Despite partially giving up on house buying, J and I have been browsing real estate websites to check the market. We also decided recently to get pre-approval after taking Home Buying 101 (or something like it).
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| Wellington, New Zealand |
We have about $14k saved, $12k still in NZ, and my parents offered to lend us $15k (without interest!) to help with downpayment but our credit history is still young. Though J is a citizen, his credit history was quiet when he was in NZ. He didn't have any credit card (or debt) when he moved overseas. The broker we met at Portland Housing didn't even begin the process for that reason. I can't blame them because their lenders are mostly big banks who sell the loans somewhere else, so they can dictate the requirements although we look good in other aspects. That is, no consumer debt and with only 4% debt-to-income ratio.
We were advised during pre-qualification to get another line of credit, which we failed to do because I just don't get why we should. We don't carry a balance in our credit card now, so what will motivate us to use that extra account?
So we are going to try our credit union and see if they will even consider us. We've done some number crunching and it looks like our monthly mortgage payments would be less than our rent of $1,400. Neat!
Let's see what happens...
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