tonyghiggins

Hello all,
I have a question regarding applying for a mortgage here in the US. I am on a H1-B, been waiting on Labor for 4+ years and am looking into buying a property to bring up my children

What if any implications are there if I am not 1) a citizen and 2) do not yet have a green card.

What could possibly happen if, I accidentally missed a check box that said I was a citizen? Could I get into real trouble, or would it be just a rate hike.

Thank you in advance for you replies

neil

The only thing that will affect your interest rate is your credit score. I was on an L1 when I did mine.

Celsius

If you plan on buying a house, you plan on living in the US for the forseeable future so why jeopardize your future in the US by lying? You'd have more to lose than to gain IMHO.

Goodacre

We have a mortgage, and I am on an H1B. What I would say is that the mortgage people couldn't care less about our visa status; it was the credit score that mattered. And since we had zilch US credit score, it was a long and arduous business to get a mortgage approved, in spite of extensive international credit checks etc. If we had our time again, we might have rented for at least a year first, but we mistakenly thought that it would be straightforward to get a mortgage. The other thing I'd add would be that if we had had about $40,000 to put down on the house, they wouldn't have been bothered about our zilch US credit score. But we didn't have that kind of money, and so we really struggled. An unhappy time.

tonyghiggins

I have been in the country for close to 9 years now, I think my credit score should be around 700 or so. I also have a decent down payment.

I have been completely legal for 9 years, paid thousands of dollars to lawyers and it just irks me after 4+ years I am still not approved for labor, but thats another story.

I was really keen to figure out the legal implications, not that I was planning on misinforming, but rather if I had missed it on the form, would I be liable for anything

Thanks for the answers so far.

Ray

Claiming to be a citizen when not ..is taken very seriously ...

Elvira

AFAIK it is an *absolute* bar to both adjustment of status and naturalization...

TouristTrap

They'll figure it out anyway seeing you have only been in the country for 9 years. Number 1.

Number 2, I don't know about CA, but in FL, you can get a homestead exemption, only when you become a PR. Before that, your taxes can go up as much as they desire. After that, 3% per year, no more.

kel.n.issy

6 months into a H1b and have full mortgage approval from 2 reputable lenders, credit rating is more the issue than residency etc.

We have a good credit rating by doing very basic things and are just entering our 7th month.

Dont be done by them offering you a really bad rate either we got 6.25 on a big mortgage, although we havent bought the property as we havent found the right one yet, stand your ground if you have been here 4 years you should be laffin.

Bob

That would get you booted from the country big time.

As already mentioned though, it's all down to your credit history, some places might have a slightly crapper rate for not being a resident as they might think your a bigger risk of scarpering, but many won't, so take your business else where.

jumping doris

We were preapproved before we moved here. We were comming over to look for houses and the relocation company sorted it all out with Wells Fargo so that if we saw anything we could buy it.
We are on H1B and H4 visas.

The best rate they would give us though was 5.25%
We did put a biggish deposit down but at the time they preapproved us we hadn't sold our UK house.

Like everyone else has said though....tick the right boxes.

Goodacre

That's interesting. We were preapproved too, but only hit the problems when the mortgage application went to the underwriters, who kept veto-ing it and insisted on more downpayment. In the end, though, perseverance did pay off and we got a good mortgage with a 5% deposit, and 6% interest rate. There is no question that in our case the one thing that would have made the big difference was a larger deposit. They were really worried about just 5%, it turned out.

jumping doris

Our "person" at Wells Fargo was very experienced with expat stuff and so we didn't have a problem with the underwriting bit, but we were promising them a big deposit.

We came over, viewed houses, chose one, paid the hand money and then we all had to wait for our house to sell .
Our realtor was also used to expat stuff and understood how you bought and sold in the UK and so she was able to reassure our seller.He was a bit nervous because we agreed the purchase in June and didn't close until late September when our visa let us in.

However, once we had all the mortgage arranged and we were just waiting to come over, we were handed over to an ordinary"person" at Wells Fargo who didn't have the expat knowledge and was a bit of a pain in the rear.

AdobePinon

You make it sound like a bad rate.

I agree with your next post though - follow through can be somewhat lacking once they think they have you. Let's just say that on the final occasion I had to 'visit' my so-called broker to clean up his mess, his staff did a quick exit out the back door and didn't return all day. The point was well received though, as he didn't make another mistake again.

jumping doris

We thought it was a reasonable rate until we had been here a few months. It is a good rate but at the time some rates were lower (June 2005) and we didn't have any points. I'm still not sure what they are.
It all seemed so confusing at the time!
One of the hardest aspects of moving was trying to understand the banking and mortgage world here with only UK things to base it all on.