Hi PF, long-time reader, first-time poster. I love the feedback here and would really appreciate some advice, even if it's just "them's the breaks, they got you".
TLDR: mortgage officer said we would get a 4% interest rate verbally (after we got pre-approved), later recanted and committed to 4.125% over email and now, 3 weeks before the closing date, is saying the best we can do is 4.25%.
Details: Before putting down an offer, we went shopping around for mortgage rates. We landed at a large, national bank. The mortgage loan officer said the standard rate was 4.125% but that he was sure he could get us 4%. We got pre-approved, put an offer in for an apartment we liked, had our offer accepted and then began finalizing the mortgage.
A few days later, the MLO called and said he was unable to get a 4% rate, but that he could get us a 4.125% rate and a small lender credit to partially make up for it. We were disappointed but overall OK with that and decided to keep going with that bank.
Fast forwarding a bit, one day before the commitment letter was due, the MLO called us and told us that the bank's underwriting group would not give us 4.125% and instead could only give us 4.25%, this time with no lender credits. He said this was based on my credit history, as I only had 1 credit card that had been open for more than 2 years. This is true (I've had 1 CC for several years and another for a year and a half), but I wished he would have told me earlier. He had run my credit history early in the process, so I don't understand why it just came up then unless he was afraid that if he told me, I would go to another bank.
I called the manager of the bank branch that we met the MLO at and asked if this was the best we could do, he said he would look into it and get back to me. The MLO then came back asking if he could use my wife's credit history to get the lower rate. We were fine with that; he checked her credit history and emailed me clearly saying that with my wife and I both on the application, we would get the 4.125% rate. I confirmed this with him a couple times over email over the next 2 weeks, he said things were going fine.
...until this past Friday, when he told us that the underwriters were refusing to consider my wife's credit card account because it was a joint account with me. OK, but again, wouldn't he have known that weeks ago, after he ran her credit? The closing date is in 3 weeks, and we're back to the higher interest rate.
I'm planning to call the manager again and see if he's able to help us out again, but I don't have high hopes. Do I have any next steps here other than to take the higher rate?
Submitted April 23, 2017 at 06:41PM by 6113K56788 http://ift.tt/2oWpEtf
