Crabbers
Well-Known Member
Thanks...I’ll post a wide view later this week when more shit is up
Home Improvement Thread 2: Electric Redo the Loo
- Thread starter Corycm
- Start date
In Toronto that room would cost 1 billion dollars.Thanks...I’ll post a wide view later this week when more shit is up
Replace the word dollar with euro and you’re about right for here too! I clearly live in the wrong Dublin!
Corycm
Well-Known Member
I only have a $20, but you can keep the change.
Crabbers
Well-Known Member
Crabbers
Well-Known Member
I don’t necessarily know about that
wokeupnew
Well-Known Member
How much should you have saved when you purchase a house? for Mortgages, taxes, insurance, other costs for repairs, fixes around the house, appliances, etc.
My girlfriend and I are looking at homes in the $300k~ price range, which is low for Vermont. We have about 20%~ saved up in savings but we'd like to have more obviously so we'd have lower monthly payments. However, using all of that 20% would drain our savings completely. The reason I'm asking is we saw a house pop up on Zillow that we seriously considered looking at this weekend. I think we could manage if we wanted to go for it. However! Houses like this one go quick, likely a 10k-20k over asking because the market is just nuts right now. It will be under contract on Monday, I'm 100% certain. So I think we'd need more saved up for bidding over asking, and other costs.
Also we just renewed the lease for our apartment this week. So we're kinda stuck until June 2022. Has anyone ever had to break a lease mid-term or tried planning moving from apartment housing to a house without double paying for mortgage and rent at the same time?
Has anyone recently or historically bought a house within this price range range and then found out you had more costs than anticipated?
My girlfriend and I are looking at homes in the $300k~ price range, which is low for Vermont. We have about 20%~ saved up in savings but we'd like to have more obviously so we'd have lower monthly payments. However, using all of that 20% would drain our savings completely. The reason I'm asking is we saw a house pop up on Zillow that we seriously considered looking at this weekend. I think we could manage if we wanted to go for it. However! Houses like this one go quick, likely a 10k-20k over asking because the market is just nuts right now. It will be under contract on Monday, I'm 100% certain. So I think we'd need more saved up for bidding over asking, and other costs.
Also we just renewed the lease for our apartment this week. So we're kinda stuck until June 2022. Has anyone ever had to break a lease mid-term or tried planning moving from apartment housing to a house without double paying for mortgage and rent at the same time?
Has anyone recently or historically bought a house within this price range range and then found out you had more costs than anticipated?
Last edited:
folsom_lives
Well-Known Member
I think your first indication that this may not be in your best interest would be that the down payment would leave you cash-strapped. I would call around to some realtors and see if they can give you info for some typical costs for utilities, repairs, insurance and things like that to see what a monthly budget may look like. Then double it... (semi kidding).
As for your last questions... your house will ALWAYS cost more than you expect. Something in the first month will usually throw you a curve ball and it could be cleverly disguised (or not disclosed) by the seller. Another piece of advice is take the offer for a home warranty. It may sound like redundancy for home insurance but it is not. This will cover major appliances, water heater, AC/heater, plumbing, electrical. All the stuff that could conceivably fail through no fault of your own by from use or abuse from the previous owners. This has saved my butt and wallet more times than not. If you can, keep renewing the policy for at least the first 3 to 5 years or until you feel confident that you've replaced or repaired things to the point where the price of the policy outweighs the possible benefits.
The biggest take away is to not let the dream of owning a house take over the reality. It's a ton of work and money to maintain. You don't ever want to be house poor. Aim for a house that you can comfortably live below your means in. Sorry to be a downer for the first half...
That said, owning and living in your own space is a great feeling. Just keep a level head and don't rush into anything. More houses will come up for sale.
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
there is a lot of good advice from Fulsom, but my situation was a little different. My wife and I sprinted to a down payment to get an FHA loan. We lived off of one salary for a year to get our credit in shape and save for a down payment.
We are pretty settled with where we are in our life, kid and long term jobs. If we didn’t get in when we did there is not way we could afford an area where our commute was less than an hour.
Yes we a bit house poor and we weren’t prepared for the repairs we need to do. We were naive when buying the house. But we love where we live. The house has also gone up about 100G since we moved in 3 years ago. If the pandemic hadn’t of hit we would be much further along.
wokeupnew
Well-Known Member
Great advice thank you! Had not considered Warranty but I will look into it. We'll look to over save and underspend if we can.
The housing market is crazy up here. This house in particular was 200k 10 years ago now going for 300k. There will be some value added on depending on how long we stay. It's 1400 sqft 3b 2ba so it's not massive, but we don't want kids so we won't need anything bigger for some time. We'd probably want to stay in it for at least 5 years, if not more. The neighborhood this particular house is in has a lot of similar houses so there's bound to be others that open up over the next year or so.
Corycm
Well-Known Member
If it’s your first time, go talk to a mortgage person at your bank/credit union/whatever. It’s a non-commitment to you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to, but they can walk you through what you (really) need down, escrow estimates, your payments, etc. If you feel like they’re a good fit/good rate/etc. getting a preapproval letter from them doesn’t hurt when you’re making an offer.
A thing I don’t think I was prepared for when I got my first house was the amount of cash-in-hand necessary during the process. Like there was a phase where I feel like every time the phone rang I was writing another $500 check.
Your lease probably has a breaking clause in it. It might suck (like you’ll owe the balance) but you might have something else like a flat fee or a % of the remaining lease. Look at your lease. Mine was terrible, so I did all the home loan legwork a few months ahead of my lease ending, started looking with 2 months left, then ended up paying a couple (up charged) month-to-month rents to cover up to move-in.
Yes, this. The amount of cash is staggering. Not to mention when you get into the house and realize that there's like at least 3 things that need immediate attention. 1000% go and talk to a mortgage professional, and a GOOD one. Not one that's going to tell you that you can afford the moon, because those ones exist too. You need to have extra funds because things will go wrong, because things almost always go wrong when purchasing a house. I'm not trying to scare you but it's just a fact.
If this is your first home, I would seriously talk to a mortgage broker or banker about an FHA loan. We did that and they only required a 3% down payment. This helped us a lot because our bills just about doubled when we moved from our one bedroom apartment to a three bedroom house. My parents' friend is a mortgage broker, so we started with her and got pre-approved before we started to look.
As for the apartment thing, I'm not sure about breaking a lease. We ended up overlapping one month of rent and mortgage, but it allowed us to move out over the span of a month which was really nice.
There is always something that needs to be fixed. Our mortgage also came with one year of paid home warranty, which is not a bad deal. Home warranties can help with the sticker shock of something breaking. You pay a single fee (usually $100) for a service, and they set up your service with a reliable person (we never had a problem with their contractors). If your fridge or dishwasher dies, they will either replace it or send you a check. We eventually dropped the insurance as we found the plumbers and other professionals we liked, since they don't cover appliances that they replaced--and they replaced our fridge and dishwasher. But for the first five years or so, it was really a life saver when unforeseen cost arose.
Melt Face Molly Drop
Well-Known Member
We bought our house in late 2018. If you want to know how much of a seller's market we're currently in, our house is now valued at $130,000 more since then. And that's not including any of the renovations we've completed (bathroom, floors). My friend just recently sold their house at a $150,000 profit after they purchased in 2017.
First, make sure it's absolutely the right decision for you. Talk with trusted professionals and make sure it makes fiscal sense and that the timing is right. If you do decide to move forward, make sure both of you have the difficult conversations about the future of your relationship and whether you should both be on the mortgage (recommending that you do so). My brother and his girlfriend were living together in a house that my brother had owned. Her name wasn't on any of the paperwork. Their relationship turned sour (after 5 years together), and he was able to recoup the house and requested that she move out. Had her name been on the mortgage it would have been a much messier situation.
We put down 20% immediately, which is recommended if you can swing it. Helps keep costs down on those monthly payments, especially if you do a 15 or 20 year. Hire a reputable company to do your house inspection. It'll cost about $500 and is required usually. They will find a ton of things that are either recommended to upgrade ASAP or 5-10 years down the line. For example, ours had a broken sink, broken garage door opener and a couple of exposed wires. We requested those items be fixed before we moved in. That probably saved us $500-1000 alone. Other things though, like they pointed our that our water heater was getting old and recommended it be replaced in the next 3-5 years. So then you'd factor in 1-2k for that upgrade in the future, etc.
If your inspection guy is good, there shouldn't be THAT many surprises, but surprises are the welcoming committee of home ownership, so they will come. No one can predict the market, but given how insanely high it's skyrocketed, I feel it's gotta come down at some point.
Melt Face Molly Drop
Well-Known Member
There is usually a few month period where you won't have a mortgage payment. So if you time it right and request a 60 day escrow from the date of signing, you could probably go 3-4 months without a mortgage payment. You can also arrange it so that your home warranty is wrapped in your mortgage escrow payments, so it's one less thing you have to worry about. Rates are crazy low, but that is being offset by how much more the market is asking for.
Corycm
Well-Known Member
I will say this though - aside from the Oprah-moment “AND YOU GET A CHECK” phase - buying a house cost less than I anticipated. There’s repairs, sure. And always a few things to fix when you first move in, but I got a year or two into my current place before I had anything too expensive to deal with (fking trees) due to a good inspector and doing my homework.
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
Also, having a house requires a lot more advanced planning of your life. Before I didn’t think in terms of what am I going to want to do in 10 15 or 30 years.
wokeupnew
Well-Known Member
Great advice everyone thank you! Definitely need to do some due diligence on FHA loans. Save more and meet with an advisor when we think we're ready. Probably much easier when we would already have financing in place and ready to go.
Corycm
Well-Known Member
Honestly, I’d chat with a mortgage banker sooner than later. It’s one of my bigger regrets - I waited way too long to buy because I *thought* I knew what I needed - and it ended up that it was a lot less once I talked to the bank.
wokeupnew
Well-Known Member
so basically ignore any and all online "mortgage calculators" and get specific rates/payments because I may be able to afford something sooner than later?