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MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 2, 2018 |
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Nov 26, 2012 06:06
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Leperflesh posted:My wife and I were together for nearly 11 years before we got married. But yeah, the more important thing is, if you are collecting rent you're a landlord and that means you have to jump through all the landlord hoops, and there's a lot of them. Guess I'm gonna have to kick her out.  Fwiw, we'll be engaged in a month. But yeah, as soon as I looked up that schedule E form I figured that wasn't going to work. We are probably going to stick with doing it in my name either way. Her credit is kind of lovely, about a 560 with some considerable debt, and I'm a 725 with only $2500 on a line of credit. I already talked to my bank and got pre-qualified for $150k, but realistically we are only looking to spend 100-125. We aren't planning on having any kids, and that price range can get us one of the cheaper/smaller houses in most of the nicer neighborhoods (suck it San Jose goons). The reason I'm worried about even having her on the financing with the houses being that cheap is because I only make 30k, and we are pretty set on the 15 year fixed rate. When I talked to my bank, they offered a 30 year, so I still need to talk to a mortgage broker. We have a realtor that is a close family friend, and I also filled out the ELP form on Dave Ramsey's website and got a call within like 30 seconds. On a Sunday! So we are just getting started, pretty much. Long road ahead and such.
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Nov 26, 2012 06:32
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Covering all my angles here - what if I just keep the thing? Buy the house, live here a few years, then move and rent it out. What if I just do that? With $450k I could build a totally custom 3500 sqft mansion with a bronze lion fountain in the front circle driveway on about 20 acres here in Texas. I curious what this house looks like your considering.
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Nov 26, 2012 06:38
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Covering all my angles here - what if I just keep the thing? Buy the house, live here a few years, then move and rent it out. What if I just do that? I can't get past the fact that you know you don't want to live in Orange County long-term. If you buy this house you might not have any choice. Real Estate is not liquid. There is no guarantee you will be able to sell this house ever - especially since you're considering going in with nothing down (no equity). There's a very good chance you'll decide to leave OC, put your house on the market and not be able to sell it for what you want. Since you'll have no equity it will actually cost you a lot of money to sell it. If you don't have that money, you'll be stuck in OC. That idea about renting it out is just awful. You'd have to rent it for $3,500 a month to break even because rent income is taxable income. Plus, your debt:income ratio with a current mortgage will preclude you from buying a home in a place you actually want to live. If I were you, I'd continue saving money hand over fist until you find a home you can commit to. There are some lessons in life you have to learn yourself. Don't let this be one of them. Man, I think about some of the real estate purchases I almost made when I was younger. I am so thankful I waited until I was truly settled down. Good luck with whatever you decide. I know you think $7,200 a month is a lot of money. It's not. $450,000 is a lot of money - enough that it could loving ruin your life.
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Nov 26, 2012 06:40
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:I dunno, I just spent 30 minutes checking single family residence rentals in the area for this price, and man, that is depressing. We're just not going to get a better house than this around here for this price. So my three options really are: buy this house, move to a worse house, or pay more for another rental. 3 feels like it's cancelled out by 1 - if I'm going to pay more, why not here? That leaves buy this house or move to a worse one, so I'll admit, I am still mulling. Planning to rent it out when you move is kinda iffy - the mortgage payment could easily make it more difficult to buy a house somewhere else, and you'd still have all the maintenance expenses plus some new property management expenses to balance out your (somewhat unpredictable) new income stream. If you're not willing to settle for a less nice place for a while, I would really recommend just paying more for another rental. That would almost certainly leave you with more money in a few years when you are ready to move. Options 3 and 1 don't really cancel each other out - I really don't think you've internalized all the costs of owning a house yet. Financial costs, but also hassle and reduced freedom to move. You gain a lot of flexibility and convenience by renting someone else's house. If you are going to rely on two incomes to pay your mortgage, you'd better both have really good job security and not be thinking about having babies or any bad car wrecks. Spamtron7000 posted:If I were you, I'd continue saving money hand over fist until you find a home you can commit to.
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Nov 26, 2012 13:05
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:The reason we have no down payment is because I took a bunch of years off to go to school, but now we have two incomes ($7200/mo take home) and no debt, so the amount that we're putting away each month is staggering, so there's definitely a pretty good cushion in the budget. So... you have no down payment, but the amount of money you're saving each money is huge? One of these statements is incorrect. I'm not saying you should cash out your savings now, but how long would it take you to save 20% down on this house? That would be $90k, btw. Even without a PMI payment, the amount you finance when you put zero down is ridiculous. Given a 5% interest rate, you'll be financing $419,000 - for a grand total price tag on this house of $869,000 by the time you pay it off in 30 years. That doesn't include taxes, insurance, repairs, closing costs or anything else. Throw those in, and you're looking at over $1 million - easily. Whereas if you save up the 20%, you'll *only* finance $240,000.
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Nov 26, 2012 15:25
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Just some corrections on the assumptions. This is California. The tax bill being quoted certainly includes the local assessments, the county presents you with your tax bill and it's inclusive. That said: MC Fruit Stripe needs to be sure he's looking at what the tax bill will be after he buys, rather than what it currently is. That's because of Proposition 13, way back in the day, which fixes the (state and county) tax rate based on the price the house was purchased at. E.g., if the house's current owner paid $300k, then the portion of the tax levied by the state and county (which is the lion's share) is lower than it will be once he ponies up $450k. The commission on a sold house in California is 6%, and is always paid by the seller. If MC Fruit Stripe chose to handle his sale himself rather than using a realtor, he could in theory collect/keep his half of that 6%... but that'd be a pretty risky and difficult thing to do (FSBO disaster stories are legion). This is of course just the bare minimum cost: you also have to pay listing fees, almost certainly need to do some fixing up to get a decent price (paint, landscaping, etc.), and in a buyer's market, sellers often need to make concessions (more money). Someone should check, but I vaguely recall that you can't rent out a house you buy with a VA loan (until x years have passed?). That's the deal with FHA loans, anyway. Better check! You have to pay for homeowner's insurance. (That's different from PMI). If you haven't gotten a quote yet you have no idea what this will cost, and it can vary wildly depending on where you are. You may also be well-advised to get supplementary earthquake insurance (lots of people in CA don't do this but they're all idiots if you ask me!) and this can be easily as much as your liability insurance, again depending a lot on your exact location (the geology under your house and nearby). Being a landlord sucks though, MC's current landlord has discovered. You pay your mortgage, you cannot deduct the interest from your taxes, you pay all maintenance and cannot (or should not at least) defer maintenance that you might otherwise not have cared about, you can only charge what the market will bear irrespective of whether that puts you in the red or the black, and of course if your tenants move (or you have to evict them) you are very likely to have a vacancy of at least a month, in which you still have to pay the mortgage (and probably have additional extra expenses that month, doing your maintenance, painting the walls, getting utilities put in your name for the month or whatever). If you're not actually living in the area it gets a lot more expensive. You need someone local to be available for landlord-type stuff, and you have to pay them. You can't just swing by to fix a leaky faucet yourself on a thursday night. So yeah, this is not a good plan. Leaving aside all of the above, what in the gently caress are you gonna do MC if in five years your house is worth 10% less than what you paid for it? We may all hope that the housing market is recovering but nobody knows the future. The reason most people (in this thread) advise that you don't buy unless you're planning to stay put for a minimum of 8 to 10 years is because that's long enough to A) build sufficient equity to absorb a loss in value and B) be able to wait for a recovered, sellers-advantage market in which to sell in. Keep renting. If you find a place to rent that costs you $500 a month more than what you're paying now, you will be at a significant financial advantage compared to the math from buying a $450k house with 0 down that you sell in 4 years. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 19:30
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The trick with landlord situations, if you are not experienced and diversified, is to live in the house at the time you are renting parts of it out. That is the one situation where the risk and costs get heavily mitigated, but if you're only planning on being there for a few years that doesn't really work.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:33
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Agree with what Leper said. General rule of thumb is getting in and out of a house is going to cost you 10% of the purchase price in sunk costs and fees. About 4% upfront with closing costs, title insurance and all that bullshit, then 6% or more (seller concessions) to dispose of the property. On a 450K house you're looking at 45,000 dollars just in sunk costs and fees to obtain and dispose of the house. That's without touching insurance, property taxes, interest, and the fuckton of money you spend once you actually buy the house. If you buy a house it'll be the dumbest financial decision you've ever made.
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Nov 27, 2012 19:36
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Just to be clear, you're comparing the monthly mortgage payment vs monthly rental cost, and that is not where the math lies. You need to add up the sunk costs that everyone is mentioning, including your total interest payments, and compare that to the hard cost of 36 months of rent. You will not have any significant equity after 3 years and you will add to that any maintenance and fees and taxes and insurance and commissions. It's almost always a losing bet. Hell, I have a high interest subprime second mortgage that I've been paying on for 6 and a half years, and I've touched four percent of the principal. It really does come off slowly, and the possibility that socal house values could drop another few percent in the next 3 years (which would mean you lose your principal payments) isn't something you should casually brush aside. Sample: Say you find a new rental for $2500 a month. $2500 x 36 months = 90,000. It is really likely that your monthly interest payments plus all your extra costs and fees will exceed that over a 3 year period. Extend the period, renting begins to lose. It's not the decision to buy that is the problem, it's the term. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Nov 27, 2012 |
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Nov 27, 2012 22:44
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MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 2, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2012 04:51
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So ask yourselves also - are the two of you comfortable making that decision on short notice, under time pressure from a landlord who is probably offering you an ok deal at best? If you're remotely not comfortable with it, there will be other perfectly good houses to rent or buy in Orange County for the foreseeable future. What you will gain by buying now is the convenience of not having to move, and the break-even point on that financially is probably ~10 years. Will you still like this house in 10 years? In other words, deciding whether to stay longer is hardly at all connected to deciding whether to buy the house. You can decide to stay there for 20 years, but hedge your bets by not buying a house right now, and that would be entirely reasonable. Just food for thought.
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Nov 28, 2012 05:00
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MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Mar 2, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2012 05:03
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Makes sense. Stripe Jr gonna claim a big whack out of your income, too, just in diaper bills. Plus one or the other of you might unexpectedly realize you really want to do the stay-home parent thing for a few years. So factor all that in when thinking about what you can afford to commit to.
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Nov 28, 2012 06:01
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I have some questions for any lenders, or underwriters like Captain Windex, about my sitch (or for any buyers who came across similar sitches). I've settled on an affordable locale for my retirement, and have been tracking pricing in the area for a year (it's still trending downward in the range I'm looking at: $100-140k). I intend to live there for what's left of my life, so resale value isn't a concern. My FICO score is >800, and I have no outstanding debt. But I also don't get a paycheck: my income's split pretty evenly between monthly distributions received from a family business and self-employment income. Both have been constant and steadily increasing for any time period that a lender would examine (ie, the last 5 years), and I get 1099s from most of my clients. (I also report income from clients who don't issue me 1099s.) I do, however, deduct business expenses from net self-employment income, which lowers my AGI (I file sched. C for my business, which is DBA'd with the state.) So my questions mainly revolve around how that will be evaluated when I apply for a loan. Specific questions: 1. Do lenders take into account gross income from self-employment, eg my 1099s? Would they factor in any of the various deductions I take, like home office, as being a *positive* from a lender's POV (lowered tax liability), or will they just look at the bottom line and say "lol, no"? Do they use MAGI as any kind of metric, rather than AGI? 2. I've seen some listings that say "seller financing might be available." Would that be a more likely option for me than FHA or conventional financing, given my self-employment? Are rates comparable to conventional lending? 3. There's an FHA first-time buyer program in the area, and I found a list of lenders who participate and phone numbers for liaisons. The bank where I've held my business and personal accounts for years (7 or 8) is one of the lenders listed. Is there an advantage to my going through my own bank for a loan, whether FHA or conventional? I figure it'd at least minimize all the paperwork clusterfucks that seem routine for loans. 4. Captain Windex mentioned an FHA program where you put 10 percent down; what is that program, and who qualifies? My sister was told, when she bought her house with an FHA rural loan, that she couldn't put more than 3.5 percent down. In the range I'm looking at, there isn't a huge difference in monthly payments between 3.5, 10 and 20 percent down, but I'd love to be able to put 10 percent down and keep the other 10 percent as reserves. And one question not related to my personal sitch: It's been mentioned that it's a red flag for lenders when the sq footage of a listing is greater than county records, because it usually indicates additions that have been built without permits. What happens in those cases? Do you have to have the county come out to inspect and file a report? How can a buyer deal with this situation to the satisfaction of a lender? Thanks loads to everyone sharing their personal expertise and first-hand buying experiences... I've learned a ton from you all!
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Nov 28, 2012 07:30
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1. We don't look at the straight 1099 gross earnings for self employment. Depending on the bank they either use AGI or SAM to calculate your income. The end result should be the same, but personally I think SAM is more intuitive. Basically we would look at your schedule C and take your net profit (line 31) and add back your depreciation, depletion, amortization/casualty loss, and business use of home expenses (lines 12, 13, 27a if specifically itemized as amortization/casualty loss, and line 30) and subtract your meals and entertainment expenses (24b - IRS allows you to only write off half of this expense so we're not double dipping by subtracting twice). 2. Not necessarily. Rates will probably be higher on seller financing and from what you've described you don't seem like a particularly risky borrower. People with lovely payment histories generally don't get 800 FICOs. Hell, my co-workers in government underwriting would love to deal with 700+ FICO scenarios more often because they're way less of a pain in the rear end. I barely even look at your credit report as a conventional underwriter, it's almost entirely up to AUS for me - those poor bastards have to manually underwrite stuff At least on the conventional side self employment vs non self employment is a relatively minor risk factor. I cannot think of a single loan I've reviewed where switching from W2 to self employment had an impact on the risk class response from the automated system beyond changing what income documentation is required which is normal. It may make a larger difference for FHA, but I don't deal with them enough to know for sure. 3. If you have an established relationship you may get some advantages in customer service, willingness to waive or reduce certain fees, or similar minor perks. You probably won't notice anything major since conventional/government/USDA loans are going to be mostly the same across lenders outside of a given bank's overlays. 4. Don't think this was me, I don't know much about FHA. FHA allows you to put down more than the minimum 3.5% but I don't know if this is more advantageous over say a conventional loan with mortgage insurance at 90% As far as discrepancy in square footage between the appraiser and the county, depends on the bank and what the appraiser says about it. For my bank, if you extend out your living room a bit or add a sun deck I don't really give a poo poo as long as it was done in a "workman like" manner and the appraiser doesn't give any value to the square footage/room additions in the appraisal and provides comps supportive of the unmodified value. Unpermitted bathroom and kitchen additions are usually deal killers for my bank because we have no idea what got screwed up in the plumbing and electrical systems and we don't want to deal with it. We'll also see cases where the appraiser states he can't find the reason for the discrepancy and the county records appear wrong - as long as it's a reasonable level of discrepancy we can usually let that fly. I've seen appraisals where the county apparently had inspected the property a couple weeks after the slab was originally poured in 1976 or whatever and never looked at it since, it's probably not going to match reality. Keep in mind for the above that I work for one of the more conservative lenders in the industry, I've seen all sorts of poo poo fly for other lenders that we would never consider. Just because I wouldn't take something doesn't mean another bank is unwilling to do it. I've seen a few people in this thread recommend going with a mortgage broker rather than a retail shop, I would generally agree with this sentiment particularly if you have a unique or problematic scenario as they can try to place your loan with a lender that is more willing to accept whatever it is. Captain Windex fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 08:36
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Wow, that's all massively helpful (and encouraging; my home-office deductions comprise the brunt of my deductions). Thanks! eta: Are you saying that only SAM takes those deductions into account? Since you said the result is the same, I'm guessing not--but I'm trying to educate myself on the basics before I start talking to lenders. etaa: What about 1040 lines 29 (self-employment health insurance) and 32 (IRA contributions)? Those are pretty big factors in lowering my AGI. Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 08:45
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Willa Rogers posted:Wow, that's all massively helpful (and encouraging; my home-office deductions comprise the brunt of my deductions). Thanks! AGI takes the same deductions into account, the method of arriving at that is just a bit more abstract, and stupid. I'm sure there are diehard AGI fans out there just like there are diehard Freddie Mac fans. Both groups likely have a bad case of  Edit: Should read the actual line items being asked about before answering questions.... 29 and 32 don't get added back from page 1 of your 1040s using the SAM method, you shouldn't be hit with them in the first place. Assuming we're just using your schedule C self employment you should only need to do what I referenced in my prior post to calculate your income. Don't worry about what is on page 1/2 of your returns (for the most part), we don't really care what deductions you take outside of child support/alimony and it has no impact on your qualified income. Captain Windex fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 09:02
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Fortunately, my healthcare deduction will go down this year (cheaper policy), and I can choose to contribute less to my IRA (although I'll pay more taxes) so that this year's numbers look better to a lender. Thanks again! edit: Cool, I won't look as broke as I thought I would! Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 09:07
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Willa Rogers posted:Fortunately, my healthcare deduction will go down this year (cheaper policy), and I can choose to contribute less to my IRA (although I'll pay more taxes) so that this year's numbers look better to a lender. Sorry about the confusion. Basically, the first 2 pages of your tax returns have almost no bearing on the actual income analysis for the SAM method, they just tell your underwriter which schedules they should be expecting to see. For schedule C, do what I referenced previously: take your net profit (line 31) add your depreciation, depletion, amortization/casualty loss, and business use of home expenses (lines 12, 13, 27a if specifically itemized as amortization/casualty loss, and line 30) subtract your meals and entertainment expenses (24b - IRS allows you to only write off half of this expense so we're not double dipping by subtracting it) This final amount is your annual earnings. Divide this by twelve and you have your monthly income for underwriting purposes. If two years of returns are required, do it for 2010 and 2011 and compare the numbers. If it increased 2010 -> 2011, take a two year average, if it declined use the more recent year -- this is the more conservative route. Edit: I have given $10k/month incomes to people who report negative income to the IRS 
Captain Windex fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Nov 28, 2012 |
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Nov 28, 2012 09:15
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I'm delighted by that answer; I was figuring my calculable income to be far lower than what you've described. I'm now renting MTM, and only just narrowed my buying search to specifics, so the next step is actually going there (another state) and seeing properties I'm finding online. I'd like to buy within the year, though, and the info you've given me has made that goal seem a lot more real.
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Nov 28, 2012 10:03
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slap me silly posted:Makes sense. Stripe Jr gonna claim a big whack out of your income, too, just in diaper bills. Plus one or the other of you might unexpectedly realize you really want to do the stay-home parent thing for a few years. So factor all that in when thinking about what you can afford to commit to. Diapers are cheap, I go through a giant box a month on average for my son. Maybe 3 boxes every 2 months tops. 40 bucks a box from Amazon. Formula is about 200 a month, and daycare is the biggest expense by far. I pay about 500/mo per kid for daycare, and those rates are cheap even here in Texas.
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Nov 28, 2012 17:04
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I have a question that I'm hoping some of the more mortgage savy people in here can help answer. I read the OP and skimmed the thread a bit, but hadn't seen it directly asked so I figured I'd post it here. When you're applying for a mortgage jointly, does it matter if you are married or not? The reason I ask is that fiancee (as of two days ago) and I have been talking about buying a house this coming June-ish and we weren't sure if being married or not would affect us applying for the loan or not. We've been living together for over 4 years and are engaged so I'm not sure if this is a more of an up to the lender type of situation or if there as a hard and fast rule about rates and filing if you were married or not. My fiancee is nervous that us not being married by then would affect it and said we could always get married on paper prior to the wedding if we needed to, but I wasn't sure if it was necessary and wanted to do some research to find out what was true. Has anyone had any experience with this?
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Nov 28, 2012 19:32
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skipdogg posted:Diapers are cheap, I go through a giant box a month on average for my son. Maybe 3 boxes every 2 months tops. 40 bucks a box from Amazon. Formula is about 200 a month, and daycare is the biggest expense by far. I pay about 500/mo per kid for daycare, and those rates are cheap even here in Texas. If I read your post correctly, you're trying to say that having a kid is cheap.
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Nov 28, 2012 19:47
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MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Mar 2, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2012 19:51
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rockcity posted:I have a question that I'm hoping some of the more mortgage savy people in here can help answer. I read the OP and skimmed the thread a bit, but hadn't seen it directly asked so I figured I'd post it here. When you're applying for a mortgage jointly, does it matter if you are married or not? The reason I ask is that fiancee (as of two days ago) and I have been talking about buying a house this coming June-ish and we weren't sure if being married or not would affect us applying for the loan or not. We've been living together for over 4 years and are engaged so I'm not sure if this is a more of an up to the lender type of situation or if there as a hard and fast rule about rates and filing if you were married or not. My fiancee is nervous that us not being married by then would affect it and said we could always get married on paper prior to the wedding if we needed to, but I wasn't sure if it was necessary and wanted to do some research to find out what was true. Has anyone had any experience with this?
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Nov 28, 2012 20:06
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moana posted:I got a house with my domestic partner and the only difference is one line of the mortgage where you say you're co-owners instead of spouse owners together or some such. My agent told us it didn't make a difference at all for practical purposes. Since then we've split up and the paperwork to change the mortgage to just my name was the same as if we had been married. Our lenders wanted all the same paperwork and tax info from both of us as if we had been married as well. That's kind of what I'd thought. My mom and step-dad bought their house while they were engaged as well, I just hadn't asked them what they remembered from it when they did. That's good news as I'd prefer not to get married on paper first and I'd rather not rush to plan the wedding to happen right before buying the house, especially financially.
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Nov 28, 2012 20:16
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Just between the 3 expenses he mentioned, he calculates $760/mo in expenses that he didn't have before, and obviously there's others. It's not cheap, but somehow people have been pulling it off. I think his estimates are off. My wife and I pay about twice as much for daycare for our son, and diapers are just the tip of the iceberg. You should plan for over $1000 a month to be on the safe side, and that's if you're extremely frugal.
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Nov 28, 2012 20:26
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Willa Rogers posted:3. There's an FHA first-time buyer program in the area, and I found a list of lenders who participate and phone numbers for liaisons. The bank where I've held my business and personal accounts for years (7 or 8) is one of the lenders listed. Is there an advantage to my going through my own bank for a loan, whether FHA or conventional? I figure it'd at least minimize all the paperwork clusterfucks that seem routine for loans. I can talk about FHA a bit (I bought with an FHA loan so I had to learn about it). First, it's a federal program, so there's no "in the area": you can get an FHA loan anywhere in the US. The minimum down payment is 3.5%. There's no maximum. Generally the advantage of FHA is that the mortgage insurance costs less for low-down loans than it would via a conventional loan from a bank. The exact point where it makes more sense to get a conventional loan and pay PMI instead of an FHA loan varies and they've changed the exact FHA premiums twice since I bought, so I don't know what it is any more, but in late 2009 it would have been right around 10% to 15% down. If you're over 20% down you should get a conventional loan, and if you're in the 10% to 20% range you should investigate both options. FHA loans have restrictions on the property you can buy. It must pass an inspection from an FHA officer, who will require it to be in a "livable" condition before you buy. This includes things like no exposed wiring, a functional kitchen, working heating systems, and so forth. If you are looking at distressed/foreclosed homes this can be a factor. However you can also work around it a little: for example, if you want to buy a foreclosure where the kitchen has been stripped, you can get a cheapo electric stove off of craigslist and drag it in, install a cheap sink, and shove a fridge in the corner and now you have a kitchen for $300. You'd immediately trash it and get to work once the home closes but the goal is to pass inspection and that would likely do it. You also cannot buy a house which is being flipped. The (non-bank) seller has to have owned it for (I think it's) at least six months. Bank-owned properties are exempt from this (so you can buy a recently-foreclosed property for example). Supposedly this is to protect FHA buyers from being exploited by a home flipper doing lovely work or something, I don't know it makes little sense to me since there's the inspection anyway. Most banks will handle FHA loans. In 2009 and 2010 FHA loans were something like 70% of all new mortgages in the US? Banks who don't do FHA lose a hell of a lot of business these days. I recommend getting a broker who specializes in FHA. It's what I did. They can advise you on the particulars and find the best deal for you on the day that you want to lock in a rate. Even though FHA loans themselves are all similar, the loan costs can vary wildly from one day to the next. When we refinanced last year, for example, during a span of two weeks we saw deals drop from ~3500 in costs to ~1200 in incentives, for example, so by being patient we saved ourselves on the order of $4700 (our refi wound up being essentially free)! We would never have found deals like that applying to just three or four banks. tiananman posted:I think his estimates are off. My wife and I pay about twice as much for daycare for our son, and diapers are just the tip of the iceberg. You should plan for over $1000 a month to be on the safe side, and that's if you're extremely frugal. The cost of daycare, as with the cost of living, varies so much depending on where you live that it's pointless to suggest a dollar amount until you know the exact location. Daycare in the Ozarks costs a tiny fraction of daycare in Manhattan.
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Nov 28, 2012 20:27
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Fruitstripe lives in OC. Childcare will be expensive. I'm in San Diego and my wife is with child. San Diego is probably comparable to OC. We are researching childcare now. The inexpensive choice is going to be $300/week. Inexpensive means dropping baby off at a baby farm with 15 other babies who will all get sick every day and make the world a worse place because all the children and parents will always be sick. The choice we're going with is in-home nanny care and it's going to cost us about $450/week. Do never make babby
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Nov 28, 2012 20:35
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tiananman posted:If I read your post correctly, you're trying to say that having a kid is cheap. Not saying that at all, merely pointing out that diapers are an almost trivial cost when it comes to raising a kid. My kids probably cost around 1500 to 1800 dollars a month to raise, and diapers are less than 5% of those costs.
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Nov 28, 2012 21:07
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Spamtron7000 posted:Do never make babby Now this is advice I can get behind!
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Nov 28, 2012 21:13
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Thanks for the info on FHA loans, Leperflesh; I should have been clearer that the program I was looking at was an FHA progam to help low-income people to buy houses in the state; I thought that might be my only option because of my self-employment bottom line, but Capt. Windex set me straight on that account. And for some reason I thought that the only 2 options out there these days were FHA/3.5% vs. conventional/20% for downpayments for 30-year fixed-rate loans, so thanks for clarifying that there are more options, and that 10% down would be an option for me.
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Nov 28, 2012 22:20
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Spamtron7000 posted:The choice we're going with is in-home nanny care and it's going to cost us about $450/week. Is that a formal, on-the-books arrangement?
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Nov 29, 2012 01:33
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SlapActionJackson posted:Is that a formal, on-the-books arrangement? It will be because we need to use Dependentcare FSA to shelter the first $5k from taxes (that number really should be a lot higher). We're still trying to find our nanny but I'm confident we can get one for $10/hour. We are going through care.com to find candidates. That's for live-out. You could also go through an au-pair service but at this point I'm not sure if we're willing to commit to a Live-In nanny That could save us a couple of thousand per year. We have the room for it but I don't know if it's a good idea to have a hot young foreign girl living in our home - presumably dressed in a sexy maid uniform.
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Nov 29, 2012 01:53
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I love that taking care of people's children is a barely-above-minimum-wage job.
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Nov 29, 2012 02:00
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MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 2, 2018 |
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Nov 29, 2012 02:28
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Yeah no offense but don't call day care a disease factory* and then talk to me about someone willing to work for $10/h as though you're flying in tutors from around the world. We're way off topic now, but I used to have icky feelings about daycare. I felt like it was wrong to pay some stranger to raise your kid. My wife was in daycare as a kid, and she assured me it's not some lazy way to abandon your kid... And then we had our son, and we sent him to daycare after his 6 month birthday, and now he's 18 months. He loves it. He gets sick, and then we get sick - but compared to other "nanny-raised" kids we know around his age, he's already better adjusted. It's all anecdotal evidence, but compared to those other kids, he doesn't have a ton of stranger anxiety, he's happy, and much more outgoing. Though I hate dropping him off every morning, he has so much fun playing with kids his age it would be selfish of me to make him hang out with me or my wife all day. Adults are boring for little kids. Our daycare providers are paid more than $10 an hour, they're all certified in first aid, and quite a few of them have bachelors and masters in early ed or similar fields. We pay close to $1,000 a month, and it seems worth it.
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Nov 29, 2012 04:06
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Yeah no offense but don't call day care a disease factory* and then talk to me about someone willing to work for $10/h as though you're flying in tutors from around the world. That's not the point at all. Certainly not what I meant. I don't know where you got that. My point was just that all the options are expensive in So Cal, no matter what you choose. There's nothing wrong with daycare in the slightest. The ONLY reason I'm choosing nanny is because I get sick every time I'm around one of my nephews and I'm over it. Baby won't be born until February so things could change. I'll move the baby to daycare in a couple of years. Don't get bent out of shape. I'm trying to give you advice - you don't have to take it. You did come here asking for advice in the first place. You're getting mad just because I'm not going to validate your stupid plan to buy a house in a place you're pretty sure you don't want to live so you can maybe consider raising a family in it. It's your money and your future. Do what you want. I was just trying to save you the horrible anguish of debilitating debt. It's really horrible and I hope it doesn't happen to you.
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Nov 29, 2012 06:59
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This turned negative fast, how about we change the subject? We've got our inspection scheduled for next Wednesday morning at 9:30am. I scheduled to take the whole day off, if it turns out to be quick I'll just go snowboarding. How badly should I worry about pissing off the sellers with 'we plan to remove that' comments? There's a lot of crap that everyone keeps telling me 'adds to resale value' that I want GONE. How bad is a wood stove in the shop going to be for my insurance?
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Nov 29, 2012 09:05
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