Mortgages Harder to Get (ELLI)
What was once considered an excellent credit score now disqualifies a borrower from obtaining a mortgage. The COO of mortgage industry services provider Ellie Mae (AMEX: ELLI) put the issue in stark terms: Last month , if your FICO score…
Last month [February], if your FICO score was below 720 or you had a down payment or equity of less than 25%, there was a good chance that your refinance application for a conventional loan was denied or you were offered a significantly less attractive interest rate.
Closed loans on those refinance applications required a FICO score of 770 and a loan-to-value ratio of 65%. Those numbers are pretty much unchanged since last August, when a closed loan required a FICO score of 763 on an loan-to-value ratio of 65%.
To purchase a home in February, a borrower needed a FICO score of 764 and a loan-to-value ratio of 78%, again virtually unchanged since last August.
Unless borrowers don’t need a loan, chances are pretty good that they won’t get one.
The report is available here.
Paul Ausick
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Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.
He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.
