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Incredulous Dylan posted:The market in my area has been just nuts - every decent home in my price range has multiple offers the same day listed. I went to one this weekend that had 17 offers after one day (great deal, though). Most annoying thing I have ran into so far is a realtor team that purposefully lists low, only to basically state they are running things auction-style and that they think the house is worth much more than listed. I'll specifically never deal with a property they are representing again. You waste enough time driving out to view homes and going through the stress without nonsense like that. We had a similar situation and did an escalation clause without a price. We said we'd go $3,000 above the highest offer, and we wanted right of last refusal instead of blindly accepting a price. Seller came back to us, showed us the 2nd place offer (with names blacked out), and asked us if we wanted it. The highest offer was was $4,000 more than the price we were thinking of offering, so I was glad our agent had a good strategie. We would have lost the house for so little and we would have been heartbroken. And we eventually got the sellers to give us $3,500 towards closing, so I feel like we got a good deal. On a side note... is it normal for the bank to be verifying our employment so close to closing? I feel like this should have been done much earlier, but we got the call today pretty much the day before we're supposed to be clear to close. Since the employment verification is in the banks control, you think they'd do that much earlier.
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May 7, 2013 00:14
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Astro7x posted:We had a similar situation and did an escalation clause without a price. We said we'd go $3,000 above the highest offer, and we wanted right of last refusal instead of blindly accepting a price. Seller came back to us, showed us the 2nd place offer (with names blacked out), and asked us if we wanted it. The highest offer was was $4,000 more than the price we were thinking of offering, so I was glad our agent had a good strategie. We would have lost the house for so little and we would have been heartbroken. And we eventually got the sellers to give us $3,500 towards closing, so I feel like we got a good deal. Yes it seems to be. I work in Payroll and we get frantic calls from employees all the time asking for employment verification because they're about to close on a house and they need help.
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May 7, 2013 00:33
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Astro7x posted:On a side note... is it normal for the bank to be verifying our employment so close to closing? I feel like this should have been done much earlier, but we got the call today pretty much the day before we're supposed to be clear to close. Since the employment verification is in the banks control, you think they'd do that much earlier. For non self employed people Fannie and Freddie require your verification to have been completed within 10 days of signing your note, I believe FHA/VA are the same. They want to minimize the time frame where we could verify employment and then have you lose your job and not tell us before signing your loan docs.
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May 7, 2013 02:17
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Captain Windex posted:For non self employed people Fannie and Freddie require your verification to have been completed within 10 days of signing your note, I believe FHA/VA are the same. They want to minimize the time frame where we could verify employment and then have you lose your job and not tell us before signing your loan docs. Ah... well that makes sense then. We are now within 10 days of closing.
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May 7, 2013 04:55
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skipdogg posted:Just don't take the drat chance. Sign your papers, close, and then go buy your furniture. Not sure why you're in such a hurry, you can't move it in until you actually close on the house. I'm supposedly closing on May 15th and don't need to be out of my apartment until the 25th. Of June. 
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May 7, 2013 13:26
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Re: Repeated furniture buying questions: Don't buy thing for house until actually own house Don't buy thing for house until actually own house (repeat x100)
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May 7, 2013 15:19
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I Love You! posted:Re: Repeated furniture buying questions: Even with a gift card? I have about $550 in Amazon Gift Cards sitting in my account and have been buying stuff as we need it. We bought the lawnmower we had our eyes on when my Amazon Price Alert went off and emailed me that it dropped in price significantly. The bank better not say a drat thing about my credit card activity this month being higher than usual, especially when I just had to pay for a $450 Application Fee/Appraisal and pay for our 1st year of home insurance at $650. Astro7x fucked around with this message at 15:48 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 15:46
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10%+ home sales fail to close for lots and lots of reasons. Maybe these reasons aren't aren't even your fault! If you want to buy things NOT on credit and aren't scared about the possibility of needing to return them, then go ahead, but don't don't don't make big purchases using credit during this time unless you are paying cash, and don't buy thing that you have no recourse for if the home somehow doesn't close.
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May 7, 2013 16:53
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Going forward with a refinance...had a 5 year ARM with a September 2015 reset at an APR of 3.5%. Refinancing into a 7 year ARM that resets in July 2020, with an APR of 2.75%. Closing costs are $1355 on a 230k house, which translates into $108 less a month with closing costs rolled in to the existing mortgage balance. No brainer, right? As of April, I'm ~$4660 ahead of a fixed rate if I had chosen 4.40% 30 year fixed in July 2010: that's $5766 ahead in real dollar amounts and then subtracting approximately $1106 that I cost myself in tax deductions for mortgage interest paid.
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May 7, 2013 17:17
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649 house jumped to 669 then last week 689 and now it's 699. What the gently caress. I assume if it doesn't sell over the summer it will be over a million by September. Those poor sellers, just how high do they have to raise the price before the thing sells?
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May 7, 2013 17:28
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Even though I've spent years working in the mortgage industry, the actual process of buying/selling is something relatively foreign to me. My wife and I just had our first child a few months ago, and it's become quickly apparent that we need a larger house than the small home we currently live in. Although the value of my home has dropped a bit since I purchased in 2007, I do have some equity in my home that will allow me to put a solid down payment on a new home after I sell. We have done some research in the area and have been pre-approved for a loan that is more than enough for what we are looking for. To make things even better, even with the larger house we're looking for (and the larger price tag), we will actually be paying less than what we currently pay for our smaller home if we move. The problem - we have to sell our home. How exactly do you go through the process of buying and selling at the same time? We have seen a few houses that we like a lot, but we are unable to make an offer or purchase a house until the current one sells. This leads to a couple issues... 1. What happens if we sell our current home, but there are no available homes to purchase that we want? 2. What happens if we see the perfect house, but our current house is still on the market? Living in an hotel/apartment isn't possible for us, because we live in a relatively rural area and have multiple dogs that wouldn't be allowed in those places. I am aware of the option of making a contingency offer, but with the market having a bit of a rebound, that's not really much better than just waiting and hoping that the house is still there. As a second question - Are there any recommendations for banks/lenders with currently good rates? My credit score is great, so getting approved isn't typically an issue. I have been pre-approved at a rate of 3.375 percent through my company, but I'm always willing to go elsewhere if a better rate is available. Acrolos fucked around with this message at 00:57 on May 8, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 23:59
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I Love You! posted:Re: Repeated furniture buying questions: I always tell people (first time buyers) not to buy things until they have written two monthly mortgage checks.
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May 8, 2013 00:50
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daslog posted:I always tell people (first time buyers) not to buy things until they have written two monthly mortgage checks. Must be fun sleeping on the floor/air mattress for 3 months?
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May 8, 2013 00:55
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Acrolos posted:
We sold our home and bought another. Our agent simply put in a clause for the buyers that we would have up to 30 days after close to stay in the home and we had to pay their mortgage/taxes/insurance on a per-day basis. None of the offers we got seemed to have an issue with it and we used it for about two weeks. As far as putting in an offer on a home without selling yours first, some agents will allow it if you qualify for dual mortgage but if you have a hot market it'll be tough.
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May 8, 2013 01:14
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daslog posted:I always tell people (first time buyers) not to buy things until they have written two monthly mortgage checks. My sister just bought (provided financing comes through) a $750,000 condo with her husband. I'm going to generously say they have a $50k down payment and make about $150k between the two of them. She was complaining about $2000 rental payments. With a 30 year I'm pegging that mortgage payment at like $3600 a month. She wants to get some new furniture 
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May 8, 2013 02:51
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Arkane posted:No brainer, right? Does the ARM include a maximum percentage increase in the APR? Like, it can reset to no more than 1 percentage point higher than the original loan?
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May 8, 2013 03:16
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Arkane posted:Must be fun sleeping on the floor/air mattress for 3 months? I assume most people already own furniture, they just want *new* furniture for their *new* house.
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May 8, 2013 03:27
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Stew Man Chew posted:My sister just bought (provided financing comes through) a $750,000 condo with her husband. I'm going to generously say they have a $50k down payment and make about $150k between the two of them. Good lord, I make that and I hate my $1350 rent. I could not imagine having a payment that high on my income.
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May 8, 2013 04:10
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TheLizard posted:Does the ARM include a maximum percentage increase in the APR? Like, it can reset to no more than 1 percentage point higher than the original loan? Not sure which ARM you are referring to; the current one (USAA/Ocwen) can increase a maximum of 2 points per 12 months, based on LIBOR + 2.25 with a low of 2.25 and the highest possible of 8.5. So if it were to reset right now, it'd go to 2.95 (1-year LIBOR is .7 atm). The new one is gimmicky/tricksy and can move 5% at the end of the 7 year window (so in August 2020 it can move to 7.75% immediately). 7.75% is also the highest it can ever be. However, I have 0 plans to still be owning the home in 7 years so I don't anticipate this rate being an issue.
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May 8, 2013 05:11
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Has anyone ever bought a multi-family property? Friends of my parents have a triplex in a desirable area that's been off the market since the early 70s, and I was able to get in there for a quick look around and liked it a lot. Assuming the price were right it would help me diversify into another asset class and I'd probably live in one of the units. Any experiences? Are MDUs even Do-Never-Buy-er than single family homes?
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May 8, 2013 05:15
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Arkane posted:Must be fun sleeping on the floor/air mattress for 3 months? Most people own a bed before they buy a house. I supposed the homeless occasionally buy a condo, but it's pretty rare.
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May 8, 2013 12:14
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So we close in a week and I'm still waiting on an appraisal. Time to panic?
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May 8, 2013 12:36
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Stew Man Chew posted:My sister just bought (provided financing comes through) a $750,000 condo with her husband. I'm going to generously say they have a $50k down payment and make about $150k between the two of them. Plus property taxes and condo fees. That could easily mean $5k+ in monthly housing expenses. No way are they going to be able to get a loan if you're right about their income and assets. Baruch Obamawitz posted:So we close in a week and I'm still waiting on an appraisal. Time to panic? I don't know about panicking, but it's definitely time to prepare yourself for the very real possibility that you won't be closing next week. Your rate lock shouldn't be an issue since rates have continued to trend down ever so slightly. Call your loan officer and find out how quickly they can get you thorough underwriting once the appraisal comes in. Hopefully, they have already run the rest of your app through underwriting, or even have conditional approval if the appraisal comes back OK. SlapActionJackson fucked around with this message at 14:43 on May 8, 2013 |
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May 8, 2013 14:27
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daslog posted:Most people own a bed before they buy a house. In my case, I owned three stacked futon mattresses with a 6" deep foam memory topper that I used in college  ~6 months after I closed on my house, THEN I went trolling Craigslist for a bedroom set (although I'd actually been keeping an eye on Craigslist for a bedroom set for almost a year at that point). $250 for a solid wood waterbed frame, 2 side tables, and a dresser, $8 for a bottle of Old English and some wood putty to repair the bedroom set, and $600 for a 14" deep foam mattress from Amazon and my bed is freaking heaven.My point being, you don't need to go to MegaFurnitureCorp immediately after you get the keys (and only after you get the keys!!!) and buy a $5,000 mahogany bedroom set. You've been sleeping on a bed/futon for the last however long, you can sleep on it for another week while you get set up in your new house. Patience is a virtue. Craigslist deals/steals are even better. daggerdragon fucked around with this message at 17:16 on May 8, 2013 |
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May 8, 2013 17:13
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SlapActionJackson posted:I don't know about panicking, but it's definitely time to prepare yourself for the very real possibility that you won't be closing next week. Your rate lock shouldn't be an issue since rates have continued to trend down ever so slightly. Call your loan officer and find out how quickly they can get you thorough underwriting once the appraisal comes in. Hopefully, they have already run the rest of your app through underwriting, or even have conditional approval if the appraisal comes back OK. Spoke with the loan officer who spoke to the listing agent who said that the appraiser contacted him to do the appraisal today. Loan officer also said everything else is ready to go. So crossing my fingers and whatnot.
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May 8, 2013 18:52
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Jealous Cow posted:Good lord, I make that and I hate my $1350 rent. I could not imagine having a payment that high on my income. if you make 150k what the gently caress are you piss away your money on that $1350 in rent causes you pain? Myself and my wife only bring home 100k and we can handle that easily.
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May 8, 2013 18:52
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sbaldrick posted:if you make 150k what the gently caress are you piss away your money on that $1350 in rent causes you pain? Myself and my wife only bring home 100k and we can handle that easily. I wondered this too and came to the conclusion that he/she is just unhappy putting down any money on housing. My wife and I make a little less and our payment is ever so slightly more and we are fine. Our rent was $1900 before getting our house, and THAT was untenable.
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May 8, 2013 19:00
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I'm always boggled by what is considered too much to spend on housing in this thread. I don't know anyone making more than 30-40k a year and everyone has to pay at least 1000 a month in rent or so. The best case I know is a couple who make about 60k combined and spend about 1200 a month on rent. The one person I know who actually owns something makes about 50k a year and her condo was about 200k.
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May 8, 2013 19:04
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Baronjutter posted:I'm always boggled by what is considered too much to spend on housing in this thread. I don't know anyone making more than 30-40k a year and everyone has to pay at least 1000 a month in rent or so. The best case I know is a couple who make about 60k combined and spend about 1200 a month on rent. The one person I know who actually owns something makes about 50k a year and her condo was about 200k. I don't think I've seen anyone in this thread looking for a house in the sub-80k range. Apparently everyone lives in NYC, Silicon Valley, or are trust fund babies. 
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May 8, 2013 19:11
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Stew Man Chew posted:My sister just bought (provided financing comes through) a $750,000 condo with her husband. I'm going to generously say they have a $50k down payment and make about $150k between the two of them. Jesus. I make 80k, and a 275k condo was a real stretch purchase for me. The mortgage+condo fees+property tax eats 50% of my monthly take-home pay (although I stand to get some nice income tax breaks to make up some of that). Scale that up, and they're looking at 75% (!!!) of their income going to mortgage payments. Financing a condo is substantially difficult. It's even more difficult if you have a sub-20% down payment. PMI companies do NOT like condos, and you're unlikely to be able to get PMI if the building is less than 70% owner-occupied. If it's less than 50%, there's essentially no chance. That's before considering that the loan will be non-conforming since that's above even the jumbo conforming limit. Then you consider that they don't have sufficient income to pay the mortgage, and financing is quite simply not going to happen. tl;dr: They can have their 750k condo when they can pay cash for it.
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May 8, 2013 19:54
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sbaldrick posted:if you make 150k what the gently caress are you piss away your money on that $1350 in rent causes you pain? Myself and my wife only bring home 100k and we can handle that easily. We don't know for sure where we're going to land and are not sure how long we'll be living in the city we're in now. I'd love to buy, I've found some awesome stuff less than 200k but I don't want to buy if we end up leaving the area in 12 months.
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May 8, 2013 20:08
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Arkane posted:However, I have 0 plans to still be owning the home in 7 years so I don't anticipate this rate being an issue. Are you aware of what happened to home prices in 2008? You know it could happen again, right? daggerdragon posted:I don't think I've seen anyone in this thread looking for a house in the sub-80k range. Apparently everyone lives in NYC, Silicon Valley, or are trust fund babies. According to the most recent figures in this chart, $80k is less than half the median existing home price in the US, which was $185k in March. The mean existing home price in March was $234k. The median new home price in February was $247k, and the mean new home price was $313k. It's not that everyone lives in rich/high-priced areas: its that you live in a poor/low-priced area. Stew Man Chew posted:My sister just bought (provided financing comes through) a $750,000 condo with her husband. I'm going to generously say they have a $50k down payment and make about $150k between the two of them. I don't see how they can possibly qualify for that size of a loan with that income.
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May 8, 2013 20:10
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daggerdragon posted:I don't think I've seen anyone in this thread looking for a house in the sub-80k range. Apparently everyone lives in NYC, Silicon Valley, or are trust fund babies. I'm none of these things, but to be able to afford a 100-200k house requires you to be able to make a 20-40k down payment and have good credit. This isn't hard. I make 20k a year and save 5k+ a year by myself outside of emergency funds. With a spouse with similar income, saving 40k for a down payment should take you 4 years if you put a little effort into it (assuming no extraordinary circumstances). Less if you really cut to the bone. With that said, with such low income, it's probably better to rent anyways unless your area's market is really hosed up. I guess I just don't understand why anyone would buy a house if they can only afford one <80k. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 20:21 on May 8, 2013 |
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May 8, 2013 20:11
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Rurutia posted:I'm none of these things, but to be able to afford a 100-200k house requires you to be able to make a 20-40k down payment and have good credit. This isn't hard. I make 20k a year and save 5k+ a year by myself outside of emergency funds. With a spouse with similar income, saving 40k for a down payment should take you 4 years if you put a little effort into it (assuming no extraordinary circumstances). Less if you really cut to the bone. I put 5% down and financing was a pain but it worked out. PMI is an expense but it's not ridiculous (it essentially amounts to a higher interest rate for the first few years). 5% down, 5k in closing costs, and $10k in emergency funds puts you at $25k savings needed to buy a $200k house. That's something you can pull off in 5 years easily if you score a secure job, possibly more if you have a lot of student loans. Robo-Pope fucked around with this message at 20:22 on May 8, 2013 |
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May 8, 2013 20:20
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Leperflesh posted:Are you aware of what happened to home prices in 2008? You know it could happen again, right?
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May 8, 2013 22:17
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moana posted:I bought my house in 2009 for $360k and Zillow has been continually upping the estimate, I think the last time it was $440k. Is it terrible that I kind of want to sell it now, pocket the equity, and just rent forever? Of course not. When you buy a stock cheap, with the intention of going long on it, and then it goes way up in price, it's quite tempting to sell at least some of it to lock in your profit. But the real question to ask yourself is "is my house's current valuation a bubble, or a return to the long-term norm?" The answer is going to depend on market but I do not thing most US house markets are in a bubble right now. There might be exceptions (I think Washington DC is in a long-term unsustainable bubble) but I'm not an expert so this is just one guy's somewhat semi-informed opinion. I suppose you could attempt to hedge. Take a home equity loan, and invest it in something that tends to go up when house prices go down. Maybe you could short REITs?
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May 8, 2013 22:27
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Spoke with the loan officer who spoke to the listing agent who said that the appraiser contacted him to do the appraisal today. Loan officer also said everything else is ready to go. Lies! My loan officer is worse than Apple with there always being "one more thing" at the end of every conversation. If you have not gotten the appraisal back yet there is still plenty to do.
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May 9, 2013 00:03
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My coworker is trying to get a house in my neighborhood with no luck. He just put in an offer above list on a house that hit the market today sight unseen. Bubble ahoy!
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May 9, 2013 00:29
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moana posted:I bought my house in 2009 for $360k and Zillow has been continually upping the estimate, I think the last time it was $440k. Is it terrible that I kind of want to sell it now, pocket the equity, and just rent forever? Zillow estimates are at best a fantasy and more likely complete fabrications. Don't base anything on them.
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May 9, 2013 01:25
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This is a good point. Zillow lowers my estimated property value because there happens to be a lot of apartments nearby and those sell more often than houses and the typical selling prices are sub-$100k. So it thinks comps for my house are low. It also thinks my home is REO/post-foreclosure, even though I bought it over 3 years ago, and it has that purchase in the history for my property. On the other hand, the county assessor's office does the same thing, and lowered my property tax accordingly. 
Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 01:35 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 01:30
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