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Real Estate - Residential - not sign related

Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Only thing that I can add as a naysayer is be careful buying land and building a house if you're borrowing to do it right now. The lot loan and construction loans are balloons and the builder liens your land while they build. After the house is ready, you convert that construction loan and roll the land loan into a mortgage. The problem that can happen is that if the market changes and the house does not appraise then you have to come out of pocket more to make up the difference. If you don't have it you're screwed. The other issue is that you don't lock in your rate until the very end. In my case rates went up about 1% before I could lock in. Like with any balloon loan, it is always possible that the bank will not refinance it (construction loan to mortgage) and you are on the hook for the balance. In 06-07 this happened a lot with people building and with people that were sold on interest only loans. Shit hit the fan and banks wouldn't refi the loans so people were forced to default. Banks, realtors and builders are quick to sell you, they make a commission and have nothing to lose.
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
Notarealsignguy said:
Only thing that I can add as a naysayer is be careful buying land and building a house if you're borrowing to do it right now. The lot loan and construction loans are balloons and the builder liens your land while they build. After the house is ready, you convert that construction loan and roll the land loan into a mortgage. The problem that can happen is that if the market changes and the house does not appraise then you have to come out of pocket more to make up the difference. If you don't have it you're screwed. The other issue is that you don't lock in your rate until the very end. In my case rates went up about 1% before I could lock in. Like with any balloon loan, it is always possible that the bank will not refinance it (construction loan to mortgage) and you are on the hook for the balance. In 06-07 this happened a lot with people building and with people that were sold on interest only loans. **** hit the fan and banks wouldn't refi the loans so people were forced to default. Banks, realtors and builders are quick to sell you, they make a commission and have nothing to lose.
Click to expand...

I worry about interest rates rising too... thankfully the builder recommended a mortgage company that had a 9 month rate lock at 3.2%. If rates are lower at the time of closing they float down (2.85% as of today) so as soon as they start building we're going to lock in.
 
Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Texas_Signmaker said:
I worry about interest rates rising too... thankfully the builder recommended a mortgage company that had a 9 month rate lock at 3.2%. If rates are lower at the time of closing they float down (2.85% as of today) so as soon as they start building we're going to lock in.
Click to expand...
I think that it's usually a lot easier when the builder owns the land like with what you're doing. It's crazy how low rates are right now, I need to refi mine.
 
V

Val47

New Member
Notarealsignguy said:
Only thing that I can add as a naysayer is be careful buying land and building a house if you're borrowing to do it right now. The lot loan and construction loans are balloons and the builder liens your land while they build. After the house is ready, you convert that construction loan and roll the land loan into a mortgage. The problem that can happen is that if the market changes and the house does not appraise then you have to come out of pocket more to make up the difference. If you don't have it you're screwed. The other issue is that you don't lock in your rate until the very end. In my case rates went up about 1% before I could lock in. Like with any balloon loan, it is always possible that the bank will not refinance it (construction loan to mortgage) and you are on the hook for the balance. In 06-07 this happened a lot with people building and with people that were sold on interest only loans. **** hit the fan and banks wouldn't refi the loans so people were forced to default. Banks, realtors and builders are quick to sell you, they make a commission and have nothing to lose.
Click to expand...
The plan is to have it paid off right away. We have two homes to sell, our budget is based on the equity of those two. We do have a lot to work with financially, the trick is finding what we are looking for, within a realistic commute to work, plus we have a kid starting high school next year. she's open to a new school, I just want it to be a good school. We can pay cash for the land, and get a building loan for the house, until the houses/property is sold, then pay off the building loan.
 
I

ikarasu

Active Member
You guys are cute with your "High" prices....

I wont even link to one in particular... here's all the "detached" houses in vancouver.

To get a detached house in vancouver proper is between 2-5 million... With a minimum wage of $14 an hour, it'd only take 230 years to pay off the cheaper, lower end on the housing market.

https://www.rew.ca/properties/areas...e&searchable_id=361&searchable_type=Geography



I live 25 minutes from Vancouver... Here you can buy a decent 5 bedroom house for 1.2-1.5 million. Still out of the price range of most people... but not totally insane vancouver levels.

Empty land sells for more than a house + land as well... Most single family homes are getting torn down and built into condos which sell for 500-800k each, and you can fit 10 on the same lot size.

I remember 20 years ago... my parents took out a mortgage for a 25K house. It's insane to think about the difference now!
 
Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Val47 said:
The plan is to have it paid off right away. We have two homes to sell, our budget is based on the equity of those two. We do have a lot to work with financially, the trick is finding what we are looking for, within a realistic commute to work, plus we have a kid starting high school next year. she's open to a new school, I just want it to be a good school. We can pay cash for the land, and get a building loan for the house, until the houses/property is sold, then pay off the building loan.
Click to expand...
Should be pretty easy then if you can find something. You can always try to find some property that isn't for sale and contact the owners to see if they would want to sell it. The tax records should have their info.
 
C

CanuckSigns

Active Member
I thought Texas was the land of huge beautiful houses on large lots for dirt cheap! I always got jealous when watching house hunters and they did an episode in Texas and there were 6 bedroom houses on 5 acres selling for $250,000.

Here in Southern Ontario houses are selling in hours for hundreds of thousands over asking as well. We bought our first home 9 years ago for $299k, it was just back on the market a few months ago and sold for $895k. This is a 2 bedroom bungalow built in 1950!

I feel very sorry for any young person trying to start a family now, the housing market is pretty much impossible to get into now for the average person.

It doesn't help that interest rates are so low that people are borrowing more than they can afford. We just renewed our current mortgage at 1.55% for 5 years
 
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Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
CanuckSigns said:
I thought Texas was the land of huge beautiful houses on large lots for dirt cheap! I always got jealous when watching house hunters and they did an episode in Texas and there were 6 bedroom houses on 5 acres selling for $250,000.
Click to expand...

Maybe in the middle of nowhere... I live in north Dallas suburbs and this area is highly sought after... but still not as expensive as Southlake or the park cities... those are where you find 50 year old houses STARTING at 1 mil.
 
KY_Graphics_Gal

KY_Graphics_Gal

New Member
A really nice 3 bedroom with at least 2500sq ft and a couple of acres would be around $300,000 around here. Another reason I love rural Kentucky. We are an hour from Louisville and 2 hours from Nashville so we are close enough to the big city if we need anything.
 
Boudica

Boudica

Back to "educational purposes"
Bump...
Found the house! Now own it! It's a bit of a fixer upper, tons of potential. Still working on getting it move -in ready, cosmetic... paint and flooring, it's a big house .
Approx 3k sq ft house, + shop + barn on an acre.
:supersmilie:
 
Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
I remember this post!!! I saw some pics of Boudica's house - it's beautiful!!!

This post is just over 2 years old. I watch the homes for sale in my area pretty closely (it's a hobby). The market here is still very strong but some are over priced even in this market. IF the house makes it to Zillow it has an offer within a couple days.

Here is one that was sold around the time of this post. For sale again about 4 days ago. It's one I'm going to watch. There's another one below it that just had a price cut. Houses appear to be selling but the bidding wars seem to be slowing...at least here. In a town of 7k we only have 3 homes listed right now.

1680527102476.png

1680527217661.png
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
You wouldn't save anything.... Costs are just as expensive and you don't have the ocean. My wife wants to move to Florida... I said hell no...it's hotter there than it is here. I said I know a guy in Pennsylvania that will let us stay in the basement for free.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Yeah, the cellar dweller is actually moving out as we speak. My wife is at home keeping an eye on things..............
imageskeeping-an-eye-out.jpg
It will be available next week after we clean the place up a little bit.
 
gnubler

gnubler

Active Member
Houses for sale in my vicinity are about double the price of what Stacey posted above, at minimum. I've been looking for undeveloped acreage because the type of dwelling I want to build won't cost anywhere near half a million dollars. The market is disgusting and discouraging, so I'm just waiting. We have a massive abundance of realtors swarming around, with very low housing inventory. I hope they all leave soon and take their cheap signage budgets with them.
 
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