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gvibes posted:Well, locked in 2.875% for 15 on a refinance. Let's hope the appraisal comes in OK (there have been three sales of identical floor plans in my building at a higher price than I need over the last three months). This is just a ridiculous rate. I was super excited to get 3.375 on my 15 year.
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Jul 6, 2012 14:47
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uwaeve posted:Edit: OK, who's had a radon mitigation system installed? The proposal for the house we just purchased came in and they are going with an outdoor-fan subslab depressurization system. Which made me immediately skeptical because I've heard outdoor-fan/routed systems are easiest and cheapest to install (highest profit for installler), run into fan life issues due to freezing of condensation, and are ugly as poo poo. I'm sure an indoor-routed/fan one could be done more elegantly at a higher cost. Anyone have any thoughts or opinions? We had one done on our house before we moved in, it's an external fan one like you mentioned. Aside from it not looking the best (though it's on the back of the house so no one sees it) I have no complaints and we haven't had any issues. Seller split the cost with us, which I can't even really remember at the moment, I think all told it was ~$1100-1200? Honestly can't remember.
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Aug 10, 2012 16:43
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Citycop posted:Ceilings Man what a lovely situation, but I'm glad you've come to an agreement that you're somewhat happy with.
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Nov 21, 2012 16:44
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Citycop posted:All of this over a cosmetic difference in the ceiling that has no functional effect other than lowering the heating and cooling efficiency. I don't know what your market is like but if it were in a McMansion neighborhood it would definitely devalue the home if all the other 80 nearly identical houses in the neighborhood had 1-2' higher ceilings than yours did. Given that you don't have a garage on your home makes me assume it's not a McMansion by any means, however (this is not an insult if it seems like one). It's a lovely situation, but you're right, I don't think there was any really good 'fix'.
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Nov 21, 2012 18:06
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Nicol Bolas posted:I'm curious what you guys will think of our situation. The general advice you're going to get is to stay away from buying a condo, even before considering you don't have much in the way of savings for a home/condo purchase. Positives/Neutrals in your situation regarding buying a condo: - You claim that you don't want to move away to another city - You do not want kids ever so in theory you won't need a larger space in a few years - Interest rates are about as good as they'll ever get Both of these things are overlooked by first time buyers of "Well I'll just buy something for a few years and then get a house in the 'burbs" completely ignoring the fact that even if they condo keeps it's value, you'd still dumped a ton of money into closing costs, HOAs, interest payments, etc and that's money you'll never see. Negatives in your situation regarding buying a condo: - You don't have much savings, certainly not enough for a healthy down payment, closing costs, and still having money left over for an emergency. Even the $20k coming in isn't what most people would consider adequate. - You have other debts (student loans). You can make your payments, but principal/interest/insurance on a $220k condo is likely to be $1300-1500 not including any building/hoa/parking fees (if you have a car). That will be a significant jump in outgoing. - As always you need to be wary of those building fees skyrocketing due to poor management or any other number of issues. - You have a wedding coming up, which can be extremely expensive even with help. - You can't choose your neighbors, in a condo you could have a ton of nearby noisy neighbors to hate, and there isn't much you can do about it. General advice: Find another apartment if you don't like the one you're in (for the money). This way you may get to see another part of the city that you'd possibly consider moving into. If you're serious about buying a condo, get your crap together and save save save. See if you can cut back on your lifestyle stuff if that's where some of your money is going because owning a home is expensive no matter how you look at it. Better to get used to having less money now than jumping right into it and making GBS threads your pants.
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Jan 3, 2013 21:00
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FunOne posted:Can anyone recommend a lawn mower? I now have ~1/4 acre to deal with. If you want to buy one mower, spend some bucks and get a honda walk behind, one with a composite or aluminum deck. They're probably at least 2-3x the price of your big box store mowers, but will last a very very very long time and their twin blade tomfoolery is apparently very nice. Check out the "alternative insanity" thread in AI, there are lots of small-engine repair/dealer types there.
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Jan 8, 2013 20:27
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Kaini Industries posted:Thanks! Actually the first point you brought up is what has made me the most hesitant - being tied down to one city, especially as a young single person, might be an issue a few years down the road. I think the low interest rates and house prices vs. rent costs is the main reason I've been looking into buying. It's none of my business so you don't have to answer, but where did the $110k come from? Did you save it, or get some sort of windfall (inheritance, etc)? If you saved it, you're obviously good at saving money. So that tells me you'll likely keep on saving (not "throwing money away") if you keep renting, which $110k+ in savings is never a bad thing and gives you a ton of flexibility with your life and however you want to live it. If you buy a house and use a large portion of savings for a down payment, you shouldn't be too bad off since your mortgage will be tiny and you're used to some sort of financial discipline for the payment, taxes, insurance, upkeep, maintenance. Now, if this was a windfall of some sort and you don't have much of a track record of saving, I would be much more hesitant. Sure, you could just about buy a house outright with your savings, but as everyone says - homes are expensive. If the $110k wasn't a product of skrimping and saving over time it might be harder to be financially smart with a house. I'm not saying if this was a windfall you're poo poo with money, I'm just saying be very cautious with your money. That said, if you really want a house and don't plan on moving anytime soon I say why not. If I were in your shoes and was going to buy, I'd probably put a really big chunk down (50-75%?) and then have a small 15 year mortgage, which would likely be less than what you're paying in rent now. Why people say "Just put 20% down" is likely the answer between "Should I pout 20% down or 25% down?", not really applicable in this case where you can buy the better part of a house outright. Either way if you decide to buy or not you seem to be in great shape!
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Jan 8, 2013 20:49
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Kaini Industries posted:It was part of inheritance, I feel pretty lucky. I have other funds too, but I don't have immediate access to it. Some of it was me saving though, too (I'm not a big spender, I try to save as much as I can). And to those who brought it up, I would definitely get a roommate or two, and thus splitting costs (that's one thing I miss about having roommates!). At this point I'm still not sure what I'm going to do, but I'll probably keep looking and think about it for a bit. Glad to get the honest opinions too, gives me something to think about before jumping on the house buying bandwagon (I know sooo many people in their early - mid 20s buying right now). Well you seem to have your head on fairly straight, so that's a plus. I'm one of the many that always says "keep renting" in the thread, especially to young people, but you have a bunch of money available and housing seems to be cheap. If you're not adverse to getting roomates like you mentioned, with a very healthy down payment and so friends paying you a couple hundred a month to live there, you'd probably be living there for free to even making a few bucks. If the market tanks again and you want to move to another city in 4 years you may "eat" a few 10s of thousands of dollars but if you're ok losing that hypothetical money, there seems to be very little downside if you can find a nice place. I'd say start looks at some places if you're curious. Who knows, maybe there isn't anything decent for what you're expecting to pay and then you won't be any worse off to continue renting? Keep in mind buying for possible roomates and/or down the road too. A 3-4br is going to have a much better market than a 2br. Good luck!
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Jan 9, 2013 02:04
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Zeta Taskforce posted:I know I encouraged this debate, but no one is changing each other's minds. Everyone gets to make a closing arguement/parting shot, but then that's it. Sorry about the backseat rear end-kissing but this is about the nicest and most polite re-rail attempt I've seen. Very classy. I'm not here to add my $.02, so you're welcome everyone for saving you another meaningless opinion to read.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:28
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Let me know if I'm on the right path here. I have a tentative goal of paying off my mortgage by my 40th b-day. I have about 9.5 years to meet that goal. I'm trying to figure out roughly what I would need to pay extra per month to do this. Current balance: $132,166.56 Interest rate: 3.375% Amortization over 10 years: $155,905.86 (calculator wouldn't let me put in 9.5 years) So can I just divide that number by the number of months left (114) and get what I would need to spend per month on principal/interest to meet that deadline? That would be an average of $1367.59. Is that right? Halp I'm no good at math. If that number is accurate, and our current P/I payment is around $950/mo, I'd need to shovel around $400/mo extra at it to meet that goal? Doesn't seem likely and/or that money would be ultimately better spent going to retirement savings or something. I still would like to pay it off early, but looks less likely now.
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Jan 29, 2013 16:51
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Rooster Brooster posted:Can't you just play with the calculator and change the "adding extra to your monthly payment" option until it's done on your schedule? But yes, that number looks right to me. Yea shortly after that I did what you posted and it looks like the ballpark figures were right. Engineer Lenk posted:My vote is with retirement savings, for two reasons: Well with the "general cost of life" and "things we'd like to do", maxing out Roths would be nice but also not in the cards. My wife and I do about 30-40% of the max in our roths year and it probably won't grow much more than that anytime soon with daycare costs, a small amount into a 529 for my son, etc. I was just curious today what it would take since I said paying off the mortgage before I was 40 would be a cool goal to have. If it were like $250/mo I think I'd commit to it but $400/mo extra is probably out of our reach without some serious lifestyle changes. We don't have any super concrete goals with any leftover money so we agreed on (percentages are totally made up, but roughly accurate maybe): ~60% General savings (to fund home renovations, etc in the short term), ~30% extra mortgage payments, ~10% travel/vacation stuff. e: You're right, I definitely think the Roths would out perform paying down the mortgage, I may look into some occasional lump-sum deposits into those as well as it will really benefit us in the long term. It probably won't be much more than a few hundred every year but every little bit helps. dreesemonkey fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 17:42
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reflex posted:You could probably hit over 3.4% by investing and therefore come out ahead, but if I was in your position, I would also consider your mindset. If you love having tangible financial goals, "pay off the house as a 40th birthday present," is quantifiable and could be motivating. Depending on how you spend, that quantifiable goal may help you decide you don't need to eat out three times a week and pop that money into the mortgage instead. Maybe if you really work at it, you could have it done by your 39th birthday, etc. Yea I'm a firm believer in mindset vs. pure numbers. You need to have the right attitude to succeed financially, and unless you're very disciplined making all your choices based purely on the numbers I think you'll have a hard time coming out ahead vs. "motivational momentum" progress when you have debt. I like having goals and I've done two major debt snowballs in the past, one for me personally, and then again when I got married. It's very rewarding. Life is just a lot different now than when I was single, or newly married. I'm now a homeowner and parent and both of those things are not only huge fixed costs, but lot's of additional related spending. I'm not making excuses, we could spend less (and are working to get there) but the amount of unallocated money is so much less that now all these things are becoming more and more long-term goals.
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Jan 29, 2013 17:57
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Anyone from the Columbus, OH area? My friend moved there recently and was thinking of buying a home. I went through the typical warnings this thread gives out but then I saw how loving depressed that market is. He could buy a ranch home duplex with garages for like $60k - it's freaking nuts! He works from home and his GF works for OSU so I don't know what area they were looking at but looking around zillow modest single family homes were still well under $100k, 3000sq ft homes built in the 90s were about $120k. Crazy poo poo!
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Feb 28, 2013 15:36
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sbaldrick posted:Do no buy in Columbus for 60k. That is not going to be in a fun part of town. I haven't lived there in years but pretty much the North end of the city Dublin etc. is where he wants to look. Yea I have no ideas what would be nice. He said he wouldn't mind a duplex so a rental-friendly area would be good. His GF has lived there for a while I think so between the two of them they should have an ok idea of where to look given their goals.
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Mar 1, 2013 15:33
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Well in some better news, in the next month or two I should have 80% LTV in my home and I can eliminate PMI. Yay! I inquired with my lender yesterday and they said I just need to submit the request in writing. When we refinanced I guess we were so close to that magic number that the PMI is now very inexpensive, but hey $15/mo is free money.
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Mar 5, 2013 14:51
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Well it's been sitting like that for a few years, if there was going to be irreparable damage the house probably would have collapsed by now. I'm not familiar with how brick homes are structurally, it appears that the inner workings are supported by wood and not the outer brick walls.
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Mar 27, 2013 18:50
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Question about escrow accounts - is it likely that I'm paying a service fee for this? Any benefit for me to do it myself? I'm very close to eliminating PMI on my mortgage (around $17 a month since when I refinanced I was so close to 80% LTV), and was wondering if there was any benefit to just paying taxes/insurance myself. I wouldn't worry about not socking the money away, but I also don't really care about the $10/year I'd earn in interest if it were one of my accounts instead.
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Apr 3, 2013 13:48
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Astro7x posted:Since I was just researching this.... one lender said there is no difference between having your money in an escrow account vs. paying it yourself. No fees for an escrow account, and they'd give the same rate on the loan either if you use or do not use an escrow account. The only difference is that I would not make interest on the money being in that escrow account. I don't specifically remember but I'm guessing my CU would not make me pay a higher rate if I didn't have my escrow with them. It sounds like it's not worth pursuing for now, especially if it's already set up and not costing me anything extra (except for the pittance of interest).
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Apr 3, 2013 14:42
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Jealous Cow posted:Basically this. I get the living in an expensive place thing and I'm not jumping down your throat but $2300/mo in debt payments seems pretty high not even taking into account a mortgage. At your income level you should be able to wipe out most debt and then save up a nice downpayment for a house in a year or two. Are you sure you're done moving, you've done a lot of it over the last couple of years?
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Apr 5, 2013 18:59
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That's probably pretty close. When we bought our $146k house it was roughly proportional to that amount. At first I missed the "pre payables section" The PMI cost seems low to me on a $180k house, but I dunno. Might vary from market to market.
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Apr 10, 2013 20:21
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I have a housing / estate / tax crossover question. My wife's stepmother's brother just died and it has my in-laws thinking about estate stuff. They're claiming that they would like the put their house (when it's paid for) in someone's name so we "avoid tax" when they die. They're not the smartest financial people, but my wife's aunt and uncle are pretty savvy and they're planning to do the same thing. I would assume you could just sell the house on behalf of their estate, and then that money would not be taxed federally (since it's no where near the $3M cap). Maybe there is a state estate tax (PA)? Does anyone have any ideas about this?
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Apr 12, 2013 14:25
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I think I probably doubled the value of my house by getting the carpet replaced. Horrible carpet  Much nicer looking carpet 
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May 29, 2013 18:37
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There are many factors. - How long do you plan to live in this house? Until it's too small (family, etc)? - How long do you plan to live in your next house? Is it your "until you're too old to wipe your own rear end" home? - Do you even plan on living in the same area for many years to come? - Do you see your current area getting worse over time? Or will the bad areas slowly be turned around? I probably more align with your ideas, I'd save / invest / pay off your current house early, and if you want to move in a few years you'll have the liquidity to soften the blow of higher interest rates (if we can assume they're going to go back up) if you're borrowing again for a bigger home. That also kinda assumes your area doesn't turn into the ghetto and your house value halves in 10 years.
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May 29, 2013 20:33
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Downhome posted:My wife and I are in the process of looking into buying our first home here in upstate SC. We are currently renting at $620 a month, have been since we got married in October of 2011, and now seems to be the time for us. Her parents are offering up a total of $20K to use for a down payment and other associated costs. We got pre-approved yesterday for an FHA loan of $132,554 on a home value of $135k at an interest rate no greater than 3.875%. You would be shocked, or maybe not, at what that kind of money can get in this area. It would be more than enough for us, especially as a first home. Important piece of info you left out is what your income is. Is the $6000 your total debt? Car loans? Student loans? I'm thinking for most of this stuff your debt/income ratio is more important that your % of utilized credit (though that will play into your credit score which will affect what rates you qualify for). Super rough estimate but 30 year loan / taxes /escrow , etc your monthly payment would probably be in the $800-1000 range depending on your taxes and insurances. Does that sound doable? You don't give any more indications of how you do financially with regards to living paycheck to paycheck, etc.
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May 30, 2013 16:39
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lord1234 posted:I called today and they *do* have a permit for the garage and room above the basement(which is called a loft). Honestly I don't think it's going to add much value. Unheated/cooled space not directly accessible from the main house? To 90% of buyers it's storage space. Unless you plan on insulating/and working out cooling and heating I wouldn't bother putting much, if any money into it. Maybe drywall/finish/primer at the very most, but without convenient access and more permanent heating/cooling solutions I don't think it would appeal to most buyers.
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Jun 4, 2013 18:33
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His Divine Shadow posted:
Beautiful, do you have any pictures of the floorplans or anything?
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Jun 6, 2013 18:40
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GD_American posted:Usually they have those "So You're Moving?" packets laying out on the counter. I'm not saying you should take a handful of them just for those 10 percent coupons, but I'm not not saying it either. Around here they no longer put the 10% off coupons in the change of address packets  Assbags on ebay selling the coupons ruin it for everyone.
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Jun 12, 2013 18:15
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Mandals posted:So, closing tomorrow. I don't know the final amount yet that I'll need to hand over in the form of a cashier's check, so should I be worried if I don't find out until the AM what that amount is? I live a block from my bank and am hoping I can just walk in quickly and have one made out--is that how it usually works? I was really worried about this at our closing since our bank isn't local and we had to get a mailed cashier's check. We just made sure it was going to be "enough" and the the attorney's office cut us a check for the difference of what we over-paid.
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Jun 26, 2013 15:37
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