Home buying thread

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sleevedraw

Revolver Ocelot
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Local credit union offers a 5/5 ARM (rather than 5/1 like most banks) with minimum 5% down and PMI waived, rate capped at 6% above the initial rate.

Given the current financial situation and the fact that fiscal conservatives have been purged from both parties, I don't really see any significant increase in rates in the near future. Would anyone jump on this, or would they still stick with the fixed?
 

brekk

Dancing Dino Superstar
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Local credit union offers a 5/5 ARM (rather than 5/1 like most banks) with minimum 5% down and PMI waived, rate capped at 6% above the initial rate.

Given the current financial situation and the fact that fiscal conservatives have been purged from both parties, I don't really see any significant increase in rates in the near future. Would anyone jump on this, or would they still stick with the fixed?

I can't imagine you'll see rates much lower than they currently are. So if you do fixed, you've locked that in for 30yrs. Versus ARM with little chance of the rate adjusting down, and all the likelihood of it going up. No PMI is definitely nice, but would you be putting that PMI money into savings/investments so it can offset the rate going up later? Or would you be going this route to stretch yourself on a more expensive house with the expectation that your income will scale up as the interest rate goes up. Do you have or plan to have kids? They do a damn good job of eating up that income growth.
 
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sleevedraw

Revolver Ocelot
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I can't imagine you'll see rates much lower than they currently are. So if you do fixed, you've locked that in for 30yrs. Versus ARM with little chance of the rate adjusting down, and all the likelihood of it going up. No PMI is definitely nice, but would you be putting that PMI money into savings/investments so it can offset the rate going up later? Or would you be going this route to stretch yourself on a more expensive house with the expectation that your income will scale up as the interest rate goes up. Do you have or plan to have kids? They do a damn good job of eating up that income growth.

Fiance and I are both cheap fuckers, so any savings would go into investment. Kids are an unknown, but I personally can't see us having (adopting) more than one, if any.
 
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ver_21

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I can't imagine you'll see rates much lower than they currently are. So if you do fixed, you've locked that in for 30yrs. Versus ARM with little chance of the rate adjusting down, and all the likelihood of it going up. No PMI is definitely nice, but would you be putting that PMI money into savings/investments so it can offset the rate going up later? Or would you be going this route to stretch yourself on a more expensive house with the expectation that your income will scale up as the interest rate goes up. Do you have or plan to have kids? They do a damn good job of eating up that income growth.

It helps to get a clear look at the PMI cost, too. 5% down on a 460,000 home was like $90 a month for us. It's basically another phone bill.
 

brekk

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It helps to get a clear look at the PMI cost, too. 5% down on a 460,000 home was like $90 a month for us. It's basically another phone bill.

On a 460,000 house with 5% down, the PMI is on 437,000, at .5% that's 182 per month.
 

Nija

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On a 460,000 house with 5% down, the PMI is on 437,000, at .5% that's 182 per month.

PMI isn’t hard and fast. I got two different numbers last month depending on which company was providing the insurance.
 

Cathan

Silver Knight of the Realm
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So I put an offer on a nice house about 2 weeks ago. It went on the market Wednesday. I saw it Monday after work and put an offer on it the same day but some other people won the bid. I started $14k under asking and went to $6k over asking while the owner's realtor kept telling my realtor they had 2 nearly identical offers the whole way... Really pissed me off I lost that one with "close offers" even though I went up $20k.

Bout a week I was pissed off and didn't even want to home shop. My roommates were complete dickheads one day when I was trying to write some documents for work. Huge fight and I got back to home shopping.

I saw this awesome fixer upper that was foreclosed on. Saw a finished house but it was meh... Then I saw the house I'm currently working to put an offer on. It's almost finished new construction, really nice. It's down in Stafford as someone recommended earlier in this thread. We'll see how it goes. I'm hopeful...
 

ver_21

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So I put an offer on a nice house about 2 weeks ago. It went on the market Wednesday. I saw it Monday after work and put an offer on it the same day but some other people won the bid. I started $14k under asking and went to $6k over asking while the owner's realtor kept telling my realtor they had 2 nearly identical offers the whole way... Really pissed me off I lost that one with "close offers" even though I went up $20k.

Bout a week I was pissed off and didn't even want to home shop. My roommates were complete dickheads one day when I was trying to write some documents for work. Huge fight and I got back to home shopping.

I saw this awesome fixer upper that was foreclosed on. Saw a finished house but it was meh... Then I saw the house I'm currently working to put an offer on. It's almost finished new construction, really nice. It's down in Stafford as someone recommended earlier in this thread. We'll see how it goes. I'm hopeful...

3 out of 4 times I have experienced a competing offer. I got really suspicious with the last one becaus the house had been on the market for over 4 months--suddenly there is competition? So we made an offer with an Escalation Clause--basically, the fixer-upper house was listed at like 375K. We offered 339K, up to 350 with escalation. If I was going to get bid up, I wanted a damn receipt! Suddenly, we were outbid, but then a week later the winning bidder backed out. The listing agent contacted us asking if we were still interested. It was hard to say politely, "no thanks."

Long story short, an Escalation Clause can give you some security when there's competition, real or phantom. They are fairly boiler plate, and any agent can help you fill one in.

Good luck with the Stafford house!
 

Cathan

Silver Knight of the Realm
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We wrote an escalation clause and still got jacked. It's possible the other bidder just agreed to outbid us with knowledge of my bid or maybe without. I'm going to check to see what the house closes for. I started hearing things like owners want to sell to families, not single guys and I was like wtf? I tried not to let that weirdo discrimination shit creep in my head. Few days later I was good to go.

One thing I don't like is 3rd hand cryptic information from the owner's realtor to my realtor who then translates it to me with whatever she interprets. It was confusing. I really do prefer to look people in the eye and understand what the situation really is so I can decide how to work a deal with them.

Thanks for the well wishes. Everyone said I'd find a better house and they were right. Fingers crossed again.
 
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Cathan

Silver Knight of the Realm
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Offer in on a house, negotiated, accepted and now it's appraisal and inspection hoops.
 
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Nija

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I got past inspection on this house. I linked the troubles with the previous place a few pages back. This place is a custom home, one owner on 5 acres outside the city limits. City water, electric only, septic. 40x60 shop. Pretty excited. Appraisal is this week sometime and then I think we're done. Closing date is 7/3, but I can't (won't) move in on the 4th of July weekend.

Didn't get 2.875% again, this time was 3% flat with 0.25 points required to get that rate. Bummer. Purchase price just a hair over 500k.
 
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Nija

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Made it past appraisal, which came in at 520. I think this is another rigged system to always place the value just above what you paid. One of my employers dragged their feet on employment verification, so that was the majority of the time spent last week. I believe they are just reviewing the insurance packet now before the loan is approved and it'll be a done deal.

High speed internet is going to be an issue, I'm looking into wireless ISPs and I'm actually testing out unlimited SIMs from Welcome | Unlimitedville right now.
 
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ver_21

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Made it past appraisal, which came in at 520. I think this is another rigged system to always place the value just above what you paid.

First two houses, we only heard "it appraised". Newest one was for 10,000 over--no worries, we'll hit PMI threshold a little faster.

I've heard horror stories of low appraisals but none were conventional loans? So yeah there might be some "rigging". I figure the chances increase with loan type.

Best of luck. The shop space sounds pretty awesome.
 

Poster

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Especially on a purchase, the appraisal is always going to come in at ~what you went into contract. On a refi where you're cashing out, well, that's where we see more questionable stuff on the commercial side at least.
 

Flobee

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High speed internet is going to be an issue, I'm looking into wireless ISPs and I'm actually testing out unlimited SIMs from Welcome | Unlimitedville right now.
FWIW this is supposed to be coming soon. Should solve internet problems for those outside cities.

 

brekk

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I highly doubt that will be fast. It will also have terrible latency. Starlink is really for providing basic internet to people with no current options. It will suck for us normals used to existing internet.
 

BrutulTM

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They're claiming 1 gbps down and 20ms latency. It's different because the satellites are in low earth orbit. Traditional satellite internet uses a single satellite in geosynchronous orbit, which means that everyone is sharing one device that is like 20,000 miles away. Starlink will have thousands of satellites that are like 200 miles away. It's going to be totally different. That said, it won't be available in densely populated areas just because it can't handle that many connections from a single area, at least at first. If it's anything like what they're claiming though, it's going to be a massive upgrade for those of us out in the sticks and may be better than what's available in a lot of cities.
 

Asshat wormie

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Some clown world real estate infos from NY. The land records offices of country clerk's in the two Long Island counties Suffolk and Nassau, are letting in 1 land record searcher per searching company, for 1 hour and 45 minutes, once every 3 days. The result of this is that title searches cannot be done in timely manner and the searching companies must rely on electronic records. The issue with these records is that they do not go back 40 years, a duration which is required by underwriting standards followed by 99% of title underwriters. So for now, title reports and their resulting policies, in case of purchases, will be issued at glacial pace in Long Island, NY. RIP that market for now. I am assuming the insurance underwriters will be taking on even more risk in the next few days in order to alleviate this issue.
 
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