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Wife and i are looking at a townhome in the Midwest. Its a new construction and will be completed in October. Is there generally some wiggle room for new construction houses being purchased from the builder? We're paying rent right now and are just unsure if we should buy or keep on renting.
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Apr 30, 2014 05:29
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The idea would be to rent it out once we outgrow it for sure. We're just paying a much higher rent than a mortgage would cost on a similar type of property. I'd be buying it in my name only if I could. But yeah, I think we'll just be stuck renting, I don't think buying is a good idea right now.
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Apr 30, 2014 23:38
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I'm more frustrated that for buying a home- which I'm not going to do now- is still out of my reach because of the way they calculate my income. I work on a commission basis for about 40% of my income right now, and I haven't been getting it for two years, so its not counted. Even though the mortgage, fees, and taxes would all be less than the rent I'm paying now, they won't let me get one for any substantive amount. Being in this situation, I know how the housing bubble happened-people in my situation were getting houses WAY more than they could really afford, they loosened income requirements back then, and houses got mega over valued. Still its frustrating to know that there is likely an entire class of people out there, just like me, who may want to join in on the home ownership, but due to specific requirements, are prohibited from building any real equity or wealth in real estate.
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May 11, 2014 14:01
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LogisticEarth posted:The reason they need that history is that you'll be on the hook for the loan for 20-30 years. If your income is potentially highly variable that us a real risk down the line. Sock money away for a down payment in the meantime and rent a smaller place if that is feasible. Oh I totally get why they do it, its just a frustrating part of the process. I feel like it keeps a lot of people out of home ownership that otherwise would be doing it. Also, in this economy anyone can really lose their job at any time, so I feel like any risk is a risk when it comes to income.  That is the plan though, downsize to a smaller apartment, sock more money away for a downpayment. silvergoose posted:On the other hand, equity and wealth in real estate is...kinda not a thing, for single family homeowners. Buy a house if you want to own a house, don't buy one because it's a good financial investment. It still is, and I don't mean it as a monetary investment. I mean as a method of ownership, of investment into a community. Something to give to your family or provide stability. I'd love to be involved in local politics for example, but I've yet to see any politician in my area that rents an apartment. Good luck having any standing on a school board if you don't directly pay property taxes (if it becomes an issue in an election). Plus, if the costs are close to the same for renting and buying, why wouldn't someone want to at least build ownership somewhere?
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May 11, 2014 15:09
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LogisticEarth posted:Like I said though, it's not the credit/mortgage availability that's the problem, it's the base cost of homes and the low income most people have. Either the price of homes needs to drop or incomes need to rise. The solution isn't to give riskier loans to people. This is a bit more D&D than BFC though. I'm glad your grandfather was a good man and a respected member of the community. But....he only had pocket change to give to his family.
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May 11, 2014 16:01
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Shipon posted:You're not prohibited from building wealth in real estate - you can get a regular job that will be stable enough to qualify for you loans. Or, you can save up and buy something outright. Home ownership isn't a right. I never said its a right. I'm only saying that its rough that a whole class of folks who would otherwise put down roots somewhere to build some equity are prohibited from doing so.
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May 12, 2014 01:28
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Leperflesh posted:I think it's the word "prohibited" that is bothersome. The reason those people can't get loans is because they're completely hosed if their house loses value. We just went through a nationwide crises that demonstrated that fact very well. People who can only just barely afford a house payment can't actually afford the risk of buying a house. Right, I don't have an answer for it, that is true. And I agree that making loans super cheap and easy to get for everyone only leads to what happened in 2008. As I mentioned before though, I'm less worried about the "gaining value" part, and more "building equity/ownership" part. If people are never, ever allowed to become home owners it creates a generational gap where there are the poor tenants and the increasingly wealthy landlords. It is anti-middle class to have less homes available. My main gripe is that there are plenty of folks like me and probably even better off than me that are excluded from home ownership not because of what their income is but because of how they earn it. I'm pointing at something and saying its not fair and it sucks, but I'm not saying I have a solution  Edit: Part of it is I don't like having a credit rating of 800 and being told that because I earn commissions, I'm' less trustworthy than someone making the same amount of money as my base pay, but with a lower credit rating.
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May 12, 2014 04:32
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OneWhoKnows posted:If you don't mind me asking, what percentage of a down payment were you bringing to the table? It was going to to be close to 15% with a VA loan. Shipon posted:You can have an 850 but if you can't make the payments on the note it won't do you a bit of good. No I don't think they are singling me out at all, I'm merely expressing my frustration at the entire process. I get that commissions are riskier than straight wages, I just wish a certain baseline could be accepted as countable income. I just point out that it means for pretty much anyone working in a sales job-jobs that are often required for the economy to operate-are excluded or at the very least have an additional requirement get home loans. The other thing that was tough was the work history part of it too. I worked in insurance for about 5 years, then took a job with the state, then went back to insurance. They considered that a gap of employment in the industry. They said that if I had kept a job in the insurance industry, commission or not, I'd be able to count all of my commission towards my income. That was strange to me as well. If I worked as a marketing person, then moved to sales, they'd still count my commission. Same for my wifes income, so long as she goes to work in the "apparel" industry, she's in. So she can go from corporate sourcing for clothing to a retail worker and they'll count her income too. I get why they want the history in the same industry, but the way they stretch it seems to undermine that requirement. And to your side note: that is what I was getting at. All things being equal, if an individual can realistically afford a home and is earning an income, owning a home is almost always a better deal for them. In taxes, in equity, in social standing, and even security. If my wife and I had owned our home we would have got back a few grand in taxes instead of having to pay in a few hundred last year.
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May 12, 2014 13:32
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My wife and I were looking at a house and considering putting in an offer. Its listed at $130K and our max budget is about $140K. The house looks like it sold for $125K back in 2012 and homes in the area are listed at around $125K for comparable houses, but don't need the replacements that this one does. The house is in pretty good shape, is only about 25 years old. The fence in the back yard needs replaced, and is currently being held in with tie-downs and rocks in the post holes. We need/want to replace all of the carpet in the home and the AC unit is the original from 1990. The seller is apparently going through a divorce and wants to off-load the property, though she does currently have tenants in there right now. Should I go in at about $125K? I really want to offer something like $117K since we're going to be swallowing a lot of costs immediately that NEED to be taken care of, like the fence and possibly the AC unit. With the $117K and splitting the closing costs a total offer of $121k Looks to be what we're seeing. Am I asking too much?
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Jul 31, 2014 04:48
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PCjr sidecar posted:How long has it been on the market and what is the local market like? Its been for sale, I think for about 30 days. Its showing 39 on Zillow.com The local comparative places are either the same, or lower and most don't require new fences or have original AC units. The carpet isn't really destroyed, its just obviously the original. They had pets and I have a 1 year old, so I want to start that fresh.
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Jul 31, 2014 05:39
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Engineer Lenk posted:Unless something has radically changed about your situation and you can afford 20% down, don't buy right now. Why not?
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Jul 31, 2014 13:01
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shortspecialbus posted:You'll be throwing money away anyways on extra closing costs, higher interest rate, PMI, etc. Better to not have to stack repairs on top of that. All those numbers lower or go away with 20% down. What kind of extra closing costs? I got a pre approval at about 3.7% at $135,000. I didn't want to max that out, and it looks like I'm not going to. Is that a good rate? I'm getting a VA loan, so no PMI required (or down, but I"m putting money down). We've budgeted it out a bit and our current monthly expenses for living are at about $1300 with utilities, rent, and insurance. A loan at about $118K will have a total payment with insurance, taxes, and utilities about $850. That gives us a lot of wiggle room on the monthly expenses while also building equity into a home.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:12
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a shameful boehner posted:As a wise someone once told me in this very thread, your "total payment" with insurance, taxes, and utilities are effectively a lower bound while renting, since you can always call your landlord/complex to fix things like broken pipes, washer/dryers, AC, fridge, etc. Yeah I am absolutely prepared for that. I was looking at what we pay to rent right now and adding $300 to it a month for "extras". We are paying about $1200 a month in rent, and the mortgage with taxes and insurance is about $850 or so. Add on another $300 a month for "miscellaneous" and I think we're looking good as far as accounting for extra "everything". We're lucky in that we have accrued a lot of the stuff for home maintenance already like lawnmowers, appliances, and stuff like that. Engineer Lenk posted:This is what I remember of your situation: We're a dual-income family now ^_^! Base salary is the only thing used to calculate my mortgage amount and interest rate, and we are going in well under that. We moved back home as opposed to being far away. So while yes, its new for the move, we're not floating out here with no support. We were living pay check to pay check since I was receiving absolutely no commission and our expenses had increased due t the move. We're consistently putting more money into our savings at this point. We're on the same page with finances now, much of it due to help on this very forum 
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Jul 31, 2014 18:21
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 Insurance goon here! Floods are the most common disaster people suffer from! If everyone bought flood, the total cost would go down, down, down.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:27
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So it isn't possible to take out a bigger mortgage to finance upgrades in the house, you either have to have it in cash or get a second equity loan, right?
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Aug 1, 2014 19:53
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Bah declined our offer for the house. It looks like if she accepted our offer they would have to put money up to break even. So...they are going to change the carpet and hold an open house in hopes of getting an offer. I think that is ridiculous. If you're going to lose money, it doesn't matter if its in the sale price or if you spend it on cheap lovely carpet, you STILL lose. Should have took our offer and not deal with even more home expenses. Oh well, their loss. The search continues.
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Aug 2, 2014 04:24
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So they want $150,000 and we offered $143 with them paying $3k in costs. They counter with $150,000 and $2k in costs..wtf Should I counter or just walk away? We want the house and the houses like it are all selling for $147k or so, and I don't want to tap out the amount of our loan just to get a house. Buying a house is loving stressful.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:46
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fknlo posted:I know I said it before, but holy poo poo home insurance quotes are all over the place. I've just been doing online ones before I start talking to actual agents, but they're just insane. My mortgage guy was "expecting" around $100/month but I've only had one quote even remotely close to that. Insurance goon here to say that what another poster alluded to is right. Sometimes Company A is looking for more policies, sometimes Company B isn't so you'll get different rates. You also have to remember, a lot of the preferred carriers use credit to varying degrees based on the state you're in. If you're credit is terrible, you may get a great rate with certain companies over others. The difference is the companies tend to run the credit in the mean time and jack up the rates later-or they may not! Its a gamble! But if you're hitting the Big Companies, having a good credit score, solid insurance history, and few claims are going to help you a lot more than the type of house you're getting. How has your experience been so far?
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Aug 8, 2014 02:50
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skipdogg posted:If houses in the area are selling for 147K why the hell would they take your 140K(net) offer? That doesn't make sense or seem reasonable. It's a reasonable counter if houses are indeed selling for 147, expecting you to counter again. Offer 147 with 2K in closing cost assistance. That is exactly what we did. Well every other house on the block is bigger and sold for more in the last few years. The two story next door sold for $148K and it had a few hundred square feet more, and was about 6 years newer. I think the house is honestly worth about $145k. It assessed for $140 with the city and larger houses went for $145-$150. We'll see what they say.
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Aug 8, 2014 04:03
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baquerd posted:That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, giving up several hundred square feet for no appreciable change in cost? They stuck to their guns and finally came down to $149K and offered 2.5k in closing costs, giving a net cost of $146.5k. Its totally doable but....our monthly expenses wouldn't go down as its slightly above our budget. We're paying about $1150 a month to rent, this place would cost $1179 to own. We really don't know what to do. We are really hesitant. We have an OK savings for contingents and are sure some stuff would be coming down due to the inspection. Should we spring for more house or wait out for another one? Jastiger fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 21:52
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bartkusa posted:How long has the home been on the market? A little over 3 months. Engineer Lenk posted:Recall that rent is a cap and mortgage/escrow/insurance is a floor. For the increased risk you're taking you probably can't afford to buy a house just yet. What do you mean by this? Leperflesh posted:Foreclosures are foreclosures. If you were taking an FHA loan, there would be extra requirements for "habitability" of the house you are buying, including stuff like "must have basic appliances" and "can't have any exposed wiring" and stuff like that. Since foreclosures are bank-owned and banks tend to sell the house "as-is", it can be an obstacle at times. It isn't a serious problem like "we won't be able to pay it" its more "we don't WANT to pay it". We make well beyond what we are budgetting for a monthly expense, we just want to save money, build equity, and be able to have some stability for our daughter. I'm aware that the extra costs come with a house, and I'm willing to pay them to get those intangibles. To offset that, we're willing to get a little less house than we can really afford.
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Aug 8, 2014 22:55
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uwaeve posted:It means that rent is the maximum you need to pay every month (landlord is responsible for the furnace exploding, roof leaking, etc). House payment is the minimum you need to pay every month. You're responsible for the stuff that goes wrong, and regular maintenance and stuff that goes wrong happens with every house. Ah yeah ok that makes sense. I guess I kind of knew that in a sense. Yeah we had calculated all of that out. We pay about $1150 or so in rent and can afford probably $1350 if need be, more so once the wife starts working full time in earnest. Our goal was to take that extra $200 (at LEAST, will increase over time as other bills are paid) and put it into a savings account in a separate bank to be used only for house repairs and upkeep. The roof is new, the furnace will need to be replaced in probably 3 to 5 years, and everything else was put in pretty new within the last few years so we think that plan will work for us going forward. I didn't know that the 1.5% was a good rule, and we were going to end up right in there. Its tough we are picky on what we want, and the houses we want are either too old, in a terrible neighborhood, or have something otherwise wrong with them. We finally find one we like and bam, the sellers won't budge. We don't know whether to go for it, and take a bit higher cost, or bank on getting the extra VA military grants to lower the price...or go in as is and have a higher payment. Or to go back and wait, and possibly mess up our moving plans by forcing us to renew the lease:(
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Aug 9, 2014 00:03
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slap me silly posted:You used the phrase "build equity", so I will point out that you are only "building equity" if the amount you pay to principal each month exceeds the amount you spend on upkeep. You are expecting to spend $200/month on upkeep, but with a 30 year $118k loan at 3.7% you are only putting $180 or so to principal at first. You won't even start "building equity" until year 3. And that's assuming the market value of the house doesn't change. Just putting things in perspective a little bit. Good point, good point. We sat down and did a budget and it would save us money over the long term, but would absolutely be a bigger commitment. Our costs will be about the same, but we'll have a much higher sanity value for both of us.
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Aug 9, 2014 03:43
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slap me silly posted:I bought a house and I'm not sorry, but it has definitely cost me $thousands per year more than I expected to spend when I bought it. So have a good buffer zone. Yeah, that is the only thing I'm going to focus on. We make enough money to have a good buffer now, once the wife is working full time it'll be gravy.
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Aug 9, 2014 04:34
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Well. We were ready to walk away so we threw out an offer at 148k with 2.5k n closing. Closing costs for us will be about 1.8k. Well....they accepted it. So poo poo. I guess we got the house for an end cost of 145.5. Ok then.
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Aug 10, 2014 01:47
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Stop you're scaring me.
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Aug 11, 2014 03:43
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Kalli posted:I'm at around $1000/mo over the past four years since I bought the house, but that includes a kitchen demo/boiler replacement I knew in advance that makes up about half of it. Track housing that was built so cheaply/quickly the washing machine and boiler were in the kitchen... ugh. That sounds like you bought a fixer upper though. I hopefully don't have those kinds of renovations required for our place. Hopefully.
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Aug 11, 2014 16:44
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Lowness 72 posted:Are there any books out there that serve as a sort of home repair / renovation manual? Not trying to be rude, I'm just curious though on what the general thought is....aren't masonry walls, lead paint, old plumbing, etc. considered bad bones?
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Aug 12, 2014 15:16
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Just ordered our inspection and a radon test. Lets hope that nothing major jumps out at us.
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Aug 14, 2014 15:36
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uwaeve posted:You may know this but if your radon test comes back over the limit, it is usually taken care of by the seller, as it's something they have to put on the disclosure list for any other buyers. That's how it was explained to me, and true to form, our radon system was put in by the sellers. As with anything else the sellers do for you, it's gonna be a minimum effort install. In our case the company guaranteed the radon level (and had to come back to install more ducting to make good on that), which is good. But the price they quoted was for an exterior installation. I chose to have it installed inside, which cost more. The seller agreed to credit me the lower price, as that was where his responsibility ended. I ponied up the extra cost to have it done the way I wanted it. Yeah they were really stingy on the selling price so I'm a little worried about how they will handle any issues. YOu can tell they put money into the place in order to make it sellable, with new carpet and a lot of painting touch ups. I think they feel justified in saying no to any kind of changes, so my wife, realtor, and mom ( to watch our daughter and check out the place) will all be there with the inspector while he does his thing. How exactly do they "fix" radon? Do they have to install new wall work with lead or something like that? I also saw the paperwork for the warranty company that the sellers provided through a company called HSA Warranty. Anyone have experience with this company?
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Aug 14, 2014 16:59
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QuarkJets posted:Oh no, we just received our conditional loan approval, and one of the conditions is that the price has to not decrease at all, or else the entire loan has to be reprocessed. That's... kind of weird. It seems like having to borrow less money shouldn't be a condition for restarting the entire loan process. This is something I'm concerned about too since I'm going to sign the official paperwork today and attend the inspection. It seems strange that they'd have to reprocess the whole thing. I mean....if they do, can't they just do it in 5 minutes with a different number and not re-run everything? Or would they keep the "sale price" the same, but apply credits from the seller to the loan to lower the amount you officially have to borrow in your name? Either way, seems a strange thing.
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Aug 19, 2014 12:29
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Just signed all my paperwork for the VA loan on the new place. The rates look OK, and I'm excited to go forward. We came in at about 3.75% MAX, but rates should be below that. I feel like I'm getting a pretty decent deal out of it. Lets cross our fingers no the appraisal!
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Aug 19, 2014 16:14
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Well god dammit. We did the home inspection and everything looked great! Except...the fridge didn't work. And the repair guy had left a note on the counter explaining that it didn't work and that repair was impossible-it needs to be replaced. Ok great, we'll talk to the sellers. Then we got the Radon readings. It came back at 14. Anything 4 and below are acceptable. Granted, this was in the basement, but gently caress. What are we supposed to do now? Just hope the sellers grant us a few grand for radon rehabilitating? Its a split level home too. Will I need to get radon work done on the basement AND the ground floor, or just the basement? Terrible to have all of this potentially fall through because of this.
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Aug 20, 2014 00:20
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Leperflesh posted:If it's not an FHA loan, the fridge is not important (you can buy a cheap fridge for like $500 and if you make the sellers do it, they'll get the cheapest loving fridge they can find). Its a VA loan and I'm not really upset about the fridge. I wanted a new one anyways, and the selling agreement included a fridge, so they'll have to replace it. I'd rather them just give me a credit and *I* will go and buy a fridge. We'll see how ti goes, this was all today.
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Aug 20, 2014 00:27
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shortspecialbus posted:I just went through the radon thing myself, when the radon test came back with 11.8. Here's a copy of what we put: But...if it didn't get fully fixed, you'd be left with the high radon levels. Still you can't ask the seller to work magic. Not a bad idea.
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Aug 20, 2014 02:49
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poo poo...so they will do the radon mitigation, but will only give us $200 for a new fridge. The fridge is old and all, but goddam. Is it normal for the warranty to only pay ACV for broken appliances? We asked for $1000 for a new fridge, and they came back saying the warranty is going to pay only $200. Is that normal? But hey, radon mitigation, yay!
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Aug 22, 2014 19:56
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Zhentar posted:Mine supposedly covers replacement cost. But... you haven't closed yet, have you? What does the warranty even matter? Its actually being talked about now. Our realtor noticed that they were trying to make a warranty claim through the realty company, which it looks like, only does ACV, not Replacement cost. So we're contesting that. I am ready to just take the thing because as the poster above said, radon is worse. But....the offer INCLUDED a working fridge so they have to provide one to us. I'm waiting to hear back on the results from this. daggerdragon posted:Who gives a poo poo about a fridge? The radon could kill you. It was part of the original offer. We're not going to take the cost of a new fridge if we can help it. We already have to get a new dryer for the gas lines.
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Aug 22, 2014 21:28
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Leperflesh posted:If the offer included a working fridge and you fight them over $200 for the fridge, they are going to go buy a $200 fridge for you. Unless your offer specified a brand new fridge then $200 is completely reasonable because it's what a used fridge costs, and if the fridge that was in the house before wasn't broken, it'd probably be a $200 fridge anyway. Oh no we are totally not trying to hold their balls on the $200. No way, we want a check no matter how much its going to be. We do NOT want them to get a fridge without our say so. We just want to make sure we're doing it right. If they are going to promise $200 from the warranty and that isn't valid, then we need them to do it right. We'd LIKE $1000 but I'd be willing to settle for half that just to get this done. The radon is the big one, which they've agreed to. As for the price on the house, actually yes. It was our final offer when we gave it to them after two back and forth rounds. At this point I Just want a check for the fridge lol.
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Aug 22, 2014 22:32
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fknlo posted:The radon in the house I bought is high. Radon mitigation probably isn't even in my top 10 things to do at the moment. I'm not super worried about it. Radon can directly kill you 
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Aug 22, 2014 22:51
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 21:47 |
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adorai posted:Maybe. Radon kills perhaps 3000 non-smokers per year. Sure, it's 3000 people who didn't necessarily have to die, but it's not nearly as likely to kill you as walking across the street is. Further, if you don't spend a significant amount of time in your basement, it's probably not even worth considering. Its a tri-level home where the base-basement will be used for storage and will likely see a lot of traffic. Also where do you live where walking across the street is likely to kill you?
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Aug 23, 2014 00:02
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