Consumer complaint received 2018-03-06
Company: PulteGroup, Inc.
State: IN
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: VA mortgage
Issue: Applying for a mortgage or refinancing an existing mortgage

Complaint:
My husband and I had gotten married last XX/XX/XXXX, he is currently on Military XXXX XXXX orders and is traveling quite frequently. We decided to wait a few months to looks for houses and in XXXX, we found the right builder and the right house. We went with Pulte because we liked one of the home styles a lot. Pulte informed us to look into Pulte Mortgage for financing, so we did. We thought it would be easier to go in house, it was not. 
They pulled our credit in XXXX and said that everything looked fine besides my husband 's credit score. They informed us to move forward with the home build anway and they would " cook '' his credit to get it to the minimum standards for VA approval. We did inform them that my husband was out on orders and was a few days late ( no more than 5 days ) on a revolving credit with XXXX XXXX and his XXXX XXXX. Obviously we asked if this would stop the process or hurt us down the road, they informed us that they saw the lates and it was not a concern. I then asked if I should have my husband write a letter of explanation for those two lates to have on file and give to the underwriter just in case, they told us they didn't need them. 
Months went by and my husband got his credit score where it needed to be and the house was in it's finally stages. Our loan team said that everything looked great, they just needed to submit the documents through the automatic underwriting system. Maybe a day later they told us the loan was being denied due to his late payments back in XXXX and XXXX, the ones we told them about when they first looked at our credit and before we started the build on our home. We kept asking if it could be anything else stopping the loan ; DTI or credit, but they told us it was only the late payments.They had told me that it doesn't look good and that they don't think we will get approved. 
At this point I was shocked and angry because we wanted to know if this was going to cause issues and if we should wait until the 12 months have past without any late payments, and they told us no and to go ahead anyways. They said they were going to submit for a manual underwrite and they now needed the letters of explanation from my husband, keep in mind he is out in the field for Active duty military orders and in " secret rooms '' where he can not access the outside world since he has a top secret clearance. This is why I wanted the letters ahead of time, while he was home and not out in the field. 
So I had to bother him during a busy training to have him write these letters to get denied by the manual underwrite in the end. My husband has served his country for 17 plus years now and has done two tours of duty over seas. No he is not perfect, no one is, but to lead us on and to encourage us to pursue this house to end of getting denied in the end is insulting. They knew about the lates, because we told them and they saw them on the first two credit pulls they did back in XXXX and XXXX. We found this out late XXXX that Pulte Mortgage was no longer going through with our loan and we close in early XXXX. What is eye opening is that the lates weren't even 90 days old when they first pulled his credit, so that should have been the red flag and we should have been told to hold off, not that " it's not going to be an issue '' and now, months later when the lates are now 6 months old. 
We heard later that Pulte Mortgage does not like to do Government loans, which I wish we would have known in the beginning because we wouldn't have gone to them in the first place. My husband is an active vet, he deserves to use his VA rights. So I am filing a complaint about negligence and false information on this companies behalf, this should never have happened and it was preventable.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation