Wednesday, September 17, 2008
House Hunting
My husband and I have been looking at houses. While the possibility of owning and gaining equity instead of throwing money down the drain (otherwise known as renting) is exciting, I find it kind of depressing. The places we are looking at are either out of our price range, in bad areas of town, or in really bad shape. I don't want to move again in just a few years because we have outgrown our living space, but that may be what happens.
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before you think a house is out of your price range you should see a loan officer at an FDIC bank ... if we had done that when we got our first house we would have been able to buy something bigger from the start. General rule of thumb is you can by a house about 3 times your yearly income ... but pay off any charge cards as quickly as you can and keep them paid off each month - it looks really good on your credit statement. They will also look to see how many cards you have out - they will take having too many cards against you too even if you only use one or two of them (they figure if anything should happen you could suddenly end up 17,000-20,000 in the hole).
You can always look at HUD homes, most are good just that people couldn't make the payments.
It is really worth the money for your own inspector too, even if you have "truth in housing" laws in your state - sometimes there are hidden flaws that the owners don't even know about.
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