Home Loans

There is a home loan thread on the general issue forum. I thought what I have found may be of some use to military docs, active or deferred.
If you are civilian deferred, like myself, and will not be able to take advantage of the VA loan anytime soon, I have done some pretty heavy digging into home mortgage programs for doctors that require as little down as possible, do not require MIP (mortgage insurance premium), and don't consider deferred student loans. There are two options depending on your credit score and student loan status.

1) Bank of America offers a physician first loan that requires nothing down, does not require MIP, and does not take student loans into consideration. The downside is that you must have a 720 FICO score, which is impossible for anyone with a lot of student loan debt (like myself).

2) USAA is willing to not take into consideration student loans as debt as long as you can prove they are deferred for at least 2 years. They are the only bank I found that does this for a conventional (5% down) loan. No MIP and no student loan consideration, but you must come up with 5% down. My payment would be about $650.00 on a $100,000 house.

There are downsides to each. I don't want to pay MIP and my credit score is only 650. FHA requires only 3% down but you must put an MIP down payment and a monthly premium fee. which ends up being about $1300 down (rolled into mortgage) and about $50.00 month into payment on a $100,000 home. The VA loan itself is not without up front fees. I was told the VA charges 2% that they will roll into the principal, but you put nothing down, have no MIP, but you do have closing costs.

If you have any specific questions I will be happy to answer

I had a really helpful loan officer at USAA that spent upwards of 1 hour with me trying to find out which loan was the best for me. Gave me many different quotes with different ARM's and such. I, like you, have really enjoyed most everyone I have delt with at USAA, but I had a really positive experience and will probably end up getting my mortgage with them. They offered me a 5 year ARM at 4.0% with .0125 points ($90.00), but with 1 point I could have gotten 3.25% ARM for five years.

I too also heard about suntrust and called them. They require a 720 for nothing down, but only a 620 for 10% down. Either way I was not interested.

Maybe you just talked to someone that did not know about our situation. The woman I spoke with had just recently done a loan for a girl starting residency. So maybe she knew more about it than the person you spoke with.

I will learn from your mistakes and try to avoid USAA if possible. Any other programs with no MIP and willing to defer student loans with a FICO of 650. They were the only one I could find.