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Not That Into You posted:Thanks for the advice everyone. I have the same bad taste in my mouth from the co-sign thing. But it's hard to FYGM to a man who paid my way through private university only a few years back. Assuming that I'd want to help Dad get his house, would there be a better financial option for me than co-signing? I'm single, 90K/yr, 150K savings with 50K of that liquid, 0 debt. Also, was the loan officer lying about the 12-month cancelled check thing? We can't tell you not to do it since he's family and that's usually why people cosign. Frankly though, if you want to pay him back, you should just give him an outright gift of cash instead of risking your own credit. Either that, or more logically, talk him out of purchasing. If he can't even qualify for the mortgage payments on his income, how's he going to take care of property taxes? Maintenance? Utilities?
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Sep 23, 2011 20:55
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You could buy a house yourself and rent it to him. Or, you could just give your dad some money to help buy the house.
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Sep 23, 2011 22:09
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Shipon posted:Yes, they were lying. You can't get around it: He can't get a bank loan because he can't afford it. I would stick with the "I can't cosign because I won't be able to buy my own house"
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Sep 23, 2011 22:53
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Can you gift him enough to get the payments down to where he CAN afford it? I wouldn't do it any other way, and even then i'd have to REALLY love him.
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Sep 23, 2011 23:03
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I have put my house for sale and looking for a new one! Youppi dee doo! I am a first time seller, any special tips?
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Sep 23, 2011 23:59
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My wife and I have decided to start looking to buy. We're looking to buy something around 200k but I wouldn't be against other options. We've both agreed that we'd rather have a townhouse/condo because neither of us are particularly interested in doing yard work, but I really don't want to spend more than $1300-1500 a month when everything is all said and done. We currently pay $600 a month to live in a really terrible area, but in a pretty decent apartment. It will be hard to get used to paying more. We have 3 cats though, so I feel like renting something decent would be out of the question. How legit is the concept of rent to own? Do people still rent houses? What options should I look into?
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Sep 24, 2011 01:09
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Your aversion to yard work is, on its own, a terrible reason to prefer a townhouse/condo over an actual house. There are plenty of houses out there without significant (or any) yard, and if you really want to you can just pave it over with gravel if you wind up with one. Or you can actually pay a gardner/landscaper, which is what you do (by proxy) anyway if you buy a townhome or condo. People still rent houses. Lots of them. Plenty of landlords are OK with cats. Sometimes you pay a larger security deposit against potential cleaning costs or whatever, but sometimes not even that. If you buy a house for $200k, your total housing cost is going to more than double over what you're paying now. $1500 is just about reasonable for mortgage payment, insurance, and tax - but not also including maintenance. If you buy a condo or townhouse, you'll have condo fees/HOA fees to pay, and those can vary widely but will probably be at least a couple hundred a month, and often much more. You should take careful stock of your finances, cash on hand, credit, etc. Then you should think about your life goals - if you buy a property, you are basically committing yourself to staying there for the better part of a decade at a minimum. Better be sure about your area, your job security, your hopes and dreams, etc. Then, read this thread, because there's lots of advice and horror stories. If, after you've subsumed yourself in the neverending wash of negativity and broken dreams, you still feel super-excited about owning your own money-destroying machine, then we can help you out better with some specifics about what you want and how much money you have and where you live.
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Sep 24, 2011 01:16
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Shipon posted:Yes, they were lying. Not necessarily. For FHA and conventional loans allow the exclusion of co-signed loans if you document for the last 12 months the primary obligor has been making the payments on their own and on time. That said, cosigning is still a bad idea and you should really think carefully about it. Edit: reworded Captain Windex fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Sep 24, 2011 |
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Sep 24, 2011 02:12
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Not That Into You posted:Anyways, my father recently got the home-ownership bug after many years of renting. He is semi-retired, and lives off of his investment interest as his income. Not yet at SS age. Because of the low income reported on taxes, he is unable to get a full loan amount of $250k (Fanny only authorized $110k). He'd prefer to get a standard 30yr/20% loan than cash out investments/retirement accounts/etc, and has asked me to be a cosigner. Maybe you should help him look at cheaper houses. $250k is a bit on the high side for fixed income. There are tons of affordable houses out there in this economy. There's got to be one he likes.
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Sep 24, 2011 08:26
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Leperflesh posted:Your aversion to yard work is, on its own, a terrible reason to prefer a townhouse/condo over an actual house. There are plenty of houses out there without significant (or any) yard, and if you really want to you can just pave it over with gravel if you wind up with one. Or you can actually pay a gardner/landscaper, which is what you do (by proxy) anyway if you buy a townhome or condo. Thanks for all of this. I was saying $1500 because that will be enough that we'll still have a pretty significant amount of left over money at the end of each month. I did read the thread and it's pretty scary. I think I'm just tired of dealing with the "drive bys" around my place. I'm less sold on buying now, but she's still adamant about it.
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Sep 24, 2011 11:28
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Pillowpants posted:Thanks for all of this. I was saying $1500 because that will be enough that we'll still have a pretty significant amount of left over money at the end of each month. What the hell... Why not get a slightly nicer apartment in a decent area in the meantime while you think about it?
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Sep 24, 2011 13:09
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Yeah, if you hate where you live, it's obvious you can afford much better - move somewhere nicer. You can even rent a whole house (or, if you must, a condo or townhome) and see what that's like.
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Sep 24, 2011 18:51
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The wife has a question for you guys that I can't answer. In the OP, it said renting is not throwing money away but she doesn't understand why. Can someone explain that to us?
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Sep 25, 2011 13:15
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Renting is cheaper than buying, especially in the short term. Homes are serious money sinks, and there's no guarantee that you prices will go up. Every time you move you will have a ton of very expensive costs, as well. There are a lot of hidden costs and downsides to owning a home. Yard work, breaking appliances, foundations cracking, roofs leaking, bad electricity, etc. all add up. I personally have spent around 8K in the past couple of months on necessary repairs/improvements. That money isn't going to come back, it didn't raise my home value by any amount.
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Sep 25, 2011 14:08
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Pillowpants posted:The wife has a question for you guys that I can't answer. It is in some circumstances. It depends on the person and situation. Some people can put more money into savings / investments while renting, than they could have gained equity while buying. But the point is to make people stop and think about the expenses of ownership that are also throwing money away (interest, property tax, bigger utility bills, maintenance, repairs, possibly other things like increased distance to work). Also the "intangible" costs of buying, like it locks you into your area / lifestyle more than renting does. On top of that, ownership involves extra risks that aren't present when renting, especially if you have a low% down. If home prices drop a few % and you didn't have much down, you're completely stuck. Someone loses a job at that point? Etc. Etc. Nocheez posted:I personally have spent around 8K in the past couple of months on necessary repairs/improvements. That money isn't going to come back, it didn't raise my home value by any amount. But it did prevent your home value from going down the shitter. That's what maintenance is. lapse fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Sep 25, 2011 |
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Sep 25, 2011 14:12
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Pillowpants posted:In the OP, it said renting is not throwing money away but she doesn't understand why. Can someone explain that to us? However, when people talk about mortgages, they usually say that THAT money isn't being thrown away, it's going to the mortgage, like there's some kind of difference. The first ten years or so, most of your payments will be going to interest (check out amortization tables to see just how much). You'll also need to deal with paying for repairs and maintenance on your own, property tax, all that other junk. And that's not even taking into account the fact that your home might just decide to decline in value 10% (if you're unlucky) or 50% (if you're REALLY unlucky), and then all of that precious money you've been paying towards your mortgage is thrown away anyways (and like lapse said, you're way leveraged on your house, so if that happens, you're gonna be stuck there for a good long while). It's a really really dumb argument to say that renting vs buying is throwing money away.
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Sep 25, 2011 16:52
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Pillowpants posted:In the OP, it said renting is not throwing money away but she doesn't understand why. Can someone explain that to us? Whether you rent, buy with a mortgage, or buy outright, you're exchanging money for a place to live. For most people, it comes down to a choice to rent a place to live directly or to rent money from a bank to buy a place to live. The real question is what can you get for your money in both of those scenarios and which suits your needs better.
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Sep 25, 2011 16:54
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Pillowpants posted:The wife has a question for you guys that I can't answer. My wife and I are going to be buying a house in the next few months with a considerable down payment and our property taxes alone will be more than our mortgage. DO NEVER BUY.
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Sep 25, 2011 19:19
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FCKGW posted:My wife and I are going to be buying a house in the next few months with a considerable down payment and our property taxes alone will be more than our mortgage. If you bought one of those 5k bangers in MI or OH, I don't feel sorry for you.
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Sep 25, 2011 19:33
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greasyhands posted:If you bought one of those 5k bangers in MI or OH, I don't feel sorry for you. No, it's in the wonderful housing bubble of CA. Good news is that houses have dropped in half from their median peak of 700k. Bad news is property tax and special assessments account for 600/mo in taxes.
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Sep 26, 2011 00:42
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greasyhands posted:If you bought one of those 5k bangers in MI or OH, I don't feel sorry for you.  (Christ, my monthly cell phone bill is more than the yearly taxes on a 5k banger (according to one website. Another shows the taxes as being 3x higher)) And yes they actually exist here. A friend got a place for $8K. Decent too. The jokes about buying a block of houses in Detroit for a few grand are not too far off either.
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Sep 26, 2011 01:09
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Fire Storm posted:HEY! Don't badmouth Michigan! It's... I mean the housing market... I... Detroit, we were in a recession before it was cool. 
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Sep 26, 2011 01:20
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Pillowpants posted:The wife has a question for you guys that I can't answer. Another big factor worth mentioning is that with a house every dime of nondeductible interest, property taxes, and PMI is "thrown away." Likewise, what you spend in general maintenance (things that would be covered by a landlord were you renting) is also "thrown away." If you move from a smallish apartment to a house it's very likely you could throwing more money away in interest and taxes than you were spending for your rent.
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Sep 26, 2011 01:47
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Quick summary of my experience. Back in 1994 I bought an $80k fixer upper, put tons of work into it and sold it 3 years later for $26k more than I paid for it, a gain of 32%. I borrowed $10k to repair it, so I walked away with $16k in "profit", a 20% return. So 7% or so annually. My monthly rent before the house was $450. In the house, my monthly bills increased about $900, due to now paying a mortgage, mortgage insurance, gas, electric, garbage, water, sewer, taxes, cable, all the things that I didn't pay (or were way cheaper) when I rented. This doesn't even include non recurring bills like buying a lawnmower or a washer and dryer, or plants for the yard. So when you add it up, I spent about $32,000 to earn that $16,000. If I had just put the $900 increase in the bank for 3 years, I would have had $32k and wouldn't have had to lift a finger to do it, nor would there have been any risk or stress. I didn't know I would bring the value of the house up, I could have just as easily lost my rear end on the deal. I would have been vastly richer and happier staying where I was. "Rent is throwing away money" is a lie perpetuated by the real estate industry to fool people into buying when they shouldn't. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Sep 26, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 05:56
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greasyhands posted:If you bought one of those 5k bangers in MI or OH, I don't feel sorry for you. They are more like 25k plus paint and a few minor repairs, and you get a perfectly inhabitable house. Input from the Ohio/Michigan line. And I agree, rent, do not ever buy.
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Sep 26, 2011 11:32
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LloydDobler posted:"Rent is throwing away money" is a lie perpetuated by the real estate industry to fool people into buying when they shouldn't. Yeah buying a house to "save money" is a terrible idea and does not work. I bought a house 3 years ago for $325k, 60k down. So far I've had to sink 54k into it in repairs. The house was just appraised at $315k. The house still needs another 40-60k of work within the next 5 years. My disposable income has gone down from about $600/m when I rented to less than $100. Every penny I earn for the next 10 years could easily be sunk into the house. Oh and currently our washer is having "bad days" when it decides not to work. Right now I simply do not have the money to buy a new one. That's home ownership for you.
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Sep 26, 2011 19:36
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LloydDobler posted:"Rent is throwing away money" is a lie perpetuated by the real estate industry to fool people into buying when they shouldn't. Isn't home ownership a big part of American culture as well? It has always seemed like owning your own home was one of the requirements for being a true red blooded American and that renting is for commies, poors, and other failures. Owning your own home tends to get you respect from other people and is often considered a major life goal.
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Sep 26, 2011 21:47
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Yes, making stupid financial decisions on principle is an important part of our culture.
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Sep 26, 2011 21:53
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MH Knights posted:Isn't home ownership a big part of American culture as well? It has always seemed like owning your own home was one of the requirements for being a true red blooded American and that renting is for commies, poors, and other failures. Owning your own home tends to get you respect from other people and is often considered a major life goal. 
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Sep 26, 2011 21:54
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Would it be possible to afford a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 house making $612.50 gross a week (I get paid 1099 so have to pay own taxes) without living paycheck to paycheck while having money to afford utilities?
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Sep 26, 2011 22:08
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Been waiting on a response on short sale from seller's bank for a bit now. Zillow/Trulia changed the listing to Removed/Off Market on friday, and the seller's agent is amazingly lazy about news. HOORAJ 
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Sep 26, 2011 22:09
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hello internet posted:Would it be possible to afford a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 house making $612.50 gross a week (I get paid 1099 so have to pay own taxes) without living paycheck to paycheck while having money to afford utilities? I make slightly more than you and would be a nervous wreck with that.
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Sep 26, 2011 22:10
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hello internet posted:Would it be possible to afford a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 house making $612.50 gross a week (I get paid 1099 so have to pay own taxes) without living paycheck to paycheck while having money to afford utilities? A mortgage? You'd probably qualify for a 30 year mortgage of 100k on that income. But then you'd need to take into account property taxes, increased utility costs as compared to an apartment (unless you're renting a house already), and the maintenance. Oh, the maintenance costs! Bad news, just rent. No way can you afford to buy a house like that on what's basically a 32k a year salary before increased self-employment taxes.
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Sep 26, 2011 22:40
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hello internet posted:Would it be possible to afford a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 house making $612.50 gross a week (I get paid 1099 so have to pay own taxes) without living paycheck to paycheck while having money to afford utilities? You would probably qualify but I wouldn't do it unless you have 0 other debt, and even then it's cutting it close. What kind of down payment?
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Sep 26, 2011 22:44
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hello internet posted:Would it be possible to afford a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 house making $612.50 gross a week (I get paid 1099 so have to pay own taxes) without living paycheck to paycheck while having money to afford utilities? You will want to have at least 20% down in order to prevent this from becoming the most stressful thing you have ever done.
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Sep 26, 2011 23:22
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Whoops, they accepted my offer of 60k with 6% concessions. Woe is me!
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Sep 26, 2011 23:46
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quote:Would it be possible to afford a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 house making $612.50 gross a week (I get paid 1099 so have to pay own taxes) without living paycheck to paycheck while having money to afford utilities? At a yearly gross of $31,850, you can *ideally* spend 33% of that on housing. That leaves you at $875 a month as your absolute maximum for monthly housing costs. With 20% down, a decent rate (4.5%), and an extremely low property tax (under 2%), I came up with about $716 - $746 as your monthly mortgage payment. This doesn't include utilities. Add in electric, gas, water, garbage, sewer, internet, television and you're going to easily be up over $875. We haven't even gotten into maintenance and repairs yet... See the problem? If you got the best rate possible, even better than 20% down payment, low taxes, and skipped out on cable tv, you could probably do it. I did (93k house on a 35k income)... But I don't recommend it and thus, do never buy. Edit - nevermind all the above, I tried to justify it a bit for you but... no, just don't do it.
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Sep 27, 2011 06:13
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Insignificunt posted:They are more like 25k plus paint and a few minor repairs, and you get a perfectly inhabitable house. Input from the Ohio/Michigan line. hello internet posted:Would it be possible to afford a 30 year mortgage on $100,000 house making $612.50 gross a week (I get paid 1099 so have to pay own taxes) without living paycheck to paycheck while having money to afford utilities? Well... I should change that. You asked POSSIBLE. It's POSSIBLE... but a HORRIBLE idea.
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Sep 27, 2011 07:00
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Fire Storm posted:My new house is proof-loving-positive of that.
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Sep 27, 2011 13:12
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The whole rent or keep my house conundrum I am in has me a nervous wreck. It costs the same to rent a 3 bedroom 2 bath as it does to have my house. 
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Sep 27, 2011 13:23
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