Whenever we turn on the radio or the t.v. all we hear about is how the economy is crashing hard. It can be very scary for a first time home buyer. Is your credit good enough? What about your employment history? And of course the scariest thing of all… down payment. Well, there is hope. It’s called Florida FHA Loans.
Even though Florida FHA guidelines don’t state a minimum score requirement, most lenders require your middle score to be at least a 620. Five Stars Mortgage has a program that will let you go as low as a 530 middle score as long as you can prove at least 2 years worth of rental history. Other than that, the only other thing they require is 2 open trade lines showing that you have paid on time for at least 12 months. Open trade lines could be credit cards, car payment, student loans, etc. And speaking of student loans, remember, you must be current on all Federal loans to be able to qualify for FHA.
Now that we got the credit out of the way, let’s talk about employment history. FHA isn’t all that strict about it. Let’s say you just started your telemarketing job last month. That would probably mean you can’t get approved, right? Incorrect! As long as you have been in the same line of work for at least 2 years (there’s that number again) then you are ok. Now you can’t go from working as a waitress to a secretary and count that as the same line of work of course unless you were in college at the time and now you are working in the field you went to school for.
See, things are starting to seem much easier, aren’t they? So, let’s talk about down payment. If you were to go conventional, you would need about 20% down. On a $100k loan that’s $20k! Who has that kind of money right now? With FHA you only need to put 3.5% down. That’s only $3,500. Much better number, don’t you say? Not to mention that you could get it gifted by a relative or borrow it from your 401k. The only place it can’t come from is the seller, but that’s no big deal since FHA allows the seller to pay up to 6% for closing costs (and closing costs are usually never more than about 5%)
So now that you know you have real options, how about giving us a call to get you that pre approval letter. We can pre qualify you in about 15 minutes and tell you exactly how much you can afford. With that letter you are set to start house hunting!
Tags: fha financing.fha mortgage company, fha lender, fha loan, fha mortgage, florida fha
[...] the original: FHA Mortgages Loans | Florida Mortgage News Posted in Loans Tags: allowing-more, fha, florida, low-home, take-advantage, the-very « [...]