Hi,

I am from the UK

I have been here for 1 year now on an L1 visa, and had a social number, credit card, car loan etc for about 4 months now so i presume my credit history is on the way to improving. I have also been on the USA payroll for my company since october...

Does anyone have any experiences or advise on how long i will need to wait to be able to get a mortgage to buy a house?

Any experiences etc much appreciated!

Richard (Houston)

Need at least 6 months to get history....but all depends how much you can put down for deposit, over 20% minimum I'd say for starters....

We are L1/L2 and got our mortgage 6 months after arriving - we didn't have any sort or credit rating but we did have a big down payment - we thought that would help but we still had to jump through many hoops to get the mortgage sorted - if you search for previous posts you can read the whole story.

You can always get a copy of your credit report and see what has shown up on it so far.

Wait until your first loan has passed the 6 month mark as Bob said.

Applying dings your credit score. If you're going to make multiple applications (e.g. one at a bank, one at a credit union and one with a mortgage broker), ensure the applications all go in the same week for only a single ding.

Your homework: http://mtgprofessor.com/ArticleLists...omeBuyers.html

Thought you might like this article, fatbrit.. speaking of credit scores:
You are not your credit score

Yep -- problem is it's always been alchemy. It's just that they're admitting it now.

That's a good start... you need pretty decent FICO score and a fairly blemish-free record to get a loan these days, even with a big down payment.

My OH and I refinanced our mortgage last year and even with excellent credit, several years of mortgage payments under our belts and less than 50% loan-to-value ratio on the house it was MUCH more work to get a mortgage than first time around.

The mortgage landscape has really changed. Lenders have really tightened the screws on their money and make you jump through far more hoops than a few years ago during the heady days of the property bubble. I recommend using a locally-recommended mortgage broker... not much cost and you'll get better advice and a wider range of options than going straight to a bank.

I was able to qualify after trying about 5 mths from getting here on a K1. Not sure if my situation is different as I'm married to a US Citizen, but I had to go first on the loan as I was the primary earner and actually had a higher FICO score! I had transferred over my Amex card so presume that helped with my FICO score, but a very limited history. I think my credit report said something like the account had been open 3 years (when I got it in the UK), but only active for 5 mths (when I transferred it). I had also gotten a car loan with a co-signer.

Anyway to get to the point: I couldn't get a conventional loan but did qualify for an FHA loan which required only 3.5% down. We put down more as we didn't want to get hit with the additional PMI cost.

http://www.hud.gov/buying/loans.cfm

There are some conditions, such as the house can't be run down, if a condo it has to have a certain owner-occupancy rate but you should look into it.

We've been offered 2 mortgages (we have zero US credit rating) as long as we have a 20% deposit. One is with Wells Fargo, I can't remember who the other one is with.

Doing as you mentioned is a great way to get started...but FICO score alone isn't all that important when it comes to getting a lone, it's about the actual history that ways more on the decision these days.

Absolutely - which is why I couldn't qualify for conventional - my history wasn't long enough.

note to self, proof read poor typing when baby daughter is tugging away at the keyboard

I'm also here on an L1, for about 9 months now.

After lots of 'Sorry you don't have any credit here', 'FICO zero', 'Your UK history doesn't count here' comments from lenders here. (Even with HSBC, my old lender in the UK!) I finally got a bite with these guys:

https://www.wellsfargo.com/mortgage/articles/reloc_info

if you happen to work for a large corporation, they may even have a deal with these guys.

I was still looking at 20% deposit though - not a problem as I'd sold my house in UK before leaving, but if you don't have a good deposit you may struggle to get approved.

We are having a house built in Cinco South West at the moment which is due to complete at the end of May.

We have already got our mortgage approval in place. OH is in Houston. I am still at home in the UK.

Like the above, we are putting down a large deposit.