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    Thursday, December 3, 2020

    Closed on our home. VA loan, locked in 2.25% interest rate, and happy wife Real Estate

    Closed on our home. VA loan, locked in 2.25% interest rate, and happy wife Real Estate


    Closed on our home. VA loan, locked in 2.25% interest rate, and happy wife

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 02:53 AM PST

    This is just a bit of a follow up/update on the last few posts I made on here.

    Link to last post here

    The inspection came back damn near perfect on this home. Nothing major but the little things did add up. We negotiated and the sellers gave us decent credit towards closing. It was a big help and we were honestly just happy (and shocked) that we got a credit in such a competitive and mentally exhausting market.

    The appraisal came back exactly on the money. No issues whatsoever. I have a feeling our lender slipped an extra $20 to the appraiser for this one though.

    After that, it was just a waiting game. We had our rate locked in. No points. With help on closing costs from the seller. It was just unbelievable how smooth it was after the offer was accepted. We owe it to our agent and our loan officer, as well as their team.

    We signed our closing documents. Got our keys. Agent left. And it was just us again. I've never seen my wife so happy.

    I guess what can be taken from this experience is that the VA loan can make this happen, it's not easy, but not imposible. It allows for a bit of a lower rate and it gives you a set of standards you should want for your home to begin with. The little to no downpayment gave us a chance to put money towards renovations and for that money to accumulate higher returns elsewhere. I encourage veterans and active duty folks to not feel discouraged and if it's time to buy a home, to remain patient and be willing to compromise.

    A few months back I was worried we would have to rent an apartment again and that we wouldn't have space for our kid. But we pushed forward. I couldn't have done this without my wife.

    We're finally homeowners.

    If anyone needs any help understanding this process,feel free to message me. I'll be happy to share my experience and what I've learned.

    That's the end of my trilogy.

    submitted by /u/CatNamedBougee
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    Well I decided to refi last night. 3.5%>2.3%

    Posted: 02 Dec 2020 10:24 AM PST

    So we just moved in to our current house in MAR 2020 before everything went crazy. Our first payment was May 1st, loan was 403k 30yr fixed VA 3.5%. My lender contacted me last week and we started talking about doing a refi. We locked in our new rate of 2.3% last night ! Saving us around 77k over the course of 30 years. But I also plan rolling the extra money into our principal to save another 29k on instrest and paying it off 5 years early. Get out and refi !!

    submitted by /u/duggyjkd
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    Mixed Feelings After Offer

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 06:36 AM PST

    After perusing Zillow & attending Open Houses for over a year, we finally have 20% down and decided last week to move forward on officially, seriously looking for a house. We went up this week to look at a few properties. Three were flops (bad location, too-low ceilings, smoker), but we really liked one of the houses.

    It's a very practical house. Way low in our budget. Absolutely nothing needs to be done. Great layout. Good yard. Right size. Meets all of our needs and some expensive wants (3-car garage with workshop and attached / roofed pergola with electric). And yet... it didn't take our breath away. We were all very calm and analytical about it.

    It isn't quite where we wanted to be, but is only 5min away and the cost is easily $40-$50k less than officially being in "THE area".

    We only had an hour to decide whether or not to put in an offer; the deadline was that day. After an anxious lunch spent hemming and hawing, we did. Now we wait. Part of me kind of hopes they reject it. Does this mean we made a mistake? Should we be more excited, or is this just "cold feet" due to everything moving so quickly?

    submitted by /u/Wisdom_In_Wonder
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    I refinanced my home twice in the last year. Was that a bad financial decision?

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 08:38 AM PST

    Bought my first home about a year ago. Rates at that time were fairly high and my rate was 4.75%. I knew I would want to refinance the rate down and after 6 months I refinanced down to 3.5%. Another 6 months goes by and rates are at a record low so I refinanced again to 2.65%.

    I bought the house for $275 and due to closing costs of refinancing twice I now owe $280 on it after about 15 months of ownership. For the first refinance I was given a $1K reimbursement check, and on the second refinance I got $5K reimbursement, both of which I added to my emergency savings.

    I plan on owning the house for a long time so I felt like the added costs now would still save me money in interest in the longterm. I also live in a quickly appreciating area, so similar houses are now selling for $305 (this started before Covid, so not a result of the recent inflation in housing prices), so at least I'm not underwater on the mortgage.

    Just wondering if my thinking makes sense and this was a sound financial decision, or whether I overlooked something and have added unnecessary costs to my ownership.

    submitted by /u/Harry_Coolahan
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    realtor.com keyword search help

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 08:36 AM PST

    I'm a first time buyer and am trying to use realtor.com to search for condos or townhomes with yards. The problem I am having is that realtor.com's keyword search doesn't seem to work the way I would expect. I have "Yard" listed as a keyword in my search, yet I have been able to find properties that have the word "Yard" in their "Property Details" section that aren't picked up by my saved search. I have run several other experiments in which I do a keyword search for a specific word in a property's description but the property is not returned in the search results.

    Additionally the daily emails I receive from realtor.com's automated search always include lots of results that don't contain the word "yard" anywhere in the listing.

    Is there some trick to using realtor.com's keyword search or does it just not work correctly? I already emailed their support but never received a reply.

    submitted by /u/hudson4351
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    Everything is difficult. Advice is appreciated, please.

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 08:33 AM PST

    Hey Reddit I'm 22 and living with my parents but oh god...this house is driving them crazy. The story might be a bit long, and I'm not too clear on all of the details but I'll do my best.

    So my parents want to move to a bigger house. They found a house, loved it, and sold our current one in three days. No big deal right? Well getting a loan for the new house, and trying to close on a selling date is the problem. We should've moved out a month ago but the closing date kept getting pushed back. The underwriters didn't approve on my parents loan. Mind you, this isn't the first time they purchased a house! They had to switch underwriters/ loan officers because the first one kept forgetting about details and leaving out information from my mom.

    She got appointed a new one. My parents were told that things would be easier with this new woman. Well it hasn't. She's getting told to pay off all of these loans, multiple loans to get to the right percentage point to be good enough to close on. (not too clear on what that's referring to, I'm sorry.) So, they pay off loans, work their asses off and have to take out other loans to pay off other loans. I'm sorry if it's confusing, I'm kind of lost myself since I'm not fully in the loop. So, anyway my parents do what the loan officers says, and a new problem pops up the next day. My mom has to show proof of her assets and she had to show proof that she doesn't own a house that we were getting evicted from like...10 years ago. She has to show proof that we lived in our current house for over 6 years because they won't loan to her if she recently bought a house. My grandma lives in a house they own, she has to show proof that my grandma's a tenant there (we don't charge her rent, she pays the bills of that house) and everything's a mess.

    Just last night the loan officer called my mom to say that they can lock in on the rate. Thirty seconds later (no, not an exaggeration! She literally called 30 seconds later) she said that the rate for the house went up! She left to call the underwriter and would "call right back". She never did for the rest of the night.

    I'm feeling like this whole thing is very suspicious and shady. I keep raising concerns to my parents that it feels like a huge scam and that they're bleeding money (my mom has to dip into her retirement funds to pay off another loan from a phone call today!) and my mom is like "this is so insane! Nobody will believe us!"

    So my question is, is my gut instinct right? Is this a scam or unethical? We should be in the new house already, and even the buyers are being told to scrape up money from wherever they can too to pay off who knows what! We're trying to leave a sucky neighborhood to go to a nicer one but as each day passes I'm wondering if we're going to be stuck here in this house. If it helps we're a family of color and live on the east coast, close to PA. (I'm sorry I'm very very weary of sharing my location with people). Is there any advice to help this process speed up? Any advice to stay sane and just not fall apart in tears? I'm super worried about my parents, especially my mom's health because she's stressed enough and I'm worried this will just make her sick.

    submitted by /u/DatNekomata
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    We want to move husband's parents into our apartment in multi-family we own and buy a single family

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 08:25 AM PST

    I know literally nothing about how any of this works and I think my husband is rushing into things because of a recent health scare and his parents living hours away in rural New Hampshire/his dad driving himself an hour to a hospital.

    Anyway...

    We own a 2 family home, mortgage with DCU, he is always current on his payments, overpays it some months, has a job at Oracle as a hardware engineer where he's been 10 years now and makes over $100k a year. We want to buy a new single family home in the range of $450-500k. Credit score is over 800.

    He contacted a different lender for a quote on a preapproval for the second home and she told him he should also refinance this one. They offered to shave $30k off the overall debt still owed on this homem so he agreed but when we emailed her after seeing a listing for a home we might be interested in making an offer on to ask the timeframe for a second loan's pre approval her response was:

    "You can make an offer on it but if we don't close on your refinance I'll have to cancel the refinance and you'll just do the purchase. The reason being is that your refinancing your home right now as a primary residence."

    (They still need to come here and do an appraisal on this house for the refinance).

    Neither one of us really know what we're doing. He bought this house from his grandmother in 2013 so the first loan process and purchase of our home wasn't exactly normal to give us any incite on how this works.

    Help me reddit!

    Also if the answer is to hire a real estate attorney or someone to answer these questions for us since we are this clueless, please let me know, and who we need to hire for this. Because we're willing to.

    submitted by /u/lorimeyersss
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    Question about "cost of sale" of house in a potential court foreclosure procedure

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 08:01 AM PST

    Long story short - my mother may eventually be sued in court for unpaid credit cards. Since she only collects social security they cannot garnish her wages. However they can place liens on her home. I've learned from a lawyer that they can escalate these liens into foreclosure sales but I'm trying to figure out if it'd be worth it for them. The lawyer said it wouldn't be but she couldn't give me the math because she didn't feel it was her strong suit. Her largest debt is around $5,200 for one creditor.

    How do they figure out the value of the home? Zillow has it at $250,000 and most other sites have it at $300,000. However it is worth much less in its condition.

    I have been advised that cost of sale alone would deter the creditor for pursuing the foreclosure of the home and they would stop at placing a lien on the home. Is it a percentage calculation? Like if it's 5-10% and they go by $250,000 then it wouldn't be worth it because it would be $12,500 to $25,000 in cost of sale, right? And they'd only be getting $5,200. Not to mention litigation and lawyers fees (from what I'm told)

    Or am I way off base?

    I just wanted to see how the math works so I came here. And yes, I know she should sell the home and downsize but she's old a refuses and it puts me in a tough spot.

    We've already examined all bankruptcy and all other options. They'd lose the home and that's the only thing they want to save. Thanks.

    submitted by /u/Dangerous-Handle-280
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    Realtor thinks my offer is too high...

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 08:00 AM PST

    How much weight do you place on your realtor's suggested offer amount? I've seen 18 houses in 2 months, submitted 4 offers, lost 3, and withdrew 1. My budget is $150,000. Very few houses are being listed right now in this price range and any good ones are pending within 2/3 days. He took me to see a house yesterday and I liked it and decided to submit an offer. The asking price is $139,000. I'm thinking of offering $143,000 with an escalation clause up to $148,000. He thinks I should cap it at $146,000. The monthly payments wouldn't be much different either way and I'm tired of looking so I want to submit a strong offer but I also don't want to overpay. The house needs some updates but it's nothing that would prevent me from being able to move in right away. He suggested that I lower my offer on a different house before due to appraisal concerns and I lost that one. I don't want to lose this one. I'm trying to decide if I should push towards the top of my budget or trust his judgement.

    submitted by /u/hideawaycrate
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    What does a real estate license get you besides the ability to broker a home sale?

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 07:47 AM PST

    My goal is to start investing and I'm thinking about going for a real estate license. I can broker some of my friend's deals but I don't intend on going full time in sales for a while.

    Is it smart to sit on the license? Any other benefits? For example, an upper hand in investing (REI), greater access to data, great access to markets, etc.

    The state is Florida if that helps

    submitted by /u/whitehousevirus
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    Anyone have remorse over the house that got away and now no new houses will satisfy?

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 03:55 AM PST

    Almost bought a condo in Del Mar for $545,000, I had the 20% down, but the closing costs and reserves required an extra 20,000 I did not have.

    Tried to ask my dad for a loan but he was giving me all sorts of grief and demanding I sell my stocks at short term capital gains rate and was not willing to do it so I did not do the deal.

    I have not seen any place in the months since I am interested in, and now looks like I will be stuck buying a $600,000+ townhouse in a marginal area of San Diego like Mira Mesa or Mission Valley.

    I had a luxurious condo in luxurious Del Mar, west of the I-5, within my grasp and was not quite able to swing it.

    https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/ca/del-mar/13665-ruette-le-parc-e/pid_37653539/

    This condo will now forever haunt my dreams.

    Now 3 months later the stock market has rallied and I have the extra cash no problem, but nothing at all looks good to me since.

    Just wondering if anyone else had the perfect house slip through their hands and now nothing else will do and you are filled with regret each passing day.

    submitted by /u/MedicalLabScientist
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    Closing soon, freezing temps and heat

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 07:32 AM PST

    We will be closing in about 2 weeks. Starting into next week the temps are going to be getting into the low 20s. The sellers arent in the house and live hours away. They did have a caretaker, not sure if they still do.

    I'm really worried about the heat being off and pipes freezing and bursting. I've brought this up to my realtor several times asking her if she knows if they have the furnace on now and I get "I'm not sure". Im going to call and tell tell her she needs to find out, because if pipes burst, I'm done.

    In contract it says "Property is to be maintained up until closing". I'd consider having the furnace on so pipes dont freeze maintaining the property, right?

    submitted by /u/BornOne4237
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    Pier and Beam question

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 07:02 AM PST

    Looking Into buying a Pier and beam home/cabin, except the piers aren't on concrete pillars, they're just wood going straight into the ground (edit: 7-8 feet into the ground imbedded in concrete with 1-3 feet of peat/silt at the top). How common is this, what kind of problems may arise, and how do they do in earthquakes compared to slab foundations (we recently had a 7.2 and the house did fine, so I'm not super worried).

    submitted by /u/PiperFM
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    California Property Tax Question

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 12:34 AM PST

    First-time buyer here. I'm scheduled for closing on 12/16/2020.

    On my loan closing disclosure, it lists the amount for 6 months of property taxes under "prepaid" and it also lists the amount for 6 months of property taxes under "initial escrow payment at closing." Is paying a year's worth of property taxes into escrow at closing to be expected because of my closing date?

    Also, the first installment property taxes have not yet been paid according to the County website, and will be delinquent if not paid by 12/10/2020. Should this be a concern for me?

    submitted by /u/PoopSuitsCA
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    Zillow Buyer Agent

    Posted: 02 Dec 2020 05:11 PM PST

    I am new to home buying when I found a home on Zillow, and I thought my husband and I should see. I put in a time and date I wanted to see the house. I received an email from "Michael," and we set up a date and time. There was no further exchange of communication, and I mistakenly thought he was a listing agent. We showed up at the house, took a very brief tour when he asked how many other places we'd seen. I told them this was our first house and we were seeing four other houses the following day. He became furious and said, "This was a complete waste of my time. Why are you working with two agents?" I began to profusely apologize when he said, "I'm a buyer's agent, not a tour guide." We quickly left, and I felt embarrassed. He then texted me, saying I was working with multiple agents, and I said, "This is the first house we've seen." I googled how tours are setup on Zillow, and it's with a buyer's agent. I know I missed this portion, but what if you don't want to work with the particular buyer agent who shows you the home? And, why doesn't the buyer presents you with more information on who they are and what agency they work with?

    submitted by /u/Personality_Opening
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    Buying a home out of state

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 05:04 AM PST

    Getting ready to buy a house in another state I'm wondering how to pay the earnest money and eventually how to fund the closing. I don't know how to move money like that, in the past I have just gotten a cashier check for downpayment but that was in person at a title office.

    It will be an investment property that I'll move to in 8-10 years if we end up liking it (we actually haven't seen it or even visited the town it's in-I know it sounds dumb but that's a whole other thread)

    submitted by /u/Chuckox50
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    I’m 19 and thinking of buying a house

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 05:02 AM PST

    Let me explain my situation real quick, I'm in community college right now and saved a lot of money while being here (10k), and I plan to transfer to a university for the remaining 2 years to finish my bachelors in software engineering. I don't have student loan debt yet, but I will soon and it'll eat up the 10k I saved like it's nothing in less than one year out of the two. I decided I'm not gonna give the university my money and take loans for the 10k regardless just so I can try to invest my money in something that could end up paying back and or pushing me forward in life, so I thought real estate. I don't plan to be a real estate person anytime soon(like getting a license and doing it as a job), I'm mainly focused on investing my 10k as a downpayment into a home and making my money back by flipping it, renting it and whatever. But I have no idea where to start or if it's even TRULY possible like the internet says, so I thought I'd start here on Reddit. I live in Texas btw, 30 minutes away from Dallas to be specific

    submitted by /u/Poetic_pineapple
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    I don't know what to do.

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 04:50 AM PST

    So, I've been looking since June to buy my first home. I've got an FHA loan for $185,000, with roughly $5,000 in seller credits. I fired my original mortgage broker and realtor for being sexist assholes. Prior to firing them I was working with $125,000, so I'm happy I made that change.

    Even with the newer amount, I'm still having trouble finding properties I like. There are 2 now within my range that I feel OK about and I could see myself living in. But I don't LOVE them. They are in nice cities, and the home size is right. But the lots are small, and one of the properties (the one in the better city) is next to an apartment building. The lots are both about 0.10 acres. The one next to the apartment building is laid out so that is has an actual backyard. The other one is laid out so that they have an impressive looking front yard, but nothing in the back.

    I like both cities, but I would prefer a house that has more yard. A small 3 bedroom ranch is fine with me, but I'd like to garden. I'm also now raising my granddaughter, and I'd like for her to have room to play. But in this market, I'm not sure if I should take what I've got in front of me, or if I should wait and miss out on what is here. What if this is as good as it gets for me? I do see some slow down in the market in my area, and prices are coming down, but if it swings up again in a couple of months then I might not find anything that I even like. I was thrilled when these 2 houses came on the market because it was finally something that would pass FHA and be in my budget.

    Any advice?

    submitted by /u/JaneAustinAstronaut
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    Oklahoma zoning question.

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 04:39 AM PST

    I plan on building a warehouse (10,000 sq ft metal building), for renting out for storage or possibly to marijuana growing company.

    My question is can this be done legally on residential land? Or should I try to rezone? Any advice? Thanks.

    submitted by /u/throwaway080102
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    Canadian here. Can someone explain WHY it’s so affordable to live in Florida?

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 04:09 AM PST

    Since I'll never be able to afford a decent house that's not falling apart in Ontario, I've started to casually browse properties in the US, just for fun, to compare what you can get there vs. what I can get here. I'm seeing 5 acre properties in Florida for 3 grand, 20 mins from the airport, close to Orlando. I'm seeing beautiful mansions for under 400k with huge properties and waterfront, close to Disney.

    Now I'm seriously considering just buying a property there and using it as a summer home or perhaps renting it out to vacationers.

    This all just seems too good to be true. Can someone eli5 what I could be missing?

    submitted by /u/DeeWhee
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    Looking into becoming an Inspector

    Posted: 02 Dec 2020 09:43 PM PST

    I have a friend who is a house inspector(independent) and he says he makes upwards of 200k a year! I really want to do something in Real Estate and I love getting my hands dirty. is this a common/realistic career choice to be making this much money?

    submitted by /u/101Bluesman101
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    Move existing house from one location to another with USDA loan?

    Posted: 02 Dec 2020 07:06 PM PST

    As the title says. I found some language on USDA's website that states:

    Eligible applicants may purchase, build, rehabilitate, improve or relocate a dwelling in an eligible rural area with 100% financing.

    I have been searching the internet for a few hours and can't seem to find anyone who has done this. I'm looking at getting a free (or very cheap) house from some developers I know and moving/rehabbing it on a new lot.

    Any mortgage brokers ever heard of anybody doing this with a USDA loan? I love the idea of saving a great house with good character, and would cost less than new construction. Would not be a huge house, less than 1300 sq feet or so.

    edit: to specify with USDA loan. I know that FHA and Homesense would be normal avenues for this but I want to move a house to a rural area, and like the no money down aspect of the program.

    submitted by /u/turbo_notturbo
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    land owner with investor ideas

    Posted: 03 Dec 2020 02:19 AM PST

    Own land in one state and subject to inherit more in due time. Broke as fuck chasing my degree and wish to develop, pay for flight certs, and a hangar and live without worry. Both estates are in remote areas . One outside LA 2 hrs (50acres) other in an up and coming mid west state . Is it possible to find 1%ers looking to develop bunker like communities in these places and still own most your estate? Or is this a pipe dream?

    submitted by /u/bush_dimension_94
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    Is it a right time to buy a house?

    Posted: 02 Dec 2020 09:29 PM PST

     I live in Seattle (WA). I'm considering to buy a house next year. 1. Is it good time to buy a house? 2. Can I buy a house and rent it to someone else, while I live in an apartment? ( loan interest < apt rent < house rent) I'm wondering if it will cause additional costs (e.g. tax). I know there is no absolute answer, but just want some opinions of you guys, real estate gurus. Thanks and have a nice & safe Christmas season! 
    submitted by /u/eastgul
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