Home buying thread

Texas A&M released a formula for stuff to use in the septic tank to replace RidX out of stuff you likely have around the house. Their studies came out ahead of the commercial stuff to pour down the drain for it every few months. Sorry I lost the recipe.

Tenks_sl said:

The biggest downside, at least IMO, is you can't have a garbage disposal with a septic. I'd find that to be a pretty big pain in the ass.

Click to expand...

Incorrect. Source: Had one for decades.

There are plenty of places in the country where there is no sewer. I wouldn't consider it a non-starter and I'm pretty sure in most states they are required to treat/pump the septic tank before letting you move in. If you are paranoid, you can call a service co after maybe 2 years, have it treated and pumped and figure out approximate usage for your family.

So I'm going to be looking at selling my house and buying a new one in the next couple of months. When I bought my first house I wasn't really able to shop around for mortgage rates. What's the best way to do this?

I'm thinking either 15 or 30 year fixed with 20% down.

Ritley_sl said:

So I'm going to be looking at selling my house and buying a new one in the next couple of months. When I bought my first house I wasn't really able to shop around for mortgage rates. What's the best way to do this?

I'm thinking either 15 or 30 year fixed with 20% down.

Click to expand...

With interest rates the way that they are, I'd get the 30 year and invest the difference between what your 15yr payment would have been. Just my opinion, but assuming you get the best rate that is what, around 3.5% right now? Should be able to match/beat that even with a semi-conservative strategy plus you have a lot more flexibility with that money.

For my refi I just went to Zillow and looked at their list of mortgage vendors and ended up usingPatriot Financialwhich ended up giving me the best rate and very low closing costs. The best part about them was that I didn't have a single phone-call or email go unanswered for more than 24 hours. Great customer service.

I'd definitely shop around but figured I throw out the recommendation.

I should get the best interest rates available, have 830ish credit, down payment on hand (not tied to current house sale) and good income for the cost range I'm looking at.

I've toyed around with the sites that give you rates for a bunch of different lenders and wasn't sure if that was a good way to go or not.

My understanding is that a lot of these online mortgage lenders make their money by selling off, in bulk, the mortgages they originate. There are a lot out there competing with each other which is why their rates and closing costs are ultra-competitive. Generally one of the major pitfalls of using the online guys is customer service. Especially troubling if you have a unique situation and/or specific deadlines that need to be met. In my case I had a very straightforward re-fi with no deadlines, but regardless I still had great service and closed quicker than promised.

Oh, and if you care about your mortgage being passed around like one of J49's crack-whores you might want to avoid them but outside of having to send my payment to a different bank every month I don't see the downside.

It's worth checking out your current bank as well if you have a good sized relationship with them. Generally they'll give you discounts on rates and closing costs.

Having a garbage disposal hooked up to a septic system changes the design requirements some as it forces it to handle more waste; but like Palum said, totally doable. Generally septics are based on number of bedrooms. If you were to buy a home with a septic and you had plans of increasing the size of the house, or even just wanted the lot and were going to start over, making sure the existing septic is in good order and large enough to meet your expected design is critical when budgeting. Having to unexpectedly replace the whole thing could be an additional $20k.

Most rural areas utilize septic systems, or only have sewage for village/ densely populated areas. In Massachusetts there is a Title V inspection that requires the septic is verified to be in good working order before a property is sold.

There are also other alternative systems like composting toilets and greywater greenhouses and some really crazy buildings that have their own eco systems. The laws regarding them vary greatly from one area to the next.

Most of this is of little concern until you start looking at developing raw land. Making sure the building site is capable of supporting a septic system is extremely important, otherwise you just bought yourself a woodlot.

Anyone know the ins and outs of mortgage rates vs credit ratings?

I ask because my wife's credit is about 100 points higher than mine (hers is 830-840, mines like 740-750), but we both make roughly equivalent money, roughly 50/50 on our household income, so while we might qualify for a better rate based purely on her and her credit, the line of credit would be much smaller I would imagine, as my income figuring in doubles our household income compared to just hers.

I guess I'm just wondering how much my credit is going to hurt us compared to hers if we want to get qualified for a larger loan based on both of our incomes.

My wife purchased our home before we had even met, on her lone income and back then only qualified for a 4.875% for 30 years on a $120,000 loan(she qualified for more at the time, but didn't want to push to the max of her budget). I'm thinking that nowadays we could probably either re-fi just in her name and get a much lower rate, or shop for new in both our names and hopefully still get a better rate + larger amount.

We do want to move, and would probably need a ~$170,000 loan to purchase the house we want($220K range on the house) and I don't think my wife could qualify for $170k just on her income, I think she only qualified for about $150k last time around. And I can't figure out if throwing in my income/credit and killing our potential rate is worth it if we're only 10 or 20k short of the loan we would need. I'm trying to figure out if we should just wait until we had more in savings to avoid having to involve me and tanking our rate, being that close to the cutoff line for the amount we'd need to borrow.

For me personally, I made most of the money at the time ($80k vs $30k). She had an 830 rating and I had a 680 or something (I know.. I know). When they did our rates and max amount we could lend it was pretty simple, they took my credit score because it was the lowest and we got the shittiest rates and deals - they took combined income and it was something like 3.5x our yearly income was what we were pre-approved for ($400k).

I don't know if that helps in your decision. But we wouldn't have been able to buy a house in just her name based solely on income.

I was kind of afraid they would just take the lowest credit, and not do an average or something

joeboo_sl said:

I was kind of afraid they would just take the lowest credit, and not do an average or something

Click to expand...

740 is pretty much the same as 840 in the eyes of creditors.

Is it? Because 5-6 years ago when my wife bought the home, her credit was only around what mine is now and she qualified for a 4.875% rate, which seems fairly bad(but maybe rates were higher back then?). I was just assuming if they used my 740-ish credit now, we still wouldn't get any better of a rate than that 4.875%, and I didn't really want to increase our loan amount by 50% without also getting a slightly better rate to offset some of that cost.

Credit.org What is a good credit score? [Infographic] | Credit.org

The information in that blog is what I've heard from every source I've looked at.

My understanding is they will use the middle score of the person with the lower credit score for a joint mortgage. So if your scores from the 3 agencies were 822, 840, 838 and your wife's were 721, 733, 752 they will use the 733 as the number. I'm sure it is more complicated than this but it is a good guideline as to what to expect.

If you can qualify on your income alone then you'd be better off doing that, can still get her name on the title and everything. If you need your combined incomes to qualify the good news is that 740ish is still pretty good and won't ding you a whole lot on your interest rate. Maybe like 0.25% if I had to guess. Considering where mortgage interest rates are currently it is definitely worth taking the small interest hit now rather than waiting for whatever is bringing your wife's score down a bit to clear up on her report.

*edit: Realized I misread who has the higher score, but you get the idea

joeboo_sl said:

Is it? Because 5-6 years ago when my wife bought the home, her credit was only around what mine is now and she qualified for a 4.875% rate, which seems fairly bad(but maybe rates were higher back then?). I was just assuming if they used my 740-ish credit now, we still wouldn't get any better of a rate than that 4.875%, and I didn't really want to increase our loan amount by 50% without also getting a slightly better rate to offset some of that cost.

Click to expand...

It's funny, I keep seeing post of people thinking rates like this are "pretty bad" or "absurd." Sure, compared to what is available today it looks that way but at the time you would have qualified for that rate it was historically low. Since 1971 rates literally had never been in the 4% range and as late as 2007 anything under 6% would have been considered a great rate. I don't have time to math it out but I would napkin-math guess that somewhere between 7%-8% had been the average up until this unprecedented drop in rates. Check it out-Primary Mortgage Market Survey Archives - 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgages - Freddie Mac

5 years ago 4.875% would have been a great rate to qualify for.

joeboo_sl said:

I was kind of afraid they would just take the lowest credit, and not do an average or something

Click to expand...

They took the middle of my 3 credit scores when we went. It was essentially as if my wife's credit did not matter at all.