Vdubchaos:
Thank you for delivering another voice of caution and explaining yourself much better than I did.
Thanks
Vdubchaos:
Thank you for delivering another voice of caution and explaining yourself much better than I did.
you prolly make 2-3x as much as me atleast.
I'm not 6 figures if that's what you're thinking... it's actually quite sad what I make after being here 12 years. But I just read the national avg was $40k annual salary per person... $60-$80k for a house is sweet any way you slice it.
I totally get the making sure your ready, I know if I wait 2-3 years I could easily put down 20%, but also know that I will have to by a house basically as close as I can find to what I want and ready to go. if I buy now I can look at the house as a project, buy cheap and work on it over the next 2-3 years. both would have the same out come. 60-70k house that has had 20-30k of work done on it (or less than that since I did alot my self or enlisted contractor reletives to save money over what market rate is) or buy a 120k house that is not what I want but is close enough and not much work is needed to make it a nice home. the former sounds more attractive to me.
oh I agree I know i'm lucky living near a big city where there are jobs, but there is plenty of nice country homes that don't have insane association costs or property taxes and are fairly low in price. if I wanted to live in town in a nice neighbor hood I prolly would spend 150-200k getting what I want/need. Still need to do some school research but I think I have a couple areas highlighted that get me into the good schools while being on the outskirts enough to be cheap still.
seems to me the smart money is putting the least amount of money down on the house the bank will allow you too. say I got 16k to put down on my 80k house. wouldn't it be better to put 10k of that into some kinda of investment that I still have acess to in the even of an emergency? a House really isn't an investment atleast in the shortterm anymore the way I see it, not unless the housing market changes drastically soon.
now another question say I find a solid house that needs 20k in mechanical, and general updates to work, how hard is it to say buy a 60k house and include the 20k in mechanical and nessary upgardes in the morgage?
If the FHA loan interests you look into the FHA 203k loan. It does exactly what your looking at. It provides money to rehab the property. You don't just get the money though, you have to use a contractor so no getting friends or family to do the work for cheap.
I bought a house earlier this year using FHA, I actually only put $100 down. It was a deal they were running because it was an FHA foreclosure. I could have put more down but the house was only $58k and the PMI on it was close to negligible. I chose to keep the money in the bank. Got 15 years at 3.5%.
well friends and family would be contractors and i'm sure I could work some loophole where they charge me full rate but then kick back a House Warming "gift" so I have some cash for DIY work.
If the FHA loan interests you look into the FHA 203k loan. It does exactly what your looking at. It provides money to rehab the property. You don't just get the money though, you have to use a contractor so no getting friends or family to do the work for cheap.
I bought a house earlier this year using FHA, I actually only put $100 down. It was a deal they were running because it was an FHA foreclosure. I could have put more down but the house was only $58k and the PMI on it was close to negligible. I chose to keep the money in the bank. Got 15 years at 3.5%.