Recently I’ve had a few borrowers who have just graduated from college and are trying to buy their first home or refinance their current mortgage.
Unfortunately their debt-to-income ratio (DTI) is too high due to numerous student loans.
Years ago when I graduated from college, there were loan consolidation programs available — However, in April 2008, Sallie Mae announced that they will discontinue their federal loan consolidation program effective May 9, 2008.
There are a few private loan consolidation programs available so check with your lender to see if your program still qualifies some type of loan consolidation program.
Anyway, I called Sallie Mae to find out what options are available for recent graduates who need to lower their monthly debt obligations but can no longer do a loan consolidation and they gave me a few options that I thought would be worth sharing:
