Taking the homeownership plungeFollow

Cooooooool. In that case, big congratulations!

Got news this morning myself,20 days till we close on the old house and buy the new house.

Johnny that's so exciting. Hooray!

Congrats Yan, closing in on my first year of owning a house. So far we have a new door that is halfway finished, a broken lawn mower with grass reaching alarming heights, and a front deck yet to be started.

one of the first houses we looked at when buying had the wood paneling and an orange shag carpet downstairs. The rest of the house was out of the 50's. It was cheap and we would have gone for it, expecting a little bit of elbow grease, until we learened there was asbestos in the walls.


By the way, anyone looking for a house up in Ma? I have a beauty waiting just for you =)

I'd give you five of my American dollars for it, but it would be taken away when the taxes came due anyway!

Nexa

Actually right now is a very good time to buy. Interest rates have only risen slightly, which the media has made a big deal of. This is scaring enough potential buyers that it's creating more of a buyer's market. The rates are still quite good.

By the way, just because someone is approved for a three hundred thousand dollar (for example) mortgage doesn't mean the person should be eager to spend that much. Foreclosure rates are at a record high right now. Know ahead of time how much you want your monthly payment to be and work from there.

Edited, Jun 13th 2006 at 12:13am EST by Yanari

QFT.

The bank will sell you a house with an X/month payment when you only make X+(X*.3)/month (before taxes). If I had taken the loan the bank offered, I'd be eating dog-food dinners, and living in a nicer, bigger, and very furniture-less house.

The houses and markets for them in SC and NC is great for people moving from higher priced areas. My cousins on the West Coast sold a house smaller than mine for nearly 4 times the price, paid off the loan (1/2 the price) and then bought a house nearly three times the size of mine on this coast. Wonderful gains for them.

There are 300,000 new homes... new homes... either on the market in Charleston or projected to be sold or built by 2007. My wife just got into real-estate. Prices are still rising. I'm hoping that pretty soon it gets like shooting fish in barrel.

Looking at this post, it appears like 300,000 is a great number, and it seems like it should be 30,000... 300,000 homes would mean between 300,000 more people to 1.2million more people. I swear I read that on a newspaper, but it just doesn't seem right.

Edited, Jun 13th 2006 at 9:19am EST by AngryUndead

It's partly that, and partly due to the insane appreciation rates of over the past 5+ years that simply couldn't continue. Houses were becomming overvalued (which is a lot of the reason we are going to be living 45 miles outside of the city). I think we're going through a normalizing process now and this is going to negatively impact some people who purchased in hot areas within the last 5 years.

This is something to look into when you're house shopping because it can be dramatically different from area to area. Make sure you buy a house in an area where house values are still appreciating and not stagnant or depreciating. Your realtor can provide you with that information.

Gawd, I'm such a mortge banker it's pathetic.

QFT

Where we live now, it has become "the" place to live, even though it is 60 minutes away from Boston (except when driving in a Nor'Easter downpour like we did) because of its convenience to the highways while still holding onto that small village feel. However, contractors have gone crazy over the past couple of years building it up a little too quickly, which is now unfortunately driving our prices down. Plus as you mentioned with the house market finally stabalizing, it can make for a slow sellers market.

Fortunatley for us, where we plan on moving to is one of the fastest growing areas for families and businesses on the east coast. I hope to buy a house and sell it in the next couple of years with a profit, even with the average market falling. NC's market is hot right now and from the way Im seeing more new houses being built and sold within a couple of weeks of being on the market in the surrounding towns, I think its going to continue for awhile.