(English) 3 Questions You Must Answer When Buying a Home
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I wish we had the luxury of buying now. We bought six years ago, and we’re the ones who lost our shirts. Both my husband and I had solid good-paying jobs, we carefully purchased (didn’t purchase a house too big, didn’t get a ridiculous mortgage we couldn’t afford), but when we both lost our jobs and the value of that home crashed, we were screwed. We’re going through a short sale now, so we won’t have the luxury of purchasing another home for another ten years or so. : / Bummer. We’re going to be renting, and perhaps it will be a relief to have maintenance taken care of (everyone loves the hundreds of dollars to repair a furnace, usually right around Christmastime, right?). There are SO many aspects to home-ownership that a lot of young people don’t realize. They budget for the mortgage payment alone and don’t think about taxes, maintenance, insurance, flood insurance (we live at the coast), keeping an ‘emergency fund’ in case that furnace, or dishwasher, or hot water heater, or garage door opener, goes kaput and YOU have to fix it. Home ownership is a BIG deal and while we were financially good for it six years ago, unfortunately, until my husband begins his new job in a couple of months, we’re not now. Like I said, I’m OK with renting for a few years…it will be a relief, honestly.
Melissa, thank you for sharing your experience with us and I’m sorry that you’re going through this. It is important as Realtors to educate our clients on the possibilities and esp having an emergency fund on those super rainy days. Your post is a great reminder to do so.
Number 3 is the only LEGIT question on the list. First of all you are asking or quoting “industry experts?” These “experts” are the people that drove us here to begin with.
If you want to buy a home, buy a home. Are you going to wait for the market to bottom out? It bottoms out daily, and all over the country. It is a buyers market-period. Interest rates are at a historic low, there is a flood of inventory that is decreasing (good for seller, bad for buyer) so you already have been give an obvious clue. It’s real simple, however some agents like to make it appear to be very technical and/or requiring analytics.
Hypothetically, If I were to offer you a home to purchase today for $450k that was last purchased for $500k 4 or 5 years ago (which is unfortunately common in the Naperville,IL market) and you received a 4-4.25% interest rate (vs. the 7% the current owner is holding). BTW, that equates to almost an $800 difference per month in interest alone, and you don’t want to look at the amortization schedule
How much are you willing to gamble