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Thanatosian posted:Renters generally don't support redlining and have anti-density signs up in their yard right next to BLM signs. Renters tend not to villainize homeless people, or support fascism nearly as much. Do you have any facts to back these assumptions up? In my experience the only difference between Renters and Owners is that when homeless people or other perceived-undesirables show up at their doorsteps Renters just move across town. Homeowners only make their biases known because they have skin in the game. I've been to plenty of Apartment buildings and Condos that have locking gates, anti-homeless emplacements, and security guards.
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Mar 10, 2021 06:21
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Can we check the class warfare at the door for the rest of the day
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Mar 10, 2021 06:24
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The "Would you live next to a renter/Are renters good people/is renting a lifestyle of dignity and honor" pathway this thread is going down will surely end well.
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Mar 10, 2021 06:28
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Hadlock posted:Can we check the class warfare at the door for the rest of the day Not to be a dick but uh Hadlock posted:That totally ignores the fact that you're not just buying a house, you're also buying your neighbors (somewhere a pubic housing advocate is turning over in their grave) Anyway I intentionally tried to dance around the classism aspect of this because it's obvious derail fodder itt but it's a real thing for sure and a thing i care a lot about but should probably be discussed elsewhere. All I really wanted to say itt was that the statement "you're not just buying a house, you're also buying your neighbors" is not only a super hosed up statement, it's also terrible advice wrt the buy vs rent question, since when you buy you are actually way more stuck with your lovely neighbors than when you rent
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Mar 10, 2021 06:30
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El Mero Mero posted:The "Would you live next to a renter/Are renters good people/is renting a lifestyle of dignity and honor" pathway this thread is going down will surely end well. The problem with renting isn’t the renters, it’s the landlords. I’d probably keep renting if there was a shred of accountability for landlords in any of my experiences
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Mar 10, 2021 06:32
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gay_crimes posted:The problem with renting isn’t the renters, it’s the landlords. I’d probably keep renting if there was a shred of accountability for landlords in any of my experiences In Korea, they have a system called Jeonse where most rentals require you to put a lump sum cash deposit down, then you pay a small amount monthly. So on a $500,000 apartment, you put down $300,000, and then you don't pay any rent. You could also only put down $50,000 and then you only pay $1,000/mo (this is known as Weolse). Then landlord can then take your deposit and use it invest. When your lease ends, you get your deposit back and move on. Of course, the landlord would invest everything into Gamestop at $400 and then your moneys gone. So, landlords tax records are a matter of public record.
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Mar 10, 2021 06:42
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I'm gonna probe every goddamned one of you, renter or owner, if you keep this poo poo up.
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Mar 10, 2021 07:03
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AmbientParadox posted:In Korea, they have a system called Jeonse where most rentals require you to put a lump sum cash deposit down, then you pay a small amount monthly. So on a $500,000 apartment, you put down $300,000, and then you don't pay any rent. You could also only put down $50,000 and then you only pay $1,000/mo (this is known as Weolse). Then landlord can then take your deposit and use it invest. When your lease ends, you get your deposit back and move on. Of course, the landlord would invest everything into Gamestop at $400 and then your moneys gone. So, landlords tax records are a matter of public record. So basically a loan, huh? That seems like a pretty cool system.
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Mar 10, 2021 07:04
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Caution, terrain! Pull up, thread!
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Mar 10, 2021 07:04
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Sundae posted:I'm gonna probe every goddamned one of you, renter or owner, if you keep this poo poo up. This is a class-warfare DMZ. Talking about the ethics of being a landlord is a topic that has repeatedly driven this thread into the ground in the past. So take it to D&D or BYOB.
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Mar 10, 2021 13:12
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Sundae posted:I'm gonna probe every goddamned one of you, renter or owner, if you keep this poo poo up. Only the rent to own people are safe! (user was put on probation for this post)
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Mar 10, 2021 13:48
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And then, a corner was turned. While we're through inspection, appraisal is up next. That's scheduled for tomorrow, and we get the report on Friday. Other homes in the neighborhood have closed over asking for the past year so I'm hopeful that we won't have any issues there as the seller intentionally went low on their asking price to generate multiple offers based on comps (their plan was successful). Two interesting tidbits have come out of this: 1. We found out that, while our offer was accepted, we were not the highest offer they had. We had both appraisal and inspection contingencies, so I'm truly befuddled as to how we landed the offer. We went for roughly 4% earnest money while this market is normally 1% but does that really make that big of an impact? Or the fact that we're getting a 10 year loan instead of a 30? When we sold our house last year, I can't imagine that any of those elements would've materially impacted our decision when there was a price differential at play but what do I know.  2. The house used to be a duplex but was converted many years ago back into single family. The MLS listing says single family but it still lists two addresses which caused our loan to price as a duplex which incurs a half a percent higher interest rate in this market. After pointing this out to the loan officer, and the fact that there is one kitchen, one electricity meter, one gas meter, one water meter, etc., we got agreement to do the appraisal as single family. Assuming the appraiser agrees (and they should unless someone has a big bowl of dumbass tomorrow morning), we'll get the lower locked in rate at closing. Fingers crossed.
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Mar 10, 2021 14:15
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We were approved and are in underwriting, but are having trouble getting our EMD payment out of our online savings account. It's been wired to my checking account so I can then wire it to the escrow account, because my online bank won't do a wire transfer to an account I don't own. So I get to do it this way. But the funds haven't shown up in my checking. I was supposed to have the EMD paid yesterday. It's now been about 16 hours and the outgoing bank said the transfer is complete but the incoming bank says nothing. Our agent and lender both say this doesn't mean anything as traditional EMD payment periods are three days and we have documentation of the initial wire, and the escrow agent hasn't asked about the payment yet, and they have to give us a one-day notice to act before the seller can even back out, but it's still stressing me. We have the money, we are aching to give it to them, but Marcus is being a little bitch.* I've initiated an ACH transfer of the remaining funds even though COE is over two weeks away, because I want to give myself some time to sort out any more of their shenanigans in time to make the remaining down payment. *Edit: I guess I should say BoA is being a little bitch, since Marcus DID initiate the transfer as soon as I asked for it, and provided an IMAD number, but it hasn't been processed by BoA yet. But Marcus is kind of known for dragging its feet on transfers, so we're still not taking our chances. Maggie Fletcher fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Mar 10, 2021 15:19
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Maggie Fletcher posted:We were approved and are in underwriting, but are having trouble getting our EMD payment out of our online savings account. It's been wired to my checking account so I can then wire it to the escrow account, because my online bank won't do a wire transfer to an account I don't own. So I get to do it this way. But the funds haven't shown up in my checking. I was supposed to have the EMD paid yesterday. It's now been about 16 hours and the outgoing bank said the transfer is complete but the incoming bank says nothing. This is super stressful and sucks. Our closing funds are at Citi and they do external wire transfers online (reportedly) but you can be sure that I'm going to be making sure everything is wired up and ready to go well in advance because transferring it to another bank via ACH and then doing a wire is going to suck and take 7 to 10 days. Getting that process started now is a good call.
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Mar 10, 2021 15:46
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Has anyone here ever bought a cabin or second small home - possibly for short term renting but mostly for fun? I live in a tiny home in Washington well below my means and did so because I knew I might want to have a place near the hills in New Mexico or southern Colorado at some point, where I've spent a lot of time in the past. My two loves are the PNW and the southern Rockies. I'm in love with areas like Crestone CO, Chama NM, Questa NM, Trindiad CO, etc. I will learn to speak Spanish or crystal healing as appropriate. My wife and I have no debt besides a mortgage payment of $1,330/mo, cars and everything else are paid off, our retirements are funded (on the low end because I probably won't make it to 80), no kids, we both have remote jobs earning a total of around $180k, and I've got $150k in cash savings in addition to retirement. I know this is mostly stupid as gently caress and indulgent as hell, but we've foregone kids and sports cars and big homes and this seems like it could be a good way to have fun and hopefully break even in the long run.
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Mar 10, 2021 17:43
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Inner Light posted:Really? I always considered Zillow one of the standard sites to find 'for rent' that I recommend to friends along with hotpads, domu, and apartments.com. I considered them all a step above Craigslist / FB marketplace. I'm not a landlord though so I dunno what the professionals usually list on. What is your next best alternative to buying this place? Or put another way, do most of the condos and homes you look at have similar restrictions? Do you plan on moving in less than 5 years? Are you putting at least 10% down, where you could afford to sell if you need to move without bringing more cash to closing? Would renting it make financial sense as an investment or would you be cashflow negative, or just straight losing money? There is a lot to consider here. In a lot of cases not being able to rent is not a problem. For some it would be, and you have other options
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Mar 10, 2021 18:10
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Mackieman posted:This is super stressful and sucks. Our closing funds are at Citi and they do external wire transfers online (reportedly) but you can be sure that I'm going to be making sure everything is wired up and ready to go well in advance because transferring it to another bank via ACH and then doing a wire is going to suck and take 7 to 10 days. Getting that process started now is a good call. You'll love this, then! Marcus used my maiden name to conduct the transfer, it was rejected, so now it's in limbo. In the meantime that means my ACH transfer of the savings into my checking means that I have literally no money to spend right now. I happened to have a tidy four-figure sum in my checking that's sitting there, so my agent recommended I wire that over with an email explaining what happened and promising to wire the remainder as soon as it all gets sorted out. The offer and approval process was so easy that I knew the hammer would drop eventually. But at the same time we're hopeful the escrow agent understands that we are doing everything possible (I've been on the phone with banks since 5 am) and DO have the funds, they're just in limbo. It would be very odd for the escrow agent to drop us or the buyer to go with another offer at this point since we're already in underwriting and have proven we have the funds we said we had, and hopefully this one- or two-day delay is not going to change much aside from making everyone's blood pressure skyrocket.
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Mar 10, 2021 18:12
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Maggie Fletcher posted:We were approved and are in underwriting, but are having trouble getting our EMD payment out of our online savings account. It's been wired to my checking account so I can then wire it to the escrow account, because my online bank won't do a wire transfer to an account I don't own. So I get to do it this way. But the funds haven't shown up in my checking. I was supposed to have the EMD paid yesterday. It's now been about 16 hours and the outgoing bank said the transfer is complete but the incoming bank says nothing. This is going to vary by state, but now that you are under contract the sellers have you give you notice you are in default and time to correct an issue before they can back out. So you get three business days to send the earnest money. Then if they send you a notice to perform you have 2-3 more business days, and they probably won't do that at all as long as your agent is communicating with them/escrow.
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Mar 10, 2021 18:17
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stellers bae posted:Has anyone here ever bought a cabin or second small home - possibly for short term renting but mostly for fun? I live in a tiny home in Washington well below my means and did so because I knew I might want to have a place near the hills in New Mexico or southern Colorado at some point, where I've spent a lot of time in the past. My two loves are the PNW and the southern Rockies. I'm in love with areas like Crestone CO, Chama NM, Questa NM, Trindiad CO, etc. I will learn to speak Spanish or crystal healing as appropriate.  With that out of the way, go for it. You're hitting your milestones. Spend your money. With that being said, the vacation homes I'm familiar with are ridiculously overpriced right now due to how well the rich are doing and how low mortgage rates are.
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Mar 10, 2021 18:26
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stellers bae posted:Has anyone here ever bought a cabin or second small home - possibly for short term renting but mostly for fun? I live in a tiny home in Washington well below my means and did so because I knew I might want to have a place near the hills in New Mexico or southern Colorado at some point, where I've spent a lot of time in the past. My two loves are the PNW and the southern Rockies. I'm in love with areas like Crestone CO, Chama NM, Questa NM, Trindiad CO, etc. I will learn to speak Spanish or crystal healing as appropriate. I have not, but I have talked to a lot of people who have, both relatives and random people I meet on trips. I can try to summarize the impression I've gotten from them because I've dreamt about a vacation home sometime in my distant future, too, and given a lot of thought to the pros and cons. Apologies if any of this is obvious stuff to you. Most people who buy a vacation home that I've talked to seem to spend a pretty serious amount of their time there - like, 3-6 months out of the year. Obviously this requires either being retired or remote work or gig work. The impression I have is that if you are not actually living there part of the year, if you're just going out there for a bunch of weekend trips, and you have vacation home kinda money, why aren't you just renting a really nice place each time instead? (An exception might be a cabin that's driveable from your own primary residence where you really go out there like every weekend and holiday). Some of the things people say they love about their vacation home are the same kind of things you'd say about owning your primary residence - you get to make it your own. You get to decorate it and furnish it how you want. You get to fill it with useful poo poo and even some clothes so that eventually when you travel there you don't even have to bring anything with you. You also get the guarantee that your sweet spot will always be available to you, whereas renting a spot will always be subject to availability. Another thing you should look into is, I think loans are not as favorable when it's not your primary residence. I'm not sure of the details. If you are in fact planning to live there several months out of the year, you could probably live there the first 6.01 months after buying it or whatever and call it your primary residence at the time of the loan, but that's just my guess, you should do your own research here to make sure you can satisfy primary residence requirements and that you're not committing fraud. I do know that if you change your primary residence it doesn't impact old/existing mortgages unless you refinance. Other than that, I think it's pretty much the same process as buying any other house.
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Mar 10, 2021 18:37
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Wiring the earnest money and options/dd/whatever money is super stressful. Ally seemed to make that hard for us but we lucked out and had enough cash in our local credit union. Is there more wiring involved with closing and paying the bank or are ACH acceptable then?
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Mar 10, 2021 19:21
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lampey posted:This is going to vary by state, but now that you are under contract the sellers have you give you notice you are in default and time to correct an issue before they can back out. So you get three business days to send the earnest money. Then if they send you a notice to perform you have 2-3 more business days, and they probably won't do that at all as long as your agent is communicating with them/escrow. You're exactly right. This is what our broker said. And we are communicating with escrow regarding the situation and our broker has let the list agent know we are approved for underwriting, I've signed the loan documents, we are all good to go aside from the banking issue, which is probably not uncommon. By the time they exercise the notice to perform, if they were going to, we'd have the money in our account and could wire it over. Our brokers are just being aggressive because the market is tight, but now that we're in contract and showing good faith, we should be okay. This could all fall through, of course, so we're not relaxing yet, but we are making good progress, so I'm still cautiously optimistic. It would be losing a dollar to save a dime for the seller to back out now. gay_crimes posted:Wiring the earnest money and options/dd/whatever money is super stressful. Ally seemed to make that hard for us but we lucked out and had enough cash in our local credit union. Is there more wiring involved with closing and paying the bank or are ACH acceptable then? ACH is not acceptable, but the account we're wiring to escrow from makes it easy to do online and provides receipts. ACH is just to get it from my online savings to my online checking, because my online savings wouldn't wire to an escrow account (probably good, because if they had, they'd have screwed it up it seems). At any rate, we have ACH'd all of our savings into our checking and once it's in there, we're prepared to send it all over ASAP. The only reason our savings are at a different bank is that the interest was initially 2%. Given the clusterfuck of the past year, they're now down to 0.5%, which is still higher than, say, BoA, but they're making it so difficult to remove the money that we're going to at least move our emergency fund to a bank that will allow us to make easy withdrawals. As of now I have three digits in my checking account, after paying what earnest money I could, not even enough to pay for the appraisal, until the ACH from savings comes through. LOL. Maggie Fletcher fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Mar 10, 2021 19:30
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gay_crimes posted:Wiring the earnest money and options/dd/whatever money is super stressful. Ally seemed to make that hard for us but we lucked out and had enough cash in our local credit union. Is there more wiring involved with closing and paying the bank or are ACH acceptable then? You had to wire earnest money? That's not how it's done here. The only thing you need to wire here are all closing funds. That include the downpayment. It's wired to the title company's escrow account and disbursed at closing. You should ask your real estate agent what the procedure is where you are buying a house.
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Mar 10, 2021 19:34
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gay_crimes posted:Wiring the earnest money and options/dd/whatever money is super stressful. Ally seemed to make that hard for us but we lucked out and had enough cash in our local credit union. Is there more wiring involved with closing and paying the bank or are ACH acceptable then? Ally (and any number of other financial institutions) do make it difficult to do large, irregular wire transfers because that's how people who have had their account hacked/taken over lose all their money so it's a big risk issue. Wires are a once and done sort of thing and there is no clearing house in the middle (ACH stands for automated clearing house) which introduces time to verify things if something is awry. Because real estate transactions require immediate funding sources, wires are good but if your bank has a conservative risk profile (and some are more conservative than others) it can be difficult to get that going correctly as Maggie Fletcher is experiencing currently. Also, you wired earnest money? That seems like overkill. Edit: Beaten by Motronic. Also, for more fun with wires, check out Citi's recent gaffe where they lost about $900M due to an erroneous wire they initiated. They sued to get it back and the judge told them to pound sand because that's the nature of wires.
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Mar 10, 2021 19:41
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stellers bae posted:Has anyone here ever bought a cabin or second small home - possibly for short term renting but mostly for fun? We have been looking at this as well, almost pulled the trigger on some property last month, might still do so, and put a cabin on it eventually Buying a second property is like buying a boat or a horse or something; if you're not going to use it at least one weekend a month on average, don't do it, just get a time share or level up your vacation budget. If you're staying at the same hotel outside yosemite five or six times a year it's worth it to buy a house in that area, for example Keep in mind now you're paying property taxes in two counties states, plus if a pipe bursts in November and you don't visit it until May you're going to have some major problems My boat is a 15 minute drive from my house and during the winter I have to spend one evening a week to go drive over there and make sure it hasn't sunk or isn't about to catch on fire etc and it's a tiny fraction the value of a second house I've been seriously considering starting a new thread, as this thread is primarily focused on primary residence purchase, but these questions come up every 3 pages or so Vacant Land, Investment Properties, and Vacation Homes: I have too much money and like making bad decisions or, Vacant Land, Investment Properties, and Vacation Homes: More bougie, More problems
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Mar 10, 2021 19:41
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Mackieman posted:Ally (and any number of other financial institutions) do make it difficult to do large, irregular wire transfers because that's how people who have had their account hacked/taken over lose all their money so it's a big risk issue. Wires are a once and done sort of thing and there is no clearing house in the middle (ACH stands for automated clearing house) which introduces time to verify things if something is awry. Because real estate transactions require immediate funding sources, wires are good but if your bank has a conservative risk profile (and some are more conservative than others) it can be difficult to get that going correctly as Maggie Fletcher is experiencing currently. Overkill and stupid, apparently, as Marcus is stubborn and/or incompetent. I understand that wire fraud is a thing and appreciate the caution, but between having to do it same business day and all the myriad things that can and will go wrong, it's kind of no wonder poo poo is hitting the fan. EMD and wiring it same day is out of the ordinary but our broker is being aggressive so we could be competitive. Well, we won the bidding "war" (really just 3 other offers), and now we have to make good. So of course there are complications. We expected to have to pay a decent sized EMD, the market is insane and 900k houses are going for 1.5MM with no contingencies. We considered ourselves lucky only having to go 90k above asking and even then we had offers that were very competitive with ours. Our only saving grace right now is that we're under contract and it's too big of a pain for them to back out when it's on the cusp of being resolved...I hope. Anyway, we have to be out of this house by April 15 either way, so I'm going to go rage-pack and hope things start to look up from here.
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Mar 10, 2021 19:49
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I wired earnest money because I was two hours away from the title company, the deal fell through and they sent it back to me via fedex. That realtor wasn't particularly useful and I've left that market for now and am now back in a hotter market
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Mar 10, 2021 19:58
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gay_crimes posted:I wired earnest money because I was two hours away from the title company, the deal fell through and they sent it back to me via fedex. That realtor wasn't particularly useful and I've left that market for now and am now back in a hotter market Makes sense; we did ours electronically as well through an ACH portal the seller's broker had set up. Had to ask twice for access as we were a couple hours away as well but it all ended well.
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Mar 10, 2021 20:13
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Hadlock posted:We have been looking at this as well, almost pulled the trigger on some property last month, might still do so, and put a cabin on it eventually I would eagerly follow this thread, except I would replace Investment Properties with hobby farms and boat slips or something because I fear that having it include investment properties would just overwhelm it with landlord and flipper chat when I’m much more interested in hearing about goons trying to build cabins in the middle of nowhere or obtain a herd of goats. Acquiring land or a second home for reasons other than renting/flipping seems like a pretty different beast.
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Mar 10, 2021 20:45
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We just wrote a personal check and overnighted via UPS.
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Mar 10, 2021 20:54
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Hadlock posted:Vacant Land, Investment Properties, and Vacation Homes: More bougie, More problems I'm down... I might buy a second home before buying a first home if that makes sense lol. Want to keep renting in LA, wife wants to go to the desert all the time to sit by the pool. spending too much on hotels
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Mar 10, 2021 21:14
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amethystbliss posted:We just wrote a personal check and overnighted via UPS. This is the approach I would like to have taken. Unfortunately, we had no idea the house we're under contract for would come on the market and wound up making an offer after doing a video walk through with our agent. I didn't have a checkbook with us because I stopped carrying a checkbook about 20 years ago; thankfully the electronic option was available so I didn't have to make an emergency trip back home.
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Mar 10, 2021 21:21
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Hadlock posted:We have been looking at this as well, almost pulled the trigger on some property last month, might still do so, and put a cabin on it eventually Thanks for the input. Glad to know I'm not alone! alnilam posted:I have not, but I have talked to a lot of people who have, both relatives and random people I meet on trips. I can try to summarize the impression I've gotten from them because I've dreamt about a vacation home sometime in my distant future, too, and given a lot of thought to the pros and cons. Apologies if any of this is obvious stuff to you. Some of this I knew but some I didn't - thank you! A MIRACLE posted:I'm down... I might buy a second home before buying a first home if that makes sense lol. Want to keep renting in LA, wife wants to go to the desert all the time to sit by the pool. spending too much on hotels I'd participate in this as well! Dik Hz posted:
Lol, thanks Dik.
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Mar 10, 2021 21:27
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I'm looking at a very different slice of housing than most of the other people in this thread seen to be: small condos. I'm looking in Seattle, so it's a high-demand area, but I don't see the sort of immense growth in the last few years in small condos (these are sub-600 sq ft, frequently sub 500 sq ft), and they generally have low association dues. I recognize that these places are unlikely to go up in value much, but I'm also tired of having my housing costs dictated by landlords, and would like to know what my rent will be for the next thirty years. The locations of these places are also waaaaaayyyy better than what I could otherwise afford (near the city core/transit). Are there any pitfalls I'm missing, other than generally apply to condos?
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Mar 10, 2021 21:38
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Thanatosian posted:I'm looking at a very different slice of housing than most of the other people in this thread seen to be: small condos. I'm looking in Seattle, so it's a high-demand area, but I don't see the sort of immense growth in the last few years in small condos (these are sub-600 sq ft, frequently sub 500 sq ft), and they generally have low association dues. I recognize that these places are unlikely to go up in value much, but I'm also tired of having my housing costs dictated by landlords, and would like to know what my rent will be for the next thirty years. The locations of these places are also waaaaaayyyy better than what I could otherwise afford (near the city core/transit). Are there any pitfalls I'm missing, other than generally apply to condos? What areas of Seattle are you looking at? I feel like most of the hotness in that market is on the Eastside with some of it bleeding over to Kitsap.
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Mar 10, 2021 21:50
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What decade was your condo building built in? Roof and elevators are big ticket items, also maybe seismic retrofit for Seattle Look at HOA reserves, should be > 50% of X, look at HOA meeting minutes, look at % of rental units in the building, and if there's a max % limit on rentals, that could limit your ability to turn it into a rental when/if you get married and have kids etc If your building has parking, see if the HOA owns the garage, if they don't you'll have trouble installing an electric car charger down the road Check zoning to see if the lot across the street is zoned for tall buildings and might block your sunlight. They're building a 200+ foot condo building to the west of my building (across the street, 80 get away) which is going to block the sunset views for those people, even on the top floors and their property values went down by 25%/sq ft, which is making it hard to refinance because they're the obvious comps Check and make sure your unit isn't plumbed with PEX, if it is, invest heavily in insurance when you flood your downstairs neighbor's house
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Mar 10, 2021 21:53
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Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square, Beacon Hill, Columbia City, etc. Walking distance from First Hill is a big plus in my mind, as that's where I work, but I'm willing to settle for light rail or bus. I really don't want a yard or a parking space, but a lot of places cone with that, anyhow.
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Mar 10, 2021 21:54
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stellers bae posted:Has anyone here ever bought a cabin or second small home - possibly for short term renting but mostly for fun? I live in a tiny home in Washington well below my means and did so because I knew I might want to have a place near the hills in New Mexico or southern Colorado at some point, where I've spent a lot of time in the past. My two loves are the PNW and the southern Rockies. I'm in love with areas like Crestone CO, Chama NM, Questa NM, Trindiad CO, etc. I will learn to speak Spanish or crystal healing as appropriate. We bought a 2nd home a few years ago, not for vacation as much as “eventual retirement residence” but with a plan to spend as much time there as possible (the initial target was a long weekend a month, post pandemic that’s become two weeks a month since my SO has been 100% remote.) One of our requirements was “easy to get to” so it’s a cheap 45 minute flight or an 8 hour drive from our primary home. This made the buying process relatively easy even in a “hot” market since we could get there on short notice to look at new listings. I’m not familiar with the areas you’re interested in but if they’re fairly remote I’d consider what you think your usage pattern will be and how long it will take to get there. Other than it shouldn’t really be any different from buying a primary residence. Our mortgage has a 2nd home rider but there weren’t any extra costs or terms associated with that for us. That might be different if you’re planning to rent it, we don’t rent ours (both because we don’t want to and because short term rentals are extremely restricted by local government.)
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Mar 10, 2021 22:27
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Mackieman posted:This is super stressful and sucks. Our closing funds are at Citi and they do external wire transfers online (reportedly) but you can be sure that I'm going to be making sure everything is wired up and ready to go well in advance because transferring it to another bank via ACH and then doing a wire is going to suck and take 7 to 10 days. Getting that process started now is a good call. Citi has a limit to their online wire transfer which I found out the hard way the day I was supposed to wire money to escrow. I think it’s $25k but you should double check.
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Mar 10, 2021 22:27
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| # ? May 30, 2024 01:41 |
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The big problem with vacation houses is they're a whole-rear end house you only use when you're on vacation. It's easy to look at the bill at the end of your trip and think "This is practically a mortgage payment," and then think "if I rented something out every other weekend it would be a net positive," and then you're off in fantasy land. The first problem is that you probably aren't going to be able to afford the type of house that matches what you get when you rent. You'll have to compromise on location, size, or quality, probably all three. A condo 5 miles from $favorite_attraction doesn't sound like it's much worse than the hotel in walking distance, but it really is, and it'll grate on you. Your friends who live there won't come over, you'll still go to their houses. Your friends who are also visiting will be in hotels, so you'll have to go pick them up. Insurance on a mostly-unoccupied dwelling is more costly than you think. Short term rental management is a job. If you're not able to get over there in 20 minutes to address a problem you will need to pay someone who can. Sure, you can set key codes over the internet, but if your ISP goes down or your router needs to be reset you're SOL without someone in place to fix things. Someone needs to check on the property regularly to make sure there isn't a water leak or a fire or some packages on the porch. Once you have a vacation home, that's where you go when you go on vacation. It's the only place you'll go on vacation. Want to go to Europe? Now you're paying for that vacation on top of your existing vacation home. Want to hang out in your underwear for a weekend? Try not to think about your vacation home costs while you do it. What if your favorite thing to do in vacationland changes, or a bridge washes out, and suddenly you're in a really inconvenient location? You're stuck with an asset that no one else wants to buy or rent now. Have more kids, or develop a condition that means you can't get up the stairs? Now your sometimes-house won't work for you. Lose your job and have to move? Now you've got another thing you need to get rid of, at long distance, possibly at a loss. I know a lot of people who have bought vacation houses. Everyone underestimates the effort and costs associated with short-term renting, and everyone overestimates how much they'll use their vacation house. I don't know of anyone who's been happy with a vacation house after 10 years unless they moved there permanently. If this isn't a place you're going to live later, you will always have more flexibility and fewer liabilities if you keep your vacations short-term. Basically if the carrying cost of a vacation house means anything at all to you, it doesn't make sense to have a vacation house in the long term. You can have amazing vacations in multiple places for the same cost. It's way better to make a friend with a vacation house, honestly. Also do I need to say to never timeshare? Never timeshare.
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Mar 10, 2021 22:38
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