DW and I will probably be looking in to getting a new mortgage on the house we're currently living in to pay family member toward Mort 2. We're looking at an April time frame to apply for the mortgage.

I thought it would be a good idea to get some pre-approval information. I made a spread sheet detailing our current net worth, our montly obligations, and projections of what our front end and back end DTI ratio would be after the new mortgage.

I took a print out of that spread sheet to a morgage originator yesterday. And boy was that interesting. I consider my situation to be "struggling financially". But it turns out that, as long as I can verify the information I submitted, and both our credit scores are considered good enough, that we will qualify with no problems. In fact the mortgage originator said that anyone with a DTI ratio (with the new mortgage payments calculated in) of any where at or below 45% - yes 45% - would qualify for a new mortgage. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I wanted to scream "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! THAT'S WHAT GOT US INTO THIS TOXIC MORTGAGE BUSINESS TO BEGIN WITH!"

But, she did ask for verification of employment, W-2's and two years of tax returns. So, I guess it's better than the NINJA loan days of the recent past.

BTW, our DTI ratio, with the new loan would be 34%, which I consider to be plenty high.