I figured out why the housing market is shit....

[InfinitusEquitas]

@Jerry -

Grix, and Sneaton kind of beat me to it. The problem is, in the town where I live for example, you simply will not find any house for under $1,000,000.

Maybe something run down for a few hundred thousand less, but not by much. My best friends parent's put theirs up for sale, about four blocks from my apartment (10 minute walk), and they want 1.2 for it.

Even after the house is paid off... and if it's in good shape, so you don't have to pay for repairs/maintenance all the time, you still have to maintain the property... meaning at the very least mowing the lawn, taking care of the trees, leaves, etc,.

I can get past all that. The down payment, the ridiculous mortgage, the maintenance.

What I absolutely can't get past, are the property taxes.

My friend got a small luxury condo, when the real estate market tanked here.

He got it for what was at the time, an amazing price.

Not it's actually worth a little less. (When I say a little, I mean about ~50k.)

Here's the kicker. Maintenance fees for the building, are ~$900 a month. Property taxes are ~4k, quarterly. Actually probably a bit higher now.

So I guess maybe, if you live out where property taxes are low, and property is not that expensive to begin with, ownership makes sense. It's incompatible with where I want to live with though.

 

[Mohrenberg]

@Jerry -

Grix, and Sneaton kind of beat me to it. The problem is, in the town where I live for example, you simply will not find any house for under $1,000,000.

Maybe something run down for a few hundred thousand less, but not by much. My best friends parent's put theirs up for sale, about four blocks from my apartment (10 minute walk), and they want 1.2 for it.

Even after the house is paid off... and if it's in good shape, so you don't have to pay for repairs/maintenance all the time, you still have to maintain the property... meaning at the very least mowing the lawn, taking care of the trees, leaves, etc,.

I can get past all that. The down payment, the ridiculous mortgage, the maintenance.

What I absolutely can't get past, are the property taxes.

My friend got a small luxury condo, when the real estate market tanked here.

He got it for what was at the time, an amazing price.

Not it's actually worth a little less. (When I say a little, I mean about ~50k.)

Here's the kicker. Maintenance fees for the building, are ~$900 a month. Property taxes are ~4k, quarterly. Actually probably a bit higher now.

So I guess maybe, if you live out where property taxes are low, and property is not that expensive to begin with, ownership makes sense. It's incompatible with where I want to live with though.

Property taxes are nothing like that here. Maybe a few hundred dollars for the year, and it's included into your mortgage that you pay monthly.
as far as maintenance, It would be a brand new house. Now much maintenance to do, other than keeping it looking nice.

I never understood the allure of living in big cities. I guess if everyone had the same feelings as i, those houses would be worth about 50,000 instead of 300,000.

The only thing that interests me in the city are STEMI & stroke centers. Hopefully I won't have any need for them for a few more decades. Even then, it's just a 20 minute helicopter ride away.




My wife and I had an idea. I'm gonna have to call the lender to ask though.
When using land or a house as equity towards the 15% down on the construction loan, do they put a lein against the equity?
I mean when it converts from a construction loan to a permanent loan.

My wife's mother has 5 acres and a house she is trying to sell.
We thought of having her sign it over to us, then using that as the down payment. Get our house and land and everything done, and once it's converted over to a permanent loan we can sign it back over to her mother.

 

[sneaton]

it wont hurt to try....banks are money hungry now so the more cold cash the better....



about the NYC/big city homes....people dont realize that >$100,000 salery is very common there, so that helps balance the high cost of living some...employers know what they have to pay so people can live comfortably.....finding rent controlled apts seems like the way to go though

 

[Deleted member 22482]

Same here.. My dad wanted to buy a house for $300.000 (equivalent) and doesn't have the best job, he's just a taxi driver and he is single, but still he manages to pay the rent for the house at $1.500 and have some money over after all the expenses and yet the bank denied the loan even though the total costs for the loan would be $1.100 per month..

And in Sweden you are only allowed to loan up to 85% of the house (unless you take another loan for the other 15% with a higher interest rate) and when there is a conversion from rent to being able to buy, you are always offered a price at 80% of the houses real value, so you are actually allowed to loan for the whole amount.. And still, they denied him. He was just looking for a way to earn some money before his retirement (in 8 years) but well well, life is tough.

 

[Mohrenberg]

I have a friend who does general contracting. He was talking about getting a construction loan himself, and buying the house and land and doing all the work, and then selling the finished house to us. Then we'd just apply for a normal home loan to buy it from him.

Not sure how that's gonna work out. We've started saving money though. Once we get the 15,000 we'll see if the house is still for sale.

With all the extra days i'm workign this month, we should have close to 6 or 7 thousand saved by the end of august.

 

[Meatball]

Keep on saving up Moh! Large down payments speak volumes over good credit any day!