After Bankruptcy Mortgage

Even after bankruptcy mortgage is a possibility, even in this housing market.

The best thing you can do is wait two years after the bankruptcy to get a mortgage. Most banks prefer to see two years of timely payments. During these two years you need to build up your financial situation. Hopefully you have figured out what your past problems were that got you into this situation and fixed them. You have also checked your credit report and made sure that the appropriate accounts are marked “included in bankruptcy” and not open or overdue and checked for other mistakes. Once you have fixed the problems you need to be concerned with building up positive history. You need two types of credit, revolving and installment payments. For installment payments you need to pay off something like a car or student loan. For revolving payments you want to obtain a secured credit card. You can usually find these at your current bank. They work like any other credit card, but you secure the card by depositing a few hundred dollars into an account. When you get this card you want to make sure that the company does report to the three major bureaus, TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. You also want to make sure that there is no application fee, reasonable annual fees, and that within 12-18months it switches to an unsecured card as long as you've made timely payments. Now that your credit is under control you want to focus on the other part of an after bankruptcy mortgage- money. The first thing you'll want to worry about is having a good steady income. Your income level needs to be easily be able to afford the level of mortgage you are going after. The longer you've had the same employer the better, but if you see an opportunity to raise your income level elsewhere, don't let that stop you.

The other thing to keep in mind, which is very important, is your down payment. This shows the lender that you're serious and have been serious for a while about responsibly buying a home. Ideally you want to have a twenty percent down payment. I know this feels like a huge amount of money, but so is your future home loan. With twenty percent you won't have to get private mortgage insurance, and any lender you go to should take your application very seriously.

If you do all of this you should have no problem finding an after bankruptcy mortgage.