<p>Wow UCD, congrats.</p>
<p>arabrab-- yeah, we were probably not going to buy the house anyway. I am just alarmed that there’s so much competition even for THAT house… I am hoping a new realtor will give us the edge we need to stay in the game. </p>
<p>I am wondering now how likely it is that whatever caused that house to shift was isolated to that one house… we spoke to the neighbor who told us that he’d lived in his house 30 years and didn’t have any of those kinds of problems and hadn’t seen anybody besides this guy excavating his yard, but after we left we noticed he had a crack in his garage patched, and so did several of the other adjacent houses-- though in those cases it was one small crack, not cracks throughout like the house we viewed. These houses are 1955-1960 ish… not sure if one small crack could be normal for a house that old in MI or if it’s indicative of a wider problem in the whole subdivision. This is our favorite subdivision and definitely our first choice…</p>
<p>On the buying end of the spectrum, we just closed on a short sale condo. Competition for nice, well priced condos in commuting distance to the major work centers here is tough. You have to get them quickly, and I have checked a couple of times a day on MLS websites, finding things before my realtor did.</p>
<p>Interesting process, though. I thought a short sale would take forever, but after the seller took our offer…the bank took about a month to get back to us. They said their minimum they could take was 7K over what we’d settled on. We offered them another 1K. No word for a week, and then they said they’d take the original offer (didn’t want the 1K…apparently too busy to do more paperwork?), but we needed to sign now, immediately. Weird, no word and then…bam, right now. Short sales aren’t supposed to close so quickly, but I wonder if the banks are getting better at them and just want them off the books.</p>
<p>My cousin recently waited over a year to hear back on a short sale before giving up and walking away… you’re lucky that went through so quickly! There are a lot of them here but we’ve been advised by most not to even consider them if we have a specific date in mind that we need to move by. Maybe it’s because the market here is jumping, but I think they like to wait until they are for-damn-sure they got the best offer they can get.</p>
<p>busdriver11, that sounds like some real sloppy work on the part of the bank.</p>
<p>Speaking of banks… anyone else finding that loans are getting delayed approvals? We just received a call from our lender saying we might not close on time on our new loan even though we have done our part to ensure timely returns of all requested information. Supposed to close next Friday and now might not close until the following Monday. You never want to close on a Monday because then you then pay interest over the weekend.</p>
<p>I am not an expert on home loans but it makes no sense to have to pay interest on a loan the weekend prior to a signing.</p>
<p>I think you’re right, ema, short sales are a bad idea if you really need a place and have a timeframe. Supposedly about 1/3 of them never go through. The problem is, even after the seller accepts your offer, you don’t know how many liens are on the property, and what the bank will even accept. It might be much more than what your accepted offer was. Though I do think the banks are getting quicker at it, it’s kind of a crapshoot. We didn’t know if our deal was going to fall through, take a year, or close today. We hadn’t expected the close today. And yes, it does sound like sloppy work on part of the bank, but since there haven’t been documents faxed back and forth, just a couple of emails from the negotiator, I’m not sure exactly what really went down. Did the negotiator just tell us the bank wanted more to get a higher offer, and who knows what he told them? Needless to say, he did cut a deal, which is the only way he gets paid.</p>
<p>jshain, I think as far as loans getting delayed, I don’t think that’s anything that hasn’t been happening forever. Probably 20 new mortgages or refi’s I’ve had over the years, I don’t remember a single on closing on time. Especially if they can delay it long enough so you have to pay a penalty, or a higher rate because you lose your lock. Even when the second they ask for something, you fax it to them immediately.</p>
<p>We made a bid on a 3/2 short sale in a beautiful neighborhood here in FL last year. The agent told us to plan on renting for a while more as it could take up to three months or longer for bank approval. It took two weeks. No negotiation, the bank accepted our bid. Our agent was shocked. The fact that we were cash buyers, willing to pay almost the asking price, and the fact that the previous owners had moved out and stopped paying the mortgage helped matters. We paid 50% of what it sold for in '07. And it was move in ready.</p>
<p>Toblin…nice…</p>
<p>Sounds like you are enjoying your new place…</p>
<p>Did you move out of state?</p>
<p>Way to go, toblin. Seems like if you make it easy for them, if they are organized enough they will grab the quick cash because it’s better than getting stuck with a foreclosure and no payments anyways.</p>
<p>Decided to retire and we moved from NJ, just outside NYC, to central/northern FL on the coast. We were lucky because home prices up there maybe went down 10% at most. </p>
<p>Yeah, we got a bargain. Mostly because so many homes here were owned (with mortgages) by out-of-staters planning to retire here that then simply walked away when they went into negative equity. That made things snowball as far as depreciation goes. </p>
<p>I have a great deal of sympathy for the young families around here that got financially devastated when the homes they bought with 20% down were reduced in value by half in only three years. And while many of them lost their jobs as well. </p>
<p>Having come from a large NE metropolitan area, I had no real idea what the majority of the country was going through in this Great Recession. It is heart breaking to see. </p>
<p>While prices might seem tempting, don’t come to Florida if you need to work.</p>
<p>Toblin…that is an interesting post…</p>
<p>“Having come from a large NE metropolitan area, I had no real idea what the majority of the country was going through in this Great Recession. It is heart breaking to see.”</p>
<p>I recently visited an area that is hard hit by this Great Recession and I was surprised by what I saw. The area was dead. It is heartbreaking to see.</p>
<p>I occasionally get the idea to chuck everything and move up to Oregon. I like the outdoors in Oregon. But…my family and friends and support network is here in Nor Cal. It can’t be easy to leave an area for another.</p>
<p>“I have a great deal of sympathy for the young families around here that got financially devastated when the homes they bought with 20% down were reduced in value by half in only three years. And while many of them lost their jobs as well.”</p>
<p>I have sympathy for those whose home values went down, which is pretty much everyone in the US, particularly those whose values plummeted. But I have no sympathy for people who chose to walk away because the value of their properties declined. Nowhere in any contract does it say that you can decide to stop paying and stay in the home until you are forced out, merely because the value of your home has gone down. I’m seeing these people, who STILL HAVE THEIR JOBS stop paying for years and just hang around like leeches, getting free rent and not even paying their HOA fees so everyone else has to pay for them.</p>
<p>I have complete and total sympathy for those who lost their jobs and are struggling to stay afloat. How awful and overwhelming. But just squatting because you can get away with it (and see how much you can put away in the bank when you don’t pay rent)–disgusting. It’s a strange world when people assume they are entitled to have their home values go up, and if they don’t, they don’t have to pay their mortgage.</p>
<p>There is one condo we’re (hopefully) closing on, where the homeowner still has child support liens. He still is employed, yet apparently he wants someone else to pay off his child support liens in the sale (that would be either us or the bank). Dude, pay your own child support, you bum!</p>
<p>Okay, my rant is over.</p>
<p>Busdriver11, </p>
<p>What are the interest rates on loans where the house, or condo is not owner occupied?</p>
<p>How much higher are the interest rates compared to owner occupied loans?</p>
<p>dstark, right now the best rate I can find is at aimloan.com. I’m still looking for better rates. They have non-owner occupied 30 year fixed for 4.25/0 closing costs. Could probably get a 5/1 ARM for 3%. It’s about a 0.5% higher interest rate than owner occupied.</p>
<p>We are trying to avoid that route unless rates go down. Buying with cash makes the transaction much more appealing for the banks and the sellers, so uncomplicated. We are finding money wherever we can, 0% and 1.9% credit cards, 1.99% loan on our car, HELOC. A bit of a scramble, and I hate owing money to several different sources, but we’re trying to minimize paying interest. Another thing we can do is purchase the property with cash, then get a 5/5 HELOC on it that locks the rate of 4.75% for 5 years, no fees and you only pay interest on what you use. Any better ideas? I’m looking for them!</p>
<p>I am asking you. :)</p>
<p>Those credit card rates don’t increase over time?</p>
<p>Maybe, at some point you can turn your heloc into a regular mortgage with lower rates on your residence?</p>
<p>Or do you already have a low interest rate first mortgage on your residence and it would cost too much to refinance?</p>
<p>With rates the way they are…an extra half point isn’t bad.</p>
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<p>I agree. I don’t understand how people can walk away from these mortgages and not be at all responsible for the balance that they owe.</p>
<p>These are nonrecourse loans.</p>
<p>The property secures the loans…not the buyer. </p>
<p>[Nonrecourse</a> debt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonrecourse_debt]Nonrecourse”>Nonrecourse debt - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>^^Purely because you can get away with it, and that you are not considered personally liable for a mortgage doesn’t make it ethical to get money from an organization, make a commitment to pay it back, and then decide you don’t feel like paying any more. Sounds like theft to me. Living for free for years until the bank repossesses your home also depresses the home values of your neighbors. Not paying your HOA dues means everyone else has to pay more for your upkeep. Sure it was stupid lending policy to give loans with little equity out, but that’s pretty much what FHA and VA loans do in particular. Maybe the lenders should have given people an ethics exam along with the mortgage application.</p>