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.