Preparing to buy again...advice please

[girlgator95]

Hi All,
We are about 17 mos. out from our CH7 discharge. We also have a foreclosure that occurred prior to our BK filing. Our home was resold in Dec. 2010 by the bank. My question is...since our foreclosure happened prior to the BK filing, will we be able to start looking for a new home in January 2014? We are saving up as much as possible for a down payment, but don't know that it will be 20%. Our FICO scores seem to be improving little by little. I think they are in the mid 600's currently. Any advice on finding mortgage brokers/banks when the time comes?

[Over our heads]

I called a FHA lender just a few weeks ago, and discovered that we can apply on June 1 this year. That makes 3 years out from our short sale. Everything I have read says you need a 660 score to not need manual underwriting. Since we are above that, I didn't try and discover exactly what that means. FHA will be the only way to go for us, I can handle a 3.5% down, but not a 20%.