This is just insanity. How is it possible that with credit scores in the 800s, a good loan to value, and stable employment that we cannot get a mortgage at any cost? I still see ads from places that claim to lend money even if you have bad credit or no credit, but those are ridiculous; no one will lend to you even if you have perfect credit, so if your credit is bad there is no way. It is not just us, it is epidemic, apparently. The lenders have gotten so gun shy that they don't want to lend to anyone, unless they already have as much money as they need to borrow. Actually, they shouldn't be called lenders anymore- the name is misleading. It would leave one to believe that they actually lend money. An email from our mortgage broker today said this:

If it makes you feel less picked on, I have a lot loan with this investor that is a 50% loan to value, good quality customers like yourselves and the investor has figured out a way to complicate that and delay the process. I still think the delays could be the result of credit lines being dried up temporarily, but for obvious reasons, the banks are not telling anyone that. No matter who the investor is, the delays are there for weeks and then suddenly the loans are cleared to close and then we hit another period of time of delays after that. It has to be something other than having too much volume. We know there is no significant volume of deals in their pipelines right now.

Our mortgage broker has been doing everything within his power to get us a deal since around November or so. He is just as frustrated with this process as we are. Right now our only hopes of building our house have dwindled down to a longshot from a "lender" that refuses to make a decision, a lottery ticket, and whatever other crazy ass scheme we can dream up. It would take probably take a miracle, but if we could find a private investor that wanted to make a nice, safe investment by loaning us the money and personally holding our mortgage that would be ideal.

I responded to an email this evening about the uncertain status of our loan. My email to our mortgage broker and our builder said:

Andy bought a Lottery ticket on the way home today. That is currently our plan B if this falls through.

Our builder replied back:

Please have Andy pick one up for me too? This mortgage and appraisal business is killing everyone looking to build. I hope they all go out of business starving themselves from the good loans they could have made.

And the mortgage broker said:

I have one too. If I win, I will finance it, personally, at 3% interest, no additional money out of pocket. Maybe that will bring the debt ratio down, right?

Something is seriously wrong in this country.