Once again....the mortgage saga continues.

[builder]

Ok....if you're gonna try to buy a house/condo/van down by the river...you really need to have all your shit together and have excellent credit. If you don't, you're going to end up extremely frustrated and irritable (like me).

I finally got an answer back today from my agent(s) about the interest rate, the downpayment, and the potential closing date.

While it's not a great interest rate, considering my debt to income ratio is fairly high (thank you Citibank, US Department of Education, and FirstUSA) I'm gonna get a fixed rate of 7.5%. Yes, that's high for the current times, but I've got some credit issues to work on and I want this condo bad enough to take it and suffer a refinance in a year and a half.

The downpayment (shady deals abound) will be nothing. I can't give you the details, but I won't have to pay but $325 above the $500 earnest money I have already paid. There's just got to be some verification of funds that don't exist. Yes, it is possible.

And the closing date. If there are no more hitches and the agent pulled the appropriate credit report (there are some things missing that I'm not going to mention until they do), I should be closing by February 28. That means on March 1, I will be a proud homowner. I can't wait.

On top of everything else going on this week with work and Topher, the mortgage financing has taken a back seat and will now be pushed full throttle to the front of the line.

And yes, there will be a party. :D

[LarryD]

im so glad that gina got us in perfect financial shape. she's a whiz on that stuff. our mortgage lender said that we came back with a 95% approval rating -- which she said she rarely ever sees.

[LLG]

In the overall scheme of things, 7.5 is not a bad rate. Get it if you can, and work on your credit, refinance in a year or two.

Good Luck!

[Guest]

I got fucked yesterday. We are building a new house (still in framing) and we refinanced our current house in Sept. We are pre-approved for the new house, but wanted to secure the loan and finance rate, so we told our broker to go ahead and secure the loan. Come to find out when we refinanced our current house in Sept. the new finance company wrote the old company a letter stating they would be buying out the loan. Well they bought it out 30 days after the next payment was due. Now the old company has tagged our credit with a 30 late payment. We have been paying on our current house for 4 years with NO late payments. Now our credit rating took a 80 point dive and we are having to contact our attorney to along with the previous lender and get the credit rating corrected. We were preapproved at 5.5 % fixed, now we have to prove the mistake before we can received the prime rate.

Needless to say FINANCE COMPANIES SUCK DICK!!!!!!!!!!!

[meatpile]

I'll never escrow again - I had a mortgage company accidentally double pay my taxes one year. Then, they saw there was a $4k balance on my escrow, so they started charging me DOUBLE on my monthly bill, saying I needed to 'catch up'.

In order to NOT fuck my credit up, I had to pay about $400 extra every month to the mortgage company to catch up. I spent several hours on the phone, and got NO HELP.

SIX months later, I called my mortgage broker. Fortunately, my mother is a realtor, and refers her a good bit of business. I basically let her know that if it didn't get fixed quick, she'd get no more. It still took a month and about 5 hours on the phone.

It was Washinton Mutual, btw. Fuck them. I now escrow my own fucking taxes and insurance. I should've done it then - it's the smart thing to do.

[Stargazer]

Originally posted by meatpile
I'll never escrow again - I had a mortgage company accidentally double pay my taxes one year. Then, they saw there was a $4k balance on my escrow, so they started charging me DOUBLE on my monthly bill, saying I needed to 'catch up'.

In order to NOT fuck my credit up, I had to pay about $400 extra every month to the mortgage company to catch up. I spent several hours on the phone, and got NO HELP.

SIX months later, I called my mortgage broker. Fortunately, my mother is a realtor, and refers her a good bit of business. I basically let her know that if it didn't get fixed quick, she'd get no more. It still took a month and about 5 hours on the phone.

It was Washinton Mutual, btw. Fuck them. I now escrow my own fucking taxes and insurance. I should've done it then - it's the smart thing to do.

That's for sure! Why let the morgage company collect the interest on that money?

[SincereNCinMD]

I'm on a FHA loan. I started with a 7.5% interest rate and after 2 refinances i'm down to 6.25% after only 1 1/2 year. I'll probably try again as soon as possible.

[Bunky]

Originally posted by meatpile
I basically let her know that if it didn't get fixed quick, she'd get no more.

it's amazing what hoops realtors and brokers start jumping thru when you hardline them and cut them to the quick.

[SilverSurfer]

Originally posted by meatpile


It was Washinton Mutual, btw. Fuck them. I now escrow my own fucking taxes and insurance. I should've done it then - it's the smart thing to do.

Yep. I used to work for those bastards. Actually, they bought us (Great Western) out after I had been there 13 years, and I got laid off. Best thing that ever happened to me. I hate those sons of bitches. :mad:

[Honeygirl]

I think this is one of the reasons why I rent. This mortgage stuff goes way over my head and I panic when I hear the terms "late payment fee" and a series of `00000's' and `you owe this --->'. I know - I'll grow out of it one day - but for now, renting keeps my blood pressure down to a reasonable level. :)

[Bunky]

the value in homoowneship is in the tax breaks you may receive. does something like that apply in new zealand?

[Honeygirl]

Originally posted by Bunky the value in homoowneship is in the tax breaks you may receive. does something like that apply in new zealand? I think it might do Bunky - but I'm crap at taxes too. :) We have a high rate of home ownership here though - it's everyone's dream to own their own home - well, everyone's except mine. Maybe one day I'll settle down and buy, but I kinda like the freedom that renting allows. :)

[VOR]

Originally posted by meatpile
I'll never escrow again - I had a mortgage company accidentally double pay my taxes one year. Then, they saw there was a $4k balance on my escrow, so they started charging me DOUBLE on my monthly bill, saying I needed to 'catch up'.

In order to NOT fuck my credit up, I had to pay about $400 extra every month to the mortgage company to catch up. I spent several hours on the phone, and got NO HELP.

SIX months later, I called my mortgage broker. Fortunately, my mother is a realtor, and refers her a good bit of business. I basically let her know that if it didn't get fixed quick, she'd get no more. It still took a month and about 5 hours on the phone.

It was Washinton Mutual, btw. Fuck them. I now escrow my own fucking taxes and insurance. I should've done it then - it's the smart thing to do.

The hurricane andrew house in miami we bought through savings of america, they had no escrow accounts and we had to take care of insurance and taxes ourselves. As it happens we closed the house in november and dade county taxes are due in november so we used to open a christmas club account at the credit union for an amount somewhat larger than the amount of the taxes and insurance. It worked great we got some intrest on the money and a check in november somewhat larger than our tax and insurance bills. But working 10 - 15 hours a day it would normally be too much grief to deal with those things normally.