Russell Stout

Somewhere around the second glass at a Fredericksburg tasting room, the thought arrives fully formed: we should buy one of these. It’s not a bad instinct. The Hill Country does real short-term rental business, and people finance these properties successfully all the time. But the financing question gets decided long before you call me — […]

A retired engineer sat across from me with about as clean a file as I ever see. Paid-off house, seven figures in a brokerage account, no debt worth mentioning, credit in the high 700s. A bank had already told him no. Not because of anything in that paragraph. Because the box on the application labeled […]

This question comes up on almost every first call, usually phrased as an apology. “I’ve still got a car payment, so I’m probably not there yet.” Maybe. But a lot of people talk themselves out of a house over a car loan that either wasn’t going to count, or wasn’t the actual problem. It’s worth […]

I had a borrower this month whose credit score was 577. His credit score was also 640. Same person. Same credit report. Same afternoon. Two different numbers, 63 points apart, and which one we used decided what kind of loan he could get. That is not a glitch and it is not a typo. It […]

The most uncomfortable call in this business is the one where I tell a business owner what his income is. He knows what he makes. He watches the account. He can tell me to the dollar what came in last month and he is not wrong about any of it. Then underwriting runs the file […]

Ask any AI assistant what credit score you need to buy a house and you will get the same answer: 620 for conventional, 580 for FHA. Confident, specific, and repeated on roughly every mortgage website in America. It is also out of date. Fannie Mae removed that 620 minimum in November of 2025. What actually […]