Home buying thread

You just need to get the numbers and compare them. They'll give you a good estimate of what everything will be. I refinanced a 60k mortgage from 5.5 to 2.6, took out 15k for renovations and my payment is less than what it was before. I got a 5/5 arm from penfed because they paid all the closing costs but the interest rate may go up to as high as 4.6 in 2019 which on a 60k loan will be like 50 bucks a month. So, in my scenario if I'd had to pay closing costs it would have taken like 4 years to recoup it.

Refinancing is a lot easier than buying in my experience, don't be scared.

Yeah the re-fi process took a while but it was pretty easy on my end. Every few weeks they'd just ask for a new piece of paperwork then at the end I had to sign/initial like 50 pages of shit and the dude came to my house to make it even easier. It was a touch tedious but it wasn't stressful.

Thanks for the advice, I'll send her our stuff. Paying $1972 a month is really killing me.

What you really need to keep on hand is your water bill from 3 years ago. I hope you have those piled somewhere.

I actually have our water bill amount memorized because it never changes. $49.50 every 6 months.

We did a refi and saved $160 a month. Went from 4.75% to 4% and no pmi. Did it with one of those zero out of pocket lenders, what the do is basically just roll the costs into the mortgage. We did ours at the end of last year, so we got a refund from our old mortgage servicer for the escrow account and the new place increased the loan to cover the escrow account, once we got the check from old servicer, we just applied that to the new loan.

Noodlemod_sl said:

I actually have our water bill amount memorized because it never changes. $49.50 every 6 months.

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JFC, I am $232 per quarter for water. I live in Canada in a city in the mountains with 3 major lakes within 10k. Our municipality has some of the worst water rates in the province and now they want to jack it again for a newer more efficient t system.


Edit - And we have a water cooler $5/month for drinking as the wife does not like the taste from the tap.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Thanks for the advice, I'll send her our stuff. Paying $1972 a month is really killing me.

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How big is your mortgage if I may ask? And how high are your property taxes and insurance? Don't be afraid of refinancing. People do it every day, and it's easy to do it without much out of pocket cost for you. I did it on my last house. They need a stupidly big amount of information, but then it gets done quickly.

We started our mortgage at around 700K$ almost 8 years ago. It was a huge thing to finance, but it was a great deal and interest rates were crazy low. I had most of my capital tied up in my business, which is why we financed so much of it. Also, property taxes are stupid low here, and insurance is also very cheap. We dumped at least 8,500$ a month into this place, and we should be paid off in about 3 months. That money will then start going into college funds. I have too many kids...

lurkingdirk_sl said:

How big is your mortgage if I may ask? And how high are your property taxes and insurance? Don't be afraid of refinancing. People do it every day, and it's easy to do it without much out of pocket cost for you. I did it on my last house. They need a stupidly big amount of information, but then it gets done quickly.

We started our mortgage at around 700K$ almost 8 years ago. It was a huge thing to finance, but it was a great deal and interest rates were crazy low. I had most of my capital tied up in my business, which is why we financed so much of it. Also, property taxes are stupid low here, and insurance is also very cheap. We dumped at least 8,500$ a month into this place, and we should be paid off in about 3 months. That money will then start going into college funds. I have too many kids...

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I posted the stuff earlier to I'll just do my best guess.

Mortgage was for $250k. PMI is roughly $250/mo and we're at 4.75% fixed.

I just got our property tax bill and it was $1100 for the quarter, so roughly $4500/year. Insurance I can't really remember, I think I remember saying it was $100 or $150/mo

The PMI and high interest rate is really what kills us right now.

I had you figured for a commoner dirk.

Dirk has a PHD man, dude is probably famous and we don't even know it

Noodlemod_sl said:

I posted the stuff earlier to I'll just do my best guess.

Mortgage was for $250k. PMI is roughly $250/mo and we're at 4.75% fixed.

I just got our property tax bill and it was $1100 for the quarter, so roughly $4500/year. Insurance I can't really remember, I think I remember saying it was $100 or $150/mo

The PMI and high interest rate is really what kills us right now.

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Yeah, if you can drop a couple interest points don't hesitate in any way to refinance. Totally worth it. Make your monthly payments way more comfortable.

And I am a commoner. I'm just good at what I do. I have a minivan and a hyundai and a 1999 ford ranger. How much more common can you get?

Big Phoenix_sl said:

jfc $4400 a year in property taxes?

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Dude, I pay that for a condo.

Eomer_sl said:

Dude, I pay that for a condo.

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Jebus on a stick, really? I have acreage and I don't pay that. This is why it's so hard for me to move back to Canada, even though I'd like to.

Yeah man we got high taxes here. Taxachusetts

I pay about that much for a third of an acre and a three bedroom, two bathroom 1400 sq ft house in suburban Chicago.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

jfc $4400 a year in property taxes?

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Would be relatively cheap for where I lived in TX, but we didn't have income tax. The beauty of property tax is if you don't have kids and aren't concerned with the school system you can live in the same house and pay LOTS less property taxes. I think in the last county I looked at it was around 3% (maybe it was .3%) of appraised value. I'm sure there are areas that are a lot cheaper. Lot of people wanting to get out to the hill country and spend lots of money on housing. That includes all the stuff they throw in like schools, roads, county stuff etc..

What's really odd is if you go the appraisal district they have you on file (at least they did before they went all digital) in a giant deal that looked like the deals to look up books at the library and they had snapshots of everything they taxed as an improvement. Gate in the middle of BFE between two pastures, pic and taxed. Put a culvert under a logging road I had on my property to keep the water from washing it out, pic and taxed.

Seemed like a lot of hassle considering they tax my timber property at $3/acre.