Expert: Jessica Bryan - 2/2/2010

Question
Dear Ms. Bryan,

How are you? I live in Little Rock, Arkansas and I am a first time home buyer. I have a realtor but I am so confused. we started off with one lender and my realtor moved me to another. the first lender was a broker and wanted me to file my 2009 income taxes to prove i didn;t have my little landscape business anymore. I was approved for an Addie Grant. Anyway, I am with a mortgage company and the guy working on my file has had it since before Christmas. He says he has many files and after I complained , he had me into his office to sign papers. i am getting 5% interest rate. but i am very disappointed that he said my credit score was not good enough to get a regular FHA loan. i will have to go another avenue which is FHA but its a bond loan where FHA loans me money, $6,000, and add another $60 something to my mortgage. I can either use my $8,000 credit and pay it off quickly or just pay it off. i ran my credit score myself and i came up with a 654,649 and 624. but the mortgage guys said these scores are different from what the mortgage companies run. he showed me my score and they were 604,654 and 604. i was pre-approved for $132,000 when i first started. i just don't understand. i really don't want to do the bond loan but i hate to change companies again. he said he last ran my credit on 01/08/2010. but i have alerts on my credit file and someone has ran reports 5 times. i asked him to rescore my credit and he said that's a big chance because my scores could come in lower than what they are. i have my truck laon which has a balance of $6,000, two credit cards which i paid the balances down to $28. and that's it. i have been working on cleaning my credit report so i paid off a lot of things before i even considered buying a house. should i have him rescore or just go for the bond loan? i don;t feel my realtor is working hard enough for me or with me. i am the one doing all the calling to the mortgage guy. what advice to you have?

Answer
Dear Eddie;
Many Realtors do not get involved with the loan process since they are not really privy to the information that is considered to be confidential.  Often, when my Buyers run into problems I cannot even talk to the lenders without special passwords given to me by the clients.  The lending industry has become very cautious and in so doing it is far more difficult for the Buyers to get loans.  If there are too many credit score inquiries it can hurt the credit score and the only thing to do is to write a letter of explanation to the credit companies to try to clean up the mess. I don't know about all of the various programs available to you since I am not a lender, but I do think that you can talk to another lender (But please don't have them run another credit check!)  Ask the questions you have raised here and discuss your concerns.  A good lender will know some possible ways to help.

Best wishes,
Jessica Bryan