Learning about mortgage pre-approvals

After speaking with a mortgage broker, I’m left a little deflated. Apparently when they look at income, they want to average out the income over the last 2 or 3 years (I thought it was just a year). So because I’ve only been at my PT job for about 7 months, and I only just started bringing in decent freelancing income over the past 18 months, none of that matters when it comes to qualifying. They will basically only look at my FT income. And because my PT and freelancing income makes up a huge portion of my overall income (about 30%), that works against me. Whereas, in terms of financial security, it works for me to not have all my eggs in one basket.

One huge detail I might have left out and not told you is that I will be taking on the mortgage myself. BF will not qualify because he is a student and hasn’t been working for over a year. So, while he will be contributing in every way to the household expenses, his name will not be on the title of the home or on the mortgage papers – which is why I mentioned in a previous post that we will need a lawyer to iron out all of the details to make sure that we are both protected.

We are still in the ballpark figure of where we thought our purchase price would be. Just at the lower end of the scale, about $30,000 less than I had initially thought. And that’s fine. We will just make sure not to see anything that isn’t in our new price range. And I had planned on doing that anyway. I am going to be level-headed about the property search and I’m not going to rush it. Buying a home will be the single most expensive thing I do in my life, and it’s not a decision I take lightly!

The good thing is that, even though I don’t qualify for the amount I thought I’d qualify for based on my income, it doesn’t change the fact that we will be very comfortable with the mortgage payments. Even without a penny of freelancing income, I will be able to easily pay for the mortgage without taking a hit to my other savings goals. We aren’t stretching ourselves by any means, and that’s the most important thing.