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This thread hasn't quite been a year, but I wanted to say thanks for all the advice in other threads given over the course of me purchasing my first home last year. Today is our 1 year house anniversary. One year down, twenty nine to go! To everyone else looking right now just get through the torture of the process, after you close it all feels better.
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May 1, 2010 05:37
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betty finn posted:Is this a scam? Yes Are you sure its even from your bank? You could make a half payment on the 15th and 31st but there is no math equation that would make that turn your 30 year loan into a 20 year loan. If instead you paid every 2 weeks (26 payments per year instead of 24) you would probably be finished about 10 years sooner, making only 260 payments over 20 years instead of 360 over 30. It costs nothing to do this though, just set up your automatic billpay to send them a half payment every 2 weeks (or a full payment every 4). You just did for free what they wanted $400 for.
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May 6, 2010 02:10
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What banks will accept varies pretty wildly. Some properties they just don't budge on, some they will give a little bit. From what myself and some other couples have seen in the Atlanta area is they aren't in any big hurry to get rid of the houses they have on their books. I made a few offers of $120-125K on houses listed ~$140-150K and they didn't even give a counteroffer. Your realtor should have a good idea of what to offer that won't get immediately rejected and at least get you a counter. I Wish I Was posted:They're asking $146,900. The house was appraised last year at $267,000 and all the neighboring houses are valued at $250,000-$350,000, so it's a good deal no matter what we pay but we obviously don't want to pay more than we have to. If you haven't already, check what other houses are actually selling for, not assessments. Assessments are still very high off of the bubble because city/county governments aren't exactly rushing to lower their incoming tax revenues by re-assessing properties at realistic values. Inside Atlanta there are a ton of houses assessed at $250-350K that are listed at $150K, and are lucky to be worth that. They are impossible to sell inside city limits because you get a nice $800 mortgage payment but the high assessments tack on another $350-400/mo. Banks are too lazy to actually fight the high tax values and its not worth putting the effort into it as a home buyer unless there is gold buried underneath the floorboards.
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Jun 25, 2010 04:43
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poofactory posted:Putting the min down is the best way to buy a house because it creates the least amount of risk to the purchaser. If the market goes bad, they can just walk away. If the market gets better they can make a lot of money. If they decide to stay long term, they can pay off the loan. This is only true in non-recourse states (AK, AZ, CA, CT, FL, ID, MN, NC, ND, TX, UT, WA) where you can walk away and not have the bank come after you for the difference. In other states walking away either means going through a short sale or declaring bankruptcy. The minimum is also not good when you are paying PMI (not to mention the added interest by having a 16.5% larger loan by only putting down 3.5% instead of 20%). I guess you could consider it paying for the privilege of not losing your 20% if your home value goes down though.
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Jun 30, 2010 19:05
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MJP posted:1) What is the difference between title services and insurance totaling $2500 and title insurance totaling $1600? 1 - Not sure, my title insurance for my $124K mortgage was $120 though. Seems like both fees are very high. 2 - What is the size of your downpayment? If you are putting down only 3.5% then you have to pay 1 3/4 points as the upfront PMI payment. I am not sure this goes down in stages at all unless you put a full 20% down. This is in addition to the monthly payments. 3 - No idea 4 - If the Homeowners/Hazard insurance isn't your own, who is it through? Before my closing I called my car insurance company, got a quote for homeowners, and they provided information to the broker to tell them how much insurance was and set up the escrow. 5 - No idea
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Jul 9, 2010 18:52
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Good news is you have a pretty health emergency fund in case of layoffs!
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Jul 15, 2010 21:41
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I'll try not to be too harsh. Don't buy a loving apartment for $269,000 are you retarded? Where do you live? Find someone who bought one of the $100-150K units who is renting it out and do that. Please tell me that $531 association fee is monthly. That would make your $269,000 apartment run into the mid $2,000's per month in payments. That is more than 50% of your gross income and every banker will giggle when they reject you instantly. And of that $2500 payment only about $375 will be going towards the principal for the first forever years. So much for not throwing your money away on rent! You shouldn't buy anything until that credit card debt is gone, probably the student loans too depending on the interest rate, and you have 20% + closing costs + leftover emergency money. And you still shouldn't buy a $269,000 condo unless that is literally the only type of housing where you live and renting is illegal. There are tangible benefits to owning a single family home I can't think of any reason to own your apartment. Are you on some sort of probation where you aren't allowed to leave your city for the next 20 years? Even if a large condo would be good, what if you get a job offer elsewhere or you decide you don't like the neighbors? If it was underpriced it would be sold already if its been on the market more than a week. Its still not sold because its not underpriced by any meaningful number. You can look on Zillow or Trulia which may have recently sold homes in your building (never looked at condos, but they have them for single family homes at least). Else ask a realtor to check for comps in that building.
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Jul 24, 2010 02:16
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Yeah it isn't a case of the appraisal being too low, its that they don't believe the appraisal is valid. Did they offer you any sort of option to get a second appraisal? Do you have an option of using another lender?
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Jul 29, 2010 17:53
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shrike82 posted:Should I just look to migrating to some place cheaper? If you are right and they go to $1.5M and you have half that in savings you would deplete your entire savings and take on a $750,000 mortgage. $750K @ 5% is $48,000/yr in principal and interest, another ~$15K in property taxes not to mention insuring and paying dues on it. Even if your salary doubled to $150K I wouldn't get anywhere close to owning a $1.5M property. At that point it sort of becomes like a Ferrari, if you can't afford to pay for two then you probably can't afford to own one. If you are wrong and prices stabilize then by all means paying for a place to live in New York City in cash is awesome if that is your thing. If you gave me $50-100K/yr into my savings for 10 years I wouldn't spend it on a 2 bedroom apartment in New York I would probably retire someplace second world and sunny where I could consult remotely. Move to Malaysia and go to Singapore for finance work maybe?
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Sep 8, 2010 02:54
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senor punk posted:Who said he's in New York? Our real estate markets didn't fair as well as he described. shrike82 posted:Singapore. My post history stalking skills are poor. For 1.5 million I suggest he buys property in Geylang and start his own whorehouse.
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Sep 9, 2010 02:50
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Nocheez posted:I'm willing to try to sell the house on our own to save from paying a Realtor. Just a note on that, you would still have to pay the buyer's realtor his 3% unless you were planning on only advertising the homes to buyers without realtors. So for the extra $3K it is going to cost you I would probably list it with a realtor just to have someone looking out for you and handling all the bullshit that comes along with selling a house. You are going to eat that $20K now or over a period of time living in it so if you have the capability to move where you want to now there isn't much of a difference as long as you feel comfortable with how much savings you will have afterward.
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Sep 20, 2010 22:51
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Nocheez posted:I forgot that part. This home is owned by the builder, and they are selling it themselves. It was leased for a year, but the wife of the couple quit her job and could qualify for the loan to buy it. I meant the one you are living in now. I read that as you were trying to sell your home without a realtor.
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Sep 21, 2010 00:12
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FISHMANPET posted:Both the buyer's Realtor and seller's Realtor take a commission, probably around 3% each. So unless you sell it to somebody who isn't using a Realtor to buy, there will still be a 3% commission. So you can get around the 3% by selling on your own its just that 3% probably isn't worth it on a $100K house. Buying a house without the help of a realtor is only useful if the seller has no realtor as well, otherwise the selling agent will just demand all 6%. It looks like you already knew that though. Is anyone else mildly/majorly annoyed at Firefox saying realtor isn't a word because it isn't capitalized because of the stupid trademark?
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Sep 21, 2010 00:23
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Take into account the tax savings (if any) you have by deducting the interest and how much you could gain on the money by just shoving it into your retirement account. $8200 @ 5% is $34/mo. And of course how likely you are to stay in the house long enough to break even. I don't think I'd pay more than 1.5-2 points to drop one percent although I may just be cheap. Rate buydown on my mortgage was 1 point per quarter percent which just wasn't exciting to me.
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Oct 8, 2010 19:54
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IOwnCalculus posted:Any thoughts? Walk away because Arizona is non-recourse? edit: totally missed that second page, oops
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Oct 27, 2010 03:38
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Sundae posted:It's very frustrating to see (in my area) that house listings are falling into the $120K range (less than 1.5X my salary), while rents are remaining in the $1200+ range indefinitely. (They're actually going up rather quickly. I'm bracing myself for a $200-300 price increase in February when my lease resets.) This is the case for me, 10 miles north of the Atlanta perimeter. My mortgage is $750/mo including taxes and insurance, and two houses in my cul-de-sac are rented out for $1200. My decent 2 bedroom apartment was $950/mo, my house is 3 beds, 3 baths, 2 car garage and a finished half basement that I am renting out to my brother for $450. The <$150K market for buyers in Atlanta right now is awesome.
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Nov 3, 2010 00:21
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Alfajor posted:Our realtors tell us that we'll be waiting anywhere between 3 to 14 weeks to find out if the bank accepted the offer. That's a poo poo lot of time, but this house was definitely the one, and we'll be happy to wait if they say yes. If after months they come back to us with a no, I'm going to be pissed. Its a good one, but its not the only one. Keep looking while waiting on the short sale approval to come back. Getting tied down to this place is only going to make you miss other opportunities and make your home buying experience miserable.
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Jan 22, 2011 15:37
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jerkstore77 posted:So what happens if the seller of a house we put an offer on dies before signing the offer? She had verbally agreed to sell us the house at the offer price, but as far as we know, she didn't sign anything before the cancer got the best of her I am just guessing, but I would assume that even if she signed the offer it wouldn't mean anything as you never closed and there was nothing in the contract preventing her from backing out. You are probably going to have to deal with whoever is inheriting the property or managing her estate.
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Jan 24, 2011 22:31
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, so that probably means nothing. Our agent is currently in contact with the seller's attorney, but I'm not too hopeful. 
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BigHead posted:My question: Is there any way I can get a mortgage at the local credit union (or wherever) that includes, as a clause in the contract, a provision stating that the credit union will not sell my mortgage to Deutsche Bank or Wells Fargo or International Hedge Fund #23982? I want to send my checks to the same guy at City Credit Union for the next thirty years, not a different megabank every four months. No. What happened if the credit union dissolves?
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Jan 29, 2011 00:08
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Dbhjed posted:To add to wanting to buy VS rent is that you can rent a place up here for 950 or have a mortgage for 1050. +$100 for extra utilities +5-10% annually in maintenance Add that of that $1050, you are only getting $150 actually applied to your principal making it financially similar to renting but with a lot more risk. Paying $100 more for a mortgage is not a good idea. I went from a $1000/mo 2 bedroom apartment to a $700/mo mortgage+ins+taxes and I am breaking even after all the little costs of home ownership come into play. I can understand your wanting to buy a house because of the responsibility and freedoms it allows. If you decide to buy, just realize this is a worse financial decision than renting and it will make you poorer. At your current income you will be saving nothing and any little expense will wreck you financially. Wait until after the wedding, see how your wife's employment plays out, pay off all of the debt except for student loans, then make a more informed decision on what to buy. Once you have two reasonable incomes and an actual down payment you will be in a better position to survive the pitfalls of buying. Tax rates in your area are loving retarded and increase your mortgage by 40-60%. Is all of that county or can you escape from some of it by being outside of city limits? If you are determined to buy, NACA has an office in Buffalo if you are willing to drive there for a few meetings to save a few hundred a month on your mortgage. They are a non-profit organization that fleeces banks for money by protesting "predatory lending practices". To make them go away BoA and Citibank have set up big funds for them to lend out at low rates if the person goes to a few meetings/credit counseling. Whether you agree with their ideology or not they have an excellent home purchase program (0% down, no PMI, no closing costs, retarded low rates) if you are willing to deal with going to some financial counseling meetings and deal with how slow and lovely a non-profit bureaucracy is. I have 3% fixed for 30 years and all I showed up to closing with was a check for $1500 to fill escrows. I've made a few big posts about it before and I'll try to dig up an old PM if you want to know more.
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Jan 30, 2011 19:58
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Let's take a quick detour down the "poo poo that's broke on our new homes" road in case DO NEVER BUY wasn't clear. $10000 - Built into the loan for new gutters, furnace, AC, carpet, and some other things to meet code. $3000 - Kitchen was not salvageable. Cost included all new cabinets and countertops. It would have been double that if I paid someone else to do it. This was sort of expected. $200 - New toilet and plumbing when old one began leaking down into garage. $200 - Patch hole in roof caused by idiot former owners drilling DirectTV Satellite into place. $600 - New water heater when old one started leaking 2 weeks after move in. $500 - Pressure washer, water sealant for deck. $300 - Interior Paint Upcoming: $1200 * 2 - Renovate two bathrooms completely. 6'*4' mirror fell off the wall in the guest bathroom and the tile around the tubs are just hideous. $4500 - New Roof. Not URGENT, but its getting up there in age and will need it sooner rather than later. $2000 - 7 new windows to replace 1980's drafty metal windows. $1000 - Replace all of the interior doors that look like poo poo and aren't even the right side on some of the frames. I don't know how to explain this or how it happened. Optional: $3000 - Expand driveway (Our 2 car garage has a 1 car driveway that slowly expands and I'd like to wrap a parking pad around the side of the house. $godknows - Replace the hideous colored siding the last owners put on the house Damnit I need to come into some money. I love my house but "investment" isn't the right word at all. I was aware about most of the big stuff that happened/will happen but I'm sure I'm leaving off a pile of <$1000 items that nickle and dimed us at the start.
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Jan 30, 2011 20:27
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Dbhjed posted:The idea of having to pay for a house when I am retired doesn't bow that well with me. And later down the road I can make a bit more with my payments if I continue to get raises and hopefully in a few years take another position in the company that pays a bit more. I am near the bottom right now. You'll still owe $500+/mo in taxes and insurance even when the house is paid off. Not adjusted for inflation of course. But really, if you live in your place for 30 years and pay it off, awesome. The thing it by buying early with no down payment you are going to get hit hard financially by PMI and the interest. Save for a while and you'll have a lower payment which you can then make extra principal payments and pay it off even earlier. Do 2 bedroom apartments with no washer/dryer really cost $950 in Rochester, NY? I was paying $1000 for a really nice 2 bedroom with washer/dryer hookups in Atlanta, GA. Dbhjed posted:Now lets say the wife makes 30k a year when she goes full time, is this still going to look like a bad idea? Until your credit card and furniture debt is paid off and you have a savings nest egg, yes. If you put the time into the NACA program and avoid closing costs there are still people who would call you stupid for financing 100%. I wouldn't finance 100% @ 5% even if I knew 100% I was going to be in the same place for 5+ years. The amount of your payment going to principal just isn't enough. When you sell your place 6% gets eaten immediately by realtor fees. $100K financed at 5% gets you that $6000 in equity at the end of year 4. After you've made $25,000 in principal and interest payments, $16,800 ($350/mo) in tax payments, $7200 ($150/mo) in insurance payments. Congratulations, you just spent $49,000 to make $0 and it only took you 4 years to do it! You did have a place to live though, at the cost of $1020. Plus the utilities. Plus the maintenance. Plus *see above*. Hope the housing market in your area stayed stable else you also get to eat all those other costs at closing. I can understand if you say "I'll be here for at least 5 years" but saying you know you'll be where you are for the next 20+ is wishful thinking at best. Someone mentioned lowering your federal tax burden earlier and I'll throw out some numbers to put that in perspective too. You have a $11,400 standard deduction as a married couple. Your $4,000/yr in property taxes isn't even getting close to letting you itemize unless you have a special situation where you have lots of other things to itemize and are already close to the $11,400. It will probably do nothing for you.
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Jan 30, 2011 21:26
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singe posted:I read the OP and the first couple pages. I'm pretty sure I want to buy even though according to this thread renting might be a better option. Might as well re-use some of my math from the previous post. Lets say you buy a $140K place and get all your closing costs paid for. With $40K down your mortgage is $100K. 8 years into your mortgage @ 5% you now owe only $85K. Yes, you are almost 30% into the mortgage and you've paid down 15% of the loan. Now you sell it and pay a realtor 6% of $140K, $8,400. So at best, if housing stays flat, you are going to make $6,600. Subtract maintenance. Subtract what the buyers want you to put towards closing costs. Subtract the extra utility bills. Subtract the HOA fees because you bought a condo and pray they didn't rise too much during your stay. Add how much the property value has increased (If you are lucky this will balance with the "subtracts"). Or you can invest that $40K and if you earn a paltry 5% you'll turn that into $60,000 with much less headache. If you use the money to "invest" in a home you are pretty much just speculating on the housing market, and your portfolio lacks diversity (You own one property). You will get no tax breaks for having a mortgage. Your standard deduction will assuredly be better than itemizing for your $140K home. If its not, then you are getting bent over in taxes, making your property investment even harder to make money on. If the $40K is dependent on you purchasing a home though then go hog wild get that money. Don't take student loans out unless you have to. They can't be discharged and are just a pain in general. The federal $8,000 tax credit has expired.
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Jan 30, 2011 21:43
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Dbhjed posted:I plan on being here until I die. I don't want to move again. Want doesn't always match up with can. If Rochester turns into Detroit, are you staying there because of your house? Dbhjed posted:Also the furniture is interest free for 4 years and it will be paid off long before that. Pay it off anyways if you decide you want to buy. If you don't the debt and the related payments will affect your debt-to-income ratio and thus lower the amount of home you can buy or even disqualify you. Another note, I see you are paying $300/mo on $25K of student loan debt. If that loan is through the government (DLS), restructure your payment plan to 20 years rather than 10 years on that website. It will make your debt-to-income look better on a monthly basis as your payment will drop 40% or so. You can keep paying the $300/mo to pay it down, it just makes it look better on applications. Dbhjed posted:ALSO I am more interested in programs that will let me invest my 5,000 for a mortgage later that 5,000 at minimum will be 7,000 by the time I buy looking at 10-12 would prob be a better picture. And if my gf get a full time job it should be even more. I have a year of renting (which you guys prefer), tax returns and savings before I plan to buy. I am not going to buy with the 5k, I want to invest it in a bank for later. I was looking for advice on this. If you are sticking with your 1 year plan, find a high interest savings account and put it in there. You aren't going to earn any appreciable interest in 12 months reliably unless you make risky bets and hit (dont do this). FYI Regarding your wife's income. If she moves employers and is starting full time employment in a field where she has not worked before, lenders may be wary to allow her income on your application until she has a 2 year employment history in the field she is working in.
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Jan 30, 2011 21:52
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Dbhjed posted:If i buy a house with the 7k assured and stay there for the whole 30 years of the loan is it still really that bad of an idea? or should I wait the estimated 10 years and buy then with the 20% down? (which I really wouldn't do just looking to see what you guys would do?) Also factoring in then I will have car payments and a kid or few to have to move with me? Probably not, but everyone is just rejecting the idea that you are likely to stay in the same location until you die. If you are financially capable of paying for the house now it should not take you 10 years to save $20-25K for a down payment. Dbhjed posted:I know I am going to be paying 200 more a month but it seems like a half decent way to spend it to me. Or is waiting the best option without a doubt and you guys can see no reason why anyone doesn't buy a house with less than 20% ever? I bought with 0% down because I had little up-front cost of getting my mortgage, 3% interest rate, $8,000 tax credit which immediately went to renovations. And the major incentive was that my mortgage was $300 less than renting which gave me a nice cushion to adjust to the extra expenses caused by owning. I did almost the same thing you are proposing you should do, except your version looks worse financially due rent vs mortgage values being +$100 rather than -$300. My pros/cons list was similar to yours, I just wouldn't have been able to pull the trigger on paying what will probably be $400-500 more a month to get my pros right away. Dbhjed posted:There is no way in HELL I am going to keep my student loan for 20 years for get that crap. 300 is very reasonable. You can keep paying $300/mo to get rid of it in 10 years, just stretch it to 20 on the website so they begin reporting "Monthly payment, $160/mo" to the credit agencies. Its just a trick to make your DTI look better on mortgage applications. And to answer an earlier question you had about "taxes being included as part of the mortgage". Yes, the $1K/mo you hear your friends talking about includes taxes and probably insurance. Your mortgage holder will set up escrow accounts for your taxes and insurance and fill them with money out of your mortgage payment and pay the bills for you. Your final payment is your PITI, principal/interest/taxes/insurance and its what you should be using to compare to renting. $100K@5% is ~$600 for your "PI", another $350 for your "T", and $100 for your "I" which gives you that $1050 figure.
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Jan 30, 2011 22:13
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Dbhjed posted:My 1050 has been with taxes with out all the fun stuff it would only cost around 520 adding in the insurance it is 800 and adding taxes is 1050 (all this is rough). I don't know where you would get 520 as Principal/Interest that is ~97K @ 5% and on the very low end of your buying spectrum by your account. Insurance shouldn't be $280/mo, $100-150 is more realistic unless there is something about New York that makes god and insurance companies hate you. Dbhjed posted:Why is looking at the whole picture a bad idea? taxes have to be paid. Not sure what you mean. PITI is the "whole picture" except for utilities/maintenance/etc.
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Jan 30, 2011 22:21
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Dbhjed posted:Now would it be dumb to move to a slightly bigger town house for 900 a month? Renting? Good god no. That sounds like a great idea, and would alleviate some of your negatives feelings about renting an apartment. Dead Pressed posted:-Call me an idiot. I know. :/ You are looking at a $150K house with $30K in the bank, it looks like you are getting close to being ready and should be financially by the time you want to buy. Looks like you have the income to easily support the mortgage payment on your own. The only thing I would caution you with is being really familiar with the area you want to live in. It would be terrible to buy a house and realize its not close to where you really want to be, far away from new friends, nothing you like to do nearby, etc. oneangrydwarf posted:I used to think the DO NEVER BUY crowd were pessimists, but honestly folks, rent a house. This will probably be the biggest mistake of my life. I'm not really pessimistic, just realistic about what buying a house is from a financial point of view. Owning a home is pretty awesome if you like doing things like mowing lawns, building cabinets, and amateur plumbing. Short term financially its a break even at best, and for most younger people, their living situation will be short term. Long term you get benefits like stable rent and maybe a little improvement in value, but its a gamble on whether you will actually be there long enough to realize any value over renting.
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Jan 31, 2011 15:44
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Dbhjed posted:So the big red flag about owning a place with out the 20% would be for the extra oh crap stuff (and wasting 150-200 a month on the PMI)? 20% gives you the leeway to leave at any point unless housing values continue to crash without having to show up at closing with a big check because you are underwater. Dbhjed posted:Would the 900 a month apartment also reflect better on if i can pay 1050 mortgage once I have the 20%? Not really. You might be able to pay that $900/mo but that doesn't really point to whether you can afford another $150, plus higher utilities, plus maintenance. Looking at your salary and debt I don't see any reason why you can't afford a $1050 mortgage payment if your wife is making $30K if you pay off your credit card and furniture debt and live a reasonable lifestyle. I assume you are going to be bringing home $4500-5000/mo and that is well within your means. This also means you could be living in a $900 townhouse and it wouldn't be out of the question for you to be able to sock away $1000-1500/mo for 2 years and come out with a proper downpayment and emergency fund. My wife and I have eerily similar salary & bills (minus the credit card/furniture items) and I would not feel excited about upping my housing bill $300/mo but mostly because that would cut into me throwing $1200 into my savings each month. If I wasn't trying to save money for home projects I could manage it sure, but its unexciting living paycheck to paycheck.
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Jan 31, 2011 16:53
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some_weird_kid posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it make sense to always jump on a 4 year interest free setup for a sizeable purchase? It makes it cheaper in the long run as inflation climbs but your payments still stay at the original purchase price. I went to the furniture store with $6000 in the bank intending to pay cash, but when I saw they had a 4 year interest free financing option, I jumped on it anyway. No sense in putting out that money right away when you can spread it out and save some money doing so. Sure, if you actually have the money and are just going to plop it in a savings account instead of sinking it into furniture then yes you can go earn a few hundred bucks (at best) putting the money into a savings account. The pitfalls: A) If you accidentally miss a payment, you will get back charged every bit of interest that would have had to make on it, losing you thousands of dollars because you wanted to try and make $300 over 4 years. B) You lock up the money in something not liquid (CDs) trying to get another point of interest, lose your job, and are forced to miss a payment or not be able to pay it off in full on time. Back interest again. C) You didn't have the money in the first place, miss payments, see above. D) The monthly payments appear on your credit report, directly affecting your Debt to Income ratio, a very important number when purchasing a home. These plans are designed to move product, and they more than make up for the interest free promotion on people who gently caress up one month and get back charged 25% interest. This is a little bit more advanced than the "Bouncing around 0% interest balance transfers" credit card trick, with more risk, and little payoff.
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Jan 31, 2011 17:21
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Dik Hz posted:I just want to point out that renting a house will always cost more than buying the same house in the long term on average. This really really really depends on the market, and the length of time staying in the house. My grandparents still live in the house they bought in 1965 for less than $10,000. It's worth $250K now and has been paid off for over 20 years. While their mortgage payments never rose, their rent surely would have. Of course this is an extreme example, but I don't think you have to go beyond 10 years or so break even or make money. Or in my case, where the house next to me is renting for $1,200/mo, and my mortgage is $700.
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Jan 31, 2011 19:39
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Testikles posted:Who wants to prevent my friends from making a retarded financial decision? You don't have to. This isn't 2005. There is 0% chance of your friend getting a $400,000 loan with $20K in the bank and $40K in income. If you actually want to save him time
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Feb 1, 2011 01:49
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Testikles posted:they're not going to let him make a loan he can't pay. I hope so, because it wasn't that way for about seven or eight years there.
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Feb 1, 2011 03:15
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Realjones posted:Your numbers are off. First the interest rate on the mortgage 3.8%. Unless you are looking at an ARM or something 30 years are around 5% right now. It also doesn't look like you factored in the deduction for mortgage interest. Pretty sure QB is Canadian and they do something weird that involves only locking the rate for 5 years and that's just how a mortgage works. In return they are looking at rates around 3-4% right now. Why? Someone else can probably explain better.
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Feb 2, 2011 00:04
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MJP posted:Replace old drafty windows vs. replace existing 80% efficiency furnace, which is old and uncertain how long it will last, with another 80% furnace - which is most cost-effective assuming $6500-$8000 range for windows vs. $2900 estimate for the furnace? How many windows do you have? Quality vinyl replacement windows shouldn't run you more than $300/ea. I replaced the 23 year old furnace when I moved into my current home 2 years ago, and am just now doing the windows. Anecdotally I have heard that window replacement takes forever to pay itself back in energy savings. I just want windows that I can open smoothly and don't look like poo poo. New double hung windows are just so much nicer than the metal poo poo they put on houses down here in the 80's. I only have 7 windows so it shouldn't cost me more than $2500, if I had 20-25 windows I would put it off a lot longer or man up and do it myself.
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Feb 10, 2011 19:46
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Check out my Zillow! Note the dollar sign, that is me buying the house for $110K (And $6K towards closing costs, so $104K) while is was still above $180K on Zillow. After $20K worth of work I think I could realistically get $140K for it. I was running some numbers for fun today to see what kind of return I would need to get to make any decent money. If I put another $25K into the house to make it "perfect", and sold it for the top end of what fully renovated houses are going for in the neighborhood I could walk with a whopping $10K profit after I get eaten by realtor fees and a likely 3% closing cost allowance. That doesn't count all the payments I would have been making as an investor. Real estate is so profitable! I'm glad I don't have a reason to move on the horizon.
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Feb 12, 2011 02:02
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greasyhands posted:Why wold you pay 6k in closing costs on a 104k mortgage? Also, whoah stop the presses flipping houses usually isn't a big money maker, particularly if you're paying contractors to do the work which, based on the numbers you're throwing out it sounds like you are. Where are you expecting the huge profits to come from? I wasn't expecting huge profits, I was showing how there aren't any. I didn't pay 6K in closing costs, the owner gave me $6K that I didn't need. It was more beneficial to me to just take the 6% even though I didn't need it because my loan had a buydown option on the interest rate. I was just showing how terribly off Zillow can be and it shouldn't be quoted as any sort of accurate figure. As Leper said its great for aggregating lots of other information, but the estimates are silly. Of the renovations, $14K was contractor because I built it into the mortgage like a 203(k). That was new AC, Furnace, Carpet, A room drywalled, kitchen appliances, water heater, some gutters, and various other things. $3.5K was me tearing out the kitchen myself and redoing it. Then another $2.5K in various little things like new toilets and fixtures and paint. I plan on fully doing both bathrooms myself, but I'm not going to do my own roofing, siding, or windows, so my estimates might be off a little bit. Flipping wasn't my goal, I'm doing all these things because I want a nice house to live in. I do like those shows on HGTV where they add 3 or 4 bushes to the yard and the REAL ESTATE EXPERT comes in and says that increased their home value by $15,000.
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Feb 12, 2011 14:11
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DO NEVER BUY advice is heavily contingent on your personal financial situation. Do you make enough money to have a good downpayment, extra money every month to save on fixing it up, actually want to live there instead of looking at it like a rental property, and on and on and on. Give more information.
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Feb 15, 2011 14:28
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Stunt Rock posted:There is no mortgage. I'd be buying it straight up in cash. I have two contractor friends who are going to walk through it with me AND recommend me certified home inspectors. The contract being proposed includes a home inspection addendum that allows us to back out if the inspection reveals problems not previously disclosed. I plan on hiring two inspectors to examine it just to be extra careful, since it is an older house. How much are the taxes yearly? What do rentals in the area go for? If you are paying cash this hardly seems like something that will bankrupt you. If rents are decent or you want to live there for a while it doesn't seem like a bad idea.
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Feb 15, 2011 16:43
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How the jesus did you save $4170 in taxes while paying an adjusted $630 in mortgage/fees? $12000 in taxes/interest deductions a year might get you $4000 back in taxes but that's almost $700/mo. I saved about $300 on my state taxes from owning. My taxes and interest plus other deductions just barely got me up to the federal standard deduction, and went way above the state's.
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Feb 19, 2011 21:08
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:16 |
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Ah, that makes a lot more sense, was worried I was missing some huge deduction I shouldn't be.
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Feb 19, 2011 21:27
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