Earlier this evening I gave a really nice man keys to his new home.  I love, love, love doing that.

Now his new home wasn’t the prettiest girl at the dance, trust me.  If they were playing Stairway to Heaven, this girl was going home alone if not for my buyers.  The last remodel took place…never.  It was original to 1959.  Yellow formica, matching worn linoleum and the carpet was perfectly threadbarren.

We have a shortage of inventory in my market right now.  I have two other well qualified buyers in his range who were in contract when I got him into contract on his new home.  They fell out back in August, in both cases due to wacky sellers, and NEITHER are back in contract yet.  It’s dicey out there.

I don’t know if the listing agent knew that.  I think my guy paid a fair price for the home.  I would have advised my sellers to take our offer.  If we faltered, someone would have snatched that house right up.

So I wrote FHA.

Stop laughing.

I have a great lender and I knew he could do it.  And he did, so I thought.  We made it through the inspections. The appraiser required carbon monoxide detectors, smoke detectors, the gas turned on so he knew the dishwasher worked and the “tripping hazards” corrected.  That made me laugh.  My house closed, although not FHA with huge gaping cracks in the garage, the driveway and the walkway.  How big?  Lizards live in there.  Swarms of termites nest in there.  Mice and rats escape through those cracks.  It’s a complete ecosystem in the cracks in my garage.  But I went out there with the buyer and we smoothed them over.  And we got loan approval.

Not so fast sweetheart.

It started as an innocent phone call.  My mortgage broker’s assistant called my buyer.  He needed to pay for the appraisal.  ”Can I use a credit card for that?” he asked.  ”Sure” she said.  He had the money in his checking account but didn’t want to read his debit card number over the phone in a busy office and have his checking account compromised if somebody wasn’t completely scrupulous.  Fair enough.  Then I order the inspections.  ”Can I use a credit card for that?” he asked.  ”Sure” I said.

I heard my mortgage broker tell me the ratios were tight.  My buyer owned another property in another state that was being rented out but wasn’t claimed properly on his taxes so he couldn’t offset the rent and there wasn’t time to amend his taxes.  He could make it but it wasn’t going to be tight on paper.

He signed off on time, we were right on time with everything.  And then they re-ran his credit.  He had used two different credit cards for the appraisal and the inspections.  The $20 a month for each of the cards threw the ratios off and they couldn’t fund.  Paying off the credit cards wasn’t going to solve the problem.  For reasons I cannot explain, I slept that night.  I think it’s because I trust my mortgage guy.

The next morning he calls.  He relocked the rate.  Simple enough.  The interest rate had gone down since the initial lock and now with the new lower interest rate his payment was lower and the ratios work.

At the end of the day, we closed three days late and my guy will be saving a little over $40 per month every month for the next 360 months.  Win.  Win.

I’m glad I work with a true professional for my mortgages.  He makes the difference sometimes.  I don’t know that another broker would have had to chops to figure that one out, or even try the solution.

The lesson I learned was when somebody says “the ratios are tight”, my answer is now, take your credit cards out of your wallet and unless you have a death in the family, leave them there.