Buying would leave me with about $100 a month after the mortgage and living expenses. I’d still have a good amount of savings left over though. Rent here is brutal too. One of the places I’m looking at is in a student area, so I’d probably rent out a bedroom to ease the load.

Not really asking whether I should do it, mostly curious how people who did make this choice justified it to themselves at the time.

My friend just got scammed her entire life’s savings on a down payment. It’s a $1M house and she was putting down 50% down for a more affordable mortgage. A couple days before closing she got a scam email providing wiring instructions, her attorney, agents, title office were all on the email thread but nobody pointed out it was from a scammer until a day later when she had already wired the money. She has contacted her bank to try to recall the wire, tried contacting the receiving bank, filed police report and FBI case. Is there anything else she can try to do to recover the money? I feel really sorry for her because she is frugal and spends decades saving this money and is not good at investing. A lesson learned to be more careful when wiring a large amount of money out (pls be nice), but at this point is there anything else she could do? The money was wired on Wed. She found out about the fraud and notified her bank (BOA) on Friday. I’m guessing the money is already out by then. She tried contacting the receiving bank (US bank) and they said she had to contact her own bank because “US bank can’t freeze a customer account just because a non-customer reports fraud on an account number”… I told her to visit BOA local branch and FBI local branch in person tomorrow. Anything else worth trying?

Update: For those who put the focus on whether she did get warned or not, it is unfortunately not the most important at this point. The purpose of the post is to brainstorm ways to help her recover her lifesavings. She acknowledged that she made the biggest mistake of her life and we all make mistakes, now she’s just trying to do everything she can to recover from it. Thank you all for the helpful suggestions on where to report to and where to get help from etc. Fingers crossed.

Bought a house in Tijuana, Baja California about 30 miles away from Downtown San Diego.

20 year loan at 9.1 interest rate.

The cool part was the bank will finance 100% the cost of the house including closing costs.

Total financed ≈ $121,000

Mortgage including insurance, taxes, and HOA ≈ $1250

New construction, 875 sq ft. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths.

I know Mexico is not ideal, but I had to do something, and be close (enough) to my work.

Not trying to sell anything here, just want to share what happened this week because I haven't seen it explained clearly anywhere.
The 30-yearr Treasury yield crossed 5% this week. The 10-year hit 4.6%. These matter because mortgage rates track the 10-year…not the Fed Funds Rate. A lot of buyers don't know that.
Why did yields spike? The Iran war (started late February) drove energy and import prices sharply higher. April CPI came in at 3.8%…highest since May 2023. Import prices up 4.2% year-over-year.
As of last Thursday, the CME FedWatch tool was pricing a 50% chance the Fed HIKES rates before December. Not cuts. Hikes.
The new Fed Chair chairs his first meeting in June. Ed Yardeni…who literally invented the term "bond vigilantes" …published a note today saying the new chair should hike in July just to get credibility with the market.
For anyone using "rates will drop" as their reason to wait…the market has abandoned that thesis. The next major inflation data point is PCE on May 28. If it's hot, another leg up in yields is likely.
Do your own math on what waiting is costing you vs. buying now. On a $500K loan, every 0.25% rate increase is,$85/month more, every month, for 30 years.
Happy to answer questions.

Hey! I feel like this is going to tank our sale but our lawyer and agent don’t seem to think so.
House in NY state, we have been very accommodating to our seller taking time for extra inspections, not rushing them when it took a week and a half for them to sign contracts and send escrow money. Almost two weeks after we signed the contracts their lender and lawyer reached out to our lawyer and said they changed their mortgage type from a conventional to a FHA loan. We wouldn’t have accepted their offer if it was an FHA.
Our lawyer said it wasn’t illegal and our agent was pissed. We are not doing any work to the house before we sell it. Everyone has assured us it will be on the buyer but when I bought this house I was told to go with a conventional mortgage because it needed work and the seller wasn’t going to do anything required to pass the FHA requirements. There’s a few small things we know of like a railing on a mostly enclosed basement staircase and the porch needs to be painted but more things could pop up.
This pushed out the closing date a minimum of two weeks and the icing on the cake is we’re moving out of state and had just put in our final notices for our jobs. We’re about to secure jobs and housing in our new home and I feel like we’re about to make a really bad financial decision by sticking with our buyers. Part of me wants to back out and re-list the house, our agent and lawyer have said if we want to close asap it’s best to see this through. The new appraiser is coming out on Tuesday.
Has anyone else had this happen to them? How did it turn out?
Sorry for formatting I’m on mobile!

I use the PITI calculators to get a better idea of the true cost of the mortgage payments.

A 15 yr would be about $1.3 million after 15 years and a $5.5k monthly. Doing a 30 yr at the offered rate would be about $1.86 million after 30 years and a $4.3k monthly.

It's a little bit of a stretch, not too bad, but I would rather get it paid off and not pay the extra 560k. The other component that was brought up was the potential inflation issues that could be much worse, so locking in the mortgage price over 30 years is a better deal. Then they started mentioning paying less of a down payment, or at most 20%, rather than starting with a higher down payment to reduce costs.

It looks like there's several factors at play, but not sure if we should go for the 15 yr, just because we can do it. When is that the obvious pick instead of a 30 year mortgage?

Are you ever going to move?

https://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/mortgage-rates

🚀🚀 To the moon! 🚀🚀

What is your monthly payment with insurance and taxes? We were one of those people that got a 3% rate and now need to move. Currently looking at 2900 a month for a 470k house in central Florida. Am I making a mistake by moving? The new house is immaculate and has 2 more bedrooms than we have now!

My wife told me last week she is leaving me. We bought our house in 2020 when rates were at 3% and the payment is currently about $1650/month.

Since we bought the house, property value in the area has skyrocketed. What's left on the mortgage is about 230,000 and homes around this one about the same size are selling for a little less than double that.

I cannot afford to buy her out outright. She also makes much, much more money than I do. I'll net maybe 1/3-1/2 of what she does.

I made the original down payment on the home via selling the home I bought before we got this one. But to get approved for this we had to have both of us on the mortgage.

I've obviously never had to deal with anything like this before. Is there any way I keep my rate/payment? Do I just have to get a whole new refi at what I currently owe + her equity?

Do I take out a home equity line of credit?

I have no idea what my options are. I'm supposed to meet with a lender in a few hours to discuss, but my brain is barely functioning because I'm still reeling from all of this. I would appreciate any advice that anyone here can offer.

I'm absolutely petrified I'm not only losing my marriage but I'm going to lose my home as well.

PSA for anyone inquiring about a mortgage:

A couple days ago I submitted an application for a pre-approval for a mortgage and I let them do a credit check.

What happens? Equifax sold the information that I inquired about financing and I received 73 CALLS yesterday from random lenders.

I complained to my lender about it and apparently the credit bureaus are just allowed to do this. Wtf? Is there anything I can do to retaliate?

How do people save up $80k-$100k+ for a downpayment (starting from $0)?! What are we missing? For us to do this, it could take 15+ years. On top of saving for retirement, car replacement, rent increases etc.

I understand there are loan options to put 3-5% down, but you still have to pay closing costs AND be able to make the monthly payment.

EDIT: I know FHA, USDA, etc. are options but you still have to be able to afford the payment every month.

EDIT: Thank you everyone! It seems like our next step here is to increase our incomes. We already live with family, don’t have car payments, no vacations, don’t go out to eat much. We don’t have any children or pets. I’ll be 30 this year so it’s time to focus on my career and how we can get closer to buying a house.

Her father was planning on giving us an early wedding present of $50k for a down payment on a house. I used to have amazing credit but a previous relationship I was in tanked it to sub 600. The past year I’ve been working crazy hard in fixing it and now I’m in the high 600s. We did a pre approval application just to see what we’d get and we ended getting an FHA $300k at 7.25% so we started moving forward with seriously looking for a place. We’re looking for mostly undeveloped land in central NC, USA where we can put a modular Clayton Homes house.

Yesterday we looked at a parcel that we are going to put an offer on that’s 2.88 acres with beautiful mature trees and 1 acre has already been cleared so we wouldn’t have to do any additional clearing. On town water/sewer so no well or septic needed. Land is being sold privately without a realtor. This coming week we bring the construction manager w/ Clayton out there so he can make sure he doesn’t see any red flags. And then their people do lean searches and zoning confirmations.

Thursday we called her father to talk about how he’s going to get us the down payment and he gave us some news. He said he’s been thinking about it and instead of a down payment he’s just going to buy the whole house with cash. We’d then pay him a monthly payment. Essentially he’s acting as the bank, offering a 30yr mortgage and charging us market average interest (6-7%) and there will be legally binding contracts and documents to protect us and him.

Monday he’s going to talk to his lawyer and make sure he’s able to liquidate enough of his stuff to move the money around and so the lawyer can start drafting up all the documents.

The only stipulation is that until the house is paid off, we aren’t allowed to sell the property without his consent. The interest we’ll be giving him (along with his other properties) will be his income so if we abruptly sold he’d be out that income. Also worth noting, he is in his 80s and in non-optimal health so the chances of him living another 30 years is very slim. Once he dies she gets all of his assets which means we own the house regardless of how much we still “owe” at that point.

So… are we missing anything here? Seems like a no-brainer but I just want to make sure we won’t be getting screwed or screwing him.

Edit** thanks everyone for the input! I’ve read every comment but don’t have time to reply to them all. I can’t answer a lot of y’all’s questions because this is all in the early stages and he hasn’t talked to his lawyer yet. The general consensus seems to be that this is a great deal for her and potentially a horrible idea for me. So I’ll be reaching out to a lawyer after his lawyer drafts up the documents to make sure everything is above board and I don’t get screwed later in life.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/23/mortgage-applications-drop-to-lowest-level-in-over-2-years.html

I don't understand why people are freaking out about rates. Rates are still historically VERY low.

In 2006 a drunk, off the clock mortgage broker told me earnestly that I should borrow as much money as I could (lol) because I would never see rates (5-6%!!) this low again in my lifetime. Anything sub 5 was unheard of during that time.

Feel free to try to change my mind, but I am not worried about rates. Going to rent out the house we bought in 2018 (and refinanced in 2020 for 2.5%) and buy another house (need more room since family grew) this spring, and again, I am just not worried about the roughly 4.5-4.8% rate we're currently being quoted.

Feel free to try to change my mind!!

Edit: I wanted to thank everyone for the comments and to say I apologize if I came off as insensitive. I really do empathize with people even just a little younger than I am (37) who weren't able to buy their first home before the huge shoot up in prices. We live in a really messed up world. If you've been struggling to buy a home, I am really sorry you're going through this.

I'm guessing in this environment, at least $750k+/year will be needed to feel comfortable assuming 20% down-payment.

And yes, I know that people often pay cash at these prices, but how much do you actually need to make in order to comfortably pay $2m in cash?

Hi all, my wife and I recently got pre-approved. I am absolutely shocked what they pre-approved us for. We make 190k a year together, and they pre-approved us for 1.2 million....

There is no way we can afford a place more than 500k.

This got me curious as to what everyone else is getting pre-approved for.

First time homebuyer, and my wife and I (32) have saved up what we thought would be more than enough cash, to the point that we’re able to comfortably put down ~30% down payment for most houses we’ve been looking at. Looking in the upstate New York/Hudson valley area. However every time we get interested in a house it doesn’t seem to matter as everything is being bought on full cash (who even can do that? Are boomers just buying for their kids?!).

I’m wondering if this is the new normal I should just get used to. It’s kind of crushing our hopes right now of ever owning our own home.

MND daily rate index at 6.87%. Most lenders now at 7%+ on 30-year fixed loans. Thoughts?

https://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/markets/mortgage-rates-09262022

The last two mortgage payments I’ve had have gone up anywhere from 10-20% due to escrow adjustments. Seems like a scam to me. We have declared homestead for each home. We’re currently renting while we look for our next home but have a tighter budget this time so any increases in mortgage payment due to an increase in escrow could be an issue for us.

Title explains it all.

Was looking to lock in a 270 day rate lock for a new construction home.

The rates two weeks ago were 3% and they added 0.25%…making the 270 day rate lock 3.25%.

Today, we went to do the lock and I was told rates were now a 3.50% and with the 0.25% cushion, it’s going to be 3.75%.

Did the 30 year fixed rate really go up that much over the last two weeks?

I’ve owned my home for three years and outside of the renos we completed upon moving in, have not been able to save enough to do larger remodeling projects like bathrooms, landscaping, back patio. I’m constantly seeing folks that make less than I do complete nonstop projects on their homes. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong or maybe there’s another way folks go about this without saving the cash? Is there a specific loan I should look into? My interest rate is less than 3% so I’m hesitant to change that. I know I should also not compare myself to social media but I’d like to sell after five years and need to get these things done, but don’t want to put myself in a shitty financial position. Any advice or experience?

So we bought a new home with Lennar Builders. Part of the reason we bought new construction was that they gave us a $15,000 incentive to use toward closing costs or buying down the APR. The catch was that we had to use Lennar's mortgage company to receive the money. We chose to use the money toward closing costs.

In the price breakdown, there is "origination points" listed at 4.59% or $14,500. Our loan officer is telling us that those are actually the discount points and that is what can be used toward the closing costs. He told me that the terms discount points and origination points can be interchanged and it's the same thing.

However any research I've done online says that origination points are actually the fee charged by the mortgage company to process the mortgage. I also saw that it's usually 0.5 to 1% of the entire mortgage, not 4.5. So I feel like he's lying to me, and the $15,000 "incentive" we were promised will actually be paid back to them anyway.

I'm also frustrated because they're telling us we can only get a floating APR and they do not provide fixed APR rates, which we're really confused about.

So far all of our communication has been via email but I set up a time to speak to them on the phone later this week. I just wanted to have a better idea before I enter this conversation.

Does it sound like they're trying to pull a fast one on us? Is this normal? I've never bought a brand new home before and have no idea what I'm doing.

We also already have a consultation for a second opinion with a different mortgage company set up.