You know me too well. I'm actually not as nuts as I seem...I swear.

 

i believe you

 

you think those houses are pricey?! try living in the seattle area ... ******* almost as expensive as where 13bace is coming from. Soooo over priced its not even funny! Try paying over 1k a month for a studio apartment. Now imagine a house

 

I guess it's just an incentive to work harder and make more money.

 

bergen county has like the highest rates in the country. that is crazy. some houses arund me are going for 400,000 and it has like 3 bath 2 bed and needs work.



but i say do it. if prices just keep going up u can end up making a profit off of it.

 

Has anyone here bought some land and built a house on it?

 

Twisteds school of real estate:



#1



Run your credit report months before you plan on buying. If you have bad stuff on your credit history you will want to have them taken off. You want to have a FICO beacon credit score of over 680 to be in the prime lending group. That may not mean much to you now but you should know it by heart before you buy a house. It may mean the difference between a percentage point or two... If that does not sound like a big deal check the math:



100,000.00 at 6% interest and 30 year mortgage = @599 a month

100,000.00 at 7% interest and 30 year mortgage = @665 a month

100,000.00 at 8% interest and 30 year mortgage = @733 a month



The difference between two % points and 30 year loan is 48,000+ dollars!



So it is definitely worth having your ducks in a row for a few months before you get serious about buying if it could save you 50K over the life of your loan. Even consider paying a credit consulting company 400 bones to clean up your credit for you. Most have guarantees and besides I cannot emphasize this enough 400 now is better than 50K later.





#2



PPL brag about talking the seller down 10k or more but sometimes it's not beneficial. It just depends on what you want out of the deal. A house I was looking at this summer needed 3k worth of appliances and 3k for association fees (gated lake front community) and closing costs and taxes. See sometimes your mortgage officer will not tell you about that but you don't have to come out of pocket for closing expenses at all if you play your cards right. So with 6k worth of expenses I placed a bid that was only 5k under their asking price. They accepted my 1st bid and BOOM we put a contract on the house. The sweatest part of it all is the fact that the closing cost for me was $238! Subsequently the house failed VA's **** inspections but hey it was a great earning experience. The whole point of that was. Don't get too greedy and try to cut 10k off the top immediately. Talk to your mortgage officer and get savvy. Find out how much you can get the seller to come out of pocket for closing costs (lending regulations vary state by state) on top of that, contract for something else while you are playing with someone elses money. Want a pool? Let the seller pay for that too.





#3



Buying a house is the greatest tax break ever. If you buy a house you will have the FATTEST federal return you ever thought about. All of your mortgage interest is tax deductable. And your first year is almost all interest very little principle. So BAM at the end of the 1st year you can get nearly all of what you paid for the year on the house. It gradually gets less becasue you get more into the principle every year but still you get your interest back 100%!



#4



Renting is just flushing money down the drain. Zero equity, zero tax deductions. You are paying for someone elses kids to go to college. Or your financing the old bastards (who cut you off in traffic and drove 30) retirement. Homes and the real estate they sit on are the best investments to be made.



Good luck man, I hope this helps

 

thanks twisted, that makes loads of sense...



id just add this for #5



also test drive the homes driveway and make sure the car doesnt scrape.

 

Twstdmtl- good advice!

 

True



Can't be scraping the sevens now can we?