Separating to Regional: Mortgage concerns
 

I'm 99% decided on accepting a position at a regional once my separation is finalized. Will be moving to Ft. Worth to be in base, looking at buying a house there. Does anyone have experience with applying for a mortgage pre-approval as they separated, and whether it's Kosher to use military income for that? I intend to buy a house in the price range I can afford even on 1st-2nd year FO salary, but I imagine the odd nature of that pay structure and not having a pay stub yet would complicate things with a lender.

Thanks for any input!

Try National Bank of Kansas City (NBKC). I'm still in and refinanced recently, their customer service is amazing. Some of my Bro's, in your same shoes, are having success there once they separate.

I'm going through National Bank of Kansas as well and they are bending over backwards to make it happen for me. I suggest you buy the house while still on active duty. If not you will have to use your monthly guarantee at first year pay at your regional and will be very difficult to get approved. They can take you up to 60% debt to income ratio on a VA loan though which is super high, but in my case I make way more every month at Southwest than my min monthly guarantee so it helps to account for that.

Helped many people in your situation
 

Hello! I work for NBKC, and my husband is retired Air Force and flies for Delta. I have helped many people in your exact situation. Send me a PM if I can be of any help!

i did this and went through NBKC. They will figure it out, but you might have to put a bunch of money down.

I am putting zero down on my VA and show a high debt to income ratio due to first year guarantee and they are making it happen.

It will be on terminal leave when I get down there, I'm not going to buy a house until everything is nailed down with the transition. I have a couple of months of time building before we buy, would a pre-approval while on terminal leave be enough, or at that point would I have to show airline pay?

FWIW credit is great, will be downgrading vehicles to lose the car payment, only have wife's student loan that I'm debating about paying off with the bonus. She does a sort of sales business from home but I'm not banking on that just yet. It's just a nice to have.

Thanks for the replies.

If you change employment your pre-approval based on your old job will be worthless. You have to complete the transaction prior to seperation or start from scratch after new eomployment.

Much easier to do while on AD than after a job change (regional, major, or any other job).

There is no sort of accountability for what happens to your financial situation AFTER the loan is issued, so nothing to worry about if the papertrail did not exist before the loan. Just because you might have been thinking about maybe leaving AD when you took the loan is irrelevant.

If you had a documented separation date when you qualified for a loan using AD payscale, and later defaulted on the loan it's hypothetically possible that there could be blowback regarding taking a loan under fraudulent circumstances. But that's pretty unlikely as far as I know, and as long as you don't default then it's moot.

I did exactly what you're talking about; bought a house on a VA loan while separating with my follow-on employment at a regional.

It was a bit of a pain to show the loan guy what my income was going to actually be. I sent them a copy of the contract for the regional I was going to be working at, which showed both the pay scale as well as monthly hourly pay guarantees, etc. I created a spreadsheet that showed what my minimum annual income was going to based on the contract, but the bank wasn't satisfied with it.

I eventually had to contact the regional itself, which had a contractor they employed to verify employment. That contractor was able to produce a document that said basically the same thing I had previously done, showing the minimum income that the contract guaranteed for the first year, second year, third year of employment. Since it was on company letterhead, I guess, the bank accepted it and I got the loan.

Of note: I closed on the house before I left active duty and it didn't make a difference in the process. The bank wanted documentation of continued service if I was going to claim my military income in obtaining the loan. This isn't their first rodeo.