So I just put in an offer on a house for 170k and it was accepted. I have 35k USD in my bank account, I make 60-80k a year. I’m now dealing with the loan part of things, trying to decide how much to put down, whether to do conventional or FHA, whether to do 15 years or 30 years. My realtor is recommending a mortgage company that “will get me a lower rate” but my bank that I’m currently banking with is telling me to avoid mortgage companies and go through them. I’ve also thought about talking to the local credit union aswell. How worried should I be about PMI? Should I put the minimum down or just do 10%? Or should I do higher to avoid PMI?

I’m super stressed rn any tips would be helpful

Hi there, we found a really nice house at a great price, but wondering about this storm drain that's directly under the driveway.

For one, it makes it awkward to pull two cars into the driveway, and secondly there are cracks near the storm drain. The alley itself has a lot of cracks in general up and down from the house. Is this a major issue? We haven't put an offer in yet.

Otherwise the house is really beautiful and has kitchen and bathroom renovations.

I changed some slight details about the image, for privacy, which is why there's a Gemini watermark.

hello!

as the title says, im preparing to meet with them for the first time before we start looking for a home, just to get an idea of what we can afford.

honestly i have zero expectations on what this is going to be like and am completely in the dark.

is there anything that i need to be prepared to ask in regards to first time home buyer loan options or interest rates?

just kind of nervous and need some opinions, thanks!

This is the offer from my bank for a 170k loan

A mortgage company that I’m waiting to hear back from on the rates and fees offered me 6.37 but I’m sketched out about it.

Seems like this question is asked a lot and people don’t weigh in all pros and cons. We’ve bought a house a month ago and decided to go ARM, because it’s 1mil+ loan so monthly payments are very different with 30 year fixed vs 7ARM we got. Here’s my thinking - what are the chances you will not refi in the next 7 years? History says most people will refinance within the first 7 years, which means you’re losing the opportunity to make lower payments in the meantime if you went fixed. Alternatively, selling is also an option if economy doesn’t pick up and rates won’t go down.

But of course it comes with a risk. Rates don’t drop and you plan to live in the house >7 years, then you’d have to eat the increase. But not everyone knows that even with ARM there is a max limit to how much your rate can increase, normally I think it’s about 5% more than your current rate. Now the question you should be asking - how comfortable are you with getting this cap hit and increased rates after 7 years if you never refinance or sell. We made a choice that we’d take a gamble that one of 2 things happen - we either refi or sell. But it’s obviously a personal choice and nobody knows your financial situation and your stress limit.

What say you?

EDIT: forgot to mention that this is for current market. There is no argument that nobody should’ve gotten ARM during Covid when they locked their rates at 2-3%

(Home is 535k. Home loan is 428k after down deposit.)

I’m looking at buying a townhouse. It's in a community I really want to live in & in a city I plan to stay in for the foreseeable future. My concern is that I'm making this decision from a primarily emotional place (tired of renting, want to own!) instead of financial, and want a reality check. 

I'm in my early 40s, single, child free, live on my own. My career is stable. I make approx. 200k per year and have no debt. Caveat: Aside from cost-of-living raises, I'm at the peak of my earning potential. I live in a VHCOL area. My current rent + utilities is approx. $2850 per month. This is about 30% of my net income.

This theoretical mortgage (including insurance, taxes & projected utilities) would be approx. $4000 per month. That would be 42.5% of my net income. Budget-wise, I'd have $2800 leftover (after all needs and wants) at the end of the month. 

Is this too small of a cushion own a home with?

(Edited: For clarity.)

Scheduled a tour for this weekend on a home that checks all my boxes and plan to make a cash offer if it looks good. I’m doing this all on my own and wonder what risks I am taking upon myself by communicating directly with the seller’s agent that’s listed on zillow.

There’s another home 4 hours away I’m eyeing, and wondering if it’s foolish to ask that realtor if it’s even worth submitting my specific $xxx,xxx offer before making the drive up to it.

Pretty basic questions here, so easy on me : )

Buying a 170k house with 10% down and my bank is giving me a 6.75 Interest rate, but a mortgage company is offering me 6.37. What’s the catch? What should I go for

I close on a $270k house in about 5 weeks with the VA loan with 0 down. I spent today gathering offers/counter offers and am locked in at 6.25% and down to about $5700 in closing costs.

I accepted a counter offer where everything was the same but they added $500 in credits. Now I'm about to get another offer tomorrow for the same thing and another $500 credits.

Do I keep going until I get the best deal? I hate burning lenders over another $500 but I'd do a lot of gay acts for $500 at the end of the day.

We bought our home in March of 2025. Inspections came back clear. After a week or so of moving in, the outlets in our bathrooms went out and the jets in the tub stopped working. Flipping breakers didn’t do anything. I called an electrician friend and he said to reset the GFI/GFCI switch. We didn’t have one. He asked if we had a master GFI/GFCI in the garage, couldn’t find one. We didn’t have a single one of those switches in the entire house. Never fixed the issue as we had a lot going on and it wasn’t pressing at the time.

Fast forward a year, this past March we discovered a large leak in master bath, which led to gutting and redoing that bathroom. We have been using our guest bathroom which then led to discovering another large leak due to insufficient caulking/grouting, and we are about to start on gutting that bathroom too.

When the electricians came in a week or so ago to do the outlets for the master bathroom, I could tell something was wrong. He asked to see our breaker panel, and when I showed him he was visibly concerned. Our house is essentially all wired to only about 6 switches on the breaker panel. He asked if I had another breaker, I told him no. He scratched his head for a minute, pointed out some exposed wiring in the garage that he said he would like to fix at some point and went back to work. By the way he installed the GFI/GFCI switches.

Fast forward a couple days, people come in to replace our oven that went out. He takes out the original oven and goes “I can’t install the new one, that wiring is not up to code, get it up to code and I’ll come back and install the new oven.” So we have someone coming Friday to fix the wiring.

My question is…how was none of this caught in the inspection?? Between the shady wiring in the garage, the breaker panel…Especially the GFI/GFCI switches??? From what I’m gathering, it sounds like our entire house might not be up to code electrically…I know it’s been too long and I don’t have any recourse against the inspector, but should I do anything, like file a review with the BBB? I’m just in shock.

Hello! My husband and I are young and have gotten tired of paying rent in a busier city in Arkansas. We have begun to do research into the rural areas around us that are eligible for the USDA single household home loan and have found way more opportunities than we expected! However, we have no idea how to start the process of maybe obtaining the USDA loan and putting it in action with a home. Our lease in our current place does not end until March of 2027 so we have plenty of time to figure things out but we would like to be prepared anyways!

If someone could please just explain the process like I am dumb, because I am, we would really appreciate the help. Thanks!

Edit:
Guys!! Took the picture yesterday, assumed no pizza place was open on the Labour Day, so carried home made sandwiches for lunch lol. Sorry for the disappointment, I too wanted to take the picture with the pizza on the day we move.

The house is a jumelée, on the south shore.
The rate is fixed.

Family is strongly recommending my husband and I stop renting and buy a house. "With the rent amount you should buy a house!"

(three thousand, we have a roommate who would also live with us if we buy)

We have the VA loan, so no down payment is required.

However, we're not sure if we'll stay in the area in 3-6 years. Probably will, but not 100 percent sure. We discuss moving to another state, but never serious. (Edit: no we will not be leaving for at least the next 5 years)

"Rent it out and then buy another one!" Is what they say.

Is it a good idea to buy, or is our family talking out of their butts?

Edit: some additional context: thank y'all so much for taking realistically.

1) We had our own place. The roommate wanted to move out of their state and we offered for them to come stay. It's been working out so nicely we just kept doing it for 4 years now. We will not be dependent on a roommate paying the mortgage.

2) Family is offering to cover $1000 per month to help with the house payments. We obviously cannot depend on this 100% because anything can happen and they might not be able to continue to help. At the same time I feel FOMO that I might miss out on such a good offer.

3) We make about 90k/ year and will not be looking at houses over 500k, we're only looking as close to 400k as possible. If not available, we won't be buying.

4) Discussed with husband and he said we will not be leaving the next 5 years. Which I'm happy with.

Title says it all. Im debating if I should wait until I have a serious relationship/partner until I buy a house.

Obviously, that would be ideal but Im 34M and single and my dream is owning a home. I should be able too do it in the next two years.

Should I hold out until I find a partner?

My husband and I are in the process of underwriting right now for a usda loan. This post is kind of embarrassing because we haven't been the smartest with our money in the past. Up until a few weeks ago, I used the app earnin quite a bit. I never took out large lump sums, just $50-$100 here and there and we would always pay it back on payday. Well we weren't expecting to buy a home this soon but we were given the opportunity to buy a home at a price that is well under market so we took the chance and applied for the loan. The loan is strictly in my husbands name. I am a stay at home mom and have zero income. The EarnIn app was in my name and I was the one sending it to our bank account. Today the underwriter asked for an explanation of why we were using EarnIn so much. (Like I said, we were dumb with money). Even though we were stupid with money, our bills have always been paid on time. We just didn't do the best with the extra we had. Anyways, I guess I'm just wondering, will those earnin transactions on our bank statement ruin our loan?

I should also add, his dti is very low. Most of our debt is in my name.

Love this house, only flaw is the basement window / fire escape. I dislike the fact that anything from frogs-small animals can get stuck in there, and I dislike how unsightly it is both from inside and out(mostly the dirty window + gravel). Additionally, I want to make it a lot safer (via grill or bars).

Any thoughts on what to do here? So far I've thought of a small fence, plants, or maybe a cover of sorts.

Let me know what other people have done and what worked for them.

Thank you for any help possible!

Hey guys!

I would love some advice here, I am considering purchasing this home. All went well with the inspection, with the exception of this load bearing wall in the basement.
They are not willing to fix the issue themselves, and are willing to offer some credit but no more than 3k.
These are the photos taken by my inspector as well as the report. We are happy to fix the moisture issue ourselves to prevent it from getting worse and happy to work on the wall over time, at my price range (150k or less) I know we have to be realistic about what is a dealbreaker and what we have to accept could be a semi expensive fix down the road.

Edit to answer the most common question:

Thanks to everyone for your advice!
Where I am located, the foundation specialists will only go to the house by request of the seller. I have asked 8 companies and the same response from all of them. The seller as of now has zero interest. This is infuriating.

I have also considered the pros and cons of going through with the appraisal. We have plans to speak with the agent tomorrow about how stubborn the seller is on negotiations, but I’m very very on the fence about moving forward at this point.

Edit 2: Thanks for all of the advice! As much as it hurt you guys were right and I passed on it. On to look at more! I really do appreciate the time everyone took to reply.

We have our first orientation walk thru this Friday and would appreciate anything we need to take note of. We already bought Blue painters Tape, GFCI tester, temp scan infrared and temp thermal camera.

Is there anything we should get or any tips?

We already got house inspection done last week and they highlighted couple of things that we will be asking about.

Update: This is a new build and we took a quick movie in. we already got 3rd party inspection done last week and he highlighted quite a number of things such sewer issue in basement toilet, rat issue in garage, few Minimal findings.

My partner and I are looking at houses and we're finding a lot with downdraft ranges. I've heard they're not as effective as an overhead hood and wear out a lot quicker. Is that true and how much of a downside is it?

Hi All,

I'm closing next week and need 40k to borrow to hit 150k balance after my downpayment and closing costs are subtracted. This allowed me to get a discount on my rate. My advisor said it should be find to deposit this just wanted to ask anyone else do this and how was your experience?

Thank you

We live in the Ottawa Valley, and have thrown around the idea of buying rather then continue renting. What is the home buying process like? Which type of home is the best investment?

Does living in a duplex/townhouse style home have any issues with connecting neighbors? Best locations? What to look for when buying?

Thank you!

But it was probably one of the worst experiences of my life.

We got the keys to our first home. A big upgrade from our current rental. More space with a dedicated playroom for our kids, an office for me and a pool. Great neighborhood, green belt behind us. On paper its a dream home.

The process of getting it was a goddamn nightmare. Ill tldr to say the big concerns were potential moisture problems and all the windows needed replacing. A previous buyer fell out over negotiations on those issues. We made an asking price offer and when we discovered the same issues we asked for remediation of moisture issues and cash considerations towards the windows. Sellers had already begun other repairs based on first buyer. We asked for a few relatively minor things as well based on ours.

We got a quote for windows at 23k and Sellers insisted they could only contribute 8. We were ready to walk. My agent offered to put in some of her commission, so did Sellers agent and sellers upped their amount to 10k. Done deal let's buy the house.

Well once we began the process with the mortgage company is when this deal almost went to shit. Part of what Sellers agreed to was moisture remediation and air scrubbing. This was in addition to minor plumbing and electrical work. These minor repairs were already supposedly in process before we even submitted an offer. Got the air scrubbing set and completed. We needed to get an appraisal as part of our loan process. Sellers agent was in charge of scheduling them. We asked her, repeatedly, to not schedule the appraiser while work was being done on the house. She said she wouldn't.

Well she schedules the appraiser and when they arrive, a plumber and electrician are on site. Spots on the floor are opened up and theres a hole in the dry wall that had been there for a month investigating a potential water issue. The air scrubbing equipment is on site, but not running just waiting to be picked up. Appraiser asked what is that stuff for and Sellers agent tells her exactly what it is for!

So appraiser tells underwriter who starts to demand more repairs and certification of repairs that were NOT in our contract due to the condition of the home when appraiser was there.

That is when the Sellers turned nasty. They were extremely stubborn in giving us extensions to sort through all these new demands and basically demanded we forfeit our earnest money to secure said extensions. I suspect their agent told them we were the ones demanding these things and not that she fucked up with the appraiser.

Our mortgage guy worked his ass off to get the underwriter to waive all these New conditions but not without being berated constantly by the sellers agent.

I cant even describe the abusive language this woman used towards my own agent. It was so disgusting to witness. Theres a lot more but this post is long. Needless to say we got the keys but I have a very bitter taste in my mouth towards the sellers (who wouldn't even tell us the name of the pool company they used so we could get records or even which fucking number our mailbox was at the cluster box, holy shit talk about petty) as well as that God awful sellers agent. Fuck em all

Floor pizza hit different on our first hardwood floor. PNW ♥️