New COVID-19 Credit Requirements For Home Buying

New credit requirements for home buying by the banks?

So what's happening with the changes with the coronavirus means that we're seeing lenders change their requirements for loans moving forward.

Why is this the case?

This is the case because we've seen over 10 million people file for unemployment and out of those 10 million, 3 million people have filed for mortgage forbearance. Meaning that 3 million people have said I cannot afford to make my mortgage payment. What that means for lenders is that they're really scared of 3 million people not paying their mortgages. And then they're running into a cash liquidity issue.

So they need to make sure people are extra, extra qualified to purchase a home and be able to make the mortgage payments on it coming up in the next few. So some of those standards are I'm seeing credit scores minimums raised up to 640. I've seen some of them raised up to 680 chase raise theirs up to 700 and requires 20% down. Basically, lenders are putting on all of these extra guidelines to make sure that if somebody closes on a loan, they feel confident that they can make sure that they're gonna pay and not go into forbearance in the upcoming months. So sometimes they're looking for reserves, sometimes they're not using future income. It's a bit of a whole mess. And each lender is different and has different guidelines.

What to do in this situation?

So my suggestion to you is to work with a mortgage broker. Because if you work with a broker, this is where the main advantage of a broker shines in issues like this in the market is we have the ability to be able to go out and shop different lenders at a really convenient pace.

So I have multiple lenders right now, and I know all of their guidelines. So if I have a client right now and they don't work with one lender, I'll go put them to another lender. So instead of you on your own, going out and trying to find a lender going through the process, and then it getting denied and you have to restart.

What we get to do is we can take it from one lender, move it to another if we need to. Now that being said, we do still have a lender that is doing no over. Even with all of the COVID changes and that's because they're keeping everything in a portfolio. So all their FHA, VA, USDA loans are in a portfolio. So FHA, VA still going down to a 500 credit score, USDA going down to a 550.

Shop with a mortgage broker

They're gonna be your best bet to help you navigate these changes. Another thing that you could do is just wait a little bit until we see some of this clear up a little bit. It's gonna make qualifying a little bit easier.