Where readers ask and we (the community, because Lord knows we don’t know everything) try to answer:
Hey there,
Wondering if anyone else there has gotten wind of a problem we’ve been running into:
My partner and I put in an offer on a 2 bed/1 bath condo in the Mission in mid-November. Offer price was $740K, and we put down $75K. A mortgage broker had confirmed that he would be able to get a loan with only ~10% down, as my partner and I both have steady jobs with good income (~$200K/year total), and our credit scores are both around 800. We went through the whole process and the loan came through fine, but the deal fell through at the last second because the mortgage insurance company claimed that they had had a significant change in policy a few days before and were “no longer insuring condos with loan amounts over $650K in California.”
We moved on to a lender at Bank of America, who assured us that “they have different relationships with the MI companies” than the brokers do. We gave him the whole story, but lo and behold–same exact thing happened. He acted all surprised and said that even the MI underwriter had just told him the day before that everything looked good, and then she found out about this new policy (which supposedly went into effect 11/30).
The MI company both lenders were trying to use was Radian, but they supposedly weren’t able to find a work around with any of the other MI companies, either. It just seems strange that none of the lenders we’ve worked with (we’re on our 3rd one now and fully anticipate running into the same problem, though he also is assuring us it won’t happen but can’t even tell us what MI company they use) seem to know about this at all. And it seems odd that the mortgage insurance underwriter didn’t find out about it until reviewing our application in mid-December after the change went into effect 11/30.
Has anyone else run into this? Is nobody in this city buying places that require MI anymore? Any thoughts or ideas on ways around it? Thankfully the sellers have been very patient and understanding–I can’t say that I would have been if I were in their situation, but we’ve done everything we can.
Thanks!
Thanks for the email and question. We’re sure there is someone out there (the Banker) that might be able to shed some light on this, or perhaps another buyer. Luckily, our recent transactions have been with cash buyers, or 20-30% down, and we have not experienced this. So….we’re calling on the community. Let’s not disappoint this reader, because all we can do on this end is thank him for hanging out on theFrontSteps, emailing in, and hope he comes back.