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question about buying a home

LUCKY! we were -just- over the income limits to qualify for that. h8

Yeah, I was still in Mankato going to college when she bought it, so it was just her applying for the loan and all that good stuff. I would come home on the weekends and look at houses with her and we agreed on that one.
 
I'm going to start looking around at foreclosures...maybe even some houses that need work. I know i can get a loan...my credit is impeccable, and with interest rates getting lower and lower i could snag something that will ultimately make me money. not to mention my own place would be awesome. I would need some supplemental income though. even with a cheap mortgage things would be tight. not going broke tight, but a man needs to party too.
 
I'm going to start looking around at foreclosures...maybe even some houses that need work. I know i can get a loan...my credit is impeccable, and with interest rates getting lower and lower i could snag something that will ultimately make me money. not to mention my own place would be awesome. I would need some supplemental income though. even with a cheap mortgage things would be tight. not going broke tight, but a man needs to party too.

goodbye volvo, hello svt (again)!
 
dougy...that house doesnt look too bad, but it only has one bath and the bedrooms are kinda small.
 
always avoid PMI has the others noted. get a conventional loan fixed. figure 20% down(like I did) on the amount to be borrowed. this will get yo the best rate and no pmi for sure.even if the rates a year or two from now are high you can refinance later. remember to keep the 20% seperate from your closing costs and other fee's those are additional.

always get pre-approved for a mortgage, this will tell you how much house you can buy and give you leverage to buy, 99% of the time no seller will talk or take offers from some one who isn't pre-qualified for a loan they don't want to tie up the property on a maybe sale and you have no leverage for offers.

I used a buyers agent, go to realator and ask for a buyers agent they will work with you and show properties listed with other realators, show houses that you only specify and help you through the process they work for you not the seller.

never use a home inspector offered by the realator even your buyers agent. they get kick backs and the inspectors over look stuff to push the sale through, not all but most do, the relator will give them a kick back not to hold up the sale. find your own and don't go cheap.

best of luck!
 
I didn't put squat down and never had PMI. Had to have a 2nd mtg. with a higher rate. I just refied after a couple years when the rates went down. Have no idea what program my buddy put me in though. LOL!
 
goodbye volvo, hello svt (again)!

Volvo is paid for in full. Part of my plan to not have any non essential expenses.

I'd like to put 20% down but with your average house around here being 500k that'd be 100k which ain't gonna happen.

If i can find something decent in the 3's that could work though.
 
lol, ok, ideally I would want a 4 car garage and some apartment space above would be perfect :laugh:

well my parents have a two car garage and a cover it, works well at the moment ... although they only use half of the garage ...

you gotta be careful when reading the adds on these garages, I refused to look at a house unless it had a 2 car garage, when we came and looked at the house I ended up buying, it said 2-car garage. Well, I guess it has only 2 doors, but it is 30'x30', as i sit and type, my mustang, both contours, and kati's jeep are all in the garage. 2-car my ass.

but on the note of buying, it's totally worth it. I avoided PMI even though I only put 5% down, 30 year fixed, and my bank was doing a no-PMI deal. keep an eye open for things like that.
 
like mentioned above, if you want to avoid PMi you can get two mortgages and refi in a year or so.
this could also help keep money in your pocket for immediate repairs and updates to the house.
then when you refi, you will/should increase the value of the house thus giving you more equity allowing you to get a single mortgage without PMI.

that is what we did, but we ended up keeping the 2nd mortgage for almost 2 years because i got laid off the week we bought the house.
but after those two years we ended up with almost 100K in equity. which then allowed us to refi and even pull out some equity and our payment even went down.

and for the garage thing...you can never really trust the listings.
again like stated above, one mans two car garage is another mans 4 car.
or in my case, the 5 car garage advertised only fits three of my cars.
 
I would have liked *a* garage, but everything we could afford where we wanted to live was lacking a garage. That was the one thing that seemed to put houses out of our range. :(

We also did an interesting refi shuffle late 2006 that not only got us out of PMI, but it also got us a small home equity loan that paid for our waterproofing, got our "toys" and paid for part of our furnace replacement.

We'll probably look at another refi soon to get a rate cut, though.
 
the thought of another refi has come up, but this time i will be looking for something with no closing costs.
that sucked the last time.
 
the thought of another refi has come up, but this time i will be looking for something with no closing costs.
that sucked the last time.

I should get you the name of our guy. I don't think we paid closing costs on our last round. I can't remember exactly how they pulled the whole deal off, but it was brilliant. Granted, we had to go to two different closings at the same place, but it was worth the drive to Danvers to get it done.
 
At some point, though, I think we're going to do a ton of work on the house. Expand the den/office back wall so it's even with the back wall of the kitchen, and go up a floor to add a large master bedroom over the existing bedroom.

Then a garage gets built at the end of our existing driveway, attached to said den/office... which then lets us build it w/out needing to build the front wall of the garage behind the rear wall of the house. Friggin' Wakefield regulations!
 
you're not allowed to build a garage behind the house? That's ridiculous.. most garages from the 20s-40s were built that way! You're very lucky you have a large flat side yard.
 
you're not allowed to build a garage behind the house? That's ridiculous.. most garages from the 20s-40s were built that way! You're very lucky you have a large flat side yard.


the way I read it the only way to build a detacted garage in wakefield is that it has to be behind the house. But if they connect it to the house then it can be anywhere on the property
 
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