Don’t be surprised if your friendly lender, the one who invites you to sit down and apply for a mortgage, ushers you politely out the door empty-handed after you’ve chatted a bit. The truth is that lending such large amounts of money is a risky business, and that money isn’t handed over to just anyone. Instead of yielding to shame, anger or any of the usual emotions associated with rejection, today’s consumers who are intent on buying or refinancing should adopt a pragmatic stance, since clear-eyed determination may eventually land them a loan.

Take control of your situation and learn what you can do to turn that rejection into an approval:

1. Get a Co-signer

If your income isn’t high enough to qualify for the loan you need and if you can find a co-signer with enough disposable income, part of that person’s income can be considered toward your loan amount regardless of whether the person will actually be living with you or helping you pay the bill. In some cases, a co-signer may also be able to compensate for your less-than-perfect credit. Overall, the co-signer is guaranteeing the lender that your mortgage payments will be paid.

2. Wait

Sometimes conditions in the economy, the housing market, or the lending business make lenders less generous with loans. If you’re in a climate where everyone is panicking, then it may be best to wait things out. When conditions improve, lenders may become more accommodating. In the meantime, you can work on improving your credit score, reducing your debt and increasing your savings. While you’re waiting, home prices or interest rates could drop. Either of these changes could also improve your mortgage eligibility.

3. Set Your Sights on a Less-Expensive Property

If you can’t qualify for the amount of mortgage you want and you aren’t willing to wait, switching to a condo or townhouse instead of a house, accepting fewer bedrooms or bathrooms, or moving to a less attractive or more distant neighborhood may give you more options. As a more drastic option, you could even move to a different part of the country where the cost of home ownership is lower. When your financial situation improves down the road, you might be able to trade up to the property, neighborhood or city where you hope to end up.

4. Ask the Lender for an Exception

Believe it or not, it is possible to ask the lender to send your file to someone else within the company for a second opinion on a rejected loan application. In asking for an exception, you’ll need to have a very good reason, and you’ll need to write a carefully worded letter defending your case. Your letter should avoid excuses and sob stories and focus only on the facts. Explain how the incident that is preventing your loan from being approved, such as a charged-off account, was a one-time event that will never occur again. This one-time event should have been caused by a catastrophe such as a large and unexpected medical expense, natural disaster, divorce or death in the family. The blemish on your record will actually need to have been a one-time event, and you’ll need to be able to back your story up with an otherwise flawless credit history.

5. Try a Different Lender

Sometimes one lender will say no while another will say yes. If the first lender you approach rejects you, there’s no reason not to try out a few other options. If every lender rejects you for the same reason, though, you’ll know that it’s not the lender that’s the problem, it’s your financial situation. Your only choice at this point is to fix the problem.

Be careful to avoid loan sharks, too. Remember, you don’t want just any loan, you want a reasonable loan. One major potential benefit of homeownership is the financial security it can bring, but if you get a bad loan, that aspect of homeownership disappears. In a worst-case scenario, a bad loan could result in your losing the home, as it did for many who bought homes during the carefree lending days of the housing bubble.

6. Team Up With Someone Else

Two incomes are better than one, so if you can’t qualify on your own, perhaps you have a family member or friend that you trust enough and like enough to make a major purchase with and live with. It won’t be enough to just put them on the loan, of course - they’ll need to actually help with the mortgage payments to make it work, and chances are they won’t want to pay half the mortgage unless they’re living in the new home with you.