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metztli posted:When you talk about a 180k townhouse, I feel like I live in the most expensive place on the planet, so we're even! Chicago and it's outright largeness is so weird. I'm pretty sure I could buy a house in a rough south or west side neighborhood for what I spent on lunch today.
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Apr 5, 2017 01:49
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Also, consider the after tax rate if you itemize. I figure my 3.75% 30 year is actually closer to 2.8% after the mortgage deduction, so I don't prepay though the temptation is there.
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Apr 5, 2017 01:49
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minivanmegafun posted:Chicago and it's outright largeness is so weird. I'm pretty sure I could buy a house in a rough south or west side neighborhood for what I spent on lunch today. Good point. It's weird as hell, and despite living here my whole life I can't really tell you for sure which neighborhoods are actually part of the city and which ones aren't quite. I was really surprised when I learned Beverly was part of the city.
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Apr 5, 2017 02:03
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Elephanthead posted:Yes but you can live in a paid off house. Would you suggest people take out a home equity loan to purchase investments? (Like the bank that loaned you the money you can't lose!)
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Apr 5, 2017 02:09
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metztli posted:Good point. It's weird as hell, and despite living here my whole life I can't really tell you for sure which neighborhoods are actually part of the city and which ones aren't quite. I was really surprised when I learned Beverly was part of the city. I love Beverly, I want to retire there. I'll keep my place in Bridgeport for now for its cheapness and close to downtown-ness.
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Apr 5, 2017 02:12
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moana posted:Yes, and I did that for my last house - paid cash and immediately refinanced for as much as I could. It's a great leveraged hedge against inflation and if you itemize deductions, the interest is even cheaper. I get that emotionally people don't like debt, but w/e. I also had car payments for three years back when they were doing a 0% rate. Yes, please, give me millions and millions of low interest debt! The rate on "millions" isn't as good as the rate on "couple of hundreds of thousands."  Also, while I share your enthusiasm, with a car it's a little different because the underlying asset has a depreciation of negative whatever enormous percent for a new car, compared with buying a cheaper used car in cash.
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Apr 5, 2017 03:27
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:The rate on "millions" isn't as good as the rate on "couple of hundreds of thousands." The trick is to get into the billions category, thent he Fed gives you money you can mark up to poor people. 0% car loans as a covered call are amazing things.
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Apr 5, 2017 04:48
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How I learned to stop worrying and love the debt peonage
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Apr 5, 2017 05:55
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Paying down your mortgage or investing is an eternal debate. If you are getting the mortgage interest deduction and you are investing in after tax accounts the capital gains are a wash with the deduction so you can compare the rates straight across. So then you are looking at a guaranteed 4%(or whatever your mortgage is) for your mortgage or whatever you expect the market to do. But if you can increase your IRA or 401k contributions you can grow the money tax free, keep your mortgage interest deduction, and probably keep your retirement account in case of bankruptcy. Maxing out the retirement accounts is a good idea for most before paying down the mortgage, but it is a tradeoff with liquidity in case you want to buy another home soon.
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Apr 5, 2017 06:01
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H110Hawk posted:Sup extra $500/month buddy. (Actually, $599. Just re-fi'd and kept paying the same amount.) I could be putting this money into savings every month, but at 6% avg returns on a taxable brokerage account, needing to pay 15-28% in cap gains, and maybe needing to sell in a recession, everything seems to average out to a wash against my 3.75% mortgage. If I can manage to make this my forever home I will be done paying off this mortgage 11 years earlier. Right or wrong this is what I'm doing after my wife begged me not to plow every extra dollar into our mortgage. Yup I've been paying an extra 500/month on my house too. I'm at a 3.5% interest rate but I'm on an ARM that I'm sure will be ticking up. Still it's capped at 0.25 increase a year and the house will be paid for in 9 years give or take as the rate rises. If I've done my math correctly I should still be able to pay off the loan before I pay in interest what it would cost me to refinance to a fixed rate.
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Apr 5, 2017 15:34
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lampey posted:Paying down your mortgage or investing is an eternal debate. If you are getting the mortgage interest deduction and you are investing in after tax accounts the capital gains are a wash with the deduction so you can compare the rates straight across. So then you are looking at a guaranteed 4%(or whatever your mortgage is) for your mortgage or whatever you expect the market to do. But if you can increase your IRA or 401k contributions you can grow the money tax free, keep your mortgage interest deduction, and probably keep your retirement account in case of bankruptcy. Maxing out the retirement accounts is a good idea for most before paying down the mortgage, but it is a tradeoff with liquidity in case you want to buy another home soon. Not meant as a nitpick or disagreement but an honest question: when you say it's a wash, do you just mean that they offset eachother, or that they actually have equal effects? I'd think given that marginal income tax rates are higher than capital gains, 4% on the market is probably 10 to 15 basis points better than 4% of mortgage interest avoided?
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Apr 6, 2017 06:49
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I'll start throwing extra principal payments in once I make all my student debt vanis-hahahahahahaha OK but seriously my wife puts in enough to make an extra payment a year so that's good enough.
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Apr 6, 2017 13:51
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Steve French posted:Not meant as a nitpick or disagreement but an honest question: when you say it's a wash, do you just mean that they offset eachother, or that they actually have equal effects? I'd think given that marginal income tax rates are higher than capital gains, 4% on the market is probably 10 to 15 basis points better than 4% of mortgage interest avoided? The numbers become so close that you start talking about 10-15‱ instead of 1% that it is "too close to matter." Sure it should be better to put the money in the market, but it feels good to pay down a mortgage. The market could not perform to your liking for years whereas your mortgage interest will accumulate no matter what.
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Apr 6, 2017 15:56
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And as a note, once the house is paid off, you then get to...invest more money into the market! Losing a small amount of potential upside is worth it to get the mental well being for some people.
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Apr 6, 2017 16:14
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We just round-up our payment to the nearest thousand, so we end up putting in a full extra payment each year (or 1.5 principal/interest payments)
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Apr 6, 2017 16:19
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Steve French posted:Not meant as a nitpick or disagreement but an honest question: when you say it's a wash, do you just mean that they offset eachother, or that they actually have equal effects? I'd think given that marginal income tax rates are higher than capital gains, 4% on the market is probably 10 to 15 basis points better than 4% of mortgage interest avoided? The real answer is "it depends." The mortgage interest deduction reduces your taxable income in your top rate, which is different depending on your income level. But we also have to compare itemizing to not itemizing, in which you'd get a standard deduction. For many taxpayers, the size of the interest deduction is lower than the size of what would be their standard deduction, so they are better off not even claiming the deduction. For others, there are enough deductions that they'd already be itemizing regardless, so the entirety of the mortgage interest deduction can be "counted" as an actual savings. And then many people find it's only worth itemizing specifically because of the mortgage interest deduction, meaning, only part of that interest deduction is a real savings - the rest is making up for some or all of what would have been their standard deduction. So you have to compare the difference between your actual deductability of the extra interest you won't be paying by making extra payments on your mortgage, vs. the expected returns of (taxable or tax advantaged, depending) investments. This number will likely be different for every case. In many cases, the numbers will be close enough that you're definitely not making a clearly wrong move by going one way or the other. Oh, one more consideration: there is no guarantee that the home loan mortgage interest deduction will be around forever. Paying down your mortgage is a hedge against the deduction being removed in the future. And one more thing! States can also offer or not offer a home loan mortgage interest deduction on state taxes. And that offering can change: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/04/changes_to_oregons_mortgage_in.html Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 17:04
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Closed on the sale of my condo today, despite my lawyer screwing up yesterday and almost scuttling the deal. Yay! Closing on the purchase of my new place on Monday, and that is a relatively stress-free transaction in comparison. I have learned my lesson: I will never, ever, ever, engage in a contingent real estate transaction again. I think I aged 5 years in the last 3 months.
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Apr 7, 2017 01:05
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I have a new job, so I will be joining this thread in the very near future. As someone who started working in 2005 and witnessed the housing crash and all of the pressure from friends/family to BUY NOW DO IT WHILE YOU STILL CAN, it's a weird feeling to actually buy something. It's also fascinating to see what prices freak people out in different areas. I lived in Denver for a year, and I'm not calling it a bubble, but THAT is what a crazy housing market looks like. I live in Philadelphia now, and locals from certain areas are freaking out because new construction in their formerly lovely (now slightly less lovely) neighborhood, 5 minutes outside of a major city downtown, is going for $300k, BUT ONLY FIVE YEARS AGO IT WAS $50K (as a condemned filthy hovel, in a neighborhood of abandoned lots).
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Apr 7, 2017 13:19
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paternity suitor posted:I have a new job, so I will be joining this thread in the very near future. As someone who started working in 2005 and witnessed the housing crash and all of the pressure from friends/family to BUY NOW DO IT WHILE YOU STILL CAN, it's a weird feeling to actually buy something. Enjoy Fishtown, bro!
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Apr 7, 2017 13:39
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Just had my offer accepted and finished signing the endless paperwork. Home inspection next Friday. Yeah, it's a seller's market and inventory is low, but that means apartments are even more ridiculously overpriced. Everything in this town that has a dishwasher and six feet of crown mold is marketed as a "luxury apartment." I did the math and it made sense to get that 3.8% interest rate while I still can.
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Apr 7, 2017 14:36
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I've been wanting to move back to the D.C. area for a while now to be closer to family but the cost of housing makes it very BWM. My parents bought the house I grew up in in northern Virginia for 100k back in the mid 80s and now everything in that neighborhood is selling for 900k+. It's a weird feeling getting priced out of your hometown.
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Apr 7, 2017 14:49
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Halloween Jack posted:finished signing the endless paperwork. Someone want to let him in on the secret?
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Apr 7, 2017 17:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Just had my offer accepted and finished signing the endless paperwork. Home inspection next Friday. Thanks, I needed a laugh.  You get to resign all of that and several dozen more at closing.
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Apr 7, 2017 17:20
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Enjoy Fishtown, bro! Well done Carmen Sandiego
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Apr 7, 2017 19:57
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paternity suitor posted:Well done Carmen Sandiego All jokes aside you're going to love that neighborhood. We lived in Graduate Hospital for the past 3 years and Philly is a great, fun town.
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Apr 7, 2017 19:58
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:All jokes aside you're going to love that neighborhood. We lived in Graduate Hospital for the past 3 years and Philly is a great, fun town. I love this area for sure, that's a major reason I'm buying now. I lived in Northern Liberties for years before I moved to Denver, and I've been in Old Richmond now for a year. I'm on the fence as to whether I'll buy in Fishtown proper, or Old Richmond/East Kensington/Port Richmond. You get a lot more house for the dollar just being a few blocks away. Northern Liberties was cool because I had a really cheap house then a cheap apartment, but I never loved the neighborhood. I never knew a single neighbor. Old Richmond is cool because even though it's kinda lower class and full of opiates, the people in the neighborhood are great, and everyone knows everyone. paternity suitor fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Apr 7, 2017 |
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Apr 7, 2017 22:42
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paternity suitor posted:though it's kinda lower class and full of opiates Opioids! 
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Apr 8, 2017 19:07
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About to put down a lowball $915k offer (never thought I'd say those words, thanks a lot Los Angeles...). Wish me luck! Don't worry; I'm appropriately scared. My coworker paid $855k for a flipped house in February (flippers paid $640k last October) and he's already put >$100k into it fixing the mess they left behind. He's probably going to sue the flippers who signed the disclosure form saying they didn't do any unpermitted work (of course no permits were actually filed). Apparently he has a YouTube video of the flippers working on the house... Evil Robot fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Apr 9, 2017 10:06
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Evil Robot posted:About to put down a lowball $915k offer (never thought I'd say those words, thanks a lot Los Angeles...). Wish me luck! Make sure he's downloaded that video and copied the URL.
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Apr 9, 2017 16:10
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H110Hawk posted:Make sure he's downloaded that video and copied the URL. Yep, that was the first thing he did.
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Apr 9, 2017 18:02
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Just curious if this is a normal thing or not. We found a new home under construction in a major city (hot market) that is due for completion in several months. Our agent got us the floor plans and pricing from the builder and after visiting the property we decided to submit an offer at the list (pre-sale) price. After the offer was submitted the builder came back and said we had accidentally been given the "old" prices, and the actual current prices are 10% higher. Our agent told us it was a mistake by the listing agent/sales rep that we were originally given "last year's prices", but as part of the submission process we got pre-approved with the builder's preferred lender (recommended by our agent), and I can't help but wonder if sending the lender our financial data for the pre-approval was somehow correlated with the builder coming back with higher prices. I assume such collusion between builder and lender would be illegal (correct me if I'm wrong), but I can't shake the feeling that we kinda got played because of it. Am I being paranoid? Is it normal for a house under construction to jump in pre-sale price every few months even though it's still months from completion? Could it really have been an honest mistake that we were given the old prices instead of the current, higher prices? Or is this type of stuff normal when dealing with builders, new construction, and pre-sales? NoDamage fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Apr 10, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2017 05:01
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If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc etc. Is it Lennar?
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Apr 10, 2017 05:20
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NoDamage posted:Just curious if this is a normal thing or not. We found a new home under construction in a major city (hot market) that is due for completion in several months. Our agent got us the floor plans and pricing from the builder and after visiting the property we decided to submit an offer at the list (pre-sale) price. It is common for shady builders to try and bilk more money out of you. Try offering them 5% lower and see what happens. Your agent should be working to tell you if the house is correctly priced. If not, fire them.
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Apr 10, 2017 05:34
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gently caress - I just bought a house and it seems like a ridiculously daunting tax. Purchase price was about 2x our gross HHI. Rate wasn't bad 3.75% on a 10/1 ARM with a 2/2/5 so max rate of 8.75% over the 30 year life of the Mortgage. I did 11% down and managed no PMI because of a special program for "new grads". Much love to this thread for its insight and helpful hints, also for it's fascinating history as essentially a journal of the financial crisis from the perspective of regular people. The house is a 1910 construction, but just went under a full, to the studs remodel. The inspector stated it's essentially new construction. It's tiny, doesn't have a garage or other real storage and in a still gentrifying area. Here's to hoping there's no hidden dangers in this house!
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Apr 10, 2017 05:38
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NoDamage posted:Our agent told us it was a mistake by the listing agent/sales rep that we were originally given "last year's prices", but as part of the submission process we got pre-approved with the builder's preferred lender (recommended by our agent),
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Apr 10, 2017 14:17
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Yea that whole sentence sounds really off to me, it makes it seem like the builder, lender, and your agent are all actually patting each other on the back here. It sounds like the agent brought this place to you and then recommended the lender? It's possible you're not getting screwed more than anyone else buying a house, but that all seems ripe for collusion.
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Apr 10, 2017 14:26
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Anyone have experience with a tankless water heater? Is it really normal for it to take like 45 to 60 seconds to heat up the water? It's pretty annoying having to do it every time basically.
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Apr 10, 2017 14:39
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lol internet. posted:Anyone have experience with a tankless water heater? Depends on how much pipe is between the heater and that faucet. If it didn't take this long with a traditional water heater there is probably problem with the tankless. Sometimes they don't turn on properly and need more water going through them before they start. Another popular installation-related problem is the "cold water sandwich" where you get hot water, then cold, then hot again.
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Apr 10, 2017 14:44
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NoDamage posted:Just curious if this is a normal thing or not. We found a new home under construction in a major city (hot market) that is due for completion in several months. Our agent got us the floor plans and pricing from the builder and after visiting the property we decided to submit an offer at the list (pre-sale) price. Most builders have a preferred lender and for whatever reason RESPA laws don't apply to them. Hell, Ryan Homes has their own lender (NVR finance) and they tie tons of poo poo to whether or not they use them. However the fact that they offered you a certain price, then raised it, is kind of shady as well as insanely stupid on the builders part. I highly doubt them sending over your financial information had anything to do with it though. That being said it's very normal for homes to jump in price even if they are under construction. Every few homes in a community usually trips a trigger to raise the price 5-10k depending on the base price of homes in any given community. If the homes don't sell at the rate they want then the prices drop. If they do the prices go up. If you weren't pre-qualified (there's really no such thing is pre-approval now) by your agent before going out and looking at homes he dropped the ball big time. That's like the first thing you do with any buyer before spending time with them. What is your agent advising you to do?
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Apr 10, 2017 14:53
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lol internet. posted:Anyone have experience with a tankless water heater? Yep that is how mine works. I routinely wash my hands in cold water.
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