New in the US and getting a mortgage loan

Just thought I'd write about my experience so far... my wife and I moved to Texas a little over a month ago and have found a wonderful house we'd like to buy. Wells Fargo offered to help us with the loan, considering we have only Canadian credit history to go on, but my credit is (or should be) stellar since I've maintained a history for years of actively using and paying down all my cards each month without a single late payment. My salary is more than adequate, the rate we were quoted is unbelievable (I'm paying almost twice that monthly amount just to rent right now) and I'm ready with a 20% downpay...

... and two days from closing we've hit a roadblock because the underwriter "doesn't like my credit report". Needless to say I'm surprised that someone with my clean financial history is having such a hard time, but since I've seen the credit report with my own eyes I find it has very little information, misses some of my cards completely (AmEx Canada doesn't seem to show up) and is rather uninformative.

We're hoping for a good resolution since we love the home we've found. Does anybody else have any advice? Is there a friendlier lender out there in this climate for a Canadian?

A "Clean" credit report is actually of very little value, since it has no history.
Nothing from canada is going to show up on your US credit history, since none of it is ties to your SSN.

You've done everything right: approached a PERSON rather than a website, explained your situation, have 20% downm, even got them to look at your Cdn history. But in this economic climate, lenders are really looking for reasons not to finance, and they have found one.

My only suggestions would be to try to deal with a bank that is affiliated with the bank you dealt with in canada if possible. Or, deal directly with the bank/credit union that gets your paycheque every week. Bringing business to a bank will sometimes get better service. The bigger outfits like Wells are not usually accomodating.


Try this former Cdns in the twincity area:
Patrick R. Holt
Your Mortgage Professional
Conventional and Investment
Mpls. MN.
612-388-0505

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Try RMC Vanguard (Rudy Vargas) in Houston. Direct Lenders, Excellent service. WIll tell you upfront if it will work or not. We had no problem with TN visa and H1 visa. We closed our loan in 3 weeks and transferred to BOA.

We moved to Texas 9 years ago from Alberta with the best credit rating. We found out that our credit rating in Canada is not looked at or considered in any way. Establishing credit can be tough - thank goodness my husband had an AmEx Gold card, as the card was transferable to the US and gave us the start of a credit history.

We did buy a house, but had almost 50% to put down. The realtor set things up and then we switched to a bank mortgage after about a year, as our mortgage had been "sold" twice in that year.

Thanks for all your replies so far - even though I did a bunch of research I feel like I wasn't prepared enough for what I encountered.

Right now, the underwriter (still unhappy with the credit report's lack of data on me) is asking for proof that I paid a rent for the past 12 months... which you would think would be simple, but in fact it requires getting a scan of all my old cheques from TD Canada Trust, and it will apparently take 10 days just to get them to fax it over! Online I can only retrieve cheque scans from the past 90 days (which, I'm told, is rather limited compared to other big banks), so out of luck there.

The second holdup is that apparently my loan agent made a goof and had me sign a document approving an IRS audit statement or something along those lines - basically to show me paying my taxes, I guess... except that since I'm new to the US obviously I haven't paid taxes yet and now we've had to work up a different request form for the IRS which will take 10 days for them to respond with. Argh!

Welcome to getting a loan in 2010, I guess.