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The rule of thumb I used to hear for buying a house possibly making sense was 7 years, has this changed because of how low mortgage rates are right now? I'm getting jumped on for wanting to rent when I'm planning to live in one place only 4 years, some people whose opinion I respect in other ways are telling me renting is throwing money away and 3 years is the new rule of thumb where buying makes more sense. I'm also getting "renting is an expense, buying is an investment" thrown at me and it's annoying.
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Dec 6, 2012 05:13
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Rooster Brooster posted:And remember you're paying to fix everything yourself now, as well. Including the washing machine. I rent an apartment and own my own washing machine / dryer, have I done something wrong?
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Dec 6, 2012 23:11
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gwarm01 posted:The wife and I may end up moving to Florida after I graduate this May. I've been thinking about picking up a cheap as hell condo for 70k or so just to have an inexpensive place to live for a couple years, then either rent it out or just keep the thing if we move out or move away. Is this feasible? Are condos are cheap now as people keep telling me? Should I just rent instead? Condos are a very mixed bag because of condo fees and how much power the condo board has over what you can do, how you can paint, and more. Also, the condo fees can skyrocket if something bad happens, like needing a new roof, or if people get foreclosed on and the building loses some occupancy. If the specific condo complex you're looking at has a long, stable history, high occupancy, and reasonable condo board then you're golden. There's potential for different things to go wrong than with a standalone property, though.
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Jan 16, 2013 18:27
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Cocoa Ninja posted:As a recent first-time home buyer, I whole-heartedly agree. Sure, it was a "buyers market," but that meant competition for any good property was absurd with dozens and dozens of offers immediately upon listing. This sounds like locally you have a booming housing market and it's a sellers market. Where I am rents are at all-time highs, housing inventory is very low and median home sale prices just broke above the previous 2006 peak. We're definitely seeing a full recovery in some places, except now it's harder to get a mortgages and rents are really high too.
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Jan 25, 2013 16:22
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DJCobol posted:Yeah, mortgage interest seems great, but when I looked at what I paid vs. the difference it made on my tax return, I'm getting back less than 10% of that money. As soon as my car is paid off, every extra penny I have will be going towards my mortgage. Thats not to say I'll be stopping my 401(k) and Roth IRA contributions, but I can definitely take what my car payment used to be and cut back on some other bullshit spending to put another $600-$800 towards my mortgage every month. I understand that this is a personal decision, but if your mortgage is under 4% then its incredibly likely that putting that $600-800 a month towards an index fund or mix of funds will beat 4%, and later you could pay off your mortgage in one huge chunk if you so desire with the earnings.
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Jan 31, 2013 16:42
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I'm considering buying a home, my financials are 100% solid (20% down ready, appropriate amount earmarked for closing costs, moving expenses and repairs, targeting under 3x my base salary. I know I won't save money compared to renting my 1 bedroom apartment. I want to be in this part of the city for at least 5 years, but there's one thing stopping me. The only options in the neighborhoods I'm interested in within my price range are 1950s-early 70s built houses around 1400 sq ft, or ultra-modern townhomes built 2010+ or even new construction around 1600-1800 sq ft. The townhome community I'm most interested in has a maintenance fee of $200 a month, which seems reasonable given that it covers exterior building maintenance including the roof as well as trash and community upkeep. I see new construction spoken of poorly throughout this thread, can someone tell me why the lead paint, poor insulation, and archaic floor plans make a 50s house on a tiny lot worth the same as a brand-new townhome right down the street? I may just have terrible taste, but I'm interested in hearing some reasons why older builds are preferable. My first impression is that those townhouses sure are shiny, have modern finishing materials, 10' ceilings, kitchen islands and stuff like that.
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Feb 18, 2013 19:01
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If I have 20% that I can comfortably put down, is there any reason to even consider an FHA loan?
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Mar 25, 2013 17:14
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lord1234 posted:Here's where the questions start coming in: How do we make this equitable for both of us. Let's say the house is worth ~500k. It was purchased for roughly half that price. Who should be responsible for doing/paying "all the work" given that it is a "lease to own" plan? If me, how do we factor the value of "my expenses" into the lease? What happens if after a year, I decide to bail out(and not buy?)? do I lose all that money? Should it be valued at some amount? What other things am I not thinking of. There are two sane scenarios here. 1. You walk away from all this craziness, find financing for a new home purchase, find and buy a different home. This involves the least risk. 2. You rent this house from the man who owns it. He is responsible for upkeep and improvements, and you pay him an agreed-upon rental rate and get a lease contract drawn up and all that jazz. There is no possible way that you spending $60k+ to improve a house that you do not own ends well.
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Apr 1, 2013 21:02
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Incredulous Dylan posted:If my pops, who has some crazy credit score above 830, is co-signing with me I should basically expect to attain those low rates right? I've seen it advised in many places that if you don't NEED a cosigner to get a decent rate, you don't want to have one. I haven't seen a justification at length on it though, and I could probably get a slightly better rate than the 3.7% that I saw recently on a good faith estimate. Is it widely considered a decent idea to have parents cosign? Edit: My median score was 738. I think that puts me near the best rates, but not perfect. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Apr 4, 2013 |
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Apr 4, 2013 17:47
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Astro7x posted:As people's income goes up, they feel they deserve more nice things. I wish I could find this, I think i saw it on Reddit's /r/frugal, but it was an article in some rich people magazine about how a family of 5 making $250K was 'barely getting buy', and it breaks down their expenses to include things like "5 Smart Phone - $5,400 year". Meanwhile I'm getting by using an iPod Touch and using a free wireless 4G hotspot from Freedompop to get by without having a smart phone for as long as I can. It looks like all these examples are including ~50K per year in future savings for retirement and college though. Capping out all 401ks and IRAs available is hardly "barely getting by".
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Apr 5, 2013 20:57
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I cannot wait to be done with renting. My girlfriend and I are extending our lease by a couple months to allow plenty of time for builders and closing to finish, and the rents even for year-long lease terms have gone up 10%. They also went up 10% the year before that. It's at the point where in our area it costs more to rent a 600 sq ft shithole 1 bedroom apartment with a 7 foot ceiling in the bathroom / hallway than the mortgage + tax + insurance on a 2300 sq ft standalone house. I think I may actually do the impossible and save money by buying. How many years in a row can this giant complex keep raising the rent 10% before people just leave? We are buying because we like the area, want a house, and are stable here. We're not expecting to save money, but it just might happen. Twerk from Home fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Apr 18, 2013 |
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Apr 18, 2013 17:30
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jackyl posted:I do! Do you think banks are losing or making money on the loans they offer? As I understand it, the banks make money originating and packaging the loan and then sell the loan off to Fannie or Freddie. They're not usually the ones who service it during the whole duration of it.
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Jun 22, 2013 05:24
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How necessary is a 3-stage new home inspection on a new build compared to doing my best to educate myself and visiting the site frequently and doing a DIY inspection? Either way the builders are equally required to fix defects, is it worth the $600+ for a three stage new home inspection?
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Jul 1, 2013 00:39
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Dr. Kyle Farnsworth posted:Man, last time I moved we hired a well-rated local company and two strong dudes with a trailer showed up, loaded all our poo poo up, drove to the new place, and carried everything up to the third floor in 2 hours door-to-door for $300. After that I'm never moving myself again. Every time they carried in something heavy I was like "Would I pay $300 to not have to carry that down 2 flights of stairs and up 6 more?" and the answer was always "Oh hell yes." You may have just sold me on using movers in-town. I'm moving about 6 miles from a 1 bedroom apartment to a modest house, and was just looking at Ryder / Penske and planning to to it myself.
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Jul 10, 2013 19:51
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tiananman posted:You're kidding yourself. Even a realtor wouldn't tell you that a two year holding period is a good financial move - but you've guzzled the kool aid. Austin is really loving bonkers right now, housing flippers are making a killing. There are some anomalous markets that are going crazy right now, and its the equivalent of riding up a stock in a short squeeze or something similar. When it breaks, there are going to be a lot of people left holding the bag. There are people building in a new development my parents have bought in who are selling a house 3 months after they moved into it for $70k over what they paid for it. This is waaay more like gambling on penny stocks or even in a casino than investing though.
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Aug 8, 2013 21:32
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CatsOnTheInternet posted:Thing is, I want to take that profit and roll it onto the downpayment for my next house. So I can't really buy my next house and swing right into it; I have to sell first and then buy. The two ways around this are doing a contingent sale where your home must sell before you close on the new one, or doing a leaseback of your old home where you sell it and become a renter for a pre-negotiated term before moving out. My parents are doing a 3-month leaseback on their house while waiting for their new one to finish building, but it can be hard to find a buyer that flexible.
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Oct 18, 2013 14:27
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reflex posted:my "never rent" mindset thinks that's a stupid waste of a year's potential mortgage money. Read the OP. Owning involves throwing away tons of money just like renting. Renting is not a bad thing. What owning gets you is a very highly leveraged speculative investment, and the ability to make changes to the property. Maybe you could look into renting a house if you want to be in a house?
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Oct 23, 2013 23:32
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PuTTY riot posted:I bought a house back in may with not a lot down, on a 203k loan. the loan sold almost immediately after closing. The bank who bought my loan called me and said they want to pay my closing costs so i can refi from 4.625 to 3.75. She said this would save me about $150/mo on a 240kish loan. She also said the only cash to closing i'd be responsible for is the difference between the refund on my upfront mortgage insurance and whatever the upfront premium is for the second loan. Your first rate was way too high, that's how they can make money on it.
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Dec 12, 2014 18:36
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Antifreeze Head posted:Canada maybe. Canada doesn't do 30 year fixed rate mortgages though, right? If people are getting 2.99% with no points on a 30 year... I understand part of the Canadian bubble.
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Dec 23, 2014 16:42
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QuarkJets posted:I can't even think of a house upgrade that I'd actually want and that would cost $5000 or less. New pot rack maybe? Getting ceramic tile instead of lovely laminate in the kitchen is way less than $5k, all sorts of finish upgrades in general could be done within that allowance. Also could do dumb poo poo that builders like to do like tray ceilings everywhere.
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Oct 6, 2016 05:47
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Jealous Cow posted:Speaking of areas where rent is unjustifiably higher than a mortgage payment.. I've been looking into buying small homes in the 60-70k range that rent for 1-1.2k per month. But in researching the dynamics of this type of market I came across this chart: I'm in Houston, and the PITI on a 2400 sqft home brand new from the builder was less than the rent I was paying for a 650 sqft apartment. I work with a bunch of guys who have become amateur landlords because houses rent for about $600-1000 more than the PITI on them, so you can immediately be massively cash flow positive. There's some parts of the US where I just don't get why people rent at all because it looks like owning comes out ahead even after 2 or 3 years.
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Oct 25, 2016 16:11
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Wait, what's wrong with buying the model? Aside from tacky finishes and an overly busy interior look because the builder wanted to show off absolutely every optional nook and tray ceiling, it seems like a fine way to get a house with every "option" they offered at the cost of a base house. My neighbors down the street bought a model, and they're pretty happy with it.
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Feb 6, 2017 16:25
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Kirios posted:I'm going to be blunt, you don't make nearly enough money for a 600k-ish house. There's a general line of you don't want a house more than 3x your income. For you, 240k is likely unreasonable in your area, so I'd personally bump it up closer to 320k...maybe slightly higher if it's a place I love. I'm also gonna say that the 3x rule of thumb is completely dead in high cost of living areas. In the San Jose area where the median single family home costs $1.2 million, a bunch of people are buying those on mid-upper $200s incomes and the PITI is still a hell of a lot cheaper than renting something comparable is. There's some places where housing costs so much and salaries are so high that you make $250k but still can't afford to drive a luxury car, do exotic travel, or even have a real yard.
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Feb 23, 2017 00:03
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Pryor on Fire posted:Thanks for that huge post diceman, it's nice to see your thinking more clearly even though we're being slightly dickish to you. Ultimately in your situation what many people do is end up leaving California for more affordable pastures. This is the real trick if you make less than $200k and want a nice house. Most jobs pay maybe 10-15% less outside of California, but housing costs are 1/3 or 1/4 as much in other states.
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Feb 23, 2017 17:16
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Just leave California. Speaking bluntly, you don't make enough money to do all that poo poo you want and get a 600k house (responsibly) on your 90k salary. You'd have literally no problem pulling this off in the Midwest. poo poo, you don't even have to go to the Midwest. There's tons of nice cosmopolitan cities where you're not even giving anything up and houses are still 1/4 price. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio to start.
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Feb 23, 2017 17:32
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supercrooky posted:FYI, redfin has a calculator right on their listing pages that will include taxes/insurance/hoa for that specific property, if available. It puts the PITI for a $600k house in that area more in the ballpark of $4200 with 3.5% down. That cheap? That's a deal, I wish there were $600k houses in the bay area. I bet with 20% down that'd be outright affordable.
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Feb 23, 2017 18:35
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My wife and I are starting to get excited and optimistic, which is a sign that I need to slow my roll. How many red flags am I flying here?
We're following this checklist here for private mortgage guidance. It's really a win/win because we'd avoid closing costs, and the lender would get a much better than bonds return. The monthly mortgage payment on my Houston house is only ~$630/mo, so I'm not to worried if we end up paying both notes for a bit while this house sells. Tell me, is this whole thing a terrible idea and I need to slow the gently caress down, sell this house first and have the buy-side contract in Nashville contingent on this sale closing, and get financing from a real bank instead?
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Mar 8, 2017 16:55
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Thufir posted:Oh hey, I bought in Nashville last summer. Where are you looking? Something to keep in mind is that especially around your price range there are a lot of multiple offer situations and yours might get rejected out of hand just for being a complex situation. Well, on the buy end of this transaction it would actually be a plus because we're essentially a cash offer, there's no ability for financing to fall through. We're drawing up contracts now to set this up, and anyone we're buying from wouldn't be aware of all this. I guess I should also add that we owe $50k principal on our house in Houston, and it's tax assessed at $180k and we find it pretty likely we can sell for ~$190k. There's similar new construction going on down our street, and the cheapest there is $230k+. We're looking to be as close to Vanderbilt as possible with at least a 3/2 for under $400k. There's a ton of new houses going up in North Nashville and near Tennessee State that seem fine to us. We'd really like to be in Wedgewood-Houston, but can't afford it. Nations looks OK, but we'd like to be a little bit east of there if possible. Maybe we should also be more open to East Nashville, but it seems like to get to our price point you end up all the way out in Inglewood.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:23
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Thufir posted:Cool, I'm in the Nations and it's not bad to Vanderbilt at all, and I say that having previously lived less than a mile from campus. That or North Nashville/TSU is probably your best bet under 400k. Before buying in the Nations we were mainly looking in East Nashville but the market is crazy there unless, as you said, you're way out. In retrospect I'm happy we stayed on the West side because it's a lot better for commuting and access to mundane stuff like Costco and decent grocery stores. It sounds like I'm not completely off base in the areas we're looking, what do I really have to lose by hopping straight into a house instead of renting first? I want to avoid the pain / expense of moving twice, and a year in an apartment or rental seems like it would be pretty expensive compared to just going ahead and buying.
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Mar 8, 2017 20:50
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Pryor on Fire posted:Rates are going up, possibly substantially, between now and June, and there can be financing related problems that delay closing by weeks or even months. Yes, absolutely shop & lock in now. Won't higher rates cause buyers to be able to afford less? I'm pretty sure that higher rates will have a downward pressure on prices, just because fewer people will be able to afford a given price point, slowing sales on more expensive houses.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:59
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Turns out that type of house I'd been looking out are mostly "Horizontal Property Regimes", a complex ownership structure in which the owner only owns the land under the foundation and a 3rd party legal organization owns the surrounding land, which is shared with other nearby homeowners. I'm bothered by this, does anyone have experience with detached homes that in a situation like this? Apparently all these houses are like this because it's a legal way to subdivide larger lots without going through actual splitting of existing lots. The end result is higher density without the consent of neighborhood homeowners, which I'm not too worried about. I just see this as even more risk because it's like the worst of condo ownership combined with the worst of detached single family homeownership. Here's one of the better summaries of the structure I've seen: http://info.rochfordlawyers.com/resources/real-estate-title/horizontal-property-regimes-hprs-nashville
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Mar 12, 2017 06:30
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gently caress that. Renting it is, I guess. I can't afford a place that isn't an HPR where I'd like to be. I wish they had just subdivided the lots, 25' wide lots are fine!
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Mar 12, 2017 19:34
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Pryor on Fire posted:That sounds like a bunch of bored old white people getting annoyed with how much the state limits their ability to control their HOA neighbors, so they invented an even worse structure to get the control they actually want. Does it count as slumlording if you're selling them to yuppies for $450k? Almost all of the homes under $600k in this area are these HPRs, with no lot ownership and fully detached buildings that are legally condos: https://www.redfin.com/zipcode/37209/filter/sort=lo-dollarsqft,min-beds=3,viewport=36.18689:36.11967:-86.80463:-86.92719
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Mar 13, 2017 01:13
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Pryor on Fire posted:Interesting... why is Nashville blowing up so much? Same story as any other city? Tech jobs, people want to live close and not in the burbs if possible, and it's really hard to build new housing stock close in because of zoning / NIMBY / anti-development laws. All of the demand pressure for new housing is getting vented through whatever stupid legal loophole works, which in Nashville is these HPRs where you've got huge numbers of detached buildings that are condos for legal purposes. I'm seeing a bunch of 4-packs too, where a single lot has been subdivided into 4:  It just sucks to be in the group of targeted customers (victims?) of these, who wants to not be 30+ minutes away from downtown, wants / needs 3 bedrooms, and can afford $350k-500k but can't even consider the $600k-800k that normal single family homes are.
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Mar 13, 2017 05:38
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Pryor on Fire posted:Skipping the inspection seems to be increasingly common here in Colorado. All the "Googler" fuckheads buying the places don't care, they will just tear the house down and build a new monstrosity anyway. Wow, and I thought that the tales of locals angry about the housing tastes of yuppies were overblown: https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/03/denver-battles-with-its-fugly-new-housing/519333/ Welcome to the new mcmansions, higher density and a complete disregard to what it looks like from the outside rather than fake luxury excessively busy exteriors. 
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Mar 14, 2017 17:37
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HEY NONG MAN posted:What does this mean? Is this racist? Yes, against highly compensated tech employees. They come from California, say "oh boy $550k is a STEAL for this 1700sqft 3/2" and entirely reshape the look of your real estate market.
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Mar 15, 2017 16:08
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Speaking of Denver, and Nashville where I'm moving and we originally got on this tangent, I'm getting some major cold feet about buying after looking at house prices over the last 4 years. It seems inevitable that after years of double digit percentage annual price increases and rates finally going up now that there's going to be a market top. I had a nightmare last night that we were moving out of Nashville in 5 years, which is about how long we know we'll be there for sure, and ate a $70k loss on the house. Looking at reports from 3 years ago in the places where I can barely find anything under $440k, new construction was going for $260k in 2013.
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Mar 16, 2017 15:43
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lampey posted:Use the ny times rent vs buy calc. You can figure out what is best for you given the length of time you will be living there and your predictions on the rental increases, home appreciation, and stock market gains/opportunity cost I appreciate this and have played with it some, but how does anyone have any confidence at all about future stock market returns, home prices, and rental rates? I bought the house that I currently am in Houston after two years of double-digit rent increases and being unable to find anywhere else to rent that wouldn't be even more expensive, but now rents are falling and I'm feeling kind of dumb for buying.
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Mar 20, 2017 15:53
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HEY NONG MAN posted:You could probably invest that money somewhere else and make more money than you're saving by paying down the principle on your house. On what time scale and while paying what amount of taxes, though? I thought that the long-term investment return outlook was much more like 5% right now, the guaranteed 4% return for paying off a mortgage sounds pretty appealing to me.
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Apr 4, 2017 21:54
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Photex posted:when you guys talk about 300,000+ homes I feel like a real poor for buying a 180k townhouse. I'm in the process of moving from a city where I bought a 2400 sqft new construction 2 car garage house on a quarter acre lot for $160k to one where $350k-400k gets me half of a duplex. Oh man it's scary.
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Apr 4, 2017 22:26
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