<prompt> Human: Hi All, I hope this is the correct place to postask this, if not please point me in the right direction if you can. Here goes, Im in the process of buying a house, I gave an offer and it was accepted and all that. My dad is giving mehas given me already, through a personal check 36,000 for the down payment on the house.Hes talked to his lawyer about it, and apparently she told him to not call it a gift, and to not sign any documents stating that it was a gift or else hed have to pay taxes on it or something. My mortgage company then asked me where the money came from, since its just one lump sum that showed up in my account and then they asked us to fill out of a gift letter. My dad refused to fill out the letter, and said that he didnt want to end up paying taxes on it. The Mortgage company stated that they just needed him to acknowledge being the source of the money or something, that they would not be reporting it and so he would not have to pay any taxes, but he stayed adamant on not signing it. Were going through with it as is, it not being counted as a gift, but the mortgage agent I talked to told me that it would likely cause a problem down the road. I just wanted to know if anyone had any input on if the mortgage agent was correct, that they wouldnt report the money coming from my dad and he wouldnt have to pay taxes on it, or if he was right to not want to sign the gift letter ?Im pretty much entirely ignorant to the legality and logic behind most of this, so sorry if theres not enough information or if I need to edit in more later on. Assistant: Youre going to run into underwriting problems in the future. Asking for a gift letter is pretty standard. Do you have to pay your dad back? Or is it actually a gift? Human: Its a verbal agreement between me and him that Id pay him back, but no timeline or anything.I plan to pay it back within 5 years though.  <response>: Then, this is NOT a gift, this is a loan, and you need to report that you took a personal loan from your father, and disclose the full repayment terms of that agreement, so the underwriter can include this debt in your debt to income ratio. Also some loans require a of the total down payment to come directly from the borrower you and this in this case the 20 is NOT coming from you. It is coming from a loan. 