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archangelwar posted:And with condo fees and maintenance paid out of pocket, you are coming out roughly equal to rent. And you mentioned possibly upgrading in 5 years. Believe it or not, in that scenario, you are likely, at best, to come out at a wash with rent, if not behind. This is assuming slight appreciation of the property, rather than any decline. My advice is that if you absolutely must buy, is to buy something you know that you could spend at least a decade in. This includes accounting for any children or pets or hobbies. I'm embarrassed to say one of my primary reasons for wanting to buy is that my hobby is model trains so I want a 2 or 1/den condo that I can use the smaller room to be a train/hobby room. My wife is the best and is actually letting me do this. Kids are not coming. Me and my trains are kid enough.
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Jun 20, 2012 03:13
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Your post seriously looks like it could have been written by me 4 months ago. Take out the cats part, and then make me a recent college grad who already interned for the company in the same city a year ago. (Phoenix area) My wife and I rented a bedroom from a guy we work with. We planned on staying for about a month, leave everything in storage, to find a house, and then move in as soon as it closed. After hiring (and subsequently firing) World's Worst Realtor (tm), we realized that this is going to take longer than usual. We took over the lease on some schoolteacher's affordable apartment we found on craigslist, and will settle in there so we can eliminate the homelessness time crunch and find the right house for us at the right price. We were at one point even under contract for $151k on a house that would have appraised for $120k.  Talk to people at work. Use your new network. Where do they live? How are the schools? What's the market like? Is there a going to be a change in your household monthly expenses in this new city? (higher food prices, longer commute, etc) Do they mostly live in one or two areas? Do they regret their house way out in the 'burbs during their 60 minute commute? In a megacorp like that, someone around there was in a similar situation and bought a house within the last six months. You're making the largest purchase of your life to date, and it's hard enough without all the other stuff you'll have going on. The last thing you need is forcing yourself into a sense of urgency.
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Jun 20, 2012 04:21
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skipdogg posted:There is one guy around here who has a crazy home automation/alarm system setup... can't remember the poster though. It's in this thread - http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3462976 Are there any good resources for things to do after you buy? I've read a lot about stuff like applying for homestead tax exemptions, changing locks, air filters, etc. I'm closing within a week, and I'm sure there are things I have not thought of. This thread has been a great resource so far. There are things that are specific to my situation, such as installing blinds and window screens, but I'm looking for more general information.
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Jun 20, 2012 13:42
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Baronjutter posted:I'm embarrassed to say one of my primary reasons for wanting to buy is that my hobby is model trains so I want a 2 or 1/den condo that I can use the smaller room to be a train/hobby room. My wife is the best and is actually letting me do this. Kids are not coming. Me and my trains are kid enough. Velochis posted:-We have cats, so it's tough to find a place worth living that allows pets.
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Jun 20, 2012 16:25
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Im shopping around for a construction loan. The bank I am leaning towards said that his fees are : "The loan cost should be just our fee of $750 and the title company fees which everyone will have. Our legal fees for document preparation is $350 and the appraisal fee varies but $350 to $400. The interest rate is 5.25% only on the money you draw and the interest is due quarterly every 3 months. The loan is normally 12 months long and it never takes you builder that long to built it." Is it normal to have to pay 5.25% interest every 3 months on a construction loan? The house I want to build is pretty much at the top of my budget and I'm becoming rather scared that poo poo like the water line being on the wrong side of the road and "fees" are going to start stacking up along with rising interest rates and by the time I've got this thing built I might be 25K over? 
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Jun 20, 2012 17:20
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Construction almost always goes over budget so go into it with that knowledge.
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Jun 20, 2012 17:26
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We lost a bid on a house a few months back (outbid). Now I notice the house is back on the market. I don't even know if I want to deal with that realtor again due to her cuntiness. Anyone have experience with that?
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Jun 20, 2012 17:55
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25k over? whats your budget? 100k? With a loan for new construction I would say you should probably plan on having enough money available to go at least 25% over budget. I am sure someone has done it, but there is really 0 chance you don't end up somewhat over budget on a project like this and you need to have enough capacity to finish the job after unexpected problems rise. You do not want to end up out of money with a house that's 80% done, with no occupancy permit and the contractor is doing other work now cause you can't pay to finish the job.
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Jun 20, 2012 17:56
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That's not going to be a problem. I have the money its just that there is a point at which I have to draw a line and that's what I want to spend. What's the average cost of a construction loan and is it normal to have to pay 3.5% every three months?
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Jun 20, 2012 18:40
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I Might Be Adam posted:We lost a bid on a house a few months back (outbid). Now I notice the house is back on the market. I don't even know if I want to deal with that realtor again due to her cuntiness. Anyone have experience with that? You could also try to contact the seller's company and say "I'm interested in this house but won't deal with X" and depending on the size of the company you may or may not get results.
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Jun 20, 2012 19:05
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Sophia posted:If you mean the selling realtor I guess it depends on how much you do or do not want the house. I personally think its kind of silly to not look into something you want because you'll have to temporarily deal with someone unpleasant, but if you're only vaguely interested or the unpleasantness is enough to take a few years off your life, then just keep looking. There are hundreds of houses. Yeah, unfortunately the seller IS the realtor. I told myself that if we like the house, we shouldn't allow an unpleasant person to get in the way. I'm kind of laughing to myself about it because this is the same seller/realtor that told us that we lost the bid to a full price cash buyer and how better suited the couple buying the house was for the area, blah blah blah. Basically being very unprofessional about it and gloating. Looks like her full price cash buyer walked at closing. I'm going to ask my realtor if she can get more info about the possible reasons why it's back on the market.
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Jun 20, 2012 19:32
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I Might Be Adam posted:Yeah, unfortunately the seller IS the realtor. I told myself that if we like the house, we shouldn't allow an unpleasant person to get in the way. I'm kind of laughing to myself about it because this is the same seller/realtor that told us that we lost the bid to a full price cash buyer and how better suited the couple buying the house was for the area, blah blah blah. Basically being very unprofessional about it and gloating. Looks like her full price cash buyer walked at closing. I'm going to ask my realtor if she can get more info about the possible reasons why it's back on the market. Maybe make a lower offer this time. Not hugely lower, just a little lower. The worst they can do is reject it, but it'd feel really really nice if they wound up taking it haha.
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Jun 20, 2012 21:00
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Citycop posted:Im shopping around for a construction loan. The bank I am leaning towards said that his fees are : You are not paying five and a quarter every quarter, you are paying the five and a quarter annually in four payments. Once the house is built, you will have paid the interest on the money you spend during the build and the remainder of your spend will be turned into whatever 15, 20 or 30 year mortgage you choose. At least, that is what it should be. I can't comment on the rate since I am not in the build market now and have no idea of your particulars, but a construction loan is part home loan, part signature loan. So, you look at the rates you qualify for on those and you can estimate whether that is fair or not. E: based on your questions, I am assuming you are not acting as GC, but if you are, pay after completion. And negotiate net 30/discount immediate if you can. That will save you in interest since you are just paying on draw. let it mellow fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jun 21, 2012 |
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Jun 21, 2012 03:20
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So Canada is making a couple of changes to insured mortgages. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/06/21/flaherty-mortgage-cmhc.html?cmp=rss Do never buy is slowly becoming can never buy.
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Jun 21, 2012 14:30
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Whiteycar posted:So Canada is making a couple of changes to insured mortgages. It's almost to the point now that despite the fact my wife a nurse and I'm a civil servant we are getting pretty close to the point of not being able to buy a house I only hope it doesn't effect the sale on my current house.
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Jun 21, 2012 16:29
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It's a good thing I've been running all my numbers at 25 years. I'm a tiny bit confused, is this just for people who don't have a down-payment or for all mortgages?
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Jun 21, 2012 17:19
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Velochis posted:There is a high chance I'll be moving to a big scary new city within the next few months for a new job. One thing you probably haven't considered is school districts. From a purely real estate perspective, they can have a significant impact on property values in some cities. But from the "family" perspective, it should be a significant factor in your decision too. Assuming you have a baby and buy a house in your new city, if you're in it for 10 years then your son/daughter will have been in school for 5 years and likely about to move into a middle school! I know when my wife and I were shopping for houses and our son was still a sea monkey, at first we didn't really consider school districts much. Once we began looking at them, our house search areas changed significantly. So, just something to keep in mind and probably something else to add to the "Renting first Pro" column.
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Jun 21, 2012 17:27
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new home, old colors, same Arsenal
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Man US education system is hosed that schools vary so much from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. Here unless there's maybe some specific program you're super interested in that's only available at a certain school(s) you're going to get pretty much the exact same fairly decent school for your kid anywhere. Having schools funded by the LOCAL property taxes seems insane. Why not have it state-wide or at least city/regional wide so you don't get the whole rich/poor good/bad divide?
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Jun 21, 2012 17:30
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Baronjutter posted:Man US education system is hosed that schools vary so much from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. I can't believe this is US specific, you really have no poor areas with well funded but still terrible schools? Here are the per student expenditures by county for Maryland. Unless you're familiar with the area there is no way to tell which ones are great (including 2 of the best systems in the US) and which are pretty awful. Worcester 15498 Montgomery 14969 Kent 14490 Baltimore City 14302 Somerset 14240 Howard 14166 Allegany 13251 Prince George's 13246 Dorchester 12564 Baltimore County12236 Anne Arundel 12178 sanchez fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jun 21, 2012 |
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Jun 21, 2012 17:39
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Baronjutter posted:Man US education system is hosed that schools vary so much from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. Here unless there's maybe some specific program you're super interested in that's only available at a certain school(s) you're going to get pretty much the exact same fairly decent school for your kid anywhere. Because local government knows best how to teach its kids rather than some state or federal bureaucrat.  
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Jun 21, 2012 17:39
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Baronjutter posted:Having schools funded by the LOCAL property taxes seems insane. Why not have it state-wide or at least city/regional wide so you don't get the whole rich/poor good/bad divide? Uhh, they are heavily funded at both the federal, state, county, and city level. People forget the amount of $$ that comes from the federal government, through the state, down in to K-12 education. At the local level there is additional funding through property taxes, and of course some level of local administration (usually at the city level). You still get good/bad schools. As far as larger federal involvement in K-12 education, well, I've never been to a good post office. FunOne fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jun 21, 2012 |
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Jun 21, 2012 17:58
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Yeah, even the richest of counties have Title 1 schools - aka they get more federal money because of all the low income kids that attend.
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Jun 21, 2012 19:01
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It is easy to tell where the "good" schools are as the housing prices will be higher in those hoods. There is a very strong correlation between perceived school quality and housing prices. There are exceptions especially if private schools are the norm for a neighborhood. Most states rate schools in a variety of ways also.
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Jun 21, 2012 19:49
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Well, I didn't want to get too detailed into the ins and outs of school districts, but... It's also important to know how your school districts are organized. For example, some "educational districts" have sub-districts for specific schools. So you are locked into attending a specific school depending on what neighborhood you live in. Some "educational districts" have the sub-districts, but allow children to choose which specific school in the district they attend provided there is room. Some states even allow children to float between districts (again provided there is room). Many states now have statewide assessment and evaluation of the performance of specific schools. Very helpful if you're moving to a new area or simply haven't bothered to figure out which schools are good (because you didn't have a kid before and now "OH GOD,I'M GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANOTHER HUMAN BEING! HOW CAN I NOT gently caress HIM/HER UP????").
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Jun 21, 2012 19:52
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In my city at least all the districts are even and only the most TIGER MOM style achievement-obsessed person fusses over which school/district to send their kid. Stat and "culture" wise they're all more or less identical. It's just little things like "oh this highschool has a slightly better music program" or "This middle school is in a newer more earthquake safe building". In a general real-estate and development gossip forum bout my region there are sometimes people posting saying they are moving to the area and have kids and want to know about best districts for schools and the advise is always unanimously "you'll be fine no matter where you move". So far all the people asking have been americans.
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Jun 21, 2012 20:11
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How do I go about shopping for a mortgage? I am in central Wisconsin and have no idea where to start. We have found a couple of houses we are trying to decide between and do not have a bank or credit union in line. Where to start?
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Jun 21, 2012 22:36
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I'm also in central WI, we got quotes (and preapprovals) from both UWCU and Summit CU. Both were painless application processes and our contacts were helpful in answering questions. Ultimately I think we're going with Summit because they claim to never sell off your loan and my partner thinks that's important, and also because our realtor says that in her experience, Summit is a bit faster at processing short sales that UWCU, and some of the houses we're looking at fall into that category.
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Jun 22, 2012 02:38
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sheri posted:How do I go about shopping for a mortgage? I am in central Wisconsin and have no idea where to start. We have found a couple of houses we are trying to decide between and do not have a bank or credit union in line. Where to start? How do you not have a bank?
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Jun 22, 2012 02:42
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FISHMANPET posted:How do you not have a bank? My current credit union only offers 15 year mortgages. We would like a 30.
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Jun 22, 2012 02:50
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sheri posted:My current credit union only offers 15 year mortgages. We would like a 30. Ah poo poo, I missed the "in line" and thought you were one of those people with no bank accounts, and I was really confused how you planned to get a mortgage when either your credit was too bad to open a bank account or non existent because you're all  about banks.Carry on.
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Jun 22, 2012 02:53
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Also, does anyone know how much the debt to credit ratio matters in credit scores. The last time my husband and I checked our actual scores they were at 790 and 797. This was 3 years ago and since then we have paid down our debt more (total now of about $8,000 all in zero percent interest loans), saved more money, and continued to be good credit consumers. As part of our good credit consumer business, we put every single purchase on our cash rewards credit card so we get all the points and pay it off every month. This is something we started doing maybe two years ago; we have not paid a cent in interest on our credit cards in many many years, so we are doing just fine with it. But now I am worried about whether or not this is going to come back to bite us as we have, in the past, saved up for vacations and tuition for grad school, charged it, and paid it off come statement time. So, some of those balances were quite large, but as stated it was always paid off as soon as it was due. Is this going to hose us out of our top tier credit scores and thus the best mortgage rates due to the debt to credit ratio.
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Jun 22, 2012 03:55
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sheri posted:How do I go about shopping for a mortgage? I am in central Wisconsin and have no idea where to start. We have found a couple of houses we are trying to decide between and do not have a bank or credit union in line. Where to start? One option is to get yourself a mortgage broker. A broker works for you, but is ultimately paid by the bank that winds up getting you a loan - but there's strict regulations about how that works and in practice it usually means despite that commission paid to the broker, the borrower gets a good deal. It works a bit like how travel agencies used to work with airlines, actually. The big advantage of a broker is that they can stay on top of the twice-daily adjustments to the 'going rate' being offered by a bunch of different banks. They also (if they're any good) know what sorts of loan packages and banks are offering good deals for borrowers in your particular situation. If you are not in a super-big hurry (must get house tomorrow!) you can also have your broker watch the rates and wait for a particularly good day to lock in a rate/offer when you're ready to buy. My broker actually paid part of the commission he got back to me as a refund against some of the closing costs, in fact - and every penny is accounted for above-board in the paperwork, so I knew exactly what I was charged, what he was paid, and how things balanced out. The main disadvantage of a broker is that you will probably get a basically random bank holding your loan. If you wanted to go with a local bank you trust for whatever reason, that's probably not going to happen. On the other hand, any bank can (and many banks do) sell your loan to another bank and they do not have to get your permission to do this. It is quite common for the lenders that work with brokers in particular to make a business of originating loans and then selling them on to other banks. In my case, I knew I was getting an FHA loan, and it happened that a broker was recommended to me who specializes in FHA loans. He got me a very good deal although at times I found it a little frustrating because he handles a lot of clients and didn't always get back to me right away when I had a question or wanted something. I also refinanced last year and again went with that guy. By the way, my refi wound up being essentially free, mostly due to my guy being really great at finding a good deal with a large incentive on just the right day late last year. In both cases, a random bank I'd never heard of originated the loan (original was land home financial, refi was provident) and then the loan was bought the next month by Wells Fargo (with whom I do my personal banking). That was fine by me because having my loan at WF meant I could set up direct transfer of my payment every month, among other things. Of course the loan terms are identical when a loan gets sold like this. Not everyone has a positive experience with brokers but I do think if you can get a recommendation from family or friends you can probably save a decent chunk of money vs. just picking two or three random places and seeing what they can offer. It just stands to reason that your broker checking ten or twelve banks twice a day every day can get a better deal than you checking two or three banks once or twice in the space of two months.
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Jun 22, 2012 04:21
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sheri posted:Credit scores You can pull a credit report and get an idea of your score. I know Equifax will let you take a look at your FICO for something like $20, or you can do all three bureaus and get your FICO for something like $40.
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Jun 22, 2012 05:37
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In regards to the question about debt to credit (or utilization) in terms of getting financing, it may not matter very much to be honest. When I look at a credit report there are two things that actually matter. 1) Your Fico score - truth be told though, your fico score is largely irrelevant depending on your equity position. If you have 20 percent equity, your fico score probably matters quite a bit for your pricing adjustments. If you have 40 percent equity, it does not really matter at all. 2) Your monthly obligations - You can have 40000 in credit card debt, but if your minimum payments are all really small, chances are your total debt to income ratio is not really that bad. You can have a pretty crummy credit score, but still have a really strong debt to income ratio. The debt to income ratio is what makes a program available or not. Generally speaking these things work together, as in people with good credit scores tend to have low debt to income ratios. But honestly I do not care what you tell me when you say you know your credit score, and it is of relatively little value for you to pull it the night before so you can tell me, because it on its own is not going to get you any closer to actual pricing on your mortgage.
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Jun 22, 2012 05:54
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If that's the case the market is going to get really interesting as people with a really large DTI because of student loan debt try to buy houses.
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Jun 22, 2012 06:47
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Baronjutter posted:In my city at least all the districts are even and only the most TIGER MOM style achievement-obsessed person fusses over which school/district to send their kid. Stat and "culture" wise they're all more or less identical. It's just little things like "oh this highschool has a slightly better music program" or "This middle school is in a newer more earthquake safe building". If you're looking to buy in Vancouver this isn't even close to true. West side schools are generally better for unsurprising reasons, but even within districts there can be really big difference in qualities of schools. Most districts also have one school with the IB programme and this school is generally going to have better students and better teachers. blah_blah fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Jun 22, 2012 |
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Jun 22, 2012 13:07
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Konstantin posted:If that's the case the market is going to get really interesting as people with a really large DTI because of student loan debt try to buy houses. My wife and I both have student loan debt and when we were trying to buy last year (in Virginia through Long & Foster Realtors and Prosperity Mortgage Company), we were told that they were specifically not allowed to consider student loan debt for the purposes of the loan. It was a pretty  moment because that's 95% of our total debt. Local law? Bizarre bank?
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Jun 22, 2012 17:47
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That's extra-bizarre because student loan debt is not dischargable in a bankruptcy (in the US). Which means in the scenario where your debt overwhelms you and you start defaulting on loans, the mortgage is going to be higher on the list of creditors getting hosed than the student loan lender. On the other hand, student loans tend to be more flexible than other debts. You often have the option of going into a temporary suspension of payments due to financial hardship, and sometimes the minimum payments are flexible. My wife is trying to pay her loans faster than the minimum, but they're on 20-year terms (!) so if we were in trouble, despite their size (originally over $35k) we could reduce payments to just a couple or three hundred a month if we had to. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens to the housing market (if anything) if Congress fails to act to prevent federal student loan interest rates from doubling next month. That would increase the minimum payments (and of course the proportion of payments going to interest) for several million borrowers, many of whom no doubt also have bought houses. On the other hand, I heard on the radio yesterday that year-over-year home prices nationwide are actually up, volume of foreclosures are down, and home builders are starting to maybe think about possibly doing some construction soon. I don't want anyone to get excited and think this necessarily means we're past "the bottom of the market" of course - that presumes a bunch of things: -That the nationwide stats are relevant to your market (local market conditions trump national conditions) -That a downturn in prices can only have a single bottom and then it will go back up smoothly (there could be a double-dip, a triple-dip, etc.) -That an upturn is a trend that must continue (it could go flat, vacillate for a while, or go back down, perhaps even further than the previous low) But it perhaps is maybe cause for a little bit of hope for those of us who own a home and would be happy to see our home value appreciate a little bit. Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/us/wests-home-prices-rebounding-as-availability-shrinks.html http://www.marketwatch.com/story/clear-capital-us-home-prices-turn-the-corner-with-small-quarterly-and-yearly-gains-2012-06-05 Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jun 22, 2012 |
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Jun 22, 2012 18:01
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Should I go to my credit union (which has famously good mortgage packages) or get a broker?
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Jun 22, 2012 18:04
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Baronjutter posted:Should I go to my credit union (which has famously good mortgage packages) or get a broker? Perhaps you could call a few brokers and ask them if they include your credit union in their list of lenders they work with? That way if your credit union is offering the best deal, you'll wind up going with them, but if not, you won't wind up paying more than you need to.
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Jun 22, 2012 18:06
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