Forum

[annbowie]

Hello Forum,

There is a long chain of events that forced us into buying a house that we could not afford, but I'll just concentrate on the facts pertaining to the mortgage. We were approved for a conventional, fixed-rate loan at 6.25% on a resale SFH that we were under contract to buy for $213,900. We had a sizable deposit ($20,000) in escrow at the urging of our realor, who said that's what we needed to "win" the house. 1 1/2 weeks before settlement, my husband lost his job. His income made up about half of the income that qualified us for the loan. I contacted our lender immediately to inform him of the job loss, and he told me that if hubby could get a job, any job, within the next 1 1/2 weeks, that we could still qualify for the loan. Hubby attempted to find something, but having so short a timeframe, he was unable to do so. After this initial conversation I emailed and left phone messages for my lender with additional questions, but from that point forward HE WOULD NOT RETURN MY ATTEMPTS TO COMMUNICATE. At that point we did not want to go through with the purchase of the house due to the loss in income. I contacted the corporate office of this well-know national mortgage company for help, but after several attempts was told that the excutives that I would need to speak to were "out of the office". I tried calling everyone I could think of to help, Dept of Banking, local Housing agency, a lawyer, but they all had conflicting advice to offer. Our realtor simply told us we needed to go through with the transaction or else the sellers would keep our deposit. He did not offer to negotiate with them on our behalf. Our settlement attorney told us the same, that we should go forward to avoid losing our deposit.

I found out in time that the lender switched us to a "no doc" loan to put the loan through. He never had us fill out any other paperwork other than the original application. Our paperwork still states conventional loan. Was that illegal? Unethical?

My second question, my income alone would not have qualified us for the loan. How was the loan officer able to push this through?

Does anyone have recommended next steps?

Thanks everyone,

Ann