My husband and I got married three years ago to help facilitate buying a house as we were told it was better to have two incomes and the legal and financial aspects were better as a married couple vs unmarried by several banks we went to. What we were not told was that since my husband was being paid W2s through a company that hired and employed freelancers, his income wouldn't count at all toward the mortgage. We didn't find out until after the wedding when we went in to apply with all of our financial documents. Together we made a lot of money, but with his income taken off the process, we were only making 60% of what we had been (on paper obviously). So we were stuck waiting the required two years for him to amass enough "regular" income, which in reality turned into 3 years since he had to quit his first job and get another one. Here's our dilema. Housing prices have been shooting up in our area so three years ago we had a downpayment for a house and today we have enough for a downpayment for the same sized house, only it's more expensive (~$400-450k). I also got a much better job than I had before, so I'm now able to get approved for a mortgage for around (~$600-700). Our questions are:
1- What's the downside of only having me on the mortgage? The banks were pretty insistent that being married was really helpful because of the way our money needed to be examined but I am now sure how that works now if I'm the only borrower.
2- Would it be better for me to be single on the mortgage? We would be we would still be together, just legally single.
3- If we wait another year or so we can get a downpayment together for a house that is ~$600k, which would be a lot nicer than the ~$450 ones we're looking at now. However with the housing costs going up, it's possible the $450k one now will be the same house we'll get at $600k.
Submitted September 23, 2017 at 12:05PM by WhiteWedding123 http://ift.tt/2xZQqXu
