Aaah! (House related)

[eav2c]

Sorry Can you do FHA or nothing at all? That's really lame.

[Deleted]

That sucks. But if you do get something worked out, definately say it is a gift. We did that when we purchased our first house from my ILs and we later paid them back. They had to sign a piece of paper that said we weren't paying them back and neither party paid taxes (it was $10,000 and in 2009).

[shevacc]

I'm sorry Ernie . Buying a house is stressful enough, as it is.

And ditto PPs that you are allowed to accept a "gift" from relatives, as long as they write a letter and sign it that it's a gift. I've been asked both times we bought houses about that, so it's pretty common. You can decide amongst yourselves whether you'll repay that gift later, but the bank needs to think it's a gift so it doesn't mess up their affordability calculations.

[abitofashout]

Gah! How frustrating.

[erniebufflo]

The short version of the short sale is that we bought a house in 2007 in Charleston, planned to stay there, and then had to move in 2010 for my hubby's job. Of course, the market had crashed in the meantime. We had a buyer for $10k less than we owed, and we were totally willing to work something out with the bank to pay that, which we could have done in less than a year, we just couldn't pay the whole $10k at once. But they weren't willing to work with us on that at all, and insisted that we would have to do a short sale. Which they said meant we had to stop making payments. Literally, Wells Fargo told us that as long as we were making payments, we couldn't do the short sale. Now, though our credit has recovered, apparently lenders won't give to someone with a short sale in the last 3 years-4 years, depending on who we're talking to (it will be 3 years since ours was final come October). So, even though we have 10% down and job security and the ability to make monthly payments, we probably won't be able to get a mortgage.

ETA: because of their own idiocy, Wells Fargo ended up selling our house at a $50k loss. So, if they had worked with us, they wouldn't have lost $40k. God I hate big banks.