Trying to buy a home 2 years after Chapter 7 BK.

[duraflame]

My Chapter 7 BK was discharged 12/26/12. I've found myself wanting to buy a home for myself and thought I would start the approval process with a local bank where I live. I was interested in FHA with the 3.5% down and now with the lower PMI. I have had 2 car loans since the BK that have a zero balance and I have 2 credit cards with zero balance. I've paid on them off and on and all are paid off. My scores for the mortgage were 720, 716 and 719. My question is my bank goes through a third party since it's FHA. It's taking forever just to even get a pre-approval and she is telling me it is because of the BK. I had to submit a reason for the BK. I make decent money, not sure what the deal is. Any suggestions or should I have gone elsewhere? I hate to start over elsewhere since I've given them all my tax returns, paystubs, etc...my bank is saying the FHA company is wanting to do a full pre-approval to make sure.

[LadyInTheRed]

Quick mortgage approvals are based on electronic approvals. Because of your BK, your application has to be manually reviewed by a real person instead of a computer. That will obviously take longer. If it is the FHA who is requiring and performing the manual review, then using a different lender probably will not make any difference. If it is the bank who does the manual review, it is hard to know if one bank would be quicker than another.

[duraflame]

I understand the quick mortgage approval. I still haven't received an approval or denial and it's been since last Friday 1/30.

[mynameainttracy]

It just takes time. We are post Ch 13 and post FC and we went through full VA underwriting prior to going under contract a few months ago. It took about a week to get an answer. Our scores were quite a bit lower than yours are and we were approved. Good luck! We close in April. It has been a very long journey to get back to home ownership.

[Diesel73L]

I'm getting started in this process as well. My wife and I will be two years out from discharge on March 13th (Can't believe it's been that long...)-since then she has gotten a new job, I've gotten a better one, we only have student loan debt and a car loan and are current on those and saving money. We are looking to renovate and refinance through the FHA 203K loan program. I contacted a broker about a month ago and he keeps telling me that our preview package is "almost done." Is this because it's just taking so long for a pre-approval?

The 203K is like a construction loan and a mortgage in one. Basically we don't have enough equity (less than $20K) to sell, refinance, or take out a home equity loan because our home is a small two bedroom one bath. The neighborhood comps in the 3-4 bedroom and 2-to 2-1/2 bathroom range are doing well, so we feel that if we add a bedroom and a bathroom as well make some updates we can increase the value of the home quite a bit, and refinance at nearly half our current (6.125%) rate.

[basketsbears]

Best of luck! We are just talking about either refinancing, or trying to buy a different house. We are two years out. Our house is in my name, and would probably just refi in my name as DH had FC last fall (ty BOA). The FC house www in our ch. 7.

I am anxious to hear how everyone makes out! We didn't reaffirm, is it best to start with the bank we are at? Prob. Not much equity. Current rate 7%. Is FHA best route?

Sorry didn't mean to hijack thread!