Boy, taxes in Va are dirt cheap. I was a little iffy on #1 because it just looks so barren. Not much privacy outside but that garage sure is appealing (looks like its heated) and the house is nice. Water, sewer, and cable/internet seem good as far as I can tell. If I had to choose between the two just from the pictures and map i would lean toward #1. It would be nice to know something about the neighbor next door (a-hole or not a-hole) and what goes on in the neighborhood. Vroom vroom vrooooooom. Know what I mean? The agent doesn't want to see a lowball offer. They surely dont want less money. Too bad. If you decide you want it I'd go in stupid low and see what happens. You're in a unique position in that there isn't much market for high priced property in a tiny coal town. Pete
Honestly the real estate agents didn't seem to know their stuff very well. They more or less opened the houses up and showed them to us but didn't know a lot of details. I had to look them up myself. Anyway, I talked with the next door neighbor after I saw the house and they said house 1 isn't a very noisy place in terms of road noise or business or trains. They also said there weren't a lot of children living directly around the house so not a lot of screaming/etc noise. They seemed to like the area and said they have been there for 10+ years and never heard of robberies or theft issues. So it seems good? House 1 has city water/sewer, has access to cable internet, garage has heating and cooling and a bathroom (!!!). I saw a glass cutting shop a block away, looks like it won't be noisy, and a salvage place another block away that looks like they salvage trailers. They are the reason there are yucky looking trailers nearby. Other than that there is a train that goes through the town about 0.6 miles away from the house, but there's a big hill between the house and train tracks and neighbors said they can't hear it whenever it comes through town. There is a prison 5.5 miles away from house 1, there are 4 sex offenders in the town but none within several streets of the house. So I guess that's far enough away for reselling later on? I saw on the nearby houses that there are other places valued at or above the house 1 asking price. So its not the most expensive place, there seem to be nice places interspersed in cheaper places?
@Zapins, Buying a home is equal parts emotion, rational decision making, and luck. Just like getting married. When you find a place that you really like. Best you can do is examine the pros and cons, make a decision, and hope for the best. Sometimes it'll work out great. Other times your house will turn out to be an ornery, spiteful creature intent on draining your will to live.
Alright I put in an offer on House 1. Will see what they say within the next day or two. Very nerve wracking and exciting, but we will see
Haha. Yeah but $700 / mo payments isn't a bank buster with attending salary. Plus I might just sell in 2-3 years when I'm done with residency. And I get a tax break every year and my mother will move in with me and contribute some towards mortgage which should lower payments down so it isn't overbearing.
My first mortgage lesson. Bought a fire job for 13,200 (late seventies right before interest rates skyrocketed) at 6% interest. Rebuilt it, took longer than building new, then got divorced and sold it after exactly 24 monthly payments of $110 a month. Went to settlement with new owners and paid off the mortgage leaving me with exactly $20 of equity! Mortgages are totally front end loaded, with all the payment going to interest, with a tiny amount against principal. So mortgage lenders are always happy when you sell, letting them off the hook and keeping way more than the interest rate in profit, and the same with Refinancing. My advice to young people, get the longest mortgage you can at the lowest monthly payment, so you can be damn sure you can make the payments if life doesn't go the way you plan. Then pay twice that amount every month with half going to principle directly, which saves you an incredible amount of money in interest. I got a 30 year loan, refinanced twice and still paid it off in 15 years, no mortgage for the past 20 years. Young guy was bragging about how much his Merrill Lynch account was making. I showed him the effective interest earnings he could get by putting his ML $100K into his house mortgage in prepayment instead. He did it and got his 30 year mortgage down to five years, and the markets crashed two week later! Never even said thank you.
One of the first question I ask the lenders is, can I pay extra. Even with auto loans. Most require a minimum $100 extra and I would pay that religiously. My second home was a 30 year note, did a re-fi after 5 years to a 20 year note and had it paid off in 15 years. Back in the day, the banks would give you an amortization sheet and my favorite task was going to the back page and scratching off the payments.
Adding to loan advice... Make payments to mortgage every two weeks instead of monthly. Cuts something like 5 to 7 years off of mortgage. Easy to do if you get paid biweekly and set up auto-payment with your bank.
I call that the magic of the mystery payment. I did the same thing with my student loan except I paid it once a month. If it was due on the 30th, it got paid on the 28th.. Next month, I paid it on the 26th and so on. Loan due dates mean nothing to me. I took my 20yr 87k student loan from 20yrs down to 9yrs 10mos. NEVER EVER let that sucker run a full 30 days between paying. Only 2 things I believe in borrowing money for. HOMES AND EDUCATION! I will not take a note on anything else PERIOD! With cars being the biggest losers of them all! During the working years, having a home loan is the last saving grace and there is no hurry to speed pay a home loan. Until they do away with mortgage deductions, I'm keeping my home loan. (which they would love to do btw) Some of you "ahem" older farts will remember when you could deduct EVERYTHING! If it had interest on it, you could deduct it.... Ahhh the good old days, back when you could float a check for an entire week on someone else's money. What's better than money? OTHER PEOPLES MONEY!
I'm debt averse, especially for a place I live. My first home was a 4 year repayment and the current one looks like it will be about 7 years. Realistically I tend to get better returns on my money other places (not this year!), but I sleep better when my home is paid for.
Exactly. Paying biweekly is more or less equivalent to making one extra full payment a year. Totally, agree on the car deal. I generally pay for car in full and then keep it for about 10 years. Trick here is that you then have to save "car payment" money each month, so you can buy next car. There are a couple reasons paying up front saves money. First, no interest, of course. Second, dealers will often give you a break-even price if they believe that they can soak you on the loan rate. So, let them believe that you plan to take a loan when negotiating price. The challenge with this second part is that you have to determine what that REAL break-even price is. Given dealer hold backs, various incentives, and other schemes, that number is hard to come by these days. Consumer reports used to have a great car buying guide (cost extra) that listed all this info online. But they sold out to True Car. As far as I can ascertain, True Car prices are probably 10 percent or more too high. The prices that I paid for my most recent 2 cars fell off the low end of their chart. Of course, there are other confounding factors at play such as when you buy, if you buy a car they they already have on the lot, and how comfortable you are being a complete A-hole negotiator. I don't have a problem with it .
You're lucky, up here mortgage interest is only tax deductible on income properties and even then they've got ways of getting their tax revenue when you sell or convert the property to a non-rental or non-commercial use.
Yeah Rocco, it's a US IRS tax filing thing. Most places here also have a homestead exemption for local property taxes. For example, Mine takes of 25k of the assessed value and I pay property tax on that. Hey ZAP, BE SURE YOUR FILE FOR HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION WHEN YOU BUY with your local tax office. Your first year taxes will be included in your mortgage as it's probably already been paid by the seller for the year. If you are lucky, you'll buy from someone OVER 65 and get old lady taxes the first year. Be warned, your escrow numbers will be whacked for the first year or two. What this means is a BIG INCREASE in your second year taxes and likely will move your mortgage payment UP. Homestead exemption is NEVER automatic, you have to tell them this is your primary residence to get that exemption. Previous years taxes for the property in question should be posted on the cities website or with a quick phone call to the county appraisers office.
Not really true, Canada's sort of an outlier, there are a lot of other countries that also have mortgage interest deductibility, I know it's common in E.U. BTW, I looked up the homestead exemption in Virginia, it kind of sucks, it's $5000, ($10,000 for seniors 65+) plus $500 per dependent. From what I read, it wasn't entirely clear how their exemption would affect the annual property tax.
I'm getting a bit nervous about the approaching move in date. Looks like the listing agent is unreachable and I don't know if the appraisal has been completed or not. At least the conditional approval has been done and signed.
Call your bank. They will know if the appraisal has been done and if it appraised high enough for them. Dont count on a listing agent to do anything but be there when the money gets paid. Do you have your own buyers agent working with you? One costs you nothing and they get to split the commission with the selling agent. I had an asshole sellers agent that wouldnt work with me... He was holding out for more money on a bigger offer.. So I found a pit bull of a 5ft tall lady that grabbed him by the nutz and got me my house. My cost? NOT A DIME! Home buying is a roller coaster, heart, brain, wallet all rolled up in one experience. Not for the faint at heart. Sometimes you have to walk and other times you have to fight for what you want. Hang in there and never tell that listing agent what you have been pre approved for. F HIM! It's none of his business and you owe him NOTHING! His allegiance is to HIS client. You are nobody in this game unless he's representing both parties. (Not allowed in most states) Did I mention I have a real estate license too? I'm not kidding either. You show up with a buyers agent and watch that guy start doing his job!
So the electrician went out to inspect house and fix a few issues with the plugs and said the house is wired with 2 wires not 3, so there is no ground wire to any of the plugs. Apparently this is still to code and to rewire the house is expensive since walls will need to be removed to get to the plugs (which sounds a bit extreme since there's a crawl space under house that could be used to thread wires up). I don't know what the implications of that are. Is that actually safe and to code? Is this a major issue or a minor one I can ignore and continue to buy? Will gfi plugs still work as intended or do they need a ground to work? I'm guessing not having a ground might not be a fire hazard but may result in my devices not being able to project themselves if they short out or there's a surge in the power lines? Could i just use a power strip/surge protector instead or do these also require a ground to work?
