Mortgage Excitement and Terror

[hrj]

The appraiser is scheduled and today I got a big fat packet from the mortgage broker with all sorts of paperwork to review, sign, and return. So now I need to sit down (either metaphorically or, if we wait for next week, literally) with the parents and decide on a purchase price for the house. The bank is willing to lend me what I consider a frightening amount of money. More ruminations follow:

The "terror" part of the reaction is easily identifiable and easily dismissable. Once the house is entirely mine, there won't be anybody else there to bail things out if disaster strikes. This is, of course, the essence of being a grown up. So it may be understandable but it's just something to acknowledge and move on. On the financial end, I've got a good, stable job for a company that isn't going away and every expectation of continuing to improve my standing there.

Of course, there'd be even more financial confidence if I had a partner (not a business partner, a life partner) -- both for additional income and the unlikelihood of something ever happening to both jobs at once. I was comparing notes with a co-worker who's also currently doing the house-buying thing about the likelihood of being a homeowner making one more attractive to women. We concluded that if it did, it would be the wrong sort of women. I guess it's the whole "life stages" thing that makes me grumpy over being single. I've never really wanted to be single all my life, I've just never been so afraid of it that I was willing to make silly choices. Some day I'm going to write an essay on the topic of "Ten Lies That Coupled Friends Tell Single People" including the one about, "Just participate in activities that interest you and you'll meet compatible people." Maybe it works for people with a looser definition of "compatible", like "good buddies but not actually romantically interested in you" or "romantically interested in some fantasy they have pasted your face onto". Well, not sure how this veered off onto that topic.

Comments

[aastg.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't say anything you don't already know about romantic involvement, so I'll just segue on to the more solid ground of mortgage lending.

Don't let the bank lend everything they'll approve you for - a good place to start is figuring out what a reasonable mortgage payment amount would be in terms of your budget, then calculate a mortgage amount based on the rate they're giving you. Divide that by 80 (or whatever loan-to-value ratio you're borrowing on) then multiply by 100 to get the sales price.

Come to think of it, you probably knew that already, too.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Oh, not to worry, we haven't actually set the price yet. (Remember that I'm buying this from me-and-my-parents-as-partnership. We'll be sitting down to discuss details next week in Maine.) I gave the mortgage company a ballpark figure of $400,000 to work with, but that's just a starting point. One thing I'd like to do is use part of the mortgage money to pay off my student loan since: A) the mortgage interest is deductible while my student loan interest isn't ('cause I earn too much); B) the amount I currently pay on my student loan per month is about twice the difference in monthly payments for the same amount as part of the mortgage (largely because the student loan is for a shorter term); C) it would simplify my life. If I did that, then I'd only have to come up with about another $500 per month than I currently am, which I can swing fairly easily.

I'll e-mail you with the specific loan terms they're offering and you can tell me if they're out of line. (Based on my on-line research, they look pretty good.)

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

One of my very wise friends told me when I got my first mortgage that if you haven't been in tears at least once, it isn't a mortgage. I didn't believe it at the time, but she was right. One can hope the title and mortgage industries in your locale are less archaic and convoluted than the ones in Texas, and hire people with IQs larger than the number of fluid ounces in their nail polish bottles.

This was the same friend who also warned me of the Homeowners Law of Threes: Everything takes three times longer than you expect, it all costs three times as much as you plan for, and things break in threes. Regrettably, I've found that one to be true also.

I don't know anything useful about finding life partners, since I was astroundingly bad at picking people to date. I have a fantastic and delightful spouse, but that's only because my friends decided, at the end of another of my disastrous relationships, to find me someone better. They all networked together like a coven of yentas, and the next thing I knew it's 11 years later and I'm still with the wonderful person they fixed me up with.

[thread-walker.livejournal.com]

That's so romantic. Cheers for thoughtful and insightful friends.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, I skip the normally requisite mood-swings of house-hunting because I'm just buying out my parents' share of the house we bought together 20 years ago. Particularly given that I live in the greater SF Bay Area, I'm well aware of how lucky I am on that score! I'd never be able to afford this house on the regular market today. And so far it's all moving much faster than I expected. On the other hand, there are a number of appliances that were already here when we bought the place 20 years ago which may be due ... *knock wood*.

[cellio]

Mortgage companies are way too eager to lend you astonishing amounts of money. When Dani and I were house-shopping they kept offering to pre-qualify us for huge amounts and were astonished when we said "we only want you to approve us for $X" (an amount we considered reasonable). Why wouldn't we want as much as we could get? Um, because we're planning to be responsible about this?

I never grokked dating, and have only been in two long-term relationships. Both of them were people I'd known for years -- through shared interests -- and then we found that there was a stronger attraction. I don't know how one jump-starts this process.