09/06/2026
Here are the 3 main reasons why Underwriters ask about the money you are using for down payment:
1. The Patriot Act - since 9/11, the mortgage industry has been tasked with terrorist financial crime managment.. It was discovered that terrorists were coming into this country with illegally obtained funds, buying real estate, which ultimately laundered those funds, and allowed them to live among us. So every dollar in a mortgage transaction has to be seasoned or sourced.
2. If there's a new loan that gave you those newly deposited funds, we would have to count that new loan payment into your debt ratio.
3. If you did borrow funds, that could be another issue. Because most loan programs require that a certain amount of the money used in a transaction comes from your hard earned savings. That's why the amount of down payment correlates to the amount of risk the lender perceives. If you're down, payment came from borrowed funds, the risk deterrent isn’t nearly as much as if it came out of your savings account, that you've been working on for years.
Hope that helps explain the reason why the underwriters seem to be all up in your business. 😀