WH..
It’s beyond crazy, but guidelines are guidelines that MUST be met. You probbably would not have had a different experience if your DTI was 10% or 50%
or if the down payment was 50%. They simply do not say that because this borrower has a lower DTI that we can over look guidelines. An approval is only the first step.

A low paid wage earner may get an FHA loan for 96.5% with 3.5% down, however a retired couple with a $800,000 home cannot qualify to refi a $300,000 loan to a lower rate.

At most banks/credit unions, the application taker/processor is an underling to the underwriter and never questions anything (for fear of losing their job ?)

I deal directly with underwriters and question them all the time to get issues resolved. This is what holds deals together or gets them closed faster.

Now of course if you listen to our new resident expert Daniel, he says that “there is NOTHING that a broker can do for you that you cannot do for yourself”

You have no idea how silly something can be that will kill a loan, regardless of income, assets, equity, credit score, down payment or how important somebody thinks they are.

If a borrower huffs and puffs and threatens to walk away from the loan, the underwriter doesn’t care, they just move on to the next file.

In some cases raising a credit score by ONE point can result in thousands of dollars of savings, or being able to qualify at all.

All the resident experts know how to make phone calls and shop for a rate, usually without a clue whether they even qualify. No loan is done until it gets funded and the delays and stress these days are beyond belief. The system is completely broken.