No no you do the windows you don't know how to open here I show you no come back

[prog]

There's a cleaning lady in my house, at the invitation of my landlady. After a few moments of working around her and even helping a little with my own messes, like taking out the trash, it seemed wisest to just withdraw into my room and her do what she likes. I kind of hope she gives my room a pass; it's been a sty since I stopped using it as a workspace two years ago. It's been a little better lately but I am not proud of it yet.

The rough part is that my landlady is there with her, ordering her around. Neither are native English speakers but they're using it as a lingua franca, which I think is always kinda cool to see, but my landlady adds the extra stumbling block of being batty and cranky, so they're both getting frustrated with each other. Cleanlady is a consummate pro with her own system, and landlady is at her heels telling her that it's all out of order. Gah. I didn't want to be witness to that either.

---

On the subject of housing: can any of y'all give me an idea of what I should have in the bank in order to obtain, let us say, a two-bedroom condo in the vicinity of my current location? Is doing this sort of thing as simple as paying a mortgage every month - just like I do now with rent - after dropping a single phat down payment? I don't know, I'm asking.

I passed the magic barrier not too long ago of wondering why I'd ever want to own property to wondering how one goes about this.

Comments

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I'd recommend looking at the home ownership page of Motley Fool to get a good overview of what you can expect in terms of buying your first home.

zillow.com has information on prices of homes recently sold in your neighborhood, which would give you a sense of of prices. How much you can expect to pay depends on a lot of factors, such as your credit history, how much interest you feel comfortable paying, etc. If you've got really good credit & are OK paying a higher mortgage, you can get by with virtually nothing down. Generally, most places will want about a 10% down payment, expect to pay another 1-2% in fees. If you can pay 20%, it's a good thing, because then you can skip mortgage insurance (which covers the mortgagor if you default on the loan, and so serves no good purpose for you), and escrow payments - though some people prefer them. If you own less than 20% of your home, you have to prepay taxes & insurance with your mortgage payments. I prefer to hold onto that money (or have it some place where it pays me interest) until the payments are actually due.

I'm happy to talk to you about this real time sometime; I'm not the most knowledgeable person, but I do know enough to know there aren't many generalizations you can make without knowing a lot of details about the person buying.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I didn't think to check with the Fool. Their pages on banking and investment fundamentals helped me tremendously in the past. Thanks!

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Zillow has a reputation for being less than accurate in its guesses, so take stuff with a large (20%? 30%?) grain of salt. The good news is that with prices dropping it may finally be *overestimating* prices.

[keimel.livejournal.com]

No specifics on prices, but I like a lot of what I saw in the Motley Fool article. But I would add to watch out for the special loans that are still floating around. Interest only, reverse, whatever - they're crap. If you can get a 15 fixed at a nice rate and afford it, do it. And once you get your mortgage, DO NOT get a second one. If you can't afford the new kitchen, don't finance one. Save the money.

But if I had it to do over again, I would have bought smaller, done a 15 instead of a 30 and never taken the second mortgage out.

I would also say it helps one hell of a lot to have as few debts going INTO a house as possible. So kill the credit cards, the personal loans and anything else you might have out there before you go for hte mortgage. If you have recently HAD credit cards, don't believe anyone that tells you 'you have to have credit cards or car payments to get a mortgage!!!' - it's bullshit (though I haven't seen Penn and Teller talking about it that way yet).

Good luck.

[jazzfish]

If you have recently HAD credit cards, don't believe anyone that tells you 'you have to have credit cards or car payments to get a mortgage!!!' - it's bullshit

That's actually very relieving to hear. I was kinda worried about having paid off my car with my bonus, since that meant it was no longer providing my credit report with good karma.

The debt thing

[prog.livejournal.com]

This doesn't sound like something I can do with my current break-even income, but that can change whenever I decide to change it. Probably not this year. Maybe next year.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I got a 30 year mortgage that wasn't fixed because that's what I could afford, but there's nothing keeping you from paying extra towards the capital and paying it off sooner. I refinanced a decade later into a 15, and in the end it looks like I'll be out of debt in under 20 years.

If you get a condo, there's not only the mortgage payment (usually with escrow money to cover the taxes, and this isn't included in any mortgage calculator), but the monthly condo fee as well. Depending on how the association works, you may pay monthly or less frequently, but it's also a noticeable expense. In my association, whenever there's not enough money for a major repair, there's a special assessment, so it's good to have a cushion. (Not that this happens frequently, but it does happen.)

[queue.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, you are required to have private mortgage insurance (PMI) with a mortgage until you have 20% equity in the house/condo. This means that, if you can afford to put 20% down, you aren't going to be paying PMI. And if I remember correctly, PMI was not an insignificant portion of the mortgage (it was over $100 per month, and possibly closer to $200 per month for my mortgage). According to Wikipedia, the biggest determiner of the cost of your PMI is your credit score, which makes sense because this is insurance for the mortgage company in case you default on your mortgage.

[shibusashirazu.livejournal.com]

The condo fees, as mentioned above, are something to consider as well. They can be variable -- I haven't been in my place long enough to experience that joy -- and substantial. My fees work out to ~1/7th of my mortgage, which although I knew it going in, still feels like a lot.