(The following is a transcription from a video my real estate agent, Jake Blount, and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)
Can the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Loan negatively affect your credit score?
And, can it prevent you from getting approved for a mortgage?
It seems the answer is yes.
I wanted to understand this better. So, I sat down with my real estate agent, Jake Blount, to discuss how to work through this if you got the PPP loan and are trying to get a mortgage (or other loan).
We will be providing some information that just may help you avoid your credit score being affected negatively by the PPP loan, and help you get that loan approved.
We welcome you to view our discussion with our SeedTime community, here:
Below is a the transcript from our conversation:
The PPP Loan
Bob Lotich: I have my friend and real estate and Jake here and we were chatting the other day and I got the PPP loan and he said, “Hey, fun fact about the PPP loan, it can prevent you from getting a mortgage.” And so I want to hear all about this. I want to hear what this situation is because I don’t think anybody knows about this. I haven’t heard about this at all. Tell me what the deal is like, what happened? What was the story here? Where are we?
It Can Prevent You From Getting A Mortgage
Jake Blount: Basically it wasn’t a client, it was actually myself. That makes it closer to home, more personal. Basically we had been planning on buying a new house for a while and renting out our current house to try to build up some rental income and kind of rental properties. And house had on the market on our street for a while and we finally were like, okay, I think this is the time it’s been on for a while. And so we were going to start to kind of go down that path. And so we’re like, great, we got our taxes done. Little bit of a rough start from the beginning of coronavirus, but we were able to get the PPP, which brings us to why we’re kind of talking about this now in the first place. Get the PPP in May, May 5th. It was the first round of getting it. Great. We got it in my bank account. I had lost a couple deals.
Bob Lotich: Got some money. Yay!
Jake Blount: Yeah, got some money. Cha-ching. Had a couple of deals fall through, so it was perfect. It got me right through the time to when some of those deals started coming back again. I had a couple of deals that were ready to close. I’m feeling good. It’s time to move forward with this purchase. And so we got our taxes done. Now it’s time to talk to the lender. Let’s get the mortgage. Verbally I talked on the phone what our income was, where we’re at, what we’re planning on doing. He’s like, “Great. “You will qualify for this no problem. Great.” All right, pumped. He was like, “All right, well, we’re going to do this thing. Let me look at your credit report.” Pull his credit report. He’s like, okay, this is fine. You know, a little $35 a month credit card, no big deal. And then he’s like, “What is this $750 a month loan?” And I was like, “Wait, what?” He’s like, “What is this maxed out $750 a month loan?” I was like, “Ah, I don’t have a maxed out 700. What are you talking about?” My first thought is somebody has frauded us.
Is Fraud The Issue?
Bob Lotich: Stolen my identity or something.
Jake Blount: Yeah, so that’s the first thing I say is, “I think someone has stolen my identity.” And he was like, “It’s happened before. We got to figure this out.” And I was like, “Where’s it at?” He’s like, “It’s at Pinnacle Bank.” And I’m like, “Pinnacle Financial Partners, that’s who I bank with.” And I was like, “Wait, I bank there.” I’m like, “Somebody stole my identity and had the audacity to pull a huge loan in my name.”
Bob Lotich: At your bank.
Jake Blount: At my bank. And so I’m totally following this whole thing of fraud or whatever, thinking that that was what’s happening. Because I’m all in thinking, I’m not thinking about the Paycheck Protection Program, which is it ended up being was the Paycheck Protection Loan was that loan because it was at the time a two year payback period. If you’re talking about a $15,000 loan with a two year payback period, so it was this massive debt on my account and totally.
Bob Lotich: Unexpected. You didn’t know it was there.
Jake Blount: Unexpected.
Is The PPP Loan Actually A Loan?
Bob Lotich: Well, and everybody gets a PPP loan because you don’t really view it as a loan because it’s forgivable and everybody I assume is going through it thinking, I’m going to get the forgiveness and it doesn’t exist as a loan.
Jake Blount: Or it did. Yeah. And so I called my banker and that was the first thing I asked him. I’m like, “Hey, what is this deal? What is going on?” And he starts laughing. I’m like, “Why are you laughing at me? I’m going through a bad time here. And you’re going to laugh at me.” And he said, he was like, “I’ve had this phone call five times this week already.” I’m like, “Really?” I was like, “What’s going on?” He’s like, well, as you’ve kind of explained some of the previous videos, the Paycheck Protection Program it changes every couple weeks they have a new thing because I’m guessing that businesses are coming back and saying, “Hey, this isn’t working for us.” And they want it to be helpful because that’s the purpose of the loan. That’s when I went on a research binger and I think this is where Bob and I, we share a common brotherhood, research.
Bob Lotich: Research. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Jake Blount: I started reading about it and basically that’s when I kind of started finding out that it was supposedly, most small business association loans are not personal or they’re not personally guaranteed, but they are reported to the credit bureaus.
Bob Lotich: Credit bureaus.
Jake Blount: Yeah. Yeah. And this one was supposedly not going to be that way because it was this forgivable loan. It had a weird kind of payback period. That was the original intent of the loan. But then they were actually not even supposed to report it at all, but now they’re reporting it to personal credit and loan.
Bob Lotich: Wow.
Jake Blount: And that’s what affected my mortgage because they were looking at it as this is a personal guaranteed loan.
Resolving The Issue
Bob Lotich: Where did it go from there? I’m assuming you got those resolved in your case.
Jake Blount: Almost.
Bob Lotich: Almost.
Jake Blount: Yeah. I have the good news.
Bob Lotich: All right, let’s talk about the good news.
Jake Blount: Immediately I’m asking the banker, “What can we do about this?” Because we know the intention is everybody in America, everybody knows what that means and how it works. And we kind of made some suggestions about him writing a letter to the mortgage lender and saying, “This is the purpose of the loan. And so therefore we can’t consider this or we shouldn’t consider this on your personal thing. Plus it’s going to be forgiven because it was used in the right purposes.” And the lender was still, “We have rules, because of 2008 and the crashes where they used to just if you had 20% down, they’d give you any size loan. You had 20% down.” All that’s changed.
And so the good news is if your lender they’re starting to work this out because we’re kind of the first round of people who are finally starting to get back on their feet, moving forward. And they’re like, now I’m going to start looking at that house that I was going to buy in March. I’m going to start trying to look into that now in June, July, August. And so now that’s when lenders are starting to figure it out. My lender personally, at Movement Mortgage, he said that they actually are at the very top writing a letter that kind of states what this is to send to the underwriters. And supposedly the underwriters are going to accept it. I don’t know because my banker also said he’s had a couple people not able to get the loan because of it.
Bob Lotich: That is crazy. It’s just amazing how quickly this whole thing rolled out and all of the kind of dominoes that are falling and the negative effects of this and the fact that some people are not able to get a mortgage because of this, unknowingly. They had no idea.
Jake Blount: The banker told me that it was, they didn’t know because it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The intention of the loan was to never be on your personal credit report.
Bob Lotich: Okay. If somebody is watching this and they’re in this situation, what do you have any suggestions?
What You Should Do
Jake Blount: Yeah. The first thing is, there’s a differentiation of when you got the loan, this may be getting too much info.
Bob Lotich: You can never have too much.
Jake Blount: But if you’re before June 5th, it was defaulted to a two year payback period. If you’re after June 5th, it’s defaulted to a five year payback period.
Bob Lotich: Okay. That’ll change things considerably.
Jake Blount: That will change things considerably because that’s a very big difference in your payment scheduling. Also, you can talk to your bank if you had it pre June 5th, which and there you can renegotiate it.
Bob Lotich: To turn into a five year or something?
Jake Blount: To five year.
Bob Lotich: That reduces your monthly payment. And that would just look better.
Jake Blount: Oh, way better need that day to come.
Bob Lotich: For the mortgage company. Okay.
Jake Blount: It looks way better.
Bob Lotich: That’s one way. And then you said, who was it? Your banker is writing a letter to the mortgage company?
Jake Blount: He said he could write a letter basically stating, this is the literal law that the banker can send to the lender to say, “Hey, this is forgivable. This is now five years. At worst case scenario, if it’s not forgivable, it’s a five year loan so it looks a lot better.” And then the third thing would be if your mortgage lenders could already be taking right steps to get this sort of situated anyways. Also, the first round of forgiveness applications, I think starting July 6th. That’s another way to get it forgiven, wiped away so that you can move forward.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, that’s great. I think the moral of the story here is that the thing is just a mess, but bottom line is some people are already in this situation and you gave us three different things we can do to kind of move forward in that. And that’s making the best of the situation we’re in.
Jake Blount: Exactly, yeah. Because this is probably going to be your window unless you’re crushing the rest of 2020, let’s hope we do. It might be a dip on your income so 2021, you might have to wait till next tax season 2022.
Bob Lotich: Yeah. All right. Well, if you’re in Nashville, you need a great real estate agent, Jake is my guy and I recommend him highly. But other than that, that’s all we have for you today. Be blessed, be blessing. See you soon.
SeedTime Money Mastery Quiz
Hey, thanks so much for watching the video. If you haven’t yet taken our Money Mastery quiz, be sure to do that.
Linda Lotich: Yeah, It’s just a super quick two minute quiz and it’s going to help you understand how good you are with your money.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, and it’s going to provide a custom report giving you specific suggestions of how you can reach your financial goals up to 10 times faster. Head over to: seedtime.com/quiz to get started now.
