Michael

Also mortgage brokers will only work with lenders that are willing to pay for the mortgage brokers services. Many credit unions and regional banks don't trust mortgage brokers and/or don't want to pay their fee so mortgage brokers won't work with those lenders.

holly_1948

Yes, my experience too.

In all my years in USA I have bought (jointly with then spouse) five houses and several refinances.
Every time we approached a lender directly we had a good experience. Every time we used a mortgage broker we had a bad experience, needlessly huge amounts of documentation, suddenly worsened terms at the last minute, junk fees at the last minute, plain refusals not replicated elsewhere, damaged credit through too many enquiries, and most of all deceptive interest rates.

My advice, avoid loan brokers like the plague, deal only with principals.

axc

Great information everyone. I don't know anything about credit unions so I hadn't thought of that.

Just for info: I spoke with an ex-Wells Fargo underwriter and he said that as long as I had 2 months US pay stubs and UK tax returns then that should be enough. I think that perhaps my underwriter or broker is getting confused!!!!

Thank you
Andrea

Pulaski

So hurry up and file your 2012 taxes, declaring your UK rental income, then file a copy of that with your mortgage application. .... That should make them happy, no?

Pulaski

I found Wells Fargo to be very helpful and accommodating when I purchased a home last summer, under my own rather unusual set of circumstances, but damn! did they ask a lot of questions!

Wells Fargo originated one third of US mortgages last year, and in some months as much as 40%! So I can't help but think that if you can't get Wells Fargo to lend to you to buy a home, you are going to have difficulty anywhere.

Mr Weeze

You're in Katy - I can suggest a broker who can get you as good a deal as Wells Fargo. I've just gone through the process of getting pre-qualified with both. One has been sorted for over a month. The other still hasn't managed to do that. I'm paid in the UK. You can guess which has not managed, and I've banked with them for over two years.

Michael

I suspect Wells Fargo will only offer loans that follow Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac regulations which are now very strict. If Wells Fargo can't sell the mortgages elsewhere, they will always be able to sell them to Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac at any time.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, the three major Government Enterprises created to control the U.S. housing market, issued 99.3 percent of all mortgage backed securities (MBS) in 2012.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/federa...rticle/2522042

So it appears that most of the banks are selling their mortgages to the GSE's and the GSE's are bundling them and selling them to investors. Nobody trusts MBS's acquired and bundled by wall street anymore. Although all mortgages are not bundled into MBS's, I suspect that the vast majority are.

Pulaski

Check again .... A mortgage is actually the provision of security for the repayment of a debt.

rpjs

We've just closed on buying a house in the US, and we had not been here long enough to provide two years worth of W-2s. The bank we used (Prospect Financial) has experience of providing loans to ex-pats and other non-standard borrowers, and accepted our P-60s/P-45s for evidence of income from the UK for the tax year before we moved over.

When we met with our loan officers they said that they'd dealt with more complex ex-pat cases than ours and were generally pretty good at handling non-US documentation. We had sold our property in the UK shortly after moving so didn't have that complication, so I can't speak as to how they'd deal with that.

I don't know if they operate in TX but as they have offices in the mid-West and CA as well as NY, I think they are probably nationwide. PM me if you'd like the contact details of the people I dealt with here in NYS. if nothing else I'm sure they'd be able to put you in touch with their colleagues who cover TX if they do operate there.

pennieanddarryl

we had exactly the same problem and you will find it very hard broker or not to get around this. We had 65% to put down but in the same position with a salary still coming in from the uk and tax returns for a year. There is a solotion hard money lending a lot of old guys are doing it yes you pay 2-4% above base rate but at least your on the ladder and in two years you have a credit score for the bank tax returns and you have been living where you want to be. We used a British guy in the US who put us in contact with an investor we are just about to take a bank mortgage out now as our two years are up, but we had to move fast as the house we wanted was a shortsale on the market for $750 down from $1.2 it took us 9 months of worry but soooo worth it market value is now just over $1 mil and a house to die for if you need contact details PM me

Pulaski

A little more punctuation would be nice..... then we might have at least half an idea what you're talking about.

fatbrit

The problem here is that the term a Wells Fargo mortgage is not as singular as it sounds. If you go to the bank and see the happy, smiling mortgage officer, she'll have a dozen or so plans to fit you into. However, if you're a rich bastard and are a Private Client with WF, the loans your WF rep will be offering you are not the same as those for Joe Schmuck at the branch in the plaza. In addition, an independent broker may well have the ability to sell WF loans, and these again are different products.....but you still end up with a WF mortgage. Dunno whether it's still going, but there also used to be a bad credit arm of WF trading known as WF Financial. And yet again with more unique products!

If you're standardly average and fit inside the rigid template, the regular bank or CU might well be your best bet. The advantage of a good broker is that they will might have 10x the products that visiting a single institution would give you, including possible access to private lenders

pennieanddarryl

how about" idiot" is that clear enough

Pulaski

I considered that to be self evident from your inability to use basic punctuation.