distantmantra
Member
lulz
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Home Buying |OT|
- Thread starter Ourobolus
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lulz
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I noticed that right around the time that thread vanished into the ether and he bailed on the thread was right around the time it was pointed out he was planning some serious fraud.
teruterubozu
Member
But he seemed OK with it, because the banks commit fraud too - or that was his reasoning.
Correction: Strategic fraud...
Mitsurux
Member
Hey fellow Detroit dweller... Haveing owned two different houses in the metro detroit area, the one BIG peice of advise is find out about the local taxes. Will they be included with your home loan? or seprate... it makes a HUGE difference.
After reading some of the prices of homes in this thread, i'm glad the houseing market crashed here... our house now cost 101,000 , but before the crash would have been valued somehwere between 250,00 to 275,000...
Ash Sparrow
Banned
Dropping the first agent we had was the best thing we could do. Her failing to show calling us and saying she was drunk was the last straw.
please please please continue with this attitude. Means more houses for my friends and i to buy and rent out and work towards quitting our jobs. OPM is a fucking great thing.
To the OP don't listen to negative nancy's, now is one of the best times to ever buy a home, with low interest rates and low home values.
Those are with me factoring taxes in. One of the weirdest things we've been dealing with is figuring out what homesteaded vs non-homesteaded taxes are and just how much that can hurt us.
EDIT: Slowly realizing we need a Detroit-GAF gathering.
Was the "Strategic Foreclosure" thread deleted? I wanted to find it and finish reading through it but can't find it.
Ya snooze ya lose!
distantmantra
Member
Anyone else notice that that guy's thread about Strategic Foreclosures has been deleted from GAF?
edit: Way late to the party on that. whoops! Wonder what happened with that guy...
Blergmeister
Member
Hello. I'm in the middle of purchasing a home, and there is somthing thats been bugging me. I'm the type that wants to pay off all my debts early. When talking with co-workers I mentioned that I'd like to pay my mortgage off in 20 years instead of 30 and they look at me like I'm crazy and tell me that I'd be missing out on the mortgage deduction tax credit. Am I missing somthing here? Unless the tax credit is equal to the amount of interest I pay in the year am I not paying more overall by not paying it off ahead of time? If it is equal to the interest than WTF is up with the federal government basically paying banks all of every Americans mortgage interest?
Look at your loan amortization. That will tell you how much you're paying in interest over the life of the loan. It's A LOT. Pay it off as soon as you can.
Blergmeister
Member
Oh I understand that. It's just the number of people who seem to think I'm crazy because of all of teh tax breaks I'll be missing out on? I amost feel like it's peoples aversion to taxes trumping rationality of paying less overall is winning it out here.
Tax benefits for 20 years is plenty!
Blergmeister
Member
Haha I'm not that concerned about the tax benefits in particular, just trying to figure things out. If the mortgage deduction tax credit is equal to the interest I pay each year, in effect canceling it out, wouldn't it then be better to keep the mortgage payment at a minimum and instead pay off other debts like a car loan?
Zoe
Member
Of course debts with higher interest rates or no tax deductions should be paid off first. And with how low mortgage rates are these days, that's practically everything.
GungHo
Single-handedly caused Exxon-Mobil to sue FOX, start World War 3
They're crazy. Don't listen to them. I had the option to amortize over 30 years. I picked 15. I payed off in 9. I am the only person in my generation in my family or even among my friends/colleages who is sitting back with no debt and building real savings.
This is true.
Blergmeister
Member
Ok, thanks for the advice guys!
Just put in an offer on a house the other day, and then got the counter offer. It's not the best, but not that far from what we wanted, so I think I'm gonna go with it. Only problem is that the seller wants to close July 2 so I need to make sure my lender can accommodate the quick turnaround (for instance, USAA can't).
Just closed on our first house last Wednesday, feels good, man.
I can say that the entire process was entirely eye opening. You need to ask every question that pops into your mind. Even if you ask 9 stupid questions, it'll be that 10th question you almost didn't ask that bails you out of a jam.
Luckily we had a great realtor from the beginning, he was very accommodating to our desires and ultimately showed us over 30 houses over the course of a month until we found the keeper. He let us dictate where and when we toured them, and didn't push anything on us. DO NOT LET PEOPLE PUSH YOU. Buying a home is a very personal thing, and ultimately you have to be 110% confident in your decision.
Regarding the loan thing, I wouldn't go through USAA (saw it mentioned earlier in the thread). I've read some big negatives about their process, and I have USAA for all my banking and insurance products. I went with a highly referred lending agent in our area and had a great working relationship with him. Again, I asked every question I could, even if I thought it made me look silly and naive. When you're putting a huge portion of your life's work into a down payment/closing costs, it's important that you understand the process and implications.
I can't really recommend what kind of loan to get. We have great credit, so we were able to do an FHA with 3.5% down at 3.5% fixed.
Don't fall in love with a house. We did that with the 2nd house we put an offer in on, and the deal fell through and broke our hearts. In the end, it's easy to see that our judgement was clouded and the house would have been a huge money pit for us.
Absolutely make sure the seller buys you a home warranty. We discovered a gas leak in our kitchen over the weekend, and will hopefully have to pay nothing out of pocket to fix it (going to require some major demo to replace the line).
Ask all your homeowner friends what they learned their first year in a house. You'll find that all of their experiences are pretty universal and at some point will probably apply to you too.
Most importantly, have fun during the house hunting phase, don't take it too seriously, joke around with your agent, and congrats in advance for what you find!
5 weeks from offer to close should be MORE than enough time for any good lender.
I can say that the entire process was entirely eye opening. You need to ask every question that pops into your mind. Even if you ask 9 stupid questions, it'll be that 10th question you almost didn't ask that bails you out of a jam.
Luckily we had a great realtor from the beginning, he was very accommodating to our desires and ultimately showed us over 30 houses over the course of a month until we found the keeper. He let us dictate where and when we toured them, and didn't push anything on us. DO NOT LET PEOPLE PUSH YOU. Buying a home is a very personal thing, and ultimately you have to be 110% confident in your decision.
Regarding the loan thing, I wouldn't go through USAA (saw it mentioned earlier in the thread). I've read some big negatives about their process, and I have USAA for all my banking and insurance products. I went with a highly referred lending agent in our area and had a great working relationship with him. Again, I asked every question I could, even if I thought it made me look silly and naive. When you're putting a huge portion of your life's work into a down payment/closing costs, it's important that you understand the process and implications.
I can't really recommend what kind of loan to get. We have great credit, so we were able to do an FHA with 3.5% down at 3.5% fixed.
Don't fall in love with a house. We did that with the 2nd house we put an offer in on, and the deal fell through and broke our hearts. In the end, it's easy to see that our judgement was clouded and the house would have been a huge money pit for us.
Absolutely make sure the seller buys you a home warranty. We discovered a gas leak in our kitchen over the weekend, and will hopefully have to pay nothing out of pocket to fix it (going to require some major demo to replace the line).
Ask all your homeowner friends what they learned their first year in a house. You'll find that all of their experiences are pretty universal and at some point will probably apply to you too.
Most importantly, have fun during the house hunting phase, don't take it too seriously, joke around with your agent, and congrats in advance for what you find!
5 weeks from offer to close should be MORE than enough time for any good lender.
If you find that all parties can accommodate the July 2 close, I would counter back with your last offer's dollar amount (or maybe a touch more) but include a closing of July 2. Clearly that date is worth something to the seller.
BTW, congrats! Hope everything goes smoothly.
Mattlikewhoa
Member
When my wife has these shows on, I always end up yelling at the TV...I honestly can't believe there's people like that out there...
Welp, got him down to $10k below the list price, which is still pretty good. Now to do the rest of this crap.
- Got to go get the actual loan approved (already was preapproved)
- Got to schedule a home inspection
- Find a title company
- I'm sure there's a bunch more, I've got it written down somewhere, but off te top of my head that's it...
- Got to go get the actual loan approved (already was preapproved)
- Got to schedule a home inspection
- Find a title company
- I'm sure there's a bunch more, I've got it written down somewhere, but off te top of my head that's it...
160-180 won't buy you hardly anything worth sneezing at in Uptown.
My friend bought a condo in Addison for that, and it's a dump.
We had to extend our search all the way out to Garland to find something decent in our pricerange (under 150).
Your realtor should be holding your hand through most of those steps, they are all pretty automatic. In our case the seller dictated the title company.
RumblingRosco
Member
What do most people look for in a down payment; 10-20%?
Depends on your needs and your aversion to paying PMI. Typical downpayment can range from 3.5% to 20% or more depending on the situation.
The deduction does not cancel out the interest. It would only cancel out at most 35% of the interest.
Example:
Taxable Income, no deduction: 80k
Tax owed: $12,060
Now lets pretend you deduct $5k in mortgage interest
Taxable Income: 75k
Tax owed: $10,810
a difference of $1,250, far less than the $5,000 in interest you paid. There are obviously benefits to reducing your taxable income, but its not free interest on your mortgage like you implied here. Not on its own at least.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Buy what you can comfortably afford to pay every month in mortgage. Ignore the dipshits that are saying you're throwing your money away. They're the ones paying rent and lease cars.
Learn how to read your lending offer. One bank I went to was offering a 'low mortgage rate' but when I went through the documents (albeit with some help), it turned out I was actually going to be paying points to get to that percentage. Needless to say, I went somewhere else.
Learn how to read your lending offer. One bank I went to was offering a 'low mortgage rate' but when I went through the documents (albeit with some help), it turned out I was actually going to be paying points to get to that percentage. Needless to say, I went somewhere else.
I don't think home inspections ever go smoothly. That isn't really a problem though, it will just come down to who has to make or pay for any repairs
teruterubozu
Member
My last 2 homes I bought the inspections were flawless. It happens.
Sanky Panky
Banned
I invested in RE and was an agent until about 3 years ago in South Florida, so I was right smack in the middle of the action. I heard recently that people are being dumb again, and listings are often flooded with offers right away (especially REOs and short sales).
I hope downward pressures stays on home prices. We are one shock away from the economy going to shit, and if rates increase in the future, the shadow unsold inventory will come back to bite banks in the ass.
Any news out there if the banks will start lending to people with late payments/foreclosures? I heard some primerica (yeah... I know) guy mention there were changes comming up.
I hope downward pressures stays on home prices. We are one shock away from the economy going to shit, and if rates increase in the future, the shadow unsold inventory will come back to bite banks in the ass.
Any news out there if the banks will start lending to people with late payments/foreclosures? I heard some primerica (yeah... I know) guy mention there were changes comming up.
RedAssedApe
Banned
Anyone have experience doing a refinance lately? I originally got a 30-year fixed in 2010 at 4.875%. Looking to take a advantage of the lower interest rates but trying to weigh paying a point to get the lowest rate possible or settling for a higher rate but no closing costs. Any advice?
we just refinaced 2 weeks ago to a 15-year fixed at 3.25% (no points), was on a 30-year fixed at 4.375%.
if you want to pay points it depends on how long you plan on staying in the house, or if you plan on refinancing again in the future. you're basically just prepaying interest. if you sell/refinace your house before the break-even point then you lose out on that extra money you paid.
There is also the theory that a long term loan gets cheaper over time due to inflation.
i.e. your $1000/month payment in inflation adjusted dollars goes down over the life of the loan. So paying it off quickly with "todays dollars" is not the best idea...
Kinda goofy to me, it assumes your wages will rise with inflation and that everything else will not eat up those dollars.
Personally I put an extra $100 every month towards principal, should cut 3-4 years of payments off the life of the loan.
PrivateWHudson
Member
I'll jump it with my situation... Not quite a buy, but worth talking about I guess.
I'm about to kind of inherit a house. My mom is inheriting it and then gifting it to me, with the stipulation that I "buy out" my sister. I thought this was well and good, but I would need cash for a)buying out my sister b)making some major repairs to bring the house up to code c)paying the underwater part of my current home.
So to do this, I would need to cash out refi pretty much right away. Turns out there is a six month seasoning period that you need to wait after getting on the title. This now means that I'll have to pay everything on the gifted house, but can't do shit with it until the fall. I'll miss selling in the spring, have to transfer the kid to a new school a couple of months into the new school year, and who knows what other crap will come along between now and then.
Who though being given a house would be such a pain in the ass.
I'm about to kind of inherit a house. My mom is inheriting it and then gifting it to me, with the stipulation that I "buy out" my sister. I thought this was well and good, but I would need cash for a)buying out my sister b)making some major repairs to bring the house up to code c)paying the underwater part of my current home.
So to do this, I would need to cash out refi pretty much right away. Turns out there is a six month seasoning period that you need to wait after getting on the title. This now means that I'll have to pay everything on the gifted house, but can't do shit with it until the fall. I'll miss selling in the spring, have to transfer the kid to a new school a couple of months into the new school year, and who knows what other crap will come along between now and then.
Who though being given a house would be such a pain in the ass.
RedAssedApe
Banned
It really is a big pain in the ass. Its pretty stressful when something breaks down and needs repairs. I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss having a landlord. haha
I'm curious if anyone has advice for choosing a real estate agent.
I'm looking for a house myself, and got overwhelming recommendations for a particular lender from many of my coworkers and friends. However, everyone has either had no recommendation for a realtor, or has suggested someone different. So now I have this list of agents, each recommended by no more than one person.
Is there a better strategy here than simply picking one and then switching if I don't really like the one I picked?
I'm looking for a house myself, and got overwhelming recommendations for a particular lender from many of my coworkers and friends. However, everyone has either had no recommendation for a realtor, or has suggested someone different. So now I have this list of agents, each recommended by no more than one person.
Is there a better strategy here than simply picking one and then switching if I don't really like the one I picked?
Your coworkers are paying the bank 20k a year to avoid paying 5k a year to the IRS. Don't listen to them, they are idiots. (Made up numbers but you get the drift) it's always better to avoid the interest all together by paying it off.
eudaemonic
Member
Hire a mold inspector.
Seriously.
Just bought a home and we found out we have to tear down several walls because there was an issue they didn't disclose (and can't prove they did know of it before hand) and the normal house inspector didn't find it in the initial inspection. We hired a mold inspector afterwards to investigate one spot specifically - and found much more.
And it was a short sale so we are stuck for paying for it out of pocket. Sucks.
Speaking of, after my experience, I'd hire two home inspectors. People these days buy homes and don't do shit to keep them up. *shakes fist* How can people live in that mess?
One episode? There's at least one show a day where people factor in their dog. Remember this one in particular where the backyard had a great pool and the dude was happy but the girl reminded him that there wasn't enough room for the dogs so he couldn't live there.
Seriously.
Just bought a home and we found out we have to tear down several walls because there was an issue they didn't disclose (and can't prove they did know of it before hand) and the normal house inspector didn't find it in the initial inspection. We hired a mold inspector afterwards to investigate one spot specifically - and found much more.
And it was a short sale so we are stuck for paying for it out of pocket. Sucks.
Speaking of, after my experience, I'd hire two home inspectors. People these days buy homes and don't do shit to keep them up. *shakes fist* How can people live in that mess?
One episode? There's at least one show a day where people factor in their dog. Remember this one in particular where the backyard had a great pool and the dude was happy but the girl reminded him that there wasn't enough room for the dogs so he couldn't live there.
I just got the same rate on a condo in the Vienna metro area. Congrats.
I went through A-PRO home inspection. They did a good job, and found a bunch of things I would have missed.
The company that does your loan should have a title company they work with. If not, let me know if you need a reference.
LowEndTorque
Member
Housing markets are drastically, drastically different depending on the city/location you're in.
Buying a home can either be an amazing investment that will end up making you tons of money down the road, or it can be a really bad idea. All depends on what the market is like where you are looking to buy.
Oh, and if you do buy make sure you hire the most anal inspector you can find before you sign any papers.
GL.
Buying a home can either be an amazing investment that will end up making you tons of money down the road, or it can be a really bad idea. All depends on what the market is like where you are looking to buy.
Oh, and if you do buy make sure you hire the most anal inspector you can find before you sign any papers.
GL.
Its understandable if pets are a part of your life to make sure your home accomidates them.
I wouldn't rent an apartment that didn't allow cats if i owned cats. That said you should find what you want and not settle, my sister and brother in law settled and now my sister complains all the time about the house and is allways looking for new ones but they bought in 2007 right before all the problems happened so they would loose alot of money . I think my brohter in law wants to just improve the house and hire contractors since its cheaper for them.
TheRagnCajun
Member
Recommendations are great to go by.
Be sure to find an agent who only represents buyers, you don't want any conflicts of interests.
Look for someone who listens to you and understands your needs, and is very knowledgable in the area you are buying. How many sales do they close per year? How long have they been working?
Darias
Member
Wrong mindset.
You want the inspector to find EVERY DAMN REASON IMAGINABLE as to why you wouldn't want to buy that house. DO NOT be emotionally attached.
At the very least, this gives you bargaining room on the final price of the house. It additionally gives you a tool to minimize you risk of spontaneous aggravations. Lastly, the written inspection (which should be delivered to you like a small book) outlines a roadmap of repairs / improvements.
You should (obviously) pay off your debts in order of interest rates. Highest first, lowest last.
The only difference with a mortgage is that you can factor in some reduction of the "real" interest cost due to a tax write off, but it only negates the interest equal to your income tax rate based on a progressive scale. So if you pay roughly 20% income tax you'll only save an extra 20% of the interest. If you had a 4.00% interest rate that 20% shaves it down closer to a 3.00% in "real" money, but if you have school loans or a car loan with a sub-3.00 interest rate you'd be better off to attack the mortgage first, even knowing that means you pay minimums on the others through their payoff dates because the mortgage will likely stick around much longer.
Sounds like you had:
1. a shitty home inspector who didn't point out all the maintenance issues inherent with your new property.
2. shitty home owners insurance that didn't squash frivolous personal injury suits for you as part of their coverage.
None of that is particularly hard to protect yourself from.
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