All Forum Posts by: Jared Bouzek

@Ericka Medina If you purchased with FHA, I'm guessing you put the minimum 3.5% down payment. Depending on how much equity you created, you may not have anything available to cash out because for a single family, you'll be capped at 80% LTV for a primary home and 75% LTV for an investment for a cash-out refi. You can still potentially refinance without taking cash out to get rid of your MI. I wouldn't waste the money on your own appraisal. Most likely your lender can give you a rough starting point for value to start your refinance then you can just dial in your loan amount once you have your appraised value back from their appraiser.

@Ericka Medina What is your goal by going through the refinance? Are you trying to take cash out? Lower payments? You're probably going to spend over $500 to get an appraisal that you won't be able to use. What are you hoping to gain by getting your own appraisal ahead of time?

@Bart H. See Fannie's guidance on interested part contributions here.

Yes real estate agents can contribute towards the closing costs so long as it is disclosed through the closing paperwork and stays within the allowable IPC limits outlined in the link provided.

@Bart H. It is to an extent legal to help with closing costs (not down payment) as long as you're abiding by Fannie/Freddie's interested party contribution limits. Regardless, that has nothing to do with the issue the original poster brought up which is his DTI.

@Matt Jones In my experience, I have not had issues with W-2 employees or business owners related to the industry. It can be an issue if you own the business that is selling the product directly, but based on what you've written here, that doesn't sound like what you're doing. Let me know if you have any questions.

Talk to Dave Foster . He knows his business.

Jack Sun What are your monthly payments like? Have you considered approaching your parents about co-signing with you? Once you can show a year of them making the payments you can actually exclude those from your DTI. You will need to be able to show a 12 month history of them making the payments on time.

Tony Karns The issue you run into with the conventional loan is the condition of the home. If you're buying real junkers that need a lot of work, you may run into problems qualifying due to appraisal standards for conventional loans. Conventional lenders also don't like lending their money short term. On the broker side, we have early pay claw backs in our contracts where we lose our money if the loan is paid off too quickly. There can be ways around that but it's best if we don't make a habit of it.

Lukasz Kowalczyk A lot of people are thinking along these lines. Lock in the rate while you can now. Drop the money into a low risk investment to sit until you're ready to pull the trigger on another property.

Nice job, @Kyle Doney!