on the big ones with Sallie Mae and I pay those religiously each month. My federal student loans have only my name but my parents out of the kindness of their hearts pay them. But since my parents have no responsibility to those loans, their payments can't help my debt-income ratio. And since I make all the payments on the loans they do have responsibility for, that also can't help my debt-income ratio. Sad huh? I'm 110% grateful that Mom and Dad pay those federal loans, I just wish the bank would be half as appreciative as I am. And because of my crummy debt-income ratio, I can't be preapproved by myself (which was an idea we were toying with since we didn't know if we could get Ross' 2007 W-2's). So that's issue number one.
Issue number two - Ross has been depositing cash tips into our bank account. We can't have any cash deposits into our bank account that aren't documented someplace. This is to keep baby smugglers from buying homes. But we aren't baby smugglers! So because of the cash deposits, the bank won't take into consideration money in our checking account...which is basically half of what we have. And it even makes our savings account questionable because we transfer money from the "sketch-tastic" checking to our savings. We have to have 60 days of no undocumented cash deposits which also means any cash wedding gifts we can't deposit without a cumbersome gift form being submitted. We have 52 days left of "cleaning" our bank accounts.
As we got to the end of this meeting, we felt pretty darn beaten down. How frustrating to KNOW we can afford a house but for our bank not to believe us. And why weren't these things, like the cash deposits, told to us before? Why isn't that common knowledge? When we set up this appointment, why weren't we provided with more complete information? Perhaps all that would have been too easy?
The good news is Grama actually has Ross' W-2's in the Ross file she's kept all his life. So we'll be able to collect those and get him on the loan too. With his income added to mine, our debt-income ratio is fine and won't hold us back. We also have time to do 52 more days of bank account cleaning and still reach out closing goal. Also the lender said that while we can't count the income from two part-tme jobs (sucks) we can submit paperwork from Sam Bass Fire Dept. to help show how we're a young couple with goals and that Ross' time in school is paying off.
Anyways, I think its all going to be OK, but folks, I'll let you know, if you are looking to buy a house, get ready for these loan meetings. Maybe you should ask if a root canal would be an acceptable trade off...
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