Post by mustardseed2007 on Mar 26, 2021 9:14:58 GMT -5
We’re now considering just selling and moving. We have a very limited area where we would want to buy. We met with a realtor and will definitely get our money out of the house and have a nice down payment for a new one but there’s obviously a timing issue since the housing market is tight here (as it is lots of places).
The realtor suggested a bridge loan for that so we could scoop up a house when we saw it.
Have any of y’all done that? Did you not do it BC it’s a horrible idea? I feel like a dope for not knowing. Please tell me anything I should know or you wish you knew about selling and buying a house.
Normally I would be “no way, no how, nu uh” about the bridge loan thing, but with how tight our housing market is, and how fast even crappy houses are selling, I might consider it. What would it do to your interest rate on your mortgage, though? That would seriously affect my decision.
Our realtor and mortgage guy both said that we have to get my current house under contract before we can start putting offers on the next one. Mainly because I don't qualify to carry two mortgages simultaneously, so the mortgage guy wants to have the current one under contract first. The realtor said it's the better way to go too because then we're not putting a contingency on our offers in a crazy competitive market. No one has mentioned the bridge loan option to us at all. Can you talk to your mortgage person about it instead of just the realtor?
Post by mustardseed2007 on Mar 26, 2021 10:59:50 GMT -5
Yes I am going to call a lender today about it.
That's exactly the kind of question I need to ask about - what will it do to the interest rate on my mortgage.
We did get quotes to just refi our house and pull out money to remodel so I know what our rates should be. I will find out what the rates end up being on the new mortgage with the bridge.
I think the thing is, DH has a hobby room full of star wars things and the kids have so many toys and stuff. Our house is full of stuff so she was also thinking - get these people out of here and it'll be easier to sell with staging furniture.
She was also thinking, you need to know where youre going to go so when the house comes up you can pounce.
I'm looking right now and there are no houses that we would want to buy that aren't already under contract. So that's confirmation of that for me. But also makes me scared to sell my house that we don't like but Like the area we're in.
Your agent is going to be your best bet for getting advice on how to proceed based on your local market.
In our area, it wouldn't fly. If you own a house, it must be sold before your buy offer would be considered because even if you have financing lined up and you *don't* include sale of your home as a contingency, the seller will still view it as an unofficial contingency (unless of course, you're paying cash, but most people I know don't have millions in cash laying around here!) Even when we had our house listed, we knew it would have an accepted offer on it within days, our offers were all rejected.
We listed/sold our house first and requested/got the buyer to include one or two months free rent (I can't remember exactly, my brain is mush), and the option to lease back in 30-day increments at a rate equal to the buyer's PITI payment. During that time, it was a scramble to find out current house, where we also had to offer that seller a 30-day lease back period.
That being said.. our housing market was/is crazy. Taking advice from someone who was used to a midwest market would have resulted in us never getting a house. And what we do here may be crazy aggressive for another market.
mustardseed2007, also you're still early in the real estate season. March is really when houses start coming on the market more frequently, so as April/May/June roll around, hopefully you start seeing inventory rise and more options for you to look at.
Can you carry two mortgages? We bought the new house and then sold the old one once we wEre locked in on the new one. While not ideal, we knew ours would sell fast and technically could carry two mortgages for a while if needed. We also put down a smaller down payment and then refinanced after our house closed to essentially add to our down payment. You could also recast your mortgage instead of refinancing if the rates get weird in between the closings.
Post by mustardseed2007 on Apr 6, 2021 14:05:32 GMT -5
It depends on how expensive of a house we buy. We probably technically could actually. We're frozen in indecision right now. I wish DH would express an opinion ever.
We've never sold and bought so I know nothing. We are currently in our first house.
When we bought, we looked at 100 homes. DH is extremely picky. It took about 6 months.
However, nowadays the market is so hot. I know someone who sold and now is living with her daughter because she can't find a house to buy. I would do just about anything not to move twice or live with relatives.
We found our current house during a dip in the market. Unfortunately, the house we were living in at the time was purchased during a peak. We'd been saving for years to put an addition onto our last house, so when we found this house, we jumped on it. We had almost no equity in the other house due to the market, so we were really just hoping to sell without having to write a check at closing.
So when we bought our current house, we were able to carry 2 mortgages for a short time. It worked out really well, because we were able to get into the new house and redo the floors, do a bit of plumbing, move a few things gradually, and really be fully ready to live here without being in a construction zone.
Post by erinshelley21 on Apr 7, 2021 12:24:43 GMT -5
We took a chance on carrying 2 mortgages when we bought our current house but only because we were worried our house wouldn't sell right away. Joke was on us. It sold immediately (we listed 3 weeks after we closed) so we only had 2 payments for 1 month. If we couldn't carry both, we wouldn't have moved.
If the housing market is going nuts there like everywhere else and you can do 2 mortgages, I'd take the chance on carrying two mortgages so you can get the house you want. Houses are slim pickins here and we would have been left homeless or living with MIL for an undetermined amount of time had we sold first and bought second.