SidViscous

No worries Mark.

I got 6.25 but I'm doing FHA so it may not reflect what you get (I'm higher).

For those of you out there there is a pretty cool program called Nedemhier (sp?) whereby You get a no money down, with being penalized with a no money down mortgage rate.

Devia

I was told you needed a door on the room, even if it was to the rest of the house. No external door was needed.

- Julie

SidViscous

As I said, if store samples (I don't have walk in customers) then you automatically qualify,

Alex Cook

Nice place! If they were that price over here I wouldn't pi$$ around renting

(2 bed apt with parking here ~ $350000-$400000)

Mr. Avionics

Congrats on the new place Sid,
Always good to see someone moving up in life. I to have just bought a house, 2 months ago, and it even came with a garage, wow, havent had one of those in years, living on the boat and all. Got a place on a canal here in Ft. Lauderdale so got the boat behind the house, nice but boy what a project it was to find a place in my price range that wast a total piece of crap. Property values for water-front ocean access property here is going up like 30 percent a year! From the time I started looking till found this place places that were asking 300k had gone up to as much as 429k, in 6 months! Also envious of your taxes, here the new tax rate is based on 2 percent of the buying price! So those who have had their places for many years don't pay much, but the poor slob, me, who buys it gets screwed right from the git go. Oh well, it's an investment for retirement.

Again congrats and have fun.
Bill

ELLSSUU

Very nice Sid. Home ownership is a great step.
I see rates have gone up. I got lucky with my re-finanace when I locked in a 4.25%.

Travis - sflraver

I purchased my first house last October (2002). It came out around 138000 after closing and all. I am in the same situation that Bill up there is in. Prices down here have gone up like you wouldn't believe. I am just glad I bought when I did.
I have an end unit / town house. The same end unit as mine a few buildings down just went for 175000. If I would have waited until this year to buy I would be slumn' it right now.
Good luck with the new house. Its a great feeling when you own.. (underlying own3d joke)

dgz924s

I considered a TH until I saw the association fees on top of mortgage payment. Is this an issue for you? Grats!! D

thf944

tell me about it. our house will be done first week of march. hopefully the rates don't go up. we should be doing the financing soon though. can't wait, finally a garage! then i can buy a porsche again too!

congrats sid!

trebor_quitman

Congrats! I just closed and moved into my first home last night. I still have to organize the mess and still have some odd tidbits from the old place to move. I KNOW how you feel. 4bedroom, 2.5bath, 3car garage, money sucking, life draining.... sorry, still geting over the thought of all the numbers involved. Luckily I've got a roomate to help split costs. Still, very intimidating though.

89magic98

Sid,

What happens to the neighborhood bar across the street from your old place? Will you still go there? Is there a new bar nearby?

Tony@GKF

Congrats. Definately a great investment and a great price. You guys should consider yourself lucky if you are able to pick up a decent 3 bedroom home for under 350k.

Yes/no. Fixed rates have creeped up, but adjustable/ARM programs are roughly static. Is 4.25% for a 30 year fixed? If so, that's an incredible rate!

ELLSSUU

15 year fixed. Contemplating what to do now. Stay here for 15 years and be 45 with a house completely paid for or build something bigger and start over again with a higher interest rate. Decisions Decisions.

Legoland951

Congratulations on the new place. For all you complaining about high housing costs, my cousin bought a 1400 sqft 3 bedroom townhouse 4 months ago for $600,000 about 4 miles from where I live. If you drive another 3 miles west by the oceanfront, the same townhouse would cost 1.5 to 2 million by Manhattan beach. Everyone already mentioned most of the things to look out for but I found that the people running the association in condo/townhouses make a big difference. Make sure the finances for the entire complex is well managed (my townhouse is in a complex that has 72 units in the association $165/mo and the whole place looks great with $200k in reserve). An example of what to watch out for is lack of reserve funds for future repairs or corrupt board of directors where they get kickbacks. My sister lives in another complex in Costa Mesa where she pays $200/mo for the association fee (negative $50k in reserve) and her complex looks run down and they ran out of money so they had to raise the association fees and charge special assessment fees for "unexpected" repairs that cost twice as much as it should have under suspecious circumstances. The board of directors did not want to show the financial records, which is illegal according to California law. Make sure you meet the people who run the association and check out the finances.

BeerBurner

Congrats on the house!

You may want to research that one a bit more, or flat out ask the HOA (perhaps anonomysly (sp?) if you want to maintain the "I didn't know" defense...) on that one. When I moved in to my place, I specifically looked for that wording in the bylaws and never found anything, but my neighbors all swear that it's in the books somewhere.

Fortunately for me, my neighbors don't care if I work on a car in the driveway (more space to move around, since the garage is kind of tight) so long as we don't make that much noise and leave disassembled cars lying around overnight. And they've all been good when we ran the air tools while doing those three suspension swaps.

But then, we're also known as the "go to" house whenever someone has a house/car problem, so there's probably some benefit to not getting on our bad side.

BB.