Buy your first house(Privilege trigger?)

the first thing you need to do, is find out how much you are going to qualify for. i wouldnt do anything until that, becuase you may come to find that its not worth it yet, with the amount you have to work with.

and while its not always possible, having 20% to put down is a huge help.. if you dont. you will get charged pmi and that is just another added expense to your mortgage.

once you go to the bank to get pre approved find a good realtor, if they are wanting to sell you a house bad enough, they will find creative ways to finance, and hook you up will all the first time buyers programs.

I saved up 3% of the downpayment, and then pressured my bank into letting me put the other 2% needed (you can't get a mortgage here unless you have at least 5% downpayment) on a credit line, so a lot of it was borrowed money. I'd suggest going to a large bank for your mortgage, rather than to small institutions. I got a mortgage quote from a small institution that would have put our mortgage at a 7.5% rate, whereas RBC (big canadian bank) got me 4.9%.

Other sneaky things that help:

We didn't get a realtor. I found all the houses on my own, and contacted to set up viewings on my own. So in the end, we had about 10 realtors competing to try and be our realtor. Instead, we worked with the seller's realtor, which is called a dual realtor. (which is tricky, you gotta be firm and know exactly what's going on so you don't get messed over in the deal, since he's working for the seller as well).

I don't know how it is there, but here the realtor for the buyer gets paid a portion of the selling price, so all you really need is to fork up lawyer costs and things like that. We told the dual realtor that we had a couple of realtors saying that they'd cover all the lawyer costs, and the dual realtor wanted our portion of the selling price, so he offered to do the same. Lawyer costs ended up being around a grand, and the realtor covered it for us, which saved us a lot.

Also if you're looking around for a house, definitely get an inspection done. A few of the problems with the house (especially if it's a house that's been on the market for a while, and the sellers just want to get sold already) can be either fixed by the sellers or deducted off the price of the house. The sellers of our house, ended up fixing all the electrical problems and buying a brand new furnace for the house. The inspection probably saved us as well, since the inspector found a carbon monoxide leak in the house furnace as well as the garage furnace.

And be good at haggling, and let the house sit on the market for a while. The house we bought started selling @ 210,000 and when we bought it, we got it down to 170,000.

Wow. That was a lot of babbling. But if you do need any help or advice when it comes time to it, feel free to PM me and I'll help with what I can. I did everything for the house on my own, all the research, all the viewings, all the negotiation, finding the best deals for mortgage and inspection, working everything and everyone so that it benefited ME in the end.

i dont recommend using the sellers realtor... there interest will always lie with the seller. if you do, you MUST be firm like naivete said.

i haggeld my house as well, from 92000 to 79500, and dont forget about closing cost... they would of fun me almost 2 grand, but i raised my initial offer of 77500 up so that the seller would pay for the closing cost.

It's something that's beneficial only if you know exactly what's going on. A few times I could tell he was helping the seller more than he was helping me, and I called him on it, I told him exactly what I wanted done, and that all he had to do was get it done. You have to be really firm, really knowing of what's going on with it, and strong in what you want.

We ended up buying an old apartment conversion (condo now) that was in dire need of surface updates, but the construction was solid, and the electrical work and plumbing was up to code.

I live in a really bloody expensive suburb, but the good side is that it is hard to sell an ugly place somewhere where lots of people have enough money to buy exactly what they want in the first place. We were able to talk the seller down from $150,000 to 92,000. Because we only had a 5% downpayment, we would have ended up paying PMI, but a friend of our family told us about a government program in the US, where if you were the first person in your family to buy a home, you could apply for grant money (gift, no paying back) to cover part of your downpayment. My parents own a home, but my husband's have always rented. So he applied and we were able to raise our downpayment to 7%, which allowed us to do what's called a 20%/80% split mortgage. Basically, we borrowed 20% (actually 13% in our case) of the cost of the house based on it's future equity, and used that money as a downpayment on a conventional mortgage (at a much lower rate.) We then snowballed (or put all extra money we had) towards paying off the higher rate loan. It took us 2 years, but now we only owe on the lower rate mortgage, which we got at a fixed rate. (We got an adjustable rate loan on the higher rate mortgage, betting that we could pay it off before interest rates rose substantially. It allowed us to get a much lower rate, about 8%, than we would have on a fixed rate, high risk loan, about 12%)

All in all, it was worth it. We've invested some money in completely remodeling the place (all that's left is the bathroom) and now it is worth that 150,000 that originally the seller was asking for. Which is good for us, because we are going to borrow against the equity so I can go to college. And to top it off, we have basically a really nice 1000 squ ft apartment for about 900 a month with utilities in an area where a similar apartment would cost about 1200 a month just rent.

They don't, but the message boards on motleyfool.com basically have that advice.

They do, actually.

Home Buying for Dummies

Mortgages for Dummies

to get a loan or whatever, i dont think age matters but your credit does matter so make sure you have good credit! I dont and it SUCKS!

good is best, but none is better than bad. I went to get a cell phone, 500$ down payment on EACH LINE! I was like, i cant pay 1000 $ for a freakin cell phone!

I'm not sure you can qualify at 18 considering you have to have established credit.

Ours is a VA loan through our Credit Union. If you can go through a CU, good times. Better than a bank. We found our own house, no realtor. There was the onsite one to get us through the buying process. Because it's VA, no down payment, but we're getting molested in the end. After all the interest, if we take 30 years to pay off the mortgage, we'll have paid almost a half million dollars for what began as a 124,000 dollar loan.

I have awful credit too~ so instead of paying a $500 deposit I just got T Mobile prepaid cell phone. It's ok, but it sucks when I'm using it and it disconnects b/c I run out of minutes.

As for the home loan stuff~ there are alot of govt programs to help w/ down payments, closing costs and the actual loan~ We could not get any of those though b/c our home is considered agricultural [I don't even have any farm animals :roll: ]

Also, some states are doing a "test pilot" 40 year loan (instead of a 30 year loan). It is only through credit unions in certain states. You may want to see if your state is one of them b/c it could lower your monthly payment.

I used Realtor.com to find my home, but we still used a realtor~ I just told him which house we wanted. We should have done it w/out the realtor b/c he was pretty useless and turned out to be a total A'hole~ somebody needed to tell him that realtors are not supposed to grab a client's ass when her man goes out of town and slap the client in the face b/c she does not go for him~ Needless to say- he got FIRED! :twisted:

Just a quick note, but please don't use terms like that, that or "I got raped with..", etc, it can be offensive or triggering to women who have been molested to see it get thrown around so lightly.

I apologize. I, of course, meant it figuratively, but I undestand what you're saying. Admin feel free to edit that to getting robbed or something.