Me: So... I think we should paint it blue or green.
Todd: Shouldn't we find a house before we decide... or at least wait until we're approved for the mortgage?
Me: 100 years ago I would have been known for Kelly's Famous Horse-Pushed Cart.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
timeline
This is my first attempt at buying a house (well, insert "no shit" here), so I really don't know how long a traditional mortgage takes. I honestly didn't even look at them. Sure, Countrywide approved me for a bajillion dollars a few years ago, but they were approving anyone for anything at the time. I thought it seemed shady to offer me like six times my annual income, so I never went any further. Shame more people didn't react the same way....
I've always been a leftist "sure, I'll march for that, where's my angry placard?" sort. I can't recall where I first read about NACA, though one of the other left wing causes near and dear to me, I'm sure. When I did I thought "wow, that... makes sense!" Their thing is this: if you can pay rent you can pay a mortgage... that is no higher than your rent. And if you want to pay more, show you can afford it by saving the difference between the two every month for a few months, and hey, there's your money for closing.
I'm telling you, if all the mortgage companies did things like that we wouldn't be in this mess.
In addition you get a great interest rate (currently 6.25 over 30 years... FIXED), pay no closing costs, and no downpayment. You need liquid assets just for the inspection, inital taxes, and a few other things. Not a ton, though. In our case, we're targeting $62,000 or less, which is about $2500 in savings.
In exchange, since it's a nonprofit, you have to do a few things every year for them- telling people, lawn signs, stuff like that.
The process hasn't been fast, but it hasn't been as slow as I expected.
June: I first learn of NACA and tell my roommate. I signed up for one of their introductary seminars.
July 12: attend the intro to NACA. We watch a video that's part gospel sermon, part left wing political march, and part news overview. I'm enthralled. A woman about my age comes in to talk about how she got her house from NACA (that's one of the actions you can do for them). Her mortgage is less than her rent had been. I'm sold. I signed us up to meet with John, the Buffalo office's director about a month later.
August: our first meeting. We pay the credit fee ($20 each, to run our credit reports. this is the only fee.) John goes over our credit reports, and the info we brought, and sends us off with a task list. More info needed, explinations written for iffy statments on the reports, things like that.
September: we return with our lists and info. John goes over everything, asks for a few more pieces of information from us, and we set an appointment for a month later. (a month is about the average wait, I think... John is a very, very busy guy, from what I can tell.)
Which brings us to...
Today: Paperwork intact, I arrive early for the meeting. Someone was there closing on their house. Exciting! Nice to see there is an end to the process at some point. We get in to meet with John, he checks out the info we brought, and... says that's it! Our case will be presented to the underwriters, and we'll know in the next two weeks if we've got a mortgage!
Worst case scenario is they say "hm, you're close, but your credit kinda blows, so come back in three months with proof of all untility bills paid on time (or some other random financial task)" and we get approved after that.
So now I'm looking at houses online, hoping I can check them out in person in the very near future.
I've always been a leftist "sure, I'll march for that, where's my angry placard?" sort. I can't recall where I first read about NACA, though one of the other left wing causes near and dear to me, I'm sure. When I did I thought "wow, that... makes sense!" Their thing is this: if you can pay rent you can pay a mortgage... that is no higher than your rent. And if you want to pay more, show you can afford it by saving the difference between the two every month for a few months, and hey, there's your money for closing.
I'm telling you, if all the mortgage companies did things like that we wouldn't be in this mess.
In addition you get a great interest rate (currently 6.25 over 30 years... FIXED), pay no closing costs, and no downpayment. You need liquid assets just for the inspection, inital taxes, and a few other things. Not a ton, though. In our case, we're targeting $62,000 or less, which is about $2500 in savings.
In exchange, since it's a nonprofit, you have to do a few things every year for them- telling people, lawn signs, stuff like that.
The process hasn't been fast, but it hasn't been as slow as I expected.
June: I first learn of NACA and tell my roommate. I signed up for one of their introductary seminars.
July 12: attend the intro to NACA. We watch a video that's part gospel sermon, part left wing political march, and part news overview. I'm enthralled. A woman about my age comes in to talk about how she got her house from NACA (that's one of the actions you can do for them). Her mortgage is less than her rent had been. I'm sold. I signed us up to meet with John, the Buffalo office's director about a month later.
August: our first meeting. We pay the credit fee ($20 each, to run our credit reports. this is the only fee.) John goes over our credit reports, and the info we brought, and sends us off with a task list. More info needed, explinations written for iffy statments on the reports, things like that.
September: we return with our lists and info. John goes over everything, asks for a few more pieces of information from us, and we set an appointment for a month later. (a month is about the average wait, I think... John is a very, very busy guy, from what I can tell.)
Which brings us to...
Today: Paperwork intact, I arrive early for the meeting. Someone was there closing on their house. Exciting! Nice to see there is an end to the process at some point. We get in to meet with John, he checks out the info we brought, and... says that's it! Our case will be presented to the underwriters, and we'll know in the next two weeks if we've got a mortgage!
Worst case scenario is they say "hm, you're close, but your credit kinda blows, so come back in three months with proof of all untility bills paid on time (or some other random financial task)" and we get approved after that.
So now I'm looking at houses online, hoping I can check them out in person in the very near future.
by way of introduction
Hello. I'm 29, I live in the tropical paradise that is Buffalo, New York, and as of the time of writing I and my roommate are attempting to purchase our own house through NACA.
Given the current state of the American real estate market I'm sure it sounds insane. But, this is Buffalo. While you all had your boom we, well, didn't. So now? No crash, either. Property values are, shockingly enough, going up here. Slowly. We're still, oh, a few hundred thousand behind the rest of the country. And, more importantly, it's still cheaper to own and pay a mortgage than it is to rent.
We're still pretty early on in the process, but I thought, hey, I had a hell of a time finding anyone talking about their NACA experiences online when I first started looking into this, so why not blog about it? (I found one, yes, ONE blog talking about NACA. Coincidentally enough, the blogger was also in Buffalo. Given that there are like seventeen thousand blogs devoted to pretty much every other subject you can imagine, so I was pretty shocked)
So, here I am.
Given the current state of the American real estate market I'm sure it sounds insane. But, this is Buffalo. While you all had your boom we, well, didn't. So now? No crash, either. Property values are, shockingly enough, going up here. Slowly. We're still, oh, a few hundred thousand behind the rest of the country. And, more importantly, it's still cheaper to own and pay a mortgage than it is to rent.
We're still pretty early on in the process, but I thought, hey, I had a hell of a time finding anyone talking about their NACA experiences online when I first started looking into this, so why not blog about it? (I found one, yes, ONE blog talking about NACA. Coincidentally enough, the blogger was also in Buffalo. Given that there are like seventeen thousand blogs devoted to pretty much every other subject you can imagine, so I was pretty shocked)
So, here I am.
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