gooddfella

No there's no way to use a credit card at a closing unless the attorney will take a personal check and that is up to 5k, rest has to be wire. But using them for improvements makes sense.

Good info, thank you. I do most of my business with home depot so I will open an account with them. So your home depot card does not report on your personal credit report? I'm looking at their website now, is it the Project Loan card? I will be using the cards mostly for improvements and dont plan on carrying a balance for too long. Will also be doing some resell.

I'm not sure about those but I wasnt able to buy my score from myfico.com until I removed the ex freeze.

Make a friend or family member AU on that card, then have them pay it off, give them the cash? Or pay it off, then have the LO run credit again(after it updates on report). It hasnt gone to underwriting yet so they wont ask for an LOE

I kinda did ask him and he didn't think it would matter. I have read so many stories about the LO not truly understanding FICOs and approvals which is why I am asking for an opinion on here. During the conversation he said my DTI was high and that was a red flag. Well the min payment on this card is $65 so that would help the DTI. Also he mentions that my accounts were all to new which was a red flag. Other than my 2 month old card this is the next newest one so removing that would raise my age I think. I need to do the math to double check that. Plus I would be removing a card that is currently over 90% used which would lower my util which should give me a score bump. My mid score was a 695 so if I could manager a 15 point bump then that may be just enough to get to a better program. Like I said, FHA is ok but the PMI is really killing our approval price. If I can get a pre approval on a non PMI loan then our max price would go from 90k to 109k. Why don't you just pay the card off? because it is at zero percent interest and I would like to keep the 1500 for housing. $1,500 at 0% is more important that not paying PMI? well that is kinda what we are trying to figure out. What if I pay the entire card off and it still does not help because of the age of the card? Then I just blew $1500 which would be helpful for the down payment. If this were a 5 year old card then I think I would snap pay it off but since it is so young it may not mean a thing to pay it off. We are in this strange in between area as far as price. $1500 down could mean the difference in finding a house in the school district that we want and not. If I could just convince my wife to live in a different school district then none of this would matter, but that's a topic for another day. If things are that tight you should probably sit it out for 6-12 months and save some more money. Don't settle for a mortgage with PMI - which will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars for years and years and years - because you didn't wait a matter of months until you saved less than two grand more. I am not saying I don't disagree with you but with my wife pregnant we will struggle in our current living situation. We currently are living in a VERY small house that is almost like a studio apartment. When the baby comes he will be sleeping in the living room because our bedrooms are too small. Ideally we would like to have a house during the summer but if the perfect house pops up in April which is when people go crazy with putting houses up I don't want to miss it. We also have some mattress money so I need to figure out what to do with that but I am going to ask that over in the mortgage section. I have approx 5k in our safe and change bottle that we have been saving for the last 6 years. My loan officer was able to tell me almost exactly what my DTI needs to be to get a conventional. About the 5k cash, I doubt you can use that or bring it anywhere near your bank account. If you have a family member who has 5k in their bank account which has been seasoned for more than 60 days you can give it to them and have them gift it back to you. Another way is to "sell" your car to someone you trust and put the cash in your bank(get a bill of sales). Also, dont spend another penny from your bank account, pay cash for everything. Its ridiculous that you have to do these things but that's how it is nowadays if you have a little bit of mattress money and want to use it towards a down payment.

Ask your loan officer if removing this card and removing the payment from your monthly expenses will help. It could be that it will still not be enough to qualify for conv. One problem I ran into when getting my loan was that I had too many AU accounts. I had to remove a couple of them. I had 3 major credit cards and I think 4 or 5 AU accounts.

I have the same question. I've been reading for the last 30 mintues but cant find the answer. Can Q be a 4th puller or will it overwrite USAA, MPM, or Amex CS? None of these over-write each other. Q* would only be needed for a couple of pulls because you're likely getting 28 each between chop periods with USAA, CS and MPM. Got it. I will probably do all 4 to speed it up. It'll be worth the price for me. By the way, I was able to B* 3 mortgage inquires off TU. I remember reading that you can't B* them. It worked for me.

I have the same question. I've been reading for the last 30 mintues but cant find the answer. Can Q be a 4th puller or will it overwrite USAA, MPM, or Amex CS?

I've had luck calling them. I always tell them I'm recording. Never gave them too much information and never admited that the debt was mine. If you dont know what you're doing do not call them.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I was in a similar situation last year. Closed my house last week. One thing that helped me with my credit age was getting added to my GF's 4 year old Wells fargo and my dads 16 year old Nordstrom card as a "joint applicant", not just an authorized user. They did not pull my credit, just added me right away. People used to do this with AU back in the day but that doesnt work for mortgages like it used to, though it helps a little.

I dont think I'll carry balances for too long because I dont want it to hurt my credit too much. I'll use them for leverage mostly. The negatives aren't hurting that bad, should be clean in a few months anyway.

I paid Amex what I owed them so I'm on good terms with them now, opened an Amex for my business recently. I didnt burn Citi so I will try them. SuperCreditMan did this before the bubble I think...

I manage them myself, tax is about $500 a year, almost no vacancy, all new systems, trust me I make that kind of returns.. have been for 3 years and managing over 35 houses for clients. The ROI has gotten a little smaller in the last eyar due to prices going up about 10-15k but its still very strong. I do fix and sell time to time as well so that helps too.

Bob, $1000 a month rent on a $50,000 house is pretty good. Was even better till last year. South Atlanta rental market has been very good to me and my clients.