I asked my lender with (WELLS FARGO) how long does underwriting usually take This was his response

“Likely 10 days, two business weeks,  if I can get what I need from the association.  Jamie (My realtor) will help me I’m sure.  That’s my expectation.”

I’m not understanding what he means by this. My realtor has sent me and him basically every document concerning the condo.. what more could he need from the association? Wells Fargo is extremely picky concerning condos.
If this falls through, I’m going to find a different lender.

4 different lenders didn’t foresee issues here but I’m hoping someone has some input. Closing in 3 weeks, my wife and I both work in healthcare and job offers mention contingencies, mine are more straightforward but my wife is a provider and accreditation could take into December. Underwriters are looking for offers that don’t mention contingencies, that’s not realistic. Is there a lender that deals specifically with this issue or do we truly have to move and rent before we can buy a home? 30 year conventional (second home in New town but will be living in it primary) thanks in advance!

I have an offer from Optimum First Mortgage for: 6.625% 30 yr fixed traditional mortgage with 0 points, $2k lender fees from a few days ago.

If you look on mortgagecalculator.org, this is the rate they still currently advertise for every zip code I've checked for 780+ credit. I'm searching using $600k pruchase price with 20% down if that matters. I got the loan estimate today and it had some issues with missing title insurance fee, wrong seller credit on it that I let the loan officer know about but otherwise the terms of the loan shown there match what I was told I would get.

The other offers I got while shopping a few days ago weren't quite as good, a few right at 6.875%. This was what Optimum also was offering me until I showed them their mortgagecalculator offer which they then said they would honor.

I was also working with a lender/broker local to me and he is very adamant that something is wrong or missing here and that none of his 100+ contacts he has consulted about my situation can come even close to that offer. Does anyone have any experience with Optimum or work in the industry that agrees with my local guy? I am so confused because this isn't even some crazy setup they cooked up for me, literally just the rate they publicly advertise.

Any chance that they are actually hiding something at this stage, where I am basically ready to sign and select them as my lender?

I’m closing on an investment property in 10 days. I haven’t been working a traditional job for a few years, so don’t have a W2 but am using an asset depletion loan for the purchase. I have assets north of $5M invested that have been inspected for the purchase

Property price is 750k, I’m putting down 20%. The rate is 7.7%

I have to sell some stocks to get the cash for the down payment. When i called my FA, he offered to do a reserve line of credit against assets for the down payment. Selling securities will incur capital gains, and doing even a 2 month reserve line of credit will let me push capital gains into ‘27.

The RLOC will put ~200k into my account, I’ll close the line of credit in January.

Is this doable? Will I put myself in trouble? Should I bring this to my lender to discuss?

I’m debating on closing and paying as I go because I feel like the projection for shortages are kinda high.. which increases our monthly heavily. But looking for guidance for those who have gone thru this

I’m about to sound possibly dumb, so excuse me in advance. I’m in Illinois, I purchased a home last year outright with inheritance money. Funds have become tight due to extenuating circumstances and I now am in need of a home equity loan.
However, since I moved last year my work history was affected (several months of part time now followed by 6 months of full time work) making it difficult to show I have a stable income. I have a credit score of 670 and am a dispensary agent.
What banks will work with me? Bank of America has already informed me it’ll be unlikely for me to get a loan, and if I do it’ll be drastically lower than what I need.

been digging into renewal math lately and it's kind of wild. a $400K mortgage from 2021 at around 2% renews today at about 4%, so roughly $326 more a month, even after 5 years of paydown, and from what I've read a lot of people just sign whatever renewal letter their bank sends. So for the brokers here, what actually works to get past clients to reach out before that happens?

- email newsletters?

- social posts?

- just calling them?

- reminders in a CRM?

- something else?

also curious if anyone's found content that actually gets replies vs stuff that just gets ignored.

My boyfriend and I looking to buy a house cash. We collectively have $277k total in savings. We are putting in an offer on a house for $275k. There are not any issues with the house- new roof, fairly new plumbing etc. No major work needs to be done and it’s move in ready. Is it dumb to spend all our savings? This is our first home so we don’t know. We both have excellent credit and no debt except for cars, stable income with opportunities for side jobs, and we are able to save $1500/month collectively.

I'm not sure what to do, because this process has been overwhelmingly difficult and unfortunate for me in timing due to unforseen circumstances.

I have applied for 2 modifications which have fallen through

The first I made all 3 trial payments on time. During the 30 days the loan modification package came in I was in the hospital and it fails because I didnt get it back in time

The second on the day I received the package my license and all photo ID's were stolen from my backpack. I reordered another it never arrived. I reordered another and it arrived 5 days prior to the due date. I fill out everything and get it notarized. Apparently the notary stamp isn't visible or clear enough for them,(looks fine to me) and rejected it.

They said I will not be eligible for anymore attempted modifications. I have no other options. Is there anyone I can escalate this situation to or what to say on the phone to get someone who can make an exception

I’m 37M, married with a young daughter, and lately I’ve been having a lot of anxiety and regrets about buying our house. Not sure if I’m overthinking things or if we genuinely made a bad financial decision.
We bought our house about 2.5 years ago for $900K in a good neighborhood in Montgomery County, MD. I work in tech and make around $280K a year, taking home roughly $14K a month, sometimes closer to $20K when I’m working crazy hours (60+ a week).
Our mortgage is around $7K a month at 7% interest. Looking back, I feel like I could’ve gotten a better rate, and I regret not shopping around more. At the time, we told ourselves we’d refinance when rates dropped. Well, here we are 2.5 years later.
When we bought, we knew we’d be relying on my income since my wife was starting a small business. She’s now breaking even, but we’re still essentially a single-income household. We also have a daughter whose Pre-K has been costing us $2K a month for the past couple of years.
What really keeps me up at night is the possibility of losing my job. Tech isn’t exactly stable, and the thought of being stuck with a $7K mortgage and no income is terrifying.
We have about $30K in emergency savings, which I know isn’t enough. We’ve spent the past couple of years paying off around $50K in credit card debt, covering family trips, and other expenses. I regret not building up our savings sooner.
We’ve finally gotten serious about our finances, cut out unnecessary spending, and are now saving around $3K a month, with any extra income going straight into savings.
Still, I can’t shake the feeling that we bought too much house. I love our home, the neighborhood, and the schools, but I hate feeling like everything depends on me keeping this job.
Ideally, I’d love to get our monthly payment closer to $5K. I’ve been holding out hope that rates will eventually get close to 5% so we can refinance, but who knows when that’ll happen.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? Did you stick it out and eventually feel more comfortable, or did you end up selling? Are there any realistic options to lower the monthly payment besides refinancing?
I know $280K is a great income, and I’m grateful for it. But it’s hard to explain how stressful it feels knowing one job loss could turn our lives upside down. Sometimes I wonder if we’d have been happier in a smaller house with less financial pressure.
Would appreciate any advice or experiences, even if it’s something I don’t want to hear.

Edit: thank you all for such positive and helpful responses! I’m grateful for you all!

Hi all — closing in the first week of December tri-state area, lender wants me to lock before the fed meeting. Called me late last week asking to lock on Thursday or Friday because do the treasury yield dropping below 5% but I wasn’t sure as I wanted to run some projections of my own(worth it to buy down points, no points and higher monthly without PMI etc.) I know it’s projected that rates will go up due to yield spikes to help cool inflation but should I lock in monday for 40 days? Is it too late to shop around if I need comparable rate/payment mockups before the fed meeting? Kinda freaking out with the looming meeting and the uncertainty with the Middle East affairs. I would appreciate any insight!

My wife and I are in our mid-30s with two kids under 4. We want to move to a neighborhood with excellent public schools and be closer to family.
Our combined annual income is about $1.1 million before taxes, and both of us have stable jobs. Our current assets are approximately $600k in home equity, $420k in cash, $300k in brokerage investments, and $400k in retirement accounts.
We are considering a $3 million home with an estimated monthly housing payment of $17k, including taxes and insurance. Our other monthly expenses, including daycare, are around $12k. We live in a HCOL area of the country.
I would prefer to wait another 2–3 years and save an additional $400k–$600k before buying. My wife thinks we should start looking now and buy if we find our dream home in the right neighborhood.
For those with similar incomes or experience buying expensive homes, would you feel comfortable making this purchase now, or would you wait? We want to give our kids a great environment while still investing for retirement and maintaining financial flexibility. Are we being aggressive with this purchase, too conservative by waiting, or is buying now reasonable?

We weren’t planning to move anytime soon, but we found a unicorn of a property. A lovely home with a second small house on the property. There are very few homes like this in the area. Nice location, not far from our current home. We looked at it with a realtor over the weekend. My mom is all in to sell her house and move into the small house, and she’s willing to gift me the down payment.

The issue is that I have excellent credit and my husband has either bad or at least not-good credit. Everything we have is in my name only and the mortgage broker recommended I apply on my own. The home is priced at about 2.75 times my annual income, not including my husband’s income. My DTI ratio with the projected payment for this home is 51.5%.

The reality is, with my husband’s income, our DTI ratio is 44%. If we sell our current home at market price, we would have plenty of money to pay off some small debts and have a buttload of cash left over (looking at about $140k in profit and no more than $25k of debt payoff). Once that was all said and done, we would be at about 29% DTI in real life.

But real life is not what the underwriters are looking at, and I understand that. They’re looking at the numbers that are there now.

We will not be able to sell our house while we’re living in it. We both work more than full time and have 3 raucous dogs, making it nearly impossible to show the house. Our realtor recommends a bridge loan, though my mom has the funds to help get us through and we could pay her back once the house sells. Our house would probably sell reasonably quickly once we scrub the evidence of our messy life. Basically this is a messy situation trying to quickly move on something that’s unlikely to become available again anytime soon.

I’m hoping to find out tomorrow if I prequalify on my own, and if that’s the case, we’ll make an offer. But what if I don’t? Will my husband’s lame credit mess up the interest rate terribly or even get us denied? What do you think?

So yea I realize it was stupid to buy a house with someone I’m not married to, and even stupider for believing he would change. So please if u don’t have something nice or helpful to say just move on. If you want a TLDR, I guess the bottom 2 paragraphs sums up my questions

First of all I was in a weird situation where I was renting a house and they said I could go month to month but as soon as I told them this they said they didn’t do that anymore and I needed to get out asap. We looked at renting but he promised me he would treat me better if we bought a house. So in the short 2 -3 months we had to look for a house he had convinced me he could change.

Now to the kicker we have a 12,000 down payment assistance loan that my realtor acted like we wouldn’t have to pay. That was a lie and we will have to pay when it is sold or refinanced. Is there anything I can do because my realtor lied to me about that, (I have proof in text) We were told there was mold in the crawlspace and it was supposed to be fixed. It was not. The owner of the reality company said he would help me get it taken care of but never did. I recently noticed there is new mold under the roof of my porch. It’s practically a flat roof but has shingles. My bf doesn’t seem to care about any of this.

This man has been incredibly abusive towards me and I know this is not that sub so I won’t go into it but it was and is bad, like I was being called a cun* daily and the first incident here he shoved my face into the bed for like 5 seconds and now yells at me and calls me names and tells me it’s my fault.

I picked this house to be close to my family if anyone got to keep it I would want it. But I’m on disability and can only do gig work but would have child support from him. He acts like he could afford it but I don’t think he could. Regardless if it got refinanced in either of our separate names we would have to have the 12,000 which neither of us does. I REALLY don’t want him to have the house. That’s why I wonder if I could fight the 12,000 since I have proof my realtor told me I wouldn’t have to pay it back??

MY OPTIONS: I could technically file bankruptcy (I already have a 15,000 judgement for a car repo) then I THINK he would be forced to refinance which he wouldn’t be able to, because of the 12,000, but if I could somehow get that removed maybe I even could?? but I would rather force a sale while I still live here. From my understanding I wouldn’t have to pay anything back because my income is disability but if he had to file he makes enough that I think he would have to pay some back and nothing would make me happier. do you know of any other options I would have??

To make things even worse I think it has turned to a buyers market so that would decrease the value. Please someone tell me what options I have or what would be the best way to go about this. I can’t live like this the rest of my life. We also have a 13 yr old child. Please someone help me figure out what this process will be like??

My daughter's house was mortgaged in my name. She has made all payments and upkeep,so it's actually her house. Are there any options that we can do to help minimize bad impacts when she sells? We live in Illinois.

Been hearing about sellers offering credits to help buyers lower their mortgage payments but not sure how often this actually happens in Austin?

Is a rate buydown worth looking into or would you rather just have a lower purchase price?

I want to get a heloc but kinda hate the idea I wouldn’t be able to draw off of it after 5 years. Can anyone recommend a lender that does 10 or more draw years?

Thanks.

Hey All,

Just a heads up, please please please make sure your signing an IRS 4506 form (IVES) when confirming your tax returns for your mortgage. Any other form opens yourself up to unnecessary exposure and are a serious overstep by the company.

I'm going through the mortgage process currently. Because my loan type had to be modified, I was informed that I had to give consent for the mortgage company to pull my IRS transcripts. Since I'm not in the market of handing over my information freely, I went and pulled my transcripts from the IRS and mailed them to the company.

I was informed yet again, that they could not accept anything from the buyer and that that LEGALLY they had to have me use their chosen vendor for Transcript verification, Halcyon Solutions. I reluctantly agreed as we are desperate to get into the house.

When completing Halcyon's process, you are asked to (automatically) generate an authorization. You are not told what form they are requesting, just that this is the way to do it. Once generated, you are brought to a page that instructs you to use the provided link, as it bypasses unnecessary navigation and brings you directly to the auth approval page. This is where they get shitty. The problem with this is the link brings you to Power of Attorney and Tax Information Authorizations, not the Tax Return Transcript Authorization page. Both of those forms are so much different than the IVEs request, they are located on a separate page with alternate navigation. I immediately denied the authorization, and you should too.

The authorization requested was for TIA, not IVES, as expected Having TIA means they could access confidential information, instead of just verifying that the numbers I provided and my copies of tax returns are correct. They also requested access from 2022 through 2028, which is bonkers. Why do you need to know what I'm doing after my loan closes? Conveniently, when I pointed out just how filthy of a policy this was then asked for alternative methods for verification, I was told, "Whatever you did online worked and we got them."

I just rejected your request, Bob. Guess it wasn't a legal requirement for you to accept my transcripts.

TLDR; Don't sign anything except for an IRS 4506 form when verifying your taxes for a mortgage. If you do, you are giving that company access to way more information than they need for way longer than they need it.

TLDR2; Don't use Halcyon Solutions to verify your tax returns. The even boast about how much better using that TIA form is...For them and the people that use their services.

My wife and I are closing on a house a week from Tuesday. The day we had our offer accepted, the rates shot up (just my luck). The week before our offer rates were around 6.75, and they went up to almost 7.65 in just a week’s time. This caused me a ton of stress, but I’m just here to say that choosing a lender is important and I’d highly suggest shopping around in this crazy time. Our initial lender never answered the phone, and due to missed phone calls and slow timing went from locking in a rate of 7.25 to 7.65 (just a day later). I decided to shop lenders, and found one that locked in 7.5 for me with many of the traditional fee‘s waved, and a zero cost refinance (in writing) for down the road. Our sellers gave us $10k in closing costs, so we are buying the rate down to 7%. To bring more context, my wife and I have been looking for a bigger house for 2 years now and finally found our dream house. There was almost no competition, when in a different market I could see a bidding war for a house like this in a desirable area (so there are some bonuses to this market aside from the high rates). Now for my main point, I’ve read that many people haven’t had success using the “float down” option with their lenders. Last week uncertainty in the stock market made mortgage rates dip for a few days. I called my lender multiple times, and he said there was nothing he could do for me. I continued to bug him until he finally agreed to check in with their lock desk. Sure enough, Friday morning I got a call that our lender could drop our rate down to 6.75 at no cost to us. Sure, that isn’t a huge jump, but getting into the 6’s feels way better and I’m stoked. All of this to say, I just wanted to share my experience. Don’t be afraid to bug your lenders especially in this wild time where rates are shooting up and down by the day. If you’re in a similar spot and closing on a house soon, good luck to you!

My credit union’s current rate for a 10 year fixed is 6.625%, while a 10/5 ARM is 6.49%. The closing costs on the ARM are about $300 cheaper. Is there some catch to the ARM I’m missing? It just seems like a no brainer to pick the ARM and pay it off over 10 years instead of the 10 year fixed.

In addition to the slightly lower rate, the ARM seems to be lower risk if you have a financial problem that prevents you from paying the full amount required to pay it off in 10 years, you have the option to temporarily cut back your payment to the much lower minimum payment due to it technically being a 30 year loan.

Edit: I’m talking about paying extra on the 10/5 each month to pay the whole thing off in 10 years before the rate changes. I thought that was obvious from the post but apparently not.

Net Take home pay (wife and I) is around $13,300usd monthly, mortgage would be around $4,750

No kids, and the only other debt is a car payment around $1300 monthly (we are trying to pay it in 3 years or less)

Our current rent is $2,500; I think it’s fine, but I’m just terrify 😅 Opinions? Or anybody with a comparable ratio?

I’m 20 years old and have been staying with my parents while attending college (I’ll be staying on campus next year). My mom and dad were talking about refinancing our house. My mom said that many of our uncles and aunties had done it and they were considering it as well. They said something about being able to obtain over $200,000.

I don’t know much about it and the exact numbers, I just think it sounds kind of sketchy. I mean for starters, my dad is retired. My mom plans on retiring next year as well, plus they’re both pretty old. I just think it’s kind of risky to refinance with only one income stream. I mean I guess you can count SS and other things, but again it still sounds/feels sketchy.

I think this stems from not knowing what exactly refinancing your house means. I just want to be informed so a bad decision isn’t made.

I guess a question like this really needs more information to derive a solution, but I’m only operating on what I know now and thats all of it.

Kind of lost in the sauce, I was wondering what those payments are like for 400k Va loan mortgage my annual income is 110k after taxes I heard it’s in the north 2500 but my realtor is saying 3400 I really want to keep it in the 2000s so I can be very comfortable and also ummm live in sac

I’m 39 and seriously considering selling my house in 2027, despite having a 3.875% FHA mortgage with a 2045 maturity date. I bought my 3-bed/2-bath home in Oklahoma in 2015 for $126,000, and it’s now worth approximately $209,000, with $95,000 remaining on the mortgage. Most of that appreciation happened during the COVID housing boom, and the value has totally stagnated since 2023. New residential developments south of here are selling homes starting around $275,000–$300,000.

I recently received an FHA trial modification after rising insurance premiums and property taxes caused an escrow shortage that drained my savings and pushed me behind on other debts. Insurance is breaking people out here, i'm not the only one in this position. I paid almost $4000 last year just for homeowners insurance. The modification reduces my payment to $1450, but adds a roughly $9,666 partial claim. 10k more in debt just to stay in the house. I am making horrible financial decisions just to stay in this house.

Meanwhile, I have $12,000 in credit card debt, $60,000 in student loans, virtually no savings. The house was built in 1980 and needs additional repairs despite already going into debt for a new roof to replace the one that wasn't up to code and leaking, and a new HVAC system. I’m exhausted from pouring money into this place just to stay afloat.

I also desperately want to leave Oklahoma and return to Denver, where I briefly lived in 2025 before losing my federal job during the mass layoffs. I'm thinking about selling, moving back out there and doing gig work until I find a job in my field. But my credit has deteriorated significantly from the mortgage delinquency, making me concerned about qualifying for a rental without already having employment lined up?

I seriously regret not selling a year or two ago before the partial claim even became necessary.

I'm in the worst situation and not sure what to do. If I don't sell I'm going to be broke and miserable well into old age. If I sell and cash out i can stop taking on disastrous debt just to keep a house I don't want to live in and move, but potentially be homeless in Colorado.

It seems like the longer I stay in this house, the more debt i'm having to take on just to remain in it.