Purchasing a home post Ch. 13

[cspa522]

We made our final payment of a 60 month plan in November, 2015 (!!!) and were discharged February 1, 2016. We were then very, very fortunate in that my husband received a promotion and an increase such that it essentially doubled his salary. We've been planning to move in 2017, and are beginning to look around and see what's what. We're looking at pre-qualifying, etc. come November (one year from last payment), and moving as early as February of 2017.

Since the BK we have each secured a credit card on our own, plus a joint card, and my husband bought a truck in his name only. Our mortgage was outside the BK, and never late (though I am having fun disputing that with TransUnion who report we were late 3 times - not true and I have the paperwork to prove it), and we're both on that and have been for 15 years.

There is a sticky, several actually, on this topic, but none that I could find to be recently updated so I figured it was worth a shot at posting this. I know there are lenders who will help us, some who would help us secure a loan the day after we finished the BK if I'd wanted. I'm interested for input on the lines of credit I've been told lenders want to see. They want a year on 2 lines of credit, and we will have that in February of 2017. Are they hard and fast on this? Just curious.

Has anything changed in the last few years I should be aware of? Experiences you'd share? Things to look out for? I'm terrified about this.

Thanks in advance!

[justbroke]

It's hard to gauge "each" lender's seasoning requirements as well as the number of trade lines required. Even with FHA requiring something similar to what you wrote (for tradelines), each bank can add an overlay to those requirements.

With a vehicle you have an installment trade line and that's good. With 3 revolving credit cards, you have 3 additional tradelines. With the mortgage, even though it's not reporting correctly, is another tradeline and a mortgage tradeline at that.

Your mortgage tradeline is probably your oldest open tradeline and that's going to have the most weight on whether you have proven that you can handle credit over time.

Just my opinion and observation. You'll never really know which "each" lender requires until you apply and it goes through the underwriting process.