Is there ANY way to do this?

[nceguyfromne]

Is there ANY way to get a mortgage without a massive down-payment prior to this "2 year" FHA milestone? We have spoken to a few mortgage companies but no one has any interest in working with us because I am only 12-13 months post-discharge. The only option that has been presented to us so far is for my wife to apply for pre-approval alone. Since I earn about 70% of our family's income, though, I'm sure you can imagine what that does to our qualifying numbers! Right now this mortgage guy has my wife wanting to pump $2,500 into debt payoff to raise her credit score enough that she *might* be pre-approved for an amount that leaves us with almost no options. There is actually one house within this price range that we are very interested in, which is the reason we're (she's) applying, but if that doesn't work out, our options would be few and far between. Not only that, but we will have to come up with money to rent elsewhere in 6 months if this effort doesn't work out.

Short of coming up with a massive down-payment, is sending my wife to the table by herself our only option besides waiting things out past this 2 year mark? Also, is that 2 years "post-discharge" or 2 years post-discharge AND post delinquency? There was a misunderstanding with my student loan company following my discharge, so I ended up with some unexpected "lates" on my credit report right out of the gate that I have so far been unable to remove. Nice, huh?

[Logan]

It's 2 years post discharge and you will have to wait 2 years. My advice is to forget about purchasing and go rent for a year then think about buying. The market isn't going to recover anytime soon.

Logan

[HHM]

Agree with Logan, what is the rush to be in debt with a mortgage?

Even people with good credit have significant hiccups getting mortgages right now, so you can forget about a mortgage until you are 2 years post discharge (heck, even if you had 50% down, you would still be denied).

[nceguyfromne]

Thanks for the input. We thought about it over the weekend and came to the same conclusion. The mortgage guy made the idea of my wife getting approved on her own sound really promising at first, but little by little he kept giving us more hurdles to jump through and it became increasingly apparent that this just isn't the right time. The house we like has been on the market for over a year so it very well could still be there in another 10 or 11 months. The mortgage on it (taxes and PMI included) would be about *half* what we're paying right now to rent a garden style apartment across from a chain smoker and below a family with 3 stomping kids, so between that and the fact that we've blown over $75K on rent in the past 5 years, hopefully you can understand the appeal. Our tentative plan is to sign a 6 month lease renewal, instead of 13, in the spring, which will get us to my "2 year" mark. After that we can take it month by month (for an added cost, of course) and be ready to move when and if an opportunity does arise. We should also have more flexibility with my income being included in the pre-approval, but we still want to get into something that is below our means.