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We are closing next Friday and I'm getting a little nervous about expenses. We did a lot of planning beforehand and budgeting and everything came out fine, but now when I just add up the additional costs that the house will present above our current renting situation, it looks scary. It could be that we are just really bad with discretionary spending right now and will need to curb that quickly, but even with a mortgage/tax payment $50 higher per month than our rent, the utilities, extra gas, insurance, etc are looking to be about $500 more per month than renting. I know its too late to change anything, but maybe you guys can give me some peace of mind, or extreme anxiety. Mortgage: $197,000 Rate: 3.75% 5yr fixed Tax: $1800/yr Payment: With taxes: $475/bi-weeky $950/mo Income: $80k + 10k+ annual bonus Net monthly: $4200 (yay Canadian taxes) Debt: One lovely car ($232/mo) Student loans ($200/mo) Late twenties couple, stable jobs. House is Oil heat but fairly efficient, previous owner only used about $70/mo worth but we are anticipating double at least. Our commute has greatly increased as we are going from living in the city to being about 25 miles each way. We are anticipating about an extra $200/mo in gas costs over what we are currently spending. We don't have a ton of savings after closing costs, in fact we just have about 5k left to spend on some new furniture and to stash for anything that pops up over the next few months. I know it is far from ideal but I guess my question is, should I be worried in this situation or is this just first time jitters?
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May 8, 2009 13:58
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anitsirK posted:Out of curiosity, who is your mortgage with? I'm Canadian too, and I haven't seen a rate this low on any of the bank websites I've looked at (though I haven't actually gone through a pre-approval process yet). It's through http://home.hlcmortgages.com/ I think most of the 5-year fixed rates are now down to 3.75 now, at least BMO's special rate was last time I checked. The actual mortgage is through Firstline, HLC was the broker.
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May 11, 2009 18:46
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moana posted:I'm still in shock over an $80k house. You're definitely financially able to do it, and the only reason I would suggest hesitation is if you don't know you want to stay there - is your job local or could you move your business anywhere? If you end up in a relationship and they don't want to stay there, would you consider moving? As long as you make it a priority to get 20% of the principal paid off so you don't have to pay PMI anymore, you're fine. Yeah I need to stop reading about places with prices like this, it's going to give me an ulcer. I think if your house price is equal to your gross annual income, you are in pretty good shape...
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Jun 10, 2009 12:39
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Ahz posted:As a Canadian, I have to wonder what all these 'closing costs' are for USA buyers. I don't know it just seems like extra ways to screw buyers when buying a home. It's a lot more than that depending on the province. In Nova Scotia we just bought a house for $200k and spent $6.5k on closing. Between lawyer fees, deed transfer tax (1.5%), disbursements, tank of oil, pre-payed property tax, blah blah blah. They say to plan for 3% of purchase price in closing costs here, and that was pretty accurate. PIPBoy 2000 posted:Tell me I'm not crazy for wanting to buy right now: Your situation is very similar to mine and we just bought a house @ $200,000. We don't have huge student loans, I am paying @200/mo on the little bit I have left to pay down, but our salaries are similar and we also had around $18k saved. I'd say you are in fine shape, but make sure you look at as many houses as possible. We love the house we bought but it was the first one we looked at (looked at about 8 in total and came back to the first). We fell in love with the location and the view and it was very hard to objectively compare the houses we saw afterwards. Every house we saw that was much bigger or had more features, we would come back to "oh but look at their terrible view, and look how close the neighbours are", like we had already made up our minds and were sabotaging any other viewing. In hindsight we probably should have seen more properties, and given it a bit more time to sink in.
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Jun 11, 2009 15:31
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I'm glad I locked in at %3.75 when I did, problem being in Canada I can only keep that for 5 years. No sweet rear end 30 yr terms here 
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Jun 12, 2009 15:10
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Obvious Paranoia posted:What's the best way to deal with homes that have mold? I've searched around a bit, but haven't found any satisfactory answers/opinions, so I figured I'd check here. We had a mild case of mold in the basement of our new house, but it was totally my fault. We had a really damp june and july and I foolishly left the basement windows open for ventilation and had no dehumidifier. I noticed we were getting a lot of insects in the basement, ants, beetles, etc and that the couch was damp in the rec room. Eventually I realised that the couch was moldy as heck, and the carpet was showing some mold spots as well. It has only been resolved for about a month now so I hope nothing spreads but, here is what I did. Ripped up the carpet in the bedroom and office, and the cushion floor in the tv room. There was mold along the baseboard behind the couch in the tv room, and a small amount under the carpets in the office. I sprayed all the effected areas (bare concrete)with a 50/50 javex/water solution liberally and let dry, then sprayed again. After the basement dried out (4 days with dehumidifier on full) I did a final cleaning and layed some laminate floor in those three rooms and threw the couch out. Total cost was around $1200 or so for the laminate and supplies. A month later the basement smells a lot better and now that it's autumn the dehumidifier rarely turns on even though I have it set to very dry. I still have one more room in the basement that was mold free that I will be redoing the floors in but I just can't seem to build up steam to do it yet.
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Sep 18, 2009 15:44
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Zfuut posted:I guess I should have made some things more clear, the interest rate quoted to us was 4.875% and the monthly payment of $1,520 does take into account taxes, HOA, MIP etc. Also, we have zero debt and no other monthly payments other than utilities. We think 20% would be an insane down payment considering the interest rate and the fact that our 80,000 savings is in mutual funds, which on average do better than 5% growth. Our current rent is 1,000 a month and we get by fine with our income. My wife COULD find a job if need be, it would just be in a bad part of town where she doesn’t want to teach. This really seems like a pretty good situation to me, I don’t see what could go horribly wrong, even if housing prices drop in the next two years, we plan to stay in a house for a lot longer than that. This is a really bad idea. Houses cost a hell of a lot more than the monthly payment and taxes. Insurance, heating costs, higher electricity bills, tons and tons of unexpected expenses around the house. We bring in 3 times that income and only pay about 1000/mo in mortgage+tax and I can tell you that the non-mortgage costs are almost higher than the mortgage and can be pretty brutal. For an example, we just bought a 9yr old house, after inspection nothing was really wrong, just needed some patio doors replaced. 5 months later we have spent probably 8,000 on various things that weren't required at the time but became evident over time. I can't even fathom paying 1520 just on tax/mortgage on that salary. I also don't have 200k (?) in investments ready to pull out when my plan comes crashing down around me, so maybe you will be fine.
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Oct 5, 2009 18:21
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Strict 9 posted:Man, this poo poo just never ends. On our move-in day we discovered that the carpet in the two upstairs bedrooms was badly stained but beds and dressers had been covering it from sight during inspection. They already had all of their stuff moved out and we were coming from an apartment that we still had posession of for 2 weeks so we just demanded a $1000 credit for cleaning or towards replacement. I think she countered with $750 or something and we just took it because one more amendment to that whole process and I would have had a heart attack.
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Oct 28, 2009 19:13
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Nocheez posted:Those nasty storms that came through North Carolina the last couple of weeks tore up my roof. Today an adjuster gave me a check for $2,400 with another $3,200 on the way to get it all fixed. I hope I'll be able to get it done for much cheaper than that, but we'll see. I have insurance and after a few years of windstorms my roof was missing 8 or so shingles. The other shingles were all damaged and lifting but after a few roofers came out they all said it wasn't enough to get a full roof through insurance, and my deductible was $500, more than fixing the 8 shingles would cost out of pocket. So I ended up paying $7000 for a new roof with no help from insurance. Do not ever purchase.
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Apr 25, 2011 13:03
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I know this varies pretty wildly from market to market, but adding an attached double garage with a finished upstairs to an existing house in a rural area of the north-east, are we talking ballpark of $50000 or $80000?
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Oct 12, 2011 18:32
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We are thinking of doing a major addition this spring and are a little unsure where to start. Anyone go down a similar route and know what the first steps are? We are looking to add a double garage with two bedrooms above it to our 1400sqft house. Not sure if we contract an architect to do plans or a contractor first to get their opinion on the current structure. Also no one we talk to off the record is even willing to ballpark what an addition like that would cost. I'm hoping its in the 50-70k range and not the 80-100 range.
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Mar 12, 2012 15:27
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