Home buying thread

Khane

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I just got a letter from my mortgage company that I'm pretty sure says they are required by law to notify me when I reach 20% equity and then remove PMI. It also said that I can pay for my own appraisal and if the new price shows I've reached 20% equity, then PMI can come off early. So charging PMI for the life of the loan doesn't sound legit to me...
FHA raises mortgage insurance, for life of loan
 

Noodleface

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One other question, since I am a bit clueless. How does credit factor in with a newly married couple applying for a house loan? For instance say I had a 500 credit rating and my wife had an 800 credit rating, but I make 2x her salary. I am just curious how credit works in this case? Our credit scores are a bit closer together, but I want a clearer understanding.

Thanks for answering my questions bros. I can pay you back in likes or fucks, whichever you find more appealing.
 

SAIDIN_sl

shitlord
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One other question, since I am a bit clueless. How does credit factor in with a newly married couple applying for a house loan? For instance say I had a 500 credit rating and my wife had an 800 credit rating, but I make 2x her salary. I am just curious how credit works in this case? Our credit scores are a bit closer together, but I want a clearer understanding.

Thanks for answering my questions bros. I can pay you back in likes or fucks, whichever you find more appealing.
Well I'll say this... I asked my lender what my credit score had to do with the interest rate. They told me they will pick the lowest of the three credit agency scores between the two of you and go by those numbers. The *lowest*. I was also told your credit score didn't affect your interest rate, but only your possibility of getting the loan. If you don't have much of a credit history, they can ask for other forms of credit. 24 months of cell phone bills, water/electricity, etc. Hope it helps
Edit- Maybe adding in my details will help. 22 years old, 690 credit score, no history of late payments, 100k a year job (raised from last discussion). I was approved at 525k, but I ended up settling with a home at 315k at 4% interest @ 1815 a month payment. The sellers paid all of my closing costs and I even threw in an origination fee (1% of the loan) and it lowered my interest rate to 3.875.
 

Candiarie_sl

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For FHA loans with <10% down (I think that's the number), you're stuck paying mortgage insurance forever. Conventional they drop it at 20%. Mortgage insurance is expensive too, if I remember right it's about 1% every year. In my case I got an estimate for a 280k purchase price with 20k down, total payment would have been 2300 with 300 of that being mortgage insurance. Forever. Or until you refi.
 

Khane

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Some private lenders are doing it for all loans that are less than 20% down as well.
 

Vinen

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Wheee, moved into my house and wife and I determined that our windows blow goats and need to be replaced. Couldn't even get Storm Windows installed over them without major work... at least its only 12k to replace every window.
 

Noodleface

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We started to look around at houses. In our area we're probably looking at around $250k-300k for a decent first house, that seemed to be about the average anyways. I think in the next couple of months we're going to really get the ball rolling. She's really nervous about it and worried we'll not get approved and have to live in an apartment forever, but I'm not worried at all.

Also told her not to fall in love with any houses we saw as we had awhile to go... too late. Our goal was just to get an idea of prices, and she fell in love with a house.
 

koljec_sl

shitlord
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For FHA loans with <10% down (I think that's the number), you're stuck paying mortgage insurance forever. Conventional they drop it at 20%. Mortgage insurance is expensive too, if I remember right it's about 1% every year. In my case I got an estimate for a 280k purchase price with 20k down, total payment would have been 2300 with 300 of that being mortgage insurance. Forever. Or until you refi.
I declare that there is no such thing as good debt anymore. Educational loans and mortgages (FHA now, anyway) are complete bullshit.
 

Vinen

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I declare that there is no such thing as good debt anymore. Educational loans and mortgages (FHA now, anyway) are complete bullshit.
Makes sense to me. If you can't handle paying 20% down it means you are risky and must be approved for a refinance later on.
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
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Makes sense to me. If you can't handle paying 20% down it means you are risky and must be approved for a refinance later on.
Maybe in a vacuum, but in the economy overall, 20% = risky doesn't make sense. There's a whole ton of other factors that can influence how much 20% is that's totally unrelated to the buyer's risk potential. Chiefly median wage and housing prices in city and coastal areas. And which way have those two conversely gone in recent decades?

It took us ~8 years to save up 10% down, would have taken probably just as long to get to 20%. Missing the low interest rates of earlier this year and continuing to pay rent for that long would have been a huge money loser, even with PMI. Our total monthly payment is just under $400 more per month than what we were paying for rent(and the two places are nowhere near comparable). That increase is easily within our budget. Arbitrarily pegging the risk threshold at 20% is kinda stupid, especially given what these banks do with our money.
 

Burnesto

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I had the ability to put 20% down earlier this year, but it was fairly pointless at that time due to interest rates. I ended up doing a 0 down rural development loan and just investing what I would have put down. I'll easily beat the interest rate of the loan and PMI with returns from my index fund.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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Makes sense to me. If you can't handle paying 20% down it means you are risky and must be approved for a refinance later on.
Allow me to introduce you to every entrepreneur on earth. Never use your own money friend! Of course, houses aren't really "investments" anymore but forget all that.
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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So technically not about home buying but...

I've never rented in my life and my company is reimbursing me to rent a place closer to work for February thru April when I might have a call out during odd hours. Anway after looking at rentals I have noticed most are people who are way underwater or moved out of the house to something cheaper and trying to hold onto the house. Several in a row made me think that most couldn't handle the basic cost of maintenance let alone if something major happened. So I asked a potential landlord if I could check their credit since they wanted to check mine. Of course they looked at me like I had 3 heads. Anyone else do this?
 

Unidin

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They hold the majority of the risk, which is why they get to pull your credit. If the house gets foreclosed on your risk is moving. If you trash the house, their risk is the cost of repairs.
 

Borzak

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I don't mind them checking my credit. I would be super fucking pissed if I rented a nice house to live in for 3-4 months out of the year and have to pay 12 months of a lease and they couldn't afford to fix the AC when it's 100F out.

It's pretty much a rhetorical question I since the company will probably just fork out the cash for a place and buy one. I just wondered if someone had ever asked someone for a credit check.

Related topic, if you are close to getting married don't look at rentals. 90% of them so far have been guys who are losing the house in a divorce and trying to stay afloat.
 

Khane

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Look for actual apartments or condos instead of houses. You'll avoid all that, because yes, usually people aren't trying to rent out an entire house unless they have financial issues
 

Borzak

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Look for actual apartments or condos instead of houses. You'll avoid all that, because yes, usually people aren't trying to rent out an entire house unless they have financial issues
Sorry, I'm not sure I could do a condo or an apartment. I would just get a job title change and keep commuting.

Part of the problem here is our customer where we are doing the turnaround has rented pretty much all the upper end homes for this big turnaround this year for it's executives coming in and executives/big wigs of the contractors as well. I took the job too late for that planning lol. In fact all the people above me have been on vacation for the past 2-3 months straight getting ready for it.

We have an apartment at the office I may wind up using and just skipping the deal entirely this spring and start over next year with a longer lead time to prepare.
 

Khane

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Well that seems silly. Depending on where you are there should be plenty of nice apartments/condos that offer good privacy. Unless you have to have a yard or something. By the way, short sales and foreclosures take FOREVER. So if the house isn't already up for sale you'd probably have at least a year there even if the owner is under water. That much they do have to tell you (if it's up for sale already). And even an owner who isn't in financial trouble can decide to sell whenever they please so you aren't shielded from that regardless.