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Thanks for the replies, after an e-mail the management sent back: "If you decide to use another Broker (other than ) or decide not to purchase an eligible property, there is no penalty other than forfeiture of the accumulated credits." The contract is pretty straightforward but just in case I've posted it here http://imgur.com/a/NnYZl with identifying details removed of course. If I don't want to buy or I feel like their broker doesn't give me a fair shake then I can just leave the credits at no loss.
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Dec 11, 2013 01:06
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It's just a gimmick to get more business for their brokers. Looks like the main disadvantage of signing up for it is that you give yourself some extra work later on, when you have to decide whether to use their broker or whether to buy a house they consider eligible. Hard to put a dollar amount on that, but it's real nonetheless.
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Dec 11, 2013 01:23
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Iucounu posted:What's up VA loan buddy! Hey hey! Yeah that's a pretty sweet deal, nice one getting the funding fee taken care of too!  I thought I'd detail a bit more into my experience buying this house because I felt like the selling agent was up to some dubious poo poo. I prequalified for my mortgage through USAA. They're an awesome company, I've been with them since 1998, and now all my finances are through them. So naturally I wanted to use them for my mortgage as well. The listing agent "wasn't sold" on my qualifications and asked me to cross-qualify with their lender. So I cross qualified. And naturally their lender tried to undercut USAA. This is a shady as gently caress business practice and I wasn't going to have any of it so I told my agent that I wanted to stick with USAA. Even my own agent said "I've had bad experiences with USAA because they don't understand how we do business in California  ." Then the listing agent told me that my offer was shakier because I wasn't using their lender and the sellers were going to consider other offers. So I got all  , bypassed the loving listing agent and wrote a letter directly to the homeowners that said how I intended to maintain my 15 year relationship with USAA, that I was uncomfortable using a lender with whom I have no history, that I've jumped through all their agent's prerequisite hoops with gold loving stars and that I understood they were free to accept any other offers but that mine was rock solid.In short, the sellers immediately accepted my offer, I used USAA, and we blew through the escrow so quickly that we were able to close 8 days early and the sellers had to ask me for extra time to move out because everyone but me expected USAA to fail. Everybody but USAA can suck eggs, I loving love USAA.  Also, my car insurance premium dropped 20% moving to my new house. I hadn't expected or considered that, so that's something for other people to think about also.
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Dec 11, 2013 02:20
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Drewski posted:edit: My friends and I are gamers and now that I'm in a stable living situation I'm more comfortable buying good furniture. I've put a deposit on http://www.geekchichq.com/the-emissary-gaming-table.html. Very excited for it to arrive. I remember seeing this company on Shark Tank. That is crazy expensive (although what the hell do I know about furniture). If you amortize the cost of that table over 500 game nights, it's still 25 dollars a night. Jesus. Cocoa Ninja fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Dec 11, 2013 |
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Dec 11, 2013 03:09
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Cocoa Ninja posted:I remember seeing this company on Shark Tank. That is crazy expensive (although what the hell do I know about furniture). Where did you learn math
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Dec 11, 2013 03:20
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uwaeve posted:Where did you learn math Oh hahaha, I was looking at the Sultan. That's 13,000 dollars!
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Dec 11, 2013 03:26
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When we last left off, I haggled a condo from 80k down to 70k by offering 66k twice in a row. On the third 66k offer however, Fannie Mae flipped the script by simply declining without a counteroffer, then lowering the listing price from 80k to 75k. They only lowered it from 88 to 80 only a week ago so I obviously forced their hand, they want to see if they can attract anyone else to bite a little higher than me. Their idea just might work, and while I'm indifferent on the place, even the 70k is a solid deal. Should I wiggle things up to 67k to get back in the game you think? I can close the place just in time for a two week vacation I could use to renovate it.
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Dec 11, 2013 04:09
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Really high quality furniture is worth it. I honestly don't find these prices shocking at all for high end furniture.
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Dec 11, 2013 04:16
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Rurutia posted:Really high quality furniture is worth it. I honestly don't find these prices shocking at all for high end furniture. I feel like there's a difference between buying quality that lasts and running D&D with the prince of Monaco.
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Dec 11, 2013 05:57
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How small is too small for a mortgage? We are looking at places in the 70-80k range, and will be able to put at least 30k down. We'll actually be able to pay it completely off in the span of a year or so (80k is less than half our annual income and we have few other expenses). We don't want to wait another year and have it saved up in advance because of timing reasons. So we may be looking at a 40k mortgage. Is that normally done? I don't want to touch my retirement savings. What would I want to look at in terms of type of loan if I plan on paying it off extremely fast? I suppose I want to avoid points and get a very short term on it.
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Dec 11, 2013 13:35
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Drewski posted:I loving love USAA. I too have a giant boner for USAA, but I ended up going with Wells Fargo. Funnily enough, I heard the exact loving same "USAA doesn't understand the market up here" speech, which is a little more believable since I bought in Alaska. Ultimately what scared me away from using USAA was their awful reviews for their mortgages on the website (props to them for keeping them all up on there though), and they were less helpful on the phone than I'm used to when I called for some general information.
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Dec 11, 2013 14:55
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Chin Strap posted:How small is too small for a mortgage? We are looking at places in the 70-80k range, and will be able to put at least 30k down. We'll actually be able to pay it completely off in the span of a year or so (80k is less than half our annual income and we have few other expenses). We don't want to wait another year and have it saved up in advance because of timing reasons. If you really want to do this you can always get a regular 80% LTV mortgage with no prepayment penalty and drop a huge payment towards principal straight off. You may want to reconsider this as a strategy, though, since interest rates are still historically cheap and you run a good chance of outperforming it with an index fund.
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Dec 11, 2013 15:28
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Engineer Lenk posted:If you really want to do this you can always get a regular 80% LTV mortgage with no prepayment penalty and drop a huge payment towards principal straight off. You may want to reconsider this as a strategy, though, since interest rates are still historically cheap and you run a good chance of outperforming it with an index fund. I can understand that mentality, but the mental burden of debt makes me not keen to play that game too much. I may rely on low mortgage payments for a bit to instead invest in the house itself (whatever remodel stuff might be done), but after that I still will probably just pay it off to pay it off. If that is the case, I suppose just going for no PMI and whatever the lowest interest rate is my best bet. I know 15 year loans are lower rates than 30 years. Do they make even lower rate ones for 10 or 5 years?
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Dec 11, 2013 15:38
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There's no mortgage too low, I mean I bought my first place for $68k. I got a 30-year mortgage with no prepayment penalty at 6%, then when half the house was paid off after a couple years, I got a Home Equity Line of Credit (no fees to do so either, unlike a second mortgage) and wrote a check off the house at 4% to pay off the mortgage, then I paid off the HELOC in another year. All said and done I think I paid under 10k in interest for everything. In my state I could write the HELOC interest off my taxes (up to $100k worth) the same as the primary mortgage. Really though I wouldn't bother with 15-year or less loans, they're only marginally less interest than 30-year, and at least with 30-year if something cataclysmic happens (say you both get fired) you won't get your rear end kicked trying to make the larger minimum payments.
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Dec 11, 2013 16:03
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Zero VGS posted:There's no mortgage too low, I mean I bought my first place for $68k. I got a 30-year mortgage with no prepayment penalty at 6%, then when half the house was paid off after a couple years, I got a Home Equity Line of Credit (no fees to do so either, unlike a second mortgage) and wrote a check off the house at 4% to pay off the mortgage, then I paid off the HELOC in another year. All said and done I think I paid under 10k in interest for everything. In my state I could write the HELOC interest off my taxes (up to $100k worth) the same as the primary mortgage. Good thought about prepayment penalty, didn't even realize that was a thing. As for 15 vs 30, cursory looks seem to show a 1% ish difference between the two. That isn't that small...
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Dec 11, 2013 16:13
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It isn't that big either, when as you say you're going to pay the place down in a couple years. For me I might have paid like, $1000 bucks more in interest over the four years, $800 when you factor in the tax write offs. To me an extra $200 a year over four years was less stressful to worry about than "what if I'm laid off / fall sick and have a super-sized minimum payment to make". You're already trying to avoid mental burdens like debt in the back of your head, so decide how much extra interest is worth it to you for the lower payments. If the worst case scenario happens you may be glad you can just pay off the place later instead of being foreclosed on.
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Dec 11, 2013 16:27
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Chin Strap posted:How small is too small for a mortgage? We are looking at places in the 70-80k range, and will be able to put at least 30k down. We'll actually be able to pay it completely off in the span of a year or so (80k is less than half our annual income and we have few other expenses). We don't want to wait another year and have it saved up in advance because of timing reasons. Different lenders have different requirements. The only thing I can think of is a 40 or 50K loan isn't really worth a lot of places time to be honest. A broker might gross 1500 dollars in revenue off a 50K loan which isn't worth their time, and I would guess there are many wholesale lenders out there that won't touch a loan that small, once again not worth their time. I would think your best bet is an existing banking relationship, hopefully with a credit union or local bank that is used to this kind of thing. They'll be more flexible with underwriting and they're probably used to seeing smaller mortgages. They'll probably be very glad to lend you money in what is basically a no risk transaction for them. Looking at a wholesale conventional mortgage rate sheet you might be able to swing 4% with no points/fees on a 10 year term. You could get down to 3.5 on a 10 year but you'd probably have to cough up a point or two. This particular lender sheet I'm looking at has a 2 point adjustment for loans under 75,000 dollars.
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Dec 11, 2013 17:24
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Drewski posted:In short, the sellers immediately accepted my offer, I used USAA, and we blew through the escrow so quickly that we were able to close 8 days early and the sellers had to ask me for extra time to move out because everyone but me expected USAA to fail. Everybody but USAA can suck eggs, I loving love USAA. I really liked USAA at one point, and used them for my car insurance, renters insurance, and car loan. I grew a bit more unhappy with them over time though, mostly because my car insurance only went up every year, despite having no at-fault accidents throughout my entire 6 years with them. My premium this year for a ford fiesta was as much as I was paying for the 210hp 2 door sports coupe I had when I was 20. I called to ask wtf earlier this year, and they just wanted to reduce my coverage to lower my premiums. So when I went to get a mortgage, I was preapproved by USAA, and a local credit union. I went with the local credit union just for simplicity, knowing a few people who work there if I ever have issues, and because they actually service 95% of their mortgages. The real kicker for USAA was when I wanted to get home owners insurance. I filled out the stuff for a quote online, but they wanted to insure my $240k house for about $320,000. I understand market value isn't the same as rebuilding value, rubble clearing costs money, etc, but the cost of an 11000 sq ft lot is included in that $240k so it would have been vastly overinsured. With the online system it would not let me adjust a drat thing. Bundling with my car insurance would have only dropped my car insurance premium like 5%. I tried a few other insurers online quotes, and state farm had the same coverage amounts for additions like my decks/sheds, property inside the home, etc and a realistic cost to rebuild. After the car/home bundle discounts, my car insurance was about 40% cheaper for the same coverage (only car rentals will cost me a little more), and the home insurance premium was 35% less than the USAA quote. Simply non-competitive. When I went to cancel my car insurance, I was told I made a mistake filling out the form for the quote (I used everything I put in the USAA form to fill out the forms on the other insurer's websites). Oh well.
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Dec 11, 2013 18:35
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I just had a home inspection done today. During the showing, my step-dad noticed a bird go into a hole in a screen into the attic. We guessed that the home inspectors would find a bird's nest up there. Yes. There's a bird's nest in the attic. Biggest either of the inspectors had ever seen (although they said one came close). Obviously kicking it back to the seller to have it removed and a new screen put in. babies havin rabies fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 00:04
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babies havin rabies posted:I just had a home inspection done today. During the showing, my step-dad noticed a bird go into a hole in a screen into the attic. We guessed that the home inspectors would find a bird's nest up there. 
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Dec 13, 2013 00:44
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Looks like free insulation to me.
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Dec 13, 2013 01:12
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I would demand a reinspection of the attic after the removal...there could be all sorts of issues under there!
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Dec 13, 2013 02:12
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I'm going to try to get them to replace the insulation under it. It no doubt has feces and other bird dirt in it. Edit: Going over the report, this house/garage has some problems that make that look like Disneyland. No thanks. babies havin rabies fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 02:16
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I'm an amateur landlord, but seeing as home inspection questions come up in the thread, I figure it might be apropos to ask.... My tenants are complaining the sliding glass door keeps getting harder to open and close. I assumed it was the rollers, so I sent a company out to repair it. However, the glass company claims the entire frame is bent due to settling of the house (its a 50 year old house). And they need to replace the frame and glass sliding doors. So a $100 job now is a $2000 job. Does this "settling" sound valid? Could it be from tenant damage or is it possible the sliding door contractor just wants to yank more money from me?
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Dec 14, 2013 00:15
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Get another opinion? Ask the DIY small questions thread, maybe? (this is if you don't get any responses here, of course)
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Dec 14, 2013 00:17
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CatchrNdRy posted:I'm an amateur landlord, but seeing as home inspection questions come up in the thread, I figure it might be apropos to ask.... Settling is absolutely valid but I can't imagine it being a $2000 job.
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Dec 14, 2013 00:21
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There should be roller height adjustment screws on the door near the bottom, one on the front and one on the back. Crank them both in a few turns and see if it improves. That's not really a job that requires a contractor. If it doesn't work, maybe the contractor wasn't lying.
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Dec 14, 2013 00:22
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That seems like something that could be figured out with a spirit level. See if the door frame is significantly racked.
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Dec 14, 2013 00:25
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Stultus Maximus posted:Settling is absolutely valid but I can't imagine it being a $2000 job. Its 143.5 x 81.5 door and frame. The first contractor wanted an eye-popping $5000. LogisticEarth posted:That seems like something that could be figured out with a spirit level. See if the door frame is significantly racked. If I use the level and the door frame is wracked, how do I know its from the foundation and not from damage? eddiewalker posted:There should be roller height adjustment screws on the door near the bottom, one on the front and one on the back. Crank them both in a few turns and see if it improves. That's not really a job that requires a contractor. They claimed to have already tried that, but I guess I'm just taking their word
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Dec 14, 2013 00:30
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CatchrNdRy posted:
The frame is a big rectangle of (probably) steel that is bolted to the studs and the floor of the house. Unless your tenants are The Incredible Hulk and The Thing, there's no way they've managed to turn that rectangle into a parallelogram just from mild abuse. If the thing isn't square any more, it's from something going on with the structure. That doesn't necessarily mean the foundation, but it's not from slamming the door hard or something.
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Dec 14, 2013 02:13
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Leperflesh posted:The frame is a big rectangle of (probably) steel that is bolted to the studs and the floor of the house. Unless your tenants are The Incredible Hulk and The Thing, there's no way they've managed to turn that rectangle into a parallelogram just from mild abuse. If the thing isn't square any more, it's from something going on with the structure. That doesn't necessarily mean the foundation, but it's not from slamming the door hard or something. Ok thanks, that's what I just wanted to verify, that it was something outside my control or not due to tenant abuse.
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Dec 14, 2013 02:15
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Just heard back Friday that Fannie Mae deemed my "final and best" $68k offer "materially sufficient", so there it is, I am now an official slumlord. What's making me nervous now is, I told them I could close before the end of the year, but that was before they stalled for a week with my last offer. Now they want to close on the 23rd, and they want me to show before then that I have the funds in my bank. I do have all the funds, but it's 25k in my checking, 35k sitting in my Fidelity account from selling all of my company stock plan, and my untouched Home Equity Line of Credit that I can write a 40k check off of my current apartment with. Transferring the stocks and HELOC money are going to take close to a week to clear into my bank, I'm definitely cutting it close and don't want Fannie to back out or penalize me by missing the closing date. Is there anything I should say to them and/or the seller's agent? I also have a lawyer but didn't want to bother him on the weekend, I'm not so sure he does real estate often though. Just incase he can't, or he can't make it to the closing on short notice, is there a go-to resource to find a lawyer to close with that won't shaft me?
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Dec 15, 2013 21:39
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It's a pretty small amount for a home purchase, you might be able to get a bridge loan from a bank in that short time period with the assets listed as collateral.
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Dec 15, 2013 23:56
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Does anyone have any tips or experiences with dealing with a tricky seller, price wise? My wife and I have been looking for a while and found a home that seemed to fit nearly everything we've been looking for. It was originally listed for $250,000 four months ago. When we looked at it it was about $240,000, and had been for over a month. We were heavily considering it, as that's near the top of our budget, and were going to try to get closer to 230,000. But before we could make any kind of formal offer our realtor contacted us and told us that they had raised the price back up to $250,000.  My wife joked that maybe they made a mistake and put in +$10k on the MLS software instead of -$10k. Locally it seems that prices are slowly falling, so I'm kind of confused why this guy bumped the price up after the house hasn't sold for four months. Would it be "insulting" if we made an offer at $230k so he knew we were interested in it at that price point?
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Dec 16, 2013 02:37
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Huh? The listing price doesn't have much correlation with what someone will take... except that they probably won't decline an offer at or above list. Some people are desperate to get rid of a house, some people might even want to stay in the house forever unless someone bids at their unrealistically high price. What you should be looking at is the actual sale prices of places in the same neighborhood with similar stats, aka comparables. Even then you can offer less than that, it all depends on a seller's mood. I just saw a condo listed at 80k and successfully bought it at 68k, and the last guy who owned it bought it two years ago for 140k so you figure that one out. But the moral of the story is it's a buyer's market, so lowballs away!
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Dec 16, 2013 03:47
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Therein lies another good house buying lesson - don't generalize. It sure as hell isn't a buyers' market in my neighborhood!
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Dec 16, 2013 04:45
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Rurutia posted:Really high quality furniture is worth it. I honestly don't find these prices shocking at all for high end furniture. I used to work for a small boutique / antique furniture place and it was pretty jaw dropping the money people would spend on furniture. I once delivered a set of 4 dining room chairs that were Amish crafted, each chair was $495. Even so, 3 grand on a D&D table seems kinda nuts.
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Dec 16, 2013 05:25
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Zero VGS posted:Huh? The listing price doesn't have much correlation with what someone will take... except that they probably won't decline an offer at or above list. Some people are desperate to get rid of a house, some people might even want to stay in the house forever unless someone bids at their unrealistically high price. We have looked at comps also, although it's hard to tell exactly what is "comparable" and how much that would affect the price. For example, most other "comparable" homes in the area that have sold recently have more than double the land, but have also sold anywhere from 30k below or 30k above this guy's asking price. And if Zillow is to be believed the general trend for home values in the area has been going down. So it's just curious that after four months he bumps the price back up. Our realtor mentioned that the listing agent mentioned the guy was sticky on price, but they also said he's only had one other offer. Housing is so drat expensive. As for "do never buy", rents are even worse around here. I think I just need a raise, ha.
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Dec 16, 2013 12:12
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He just might not be in any kind of hurry or simply can't afford to leave the house at less than a certain amount. More or less a "make me move" asking price. Generally they have no need or motivation to negotiate on price. The drop and raise is a bit odd though.
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Dec 16, 2013 16:38
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scavok posted:He just might not be in any kind of hurry or simply can't afford to leave the house at less than a certain amount. More or less a "make me move" asking price. Generally they have no need or motivation to negotiate on price. The drop and raise is a bit odd though. Totally speculating here, but from past experience in other markets this usually happens if someone got talked into lowering their price (maybe by their realtor) and reversed the decision (maybe catalyzed by an offer at that price, which they couldn't go through with).
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Dec 16, 2013 16:47
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