Question
As first time home buyers, my husband and I are wanting to buy our first house. We will both be making $39,000. We have good credit, but have student loans. I have $8500 and he has $85,000. We are curious to know if we should get pre-qualified together or if I should buy the house alone because of his debts.
Answer
If both of your credit reports and scores are good then you could try to pre qualify with both of you. If you do not want to buy too much of a home, then his student loans might not be that big of a deal. If he does not go on the loan then you will be limited on what you can buy based on your income and debt. You really need to put all the pieces together to help you with the direction you'll ultimately go. It might be helpful just to sit down with a piece of paper and write down your income and debt payments in one list and his in another to compare which route is better.
My suggestion is that you look at what kind of monthly housing payment you want to make. Use that number to calculate your debt to income ratio. Here is a link on how to calculate your income from GetPreQualified.com. You can do this work without using a loan officer to get close to the payment that you can either afford or that you are most comfortable paying. Calculate this ratio with and without your husband's income and debt. Make sure that you include any joint accounts only one time, and if you do the calculation with just you make sure that you use the joint payment in your numbers. The underwriters will consider this your debt if your name is on it.
For further questions on the home buying process visit our page on The Steps To Buying a Home.
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