Monday, June 11, 2012

Hopefully I Won't Have to Bore You Much Longer With House Updates...

But for this week, I will bore you a bit more.  Here's what we have been doing of late (which is mostly waiting):

  • The lender called and said he needed a paper from Social Security about hubby's monthly SS payments.  We thought we would be on the doorstep of the Social Security office this morning and be the first in line to get the document the lender needed.  We were SHOCKED that over a hundred people had the same idea and that the line wound around the building and out in the parking lot!  Fortunately since we only needed a simple print-out we ended up in the speed line and were done within a half hour.
  • We were happy that the lender called and said that the bank that owns the house will accept the lower appraised value price on the house.  So instead of $125,000 for the house we will get it for $119,500 (and this reduces our payments by $30).  We also locked in our interest rate a while back and it is 3.75%--I've never in my life seen an interest rate that low!  The house will be on a 30 year term but there is no prepayment penalty so we will try to pay it off within eight to ten years.
  • We are supposed to sign the closing documents on Thursday and then will get the keys about 48 hours later (because of the weekend that means we should get the keys on Monday or Tuesday).
  • We have to bring cash (actually a bank transfer) to closing which is something we have never had to do. While most of the closing costs are taken care of (the VA pays a lot of closing costs for veteran's home loans) and it is a $0 down loan, there are still some closing costs that weren't covered so we will need to pay around $1000 at closing.  We have never had to do this before because usually the seller has paid all of the closing costs but the lender said that with bank-owned homes, they don't do this. Bummer...I could have used that money for something better, like furniture.
  • We are so ready to move!  It feels like we have been in limbo for ages so I will be really happy when everything gets done and we get moved!
Here are our lessons learned so far:
  • Keep all of your important documents scanned and saved on your computer.  I have most all of the documents we need for the home loan stored this way and it is really useful when the lender calls and says "can you send me X document."  With the documents already saved I don't have to hunt through paper files for them.  Unfortunately, since we have been traveling, the particular paper needed today was lost in the shuffle before I had a chance to scan it.
  • When you are bidding on a repo/short sale, bid a bit high.  I heard this from another guy who successfully bought a house here.  For the first 13 offers, we bid at a price we thought was reasonable for the property.  On this house, we bid $6000 over the asking price and we thought it was high but that made the bank accept our offer over all of the other offers and in the end, the bank ended up accepting the appraised price so it worked out well for us.
  • Interest rates are freakishly low these days.  That makes this a good time to buy a house and/or a good time to refinance your current house loan to a much lower rate.
  • Weekends and holidays can throw a wrench into your plans because everything is done on a count of "business days" not on 'all days' so ten business days can mean up to 15 regular days.
  • Put aside money for closing costs.  Even if the seller will pay most or all of the closing costs, there are always extra things that come up and need paid for (the home inspection, appraisal, smoke alarms, and additional closing costs so far for us).

1 comment:

  1. That's so awesome that the bank agreed and that you're getting the house for LESS!! And thanks for sharing your lessons learned!

    ReplyDelete