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Getting back into homeownership has been a blast... to my wallet. So much deferred maintenance to get caught up on and some other things putting us into the 10-15k territory thus far since December.  Big ticket items so far: 1. Exterior french drain and gutter extensions to street to get water away from foundation (4500) 2. Remove 40y old fence and shared planters and install new shiney fence (6000) 3. Brickwork to get things back in check for the next 50y ($$$$?) 2nd kid due in the next 2-3 weeks, going to shore up on the savings side as we prep for two kids in daycare  . In two years hopefully our choice of best public school district pays off and our first kid drops off of daycare into sweet sweet tax-payer funded schooling.
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Feb 11, 2016 17:51
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dietcokefiend posted:In two years hopefully our choice of best public school district pays off and our first kid drops off of daycare into sweet sweet tax-payer funded schooling. Don't forget about after school care. My oldest started K, and school gets out at 2:30PM. The after school program we chose is 20 dollars a week cheaper than full time daycare when she 4. There's not really any savings until they're old enough to stay at home by themselves.
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Feb 11, 2016 19:42
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skipdogg posted:Don't forget about after school care. My oldest started K, and school gets out at 2:30PM. The after school program we chose is 20 dollars a week cheaper than full time daycare when she 4. There's not really any savings until they're old enough to stay at home by themselves. Yea right now we're working out a plan to shuffle hours around so someone can be at home when they get out of school to skip that part.
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Feb 11, 2016 20:19
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Just a heads up, I closed a no closing cost 30 year conventional fixed mortgage last July at 4.125% and today on zillow mortgage I'm seeing no cost/low cost refinances in the 3.25-3.375% range. Not what I expected given the Fed lately, but I'm not sad about it!
antiga fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 20:19
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^^^ Thanks for the heads up. Gonna do some number crunching. Getting my 4.25 down to 3.5 would make me a happy camper.
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Feb 11, 2016 21:50
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As someone that would really prefer not to lump down another 5% for a refi, is there a handy calculator to sort out where the breakeven amount is for a refi? Locked in at 4, not sure how low it would have to be to make it worthwhile.
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Feb 11, 2016 21:55
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Phone posting, but check out Mortgage professor calculator 3 or 3a, not sure.
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Feb 11, 2016 22:11
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Funny, I just refi'd back in early December, since with the fed raising rates, I assumed rates would start creeping back up... guess not. I went from a 30 year 4.125% rate, down to a 15 year 3.125% rate. Sure it made my mortgage go up a little less than $500, but considering I'm knocking 13+ years off.. I'm cool with that. However, now that rates have dropped again, I'm eyeballing a 2.75% zero cost refi. While it may only knock ~$40 a month off the mortgage, I'm already committed to paying a touch more to pay down the principal on my current loan, so this will only pay it down that much faster. Are there any problems refinancing shortly after already refinancing??
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Feb 12, 2016 04:33
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There aren't really any provisions against refinancing shortly after your loan closes. Sometimes there can be some additional paperwork on the lender side (whoever they sent the mortgage to as an investor might not be thrilled they are only getting a few months of interest off of you) but that tends to not be an issue for the borrower. It is possible if you are working with the same lender that you did before that you might not need to reappraise the home. That might even be something another lender is willing to do for you based on the investor used for your last 15 year (admittedly it is a lot less likely though).
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Feb 12, 2016 17:50
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What would the average cost for refinancing be? I'm currently trying to refinance $310k loan from a 4.25% 30yr to a 3.25% 20yr. I'm finding the average closing costs to be $3500 to $4500. Which would be in the 1.1% to 1.5% area. Also, how does escrow work when refinancing? My property taxes are 10k a year. So my new lender would create an escrow account and I would have to provide cash upfront to fund it myself out of pocket? Do I need to provide for a full year of property tax and insurance or a couple of months? And my other option if I didn't want to front that would be to fold that into my mortgage? I'd rather not do that. But paying taxes out of pocket on top of $4k in closing costs seems like a lotta dough.
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Feb 12, 2016 21:45
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Your mileage may vary shopping between lenders of course, but the standard advice here would be to get different quotes. In regards to escrow you typically can fold that into the loan or pay it out of pocket, it is more determined by your loan to value than anything else. As far as how much needs to be in your escrow account, typically there is going to be a few months of cushion in the amount they collect (you "skip" a payment the month after you close) but depending on when your taxes and insurance are paid out the amount they need could vary quite a bit. For instance if you pay your taxes semi-annually, you probably just paid winter property taxes, but if you pay taxes quarterly, you'll likely have a bill coming up soon. Either way you get the check back from your current servicer after your loan funds. You should be able to look up your most recent mortgage state and see how much is currently in your escrow, under escrow balance. Unless you have an FHA mortgage (where MIP is going to get paid to the FHA post close), you likely are getting all of that back post closing.
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Feb 12, 2016 22:27
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A no-cost refinance is possible by taking a higher interest rate. E.g. market rate is 3% but instead you take 3.25% and the lender gives you a credit to cover the closing costs. Basically the same as buying points when you first get the mtg but in reverse.
antiga fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Feb 12, 2016 |
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Feb 12, 2016 23:47
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Anyone have experience with a 203k loan? Wife and I are interested in downsizing, moving downtown, and doing it all into a foreclosed home. House looks to hit the market at $60k, and I'm thinking the 35k allowance on the streamlined loan should cover the majority of all work to be done. If not, we have roughly 40k equity in our current home, which we will sell when the new home is move in-ish ready.
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Feb 14, 2016 23:17
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Hi, Do Never Buy thread! You may remember me as the guy that needed a completely new septic system installed on mountainous terrain, and his neighbor's cooperation to access his land. To clarify, our neighbor's driveway crosses our property (confirmed by ILC/survey), so after much hand holding, our neighbor agreed to let us access a small slice of *her* land to access ours, as she does every day. Well, the project is finally complete, and it ran pretty significantly overbudget (budgeted for $21k, ended up being $26k). Whatever, gently caress it, I got about 80% of that off the purchase price of the house and I know nobody else wanted to deal with that poo poo which is why we could find such a reasonably priced house in the first place ($238k in the foothills/mountains about 30 minutes way from Denver). Our neighbor *won't.* *stop.* *bugging my wife.*, who has been my liaison through all of this because I hate dealing with old, irrational TBI patients. We have a signed (informal) agreement with her to reseed/finalize grading as soon as the middle of winter is over in exchange for allowing the excavator access to our land. She will text us in the middle of the night, "the rocks are falling!!" (no, they're not) or "I can't access my driveway!!" (yes, you can, I just saw that you did and melting snow does make dirt driveways muddy). We've tried to be as nice and polite as possible, but after receiving two eight paragraph emails about how we have "trampled the heart of the land", I put my foot down and set her a four sentence email basically stating "I'm sorry you feel that way, we will comply with what we originally agreed to as soon as grass seeding season starts, thank you for your help with this." That stopped her for a few weeks, but she's complaining about her muddy driveway again. The most bizarre part? I think it's related to the TBI, but she cannot read maps or diagrams and quite literally refuses to believe that our land is ours, or that her driveway crosses our land. She became incensed when I told her we'd be happy to allow her to continue using our land for driveway access, and started saying how nice she was that she let our system be installed on her land at all (uh, the septic system can't even legally be installed on anyone's land but ours, and obviously the county wouldn't allow this to happen without a current survey/ILC on file). There's also been a big pile of garbage bags sitting down there for weeks, and she lets her dog poo poo all over what is technically our land - I wouldn't care about this normally, since it's untended grassland, but if we're getting all up in our neighbor's faces about things we dislike... I don't think she has the mental temerity to put together a lawsuit, but I do have a legal aid package through work, and copies of our ILC and her signed agreement to access her land, along with proof that we've prepaid for seeding services in March. I really don't like this woman, but I don't want to be her enemy. Am I doing the right thing? Here's what I'm planning on sending her: "Hello [High Maintenance Neighbor], We're still on track for having [excavating company] come out to reseed and finish things up in March. In the meantime, can you please dispose of the black trash bags that have been dumped near our tree? Thank you. [Radbot] and [Radbot's Wife]" Radbot fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Feb 15, 2016 |
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Feb 15, 2016 18:09
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Radbot posted:Hi, Do Never Buy thread! You may remember me as the guy that needed a completely new septic system installed on mountainous terrain, and his neighbor's cooperation to access his land. To clarify, our neighbor's driveway crosses our property (confirmed by ILC/survey), so after much hand holding, our neighbor agreed to let us access a small slice of *her* land to access ours, as she does every day. That sound lovely but couldn't you have just gone and thrown the trash away yourself in the time it took to write this instead of relying on an old person with a brain injury (if that's what TBI means) to do it?
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Feb 15, 2016 18:20
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Unless I want to climb down, and then up a 15% grass grade covered in snow to access land she believes is hers, I would have to cross her property to get to the bags. I think I conveyed this, but I don't care about the bags or the dog poo poo in reality. I just need her to leave us alone, at least until the seeding we've already paid for occurs in a few weeks.
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Feb 15, 2016 18:43
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This is treading pretty close to e/n territory.
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Feb 15, 2016 19:22
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Agreed. I'd never communicate with her again if it were my choice.
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Feb 15, 2016 19:24
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Radbot posted:Agreed. I'd never communicate with her again if it were my choice. If she sends you a letter or an e-mail just throw them away? Or put them (unopened) in a box if you're worried about legal issues and need proof of something
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Feb 15, 2016 20:11
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QuarkJets posted:If she sends you a letter or an e-mail just throw them away? Isn't this kinda a goony way to approach this? I'm not trying to be an obstinate rear end in a top hat, I'd like for us to live in at least passive acceptance of each other, if possible. I don't know if it is, though. I guess my real question is if y'all think I should reply (politely with a very short text confirming what we've already talked about) or if I should go total incommunicado.
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Feb 15, 2016 20:13
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It's definitely not the type of thing that anyone in this thread would have expertise on. You could ask the lawgoons.
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Feb 15, 2016 20:18
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Radbot posted:Isn't this kinda a goony way to approach this? I'm not trying to be an obstinate rear end in a top hat, I'd like for us to live in at least passive acceptance of each other, if possible. I don't know if it is, though. If she's harassing you with pointless letters then ignoring them is a legitimate and not-at-all-goony way of dealing with that. It's not being obstinate. It sounds like the letters are long pointless diatribes over something that you already have a contract over and that you can't do anything about anyway.
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Feb 15, 2016 20:21
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Radbot posted:Agreed. I'd never communicate with her again if it were my choice. The beauty of home ownership and lovely neighbors... I think this is your only choice:  Really though, if you let this get into a tit for tat it'll only get worse and the only person who's going to lose out is you, in terms of stress, resentment, wasting time with frivolous legal stuff, and bitterness. The smallest dumbest thing will just consume you entirely if you let it. It sucks, but just go ahead and deal with the trash yourself, don't even bring it up. She'll forget about all this eventually, and just be nice and smile in the meantime. So long as you've got all your ducks in order there's nothing she can do, just smile, wave, say hi, ask her how her day is going and if she's elderly if there's anything you can help out with. Just forget about her bitching and if the dogs are an issue down the road, build a fence or plant some privacy hedges to keep them out in the future. You do not want this to get worse, she's got unlimited time on her hand and will make your life a living hell. Don't mention your land/her driveway, there could even be an easement on there or something or she might try to get one and then it's effectively her land. This does not have any potential to end well for you if you let it devolve. Take the first step to do something nice, and that might really help defuse things. Make her some brownies or cookies or buy her a fruit basket or restaurant gift card as some small thank you token of your appreciation for her inconvenience, even if it's bullshit. You'll reap rewards over having a good relationship in the long term. Try not to let this bit of negativity overwhelm the rest of the positivity surrounding your new home 
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Feb 15, 2016 20:24
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That's exactly what we did, actually. We had her up for tea and she brought us a cute little gift basket. The nasty letters/texts started after the work began - I don't think she understood exactly what was going to happen even though we repeatedly explained it to her in person, over email, and provided her with our full permit documentation (75 pages detailing to the millimeter exactly what was planned), our contractor's phone numbers, and the ILC results. Now, we've "ruined" "her" (our) land. I have no doubt she could get an easement at this point if she wanted it, though none currently exists. I *believe* it would only be for driveway use and I wouldn't literally be ceding my land to her, but regardless, it's a path I agree I don't want to go down. At this point, I think I'm just going to stop replying to her and let the trash/dog poo poo go, to your advice. If she keeps texting, I may just let her know that we're going to get the seeding done as soon as humanly possible, again.
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Feb 15, 2016 20:36
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Found an interesting house for a decent price in an awesome spot, but the listing warns "ALL BEDROOMS ARE NON-CONFORMING". One upstairs loft style bedroom and another tiny guest bedroom in the basement. "Makes a wonderful summer retreat or possible to convert to full-time residence." Are you somehow allowed to legally stay in a "summer retreat" with non-confirming bedrooms, but not live there full time? Or is it just a fire/safety thing in general but not illegal to live in? I was already a little suspicious because it's been listed for 9 months now but I'm guessing this is why.
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Feb 15, 2016 21:15
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Depends (usually) on the county, around here they wouldn't allow you to transfer the deed until renovations had been made to convert the bedrooms to conforming and was inspected as such since those are the sorts of places that usually end up in the news with headlines like "12 children die in fire because they were stuffed in a non conforming bedroom with no window".
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Feb 15, 2016 22:20
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sadus posted:Found an interesting house for a decent price in an awesome spot, but the listing warns "ALL BEDROOMS ARE NON-CONFORMING". One upstairs loft style bedroom and another tiny guest bedroom in the basement. "Makes a wonderful summer retreat or possible to convert to full-time residence." Are you somehow allowed to legally stay in a "summer retreat" with non-confirming bedrooms, but not live there full time? Or is it just a fire/safety thing in general but not illegal to live in? I was already a little suspicious because it's been listed for 9 months now but I'm guessing this is why.
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Feb 16, 2016 00:45
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Radbot posted:That's exactly what we did, actually. We had her up for tea and she brought us a cute little gift basket. The nasty letters/texts started after the work began - I don't think she understood exactly what was going to happen even though we repeatedly explained it to her in person, over email, and provided her with our full permit documentation (75 pages detailing to the millimeter exactly what was planned), our contractor's phone numbers, and the ILC results. Now, we've "ruined" "her" (our) land. I end up with lovely situations a bit with my work. No matter how much you try to keep them happy they will just find a new way to be a fuckwit. In relation to being unable to read plans this is a common problem. 95% of people can't envision what plans actually show but that's mostly because people rarely get involved in anything involving property or buildings. Usually some additional explanation is needed so they will get it, some are too stupid to understand though. Keep all of the letters as they show long term harassment. She's providing evidence in case she does something stupid in the future. Given that she hasn't complained to any legal authorities she's just moaning at you so who cares. Once the work is done hopefully she'll settle down. If not it's best not to get involved in petty boundary disputes and so on. People waste a lot of money to get nothing in those situations.
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Feb 16, 2016 02:02
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So, whats up with these super low/no cost refinance loans? Based on some suggestions from this thread, I took a look at the Mortgage section on Zillow, put in my info and have a pile of quick estimates now. My understanding was that the no cost programs were paid for in 1 of 2 ways. Either they just roll the fees etc into the loan, or you end up with a higher rate than you would otherwise get and that difference is the cost. But Ia m looking at these, and seeing $1 in fees, with nothing added to the loan balance, and rates as low as I can find on any loan without buying it down. What am I missing?
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Feb 17, 2016 21:23
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emocrat posted:So, whats up with these super low/no cost refinance loans? Based on some suggestions from this thread, I took a look at the Mortgage section on Zillow, put in my info and have a pile of quick estimates now. My understanding was that the no cost programs were paid for in 1 of 2 ways. Either they just roll the fees etc into the loan, or you end up with a higher rate than you would otherwise get and that difference is the cost. But Ia m looking at these, and seeing $1 in fees, with nothing added to the loan balance, and rates as low as I can find on any loan without buying it down. What am I missing? Fill out the form on the lender's site and you'll see that the fees usually are added into the loan or that the rate is higher to offset the fees. I'm going through some refi applications right now because of the rates and most of the lenders are kicking back quotes with a range of fee options and corresponding rate changes to match.
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Feb 17, 2016 21:31
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I bought a house three months ago, originally built in the early 1960s, in the Chicago suburbs. We finally had our electrical panel moved out of our basement bathroom (a real  location) to an open spot on a wall in our basement. Before we had our electrical panel moved, our three bedrooms, upstairs bathroom, hallway light, one wall of our dining room, basement lights, and basement outlets were all on the same circuit. We figured this is because the electrician said our old panel was overloaded beyond capacity, and by expanding our panel to a 200amp panel with more breakers, the basement would be split off from the rest of the house. Nope. Apparently all that poo poo is on one circuit, on one lone 15 amp breaker. We've had it flip a few times before we upgraded the panel, now I need to have him come back out and figure out how much it's going to cost to split the basement off of the rest of that loving mess. Not the electrician's fault because he just moved everything over as it was wired before, and separated the breakers that were double tapped, but we were hoping this would fix the problem and it didn't. $4500 out the window so far.Now our ejector pit is leaking. Do. Never. Buy.
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Feb 17, 2016 23:12
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I can't imagine why you thought moving the location of the breaker panel and adding a panel with more capacity would somehow split a circuit in your house into multiple circuits. The only way to accomplish that would be to run new wire.
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Feb 17, 2016 23:58
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emocrat posted:So, whats up with these super low/no cost refinance loans? Based on some suggestions from this thread, I took a look at the Mortgage section on Zillow, put in my info and have a pile of quick estimates now. My understanding was that the no cost programs were paid for in 1 of 2 ways. Either they just roll the fees etc into the loan, or you end up with a higher rate than you would otherwise get and that difference is the cost. But Ia m looking at these, and seeing $1 in fees, with nothing added to the loan balance, and rates as low as I can find on any loan without buying it down. What am I missing? Zillow also defaults into showing you zero point loans. You can see more loans by clicking the filter option on the top right and selecting 1 or 2 point loans for a lower rate. I know that seems too good to be true, but I've refinanced three times through Zillow brokers and always gotten slightly better than the quoted rate.
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Feb 18, 2016 01:05
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Leperflesh posted:I can't imagine why you thought moving the location of the breaker panel and adding a panel with more capacity would somehow split a circuit in your house into multiple circuits. The only way to accomplish that would be to run new wire. You are correct, it's because I didn't ask the electrician before we moved it whether the problem was because everything was on one circuit or because the existing breaker had both circuits tapped into it. I assumed nobody would be dumb enough to run all that poo poo on one circuit. I was wrong.
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Feb 18, 2016 03:20
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swenblack posted:Zillow quotes don't include escrow expenses (taxes and insurance), local transfer taxes (if applicable), or daily interest payments until the first mortgage payment, all of which will require you to bring a check to closing or need to be rolled onto the loan. I'm closing on my refi in the next week or two and Zillow and Lendingtree both had virtually identical rates from the same companies. It's been pretty painless so far. The appraisal came back about 10K less than I had hoped, but it still means that I've gotten about $27,000 in appreciation over the last 2 years so I can't complain. The difference in payment should be over $300 a month.
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Feb 19, 2016 00:24
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Homeowners, how worth it is it to get insurance on things like my sewer line or electrical line? The fine print makes it seem like a bad idea (covering normal wear and tear but not natural disasters or accidents) but I wanted a better idea if this stuff was just a scam or not.
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Feb 19, 2016 15:01
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Dazerbeams posted:Homeowners, how worth it is it to get insurance on things like my sewer line or electrical line? The fine print makes it seem like a bad idea (covering normal wear and tear but not natural disasters or accidents) but I wanted a better idea if this stuff was just a scam or not. I can't speak to your sewer line, but I think the main hazard there is fast growing trees with deep tap roots, like willows and whatnot growing near the line out front. You can remove those kinds of plants yourself, and there's a biocide foam that's supposed to kill tap roots and coat the inside of the pipe for a year, so maybe that might be better insurance if you're worried about it? Otherwise, it could be pretty costly to replace a sewer line depending on how hard it is to access/dig up. Could be in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars or more, depending on whether it's underneath a concrete slab or something. Older clay tiles are more susceptible to cracking and root penetration too. I'd say it depends on the premium cost, what's covered, and the deductible amount, and what kind of system you have/age/how vulnerable you think it might be. I don't have it myself, on a hundred twenty year old house, just fyi. I don't see it being an issue for me anytime soon, though it certainly could. The electrical service insurance quote I received from AEP only covers the meter base and service mast, neither of which are all that expensive or difficult to replace, or even likely to be damaged beyond a big storm or something, so my thought process is that 20$ extra a month tacked onto my electric bill ain't worth what is probably mediocre insurance to begin with, for something that may cost 1-2 grand for an electrician to fix. I think the insurance limit with the quote I received was three grand anyways. Plus, if my service mast were damaged, I'd want to replace it with an underground run anyways, so I just declined the coverage. That one just doesn't seem worth it to me. Catatron Prime fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 15:27
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At least with State Farm, the sewer insurance only insured repairs caused by damage from a backup, not repairing the sewer line itself.
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Feb 19, 2016 16:19
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I can't imagine anyone having any success getting these types of policies to pay for any repairs. If you think your risk is higher then average though you can probably get something added to your home owners policy. (This assumes your have a reliable company that pays reasonable claims).
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Feb 19, 2016 17:34
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I originally posted this in the tax thread but maybe this is a more appropriate venue: Does anyone know how the first time homebuyers $10k/person penalty-free IRA withdrawal allowance works for married couples? Specifically, does $10k have to come from my IRA and $10k from her IRA, or can the entire $20k come from the wife's IRA?
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Feb 19, 2016 17:35
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