Jumping Through Hoops

8:30 last night I'm at work and get a call on my cell from our mortgage broker. I know this is a bad sign if he's calling me after hours. He tells me the lender wants EVEN MORE documents from us. Keep in mind they have our checking statements, saving(s) statements, 401k, pay stubs, tax forms, 2007 W2, and employer numbers to get verbal verification of employment. Not to mention they've run our credit!! Our debt to income ratio is lower than average even WITH the two mortgages!

So, he calls to say that the underwriter wants to know "what we are hiding" since my printed pay stub was missing a page. The second part of my pay stub looks like this

00.0 00.0 00.0

It's adding up the PTO and ELB I don't get (since I'm pool, I get paid more hourly and don't get PTO or benefits), so it's all zeros. And I didn't feel the need to fax a page that looks exactly like that! SO I refaxed my most recent pay stub and included the zeros. They will probably want to know now why I didn't use the same pay stub as the last one.

Besides needing my zeros, they also want our current mortgage statement. I was thinking... ok, to see that we pay *this* and owe *that*. NO! It was to make sure our taxes were rolled into our loan. WTF!??!?! This is literally about $2500 a year??? Again, the debt to income/credit history should prove we aren't having a hard time paying our taxes. Whatever! Just one more thing we have to fax.

***Note to future home buyers: invest in a fax machine

Whoever is doing this loan must have some screws loose. They wanted to know why we had had so many credit checks in the past month. Um, cause we were looking to buy a house and shopping for loans! Mr. Underwriter, people check credit before they approve you (or even preapprove up), as you should know since you're checking ours so thoroughly.


And just to add a cherry to all this wonderfulness, he informed us that the lender is no longer doing 95% loans as of today. Which tells me they regret saying yes to our loan, but they already did so they have to follow through. It almost sounds like a threat too.

Now I know this is a bank being safe and trying not to end up in the exact situation banks are in, but come on now. Debt to income/credit report should be enough proof. Problem with the economy, people brought home $2500 a month and got a mortgage for $2000. That obviously doesn't add up. But hey, I'm clearly not a banker....

Until the signatures are on the dotted line, I will not be breathing easy (quite literally, my chest is tight and it hurts to take deep breaths. You know that saying "it feels like an elephant is sitting on my chest"? It does)