All Forum Posts by: Elise Marquette

I would advise strongly against going with Quicken/Rocket and any of the big banks

@Brock Heppner The biggest thing is that the three credit bureaus and lenders want to see you effectively utilizing credit. If you have a trusted family member with good credit, I'd recommend becoming an authorized user on one of their credit cards, so long as they have good payment history and don't utilize the credit card above 30% utilization. If you have any student loans that you're making payments on, that will help contribute to your score. Additionally, you may want to look into getting a small credit card and billing your monthly expenses to it (grocery/gas etc.) and then paying it down to about $15 every month to keep a little bit of utilization on there. I see clients all the time with multiple credit cards with no balance and it doesn't do them any good because they aren't utilizing it. 

To get any type of loan, lenders will look for credit (score usually above around 620), capacity (are you employed/earning some form of income that you can use to repay the loan?), and collateral (down payment/skin in the game). If you have all these three things then you should be able to get approved for a mortgage. If you plan on buying and living in the home, then I'd recommend you look into an FHA mortgage or a 3% down Conventional loan if down payment is a concern. Remember, the bigger the loan amount, the bigger your monthly payment will be which will directly impact your cash flow.

Yeah, but you more than likely will not get a refund for the appraisal

If you are getting rental income from the property you own on FHA, then your new property must be at least 100 miles away from your current property

Don't switch jobs/industries before you close on a home if you plan on buying to house hack. Especially if you're switching to a commission job. Mortgage lenders require 2 years of stable employment history before you can be approved for a loan

Hi Brann. As far as utilizing equity in your current property goes to purchase a new property, that can be a little tricky. The first thing you would need to do it wait for your current property to both appreciate in value and pay down the current mortgage so you can take out more money in a cash out refinance or get a lot of cash when you go to sell your current property to buy a multi. 

Speaking from only the residential side of lending, absolutely not. Would you lend money to someone who can't repay it? I don't know much about hard money so I can't speak to that. 

@Chris Tran yes you can rent out rooms but you cannot use the anticipated income from renting out the rooms to qualify for the mortgage unless you have prior landlord experience.

Hi @Jordan Reid, great to meet you. My fiance and I are both residential lenders in the Tampa Bay area. Are you involved with any of the TBREIA groups?