....but the government felt that it was ok to restrict my mortgage based on some crazy scheme .....
Were you applying for a government-backed loan (FHA, VA)? If not, then the government had nothing to say about your loan. If you were, the DTI limits for FHA are (and were then) 41%, and the VA had no max DTI, they had what they called "residual income guidelines" and your income would have exceeded any parameters there.
If you are talking FNMA-type loan guidelines, those are conventional loans underwritten to set standards. Those standards only have to be adhered to if the originating source wants to immediately sell the mortgage to FNMA. Otherwise the originaotrs have quite a bit of discretion in standards. But in no way is the "government" involved in saying "yes" or "no" to you. The FNMA guidelines for DTI were 36% unless you were applying for the max LTV loans. If you were making all that money and were a geek that didn't have any outside expenditures, then you wouldn't be needing the max LTV would you?
You seem to have a gripe with DTI limits being used for high income, but if you make more, the same percentage applied to your income level means you can buy much more house. I mean someone bringing down $5,000/ month has an $1,800 limit in which to fit housing and all other credit obligations. In your example of $16,000/month that means $5,760 to cover housing and all other credit obligations. Since each additional $665/mo of P&I buys another $100,000 of mortgage (7%, 30yr fixed), that's quite a bit more house if one just stays within the guidelines. With more money down, demonstrated ability to save, and great credit, I've seen that DTI stretched to 50% in conventional products.
In the last few years 100% purchase money and no income verification combined with interest-only and negative amortization products to virtually remove any notions of DTI limitations.
Timba |
