Hmmm, the areas you guys live in must be a lot different than mine. You can literally buy a place for $100-200 a month cheaper then renting the exact same place regardless of size/location. Seems like a no brainer to me if your stay isn't temporary.
Home buying thread
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It'll always vary depending on where you live and where you are in your life. Home ownership comes with a ton of expenses for sure. When I bought a few years ago, there was already an updated kitchen. I wouldn't of bought a house that I had to remodel the kitchen.
Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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That is more or less the state that I feel we're in now after owning our 1st home for about two years at this point. I'm constantly in that mode of "$X for this improvement vs. return." There isn't anything significant (as in >$5-10k) that I want to do, but I don't want to do everything at once. Repaint / Siding, maybe some new windows, some small changes to the Kitchen area, etc... I'll likely end up spacing them out over the next few years. Just being in maintenance mode on a lot of this stuff has taken up a lot of resources (time & money). I'd probably feel more motivated if I had a wife that cared about it, hah. But no one's cracking the whip around here to make it look like the front of Southern Living.
OneofOne
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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While of course it's dependent upon what other deductions you have, your loan rate, your property tax amount, and your marginal tax rate, I'd be shocked if you see more than $300-500/year in tax savings due to your home. At least if I understand you correctly that your house cost $180k. Don't get me wrong, I'm not picking on you, it's just a large (pet peeve is the wrong term, but close enough I suppose) of mine because tax write offs are probably the single most misunderstood taxation concept among the public, followed closely by tax brackets ("I'd love to work overtime, but then I'll end up paying higher taxes and losing money in the end, so it's not worth it!"). When you say
well, 29 out of 30 people that say this (or something strikingly similar) completely over estimate the tax savings of their actions. I'm with you bro, I just bought a house almost 2 years ago and super happy I did - I pay more than I did renting, especially when you factor in repairs and upkeep, but I'd do it all over again if I had to.
For your own personal shits and giggles, if you want a better idea of your true savings, a quick and dirty way would be to go see what your total itemized deductions were, subtract $12,200 from that, and multiply the result by your marginal tax rate (your top tax bracket).
Also, a general piece of advice for everyone, if you expect (or really, even if you don't) your home to turn a sizable profit when you eventually sell it, you should keep all receipts for home improvements (not repairs or maintenance), like adding rooms, porches, double-paned windows, upgrading/updating your water heater, heating system, plumbing, paving a driveway - really anything you do other than upkeep like painting and shit will add to the basis of your home and allow you to pay less (or no) taxes upon sale of your home. A thousand here, a thousand there, it adds up and the next thing you know you put $30k into your house over the last 10 years.
Lejina
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
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Closing on the 16th. Currently renting a bungalow on base. Appointment tomorrow for my pre march-out inspection, then next week I see the bank to pull cash out of my RRSP and draft the down-payment, then the next day the lawyer and a week later we close.
House is 1962, previous owners were an old couple who took relatively good care of it, which is rare in that price bracket here. Something decent at 290k is tough to find: between 200 and 350k, usually people buy them as investment to rent, so they do minimal maintenance. That, or military guys buy and sell after their 4 years posting and obviously they do the strict minimum as well.
The entire house has carpet, going to rip that off and put laminate instead. While the floor will be on bare plywood, I'll repaint the entire interior. Hopefully there isn't any bad surprises under that carpet. I'll have my current bungalow until the 30th, so that gives me about two weeks to work in the house with no furniture getting in the way.
The housing market being the way it is here, I'll likely try my luck with renting a bedroom or two. Should be able to get $800 each easy, which would cover the mortgage and some.
House is 1962, previous owners were an old couple who took relatively good care of it, which is rare in that price bracket here. Something decent at 290k is tough to find: between 200 and 350k, usually people buy them as investment to rent, so they do minimal maintenance. That, or military guys buy and sell after their 4 years posting and obviously they do the strict minimum as well.
The entire house has carpet, going to rip that off and put laminate instead. While the floor will be on bare plywood, I'll repaint the entire interior. Hopefully there isn't any bad surprises under that carpet. I'll have my current bungalow until the 30th, so that gives me about two weeks to work in the house with no furniture getting in the way.
The housing market being the way it is here, I'll likely try my luck with renting a bedroom or two. Should be able to get $800 each easy, which would cover the mortgage and some.
I'm getting conflicting information on this.
I'm about to get about 20% paid off on my FHA loan. Will the PMI automatically go away or do I need to call up BoA to get the PMI taken away? Do I have to re-fi away from FHA to get it taken away?
I'm about to get about 20% paid off on my FHA loan. Will the PMI automatically go away or do I need to call up BoA to get the PMI taken away? Do I have to re-fi away from FHA to get it taken away?
OU Ariakas
Diet Dr. Pepper Enjoyer
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Don't leave it to chance; no matter what anyone tells you, take the time to call your mortgage provider to talk to a human that can confirm that your LTV is under 80% and also confirm that your payments going forward will not show PMI.
Falstaff
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I imagine the bank will do it automatically but yes, you should definitely call and ask instead of waiting. You shouldn't need to re-fi but I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me why you would have to do that.
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
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Our bank told us very specifically that while sometimes the PMI will automatically go away a lot of times it will not. She said it's a simple call and sometimes filling out a form to get it removed. She told us no matter what, when the time comes to call and talk it over.
Asshat Brando
Potato del Grande
- 5,346
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Depends when you got your FHA loan. If you got your FHA loan over a year ago then the minimum wait to remove FHA MI is 5 years and the LTV has to be 78%. If you just got your FHA loan in the last year then you have to refi out of it as FHA MI is now for the life of the loan.
Ritley
Karazhan Raider
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Ya, my loan requires 5 years, which is shit. Requiring for the life of the loan is complete horseshit, the whole point is so the bank doesn't lose money on repossessed houses a couple of years into the loan. What is the risk on a house with a LTV of 25%? Why should you still be paying PMI in that situation?
Asshat Brando
Potato del Grande
- 5,346
- -478
No, it's not shit as FHA doesn't do risk adjusted pricing like Fannie/Freddie so someone with a 620 FICO and someone with an 800 FICO get the same pricing. The risk is therefore spread over the whole pool of loans to enable a cheaper path to homeownership but like anything lending related with the government they fucked the whole thing up by making FHA a lender of choice when the market crashed. Historically FHA was always a very small slice of the lending pie but I believe at one point it was almost 40% which is not what the model was built on. You're paying for the choices your government made and the fact you wanted yourself a low barrier to homeownership.
Edit: If you are getting an FHA loan in going forward and your bank tells you they have to give you a higher rate for your FICO tell them to fuck off, just them making more money for your risk of default on their own and not HUD.
Edit: If you are getting an FHA loan in going forward and your bank tells you they have to give you a higher rate for your FICO tell them to fuck off, just them making more money for your risk of default on their own and not HUD.
Crone
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Can confirm this. We first thought that it was just the LTV, but nope, it's LTV + 5 years. We're selling our house now, so it doesn't matter, but was surprised at that. Not that it wasn't spelled out in the loan docs though, I just didn't read it all.