Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

Hi,

My family are re-locating from Essex to the New Jersey area shortly, and I am desperately in need of advice on where newly arrived US credit virgins can get a mortgage deal on a L1 visa??? Any info would be great!

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

We got ours from Wells Fargo.

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

You should be able to get one anywhere but might end up paying higher rates without credit history (unless you've got a good sized deposit). I got mine through Wachovia (although I had built up some credit by that time) and generally their staff are very helpful whatever the situation.

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

I think most people here would recommend a few months of renting in the area prior to going out and getting a mortgage. See what the area is like, how the schools are, the housing stock, etc. Make your househunting and mortgage hunting less 'under the gun' and more relaxing.

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

I would agree. We had to buy because we couldn't find anywhere to rent in our chosen areas that would take dogs and cats and children. Sometimes one, sometimes two but not all three.
Also where we are you can only go to the school if you live in the township and we were looking at two separate areas. I didn't want to end up moving my children between schools.

But I would have preferred to rent.
Our house is nice and the neighbourhood is ok but there are other areas I prefer having lived here a while.

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

Great advice I always give newbies ;)

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

I also concur.

we stayed in a rental house for a year when I first moved here....

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

We lived in a rental for 2 years before we bought our house.

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

might want to browse through the wiki, as a lot of your questions are covered, or at least give you a start on what your looking for :)

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

We'll be renting for donkeys, at this rate, it's a couple of grand a month cheaper to rent than buy around here, and then some.

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

You'll get there eventually. :thumbsup:

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

In that case, you're probably better off renting as long as you are investing some of the money you save by not buying.

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

I know it, because we did some sums, not that we have it, but if you had $60K cash deposit, the kind of mortage we could get would be $2.5K more a month that we pay on rent for a house that's about 700sq smaller than our apartment :lol:

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

Best if you have a 20% deposit; the lenders know that people are less likely to walk away from a property if they've put 20% equity into it and if you don't put down the 20% most lenders will insist on PMI - an insurance purely for their benefit if you do default, so you'd be paying for something which is useless to you.

All we had to do was to provide statements from our bank and building society going back for the previous 18 months and a copy of my husband's employment contract stating his job and salary. We also paid for our banks to provide a letter to state that we were in 'good financial standing' with them. We had no credit rating whatsoever in the US and my husband hadn't received his Social Security number either.

Our realtors (Weichert) had a mortgage consultant who arranged for the mortgage and international credit reference search. There are many expats on international transfers in the part of NJ where we live so they seemed quite used to dealing with new arrivals.

Anyone can buy property in the US including buyers based overseas (just like the UK) - visa status is irrelevant.

(Where are you moving from in Essex? Someone posted here that they're moving to NJ from Braintree, someone I think from Colchester and we lived near Epping. I live in Essex county in NJ!).

Re: Help! - Mortgage for a new arrival in NJ area on L1 visa??
 

Thanks for all the replies, some really useful info. I appreciate you taking the time. Cheers guys, and if any one else has any other useful info please do let me know!