If you’re buying or refinancing, the answer may surprise you.
Whether you're looking for help financing the Victorian fixer-upper of your dreams, tapping the value of the house where you’ve been for years, or taking advantage of rates that are still at near-historic lows, you might be surprised at how mortgage lenders rate older borrowers.
Age doesn’t matter.
Counterintuitive as it may sound, your loan application for a mortgage to be repaid over 30 years looks the same to lenders whether you are 90 years old or 40. A web of federal civil rights laws, including the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Fair Housing Act, make it illegal for a creditor to discriminate on the basis of an adult’s age.
Being debt-free may pose a problem.
Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, says an unexpected stumbling block can be that you don’t have a credit rating if you haven’t recently been in debt. “It used to be that you looked to retire debt-free. You may have a great credit history, but if you’re out of the credit game now—debit cards don’t count, and you’ve paid off your car loan, you’ve paid off your mortgage—there’s no recent activity to give you a score. It’s one of the reasons to use a credit card even if you pay it off completely each month, just so you have active credit lines to show a current credit history.” A strong credit score can mean you’ll be approved with a better borrowing rate.
Retirement income is still income.
This story is from the July/August 2018 edition of This Old House Magazine.
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This story is from the July/August 2018 edition of This Old House Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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