I have a question, I'm divorced and now I want to buy a house. My question is if I'm still a first time home buyer if my husband bought a house during our marriage using a VA loan.
I was never on the loan and I signed a quit claim deed. Also I was never on the title as well.
I got in my divorce decree that the house is all on him with all debt etc., as well as the first time home credit of $8000 that he took.
He bought the house in 2009 and we our got final divorce in 2011.
When the mortgage loan officer ask me if I ever owned any property I said that I had not, am I correct on that?
Thank you,
Mag
=====ANSWERS=====
Hello Mag,
Thank you for stopping by my site and presenting your questions for me to answer.
If I understand this right, your question is: "am I a first time home buyer if I previously owned a house with my ex-husband?"
Well to make a long story short, the answer is yes and no. Kind of confusing I know, but here is why I say this.
By marriage you were a home owner. Even though you were not on title or the mortgage, legally you owned a home with your husband. However, technically speaking you were not an owner because you did not put yourself at risk by going on the mortgage.
So the fact you signed a quit claim deed, you no longer have any legal claim to the property. The quit claim deed accomplished that.
However, it appears to me your lawyer was wise in that he had your ex-husband take all responsibility for the $8,000 tax credit. This is a good thing since there were certain restrictions that came along with it that a person had to stay in the property for a certain period of time.
So chances are you were on a joint tax return which claimed the $8,000 tax credit. So in the eyes of the IRS you are a homeowner as well. If for some reason your ex-husband were to move out and end up owing the tax credit back to the IRS, then hopefully that document will protect you.
So as far as a truthful answer to the question have you owned a home before, the answer would be yes.
But you can still pursue a first time home buyer mortgage because you have not been on a mortgage in the past 3 years. Some programs have that restriction. However, the FHA loan does not, you just cannot have more than 1 FHA loan at a time.
Often times first time buyers use the FHA loan as the best one to choose.
So do not be afraid to explain to a loan officer your situation. You do not want to hide anything because the penalty for mortgage fraud is very stiff.
Tell him/her what happened and let them decide how to proceed.
I hope you find this helpful.
You may want to check out this webpage on first time home buyer loans. Many of my web visitors have found it helpful to try using Lending Tree. They can give you 4 different lenders that will provide you quotes for a mortgage. At any given month I see 70-80 people using them as a good choice when shopping for a mortgage.
If you have any other questions feel free to reply to this answer in the comments section below.
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