My wife and I have been saving monies for the past few years, getting together a decent amount of scratch for a down payment on a house. Yeah, I know, that's old-fashioned, who actually puts down a down payment anymore?
Well, turns out we are freaking prescient, because about nobody wants to give you a mortgage anymore unless you are sitting on a nest egg (like us) and have stellar credit ratings (like us). We were made in the shade. We got pre-approved for a no-fee mortgage over the internet (only $3,000 in closing costs). Whatever. We'd started doing drive-by's (the suburban, house-shopper kind) of houses we were looking at. We started getting our hearts set on places that were close to wooded areas, off of main roads, and had 2-3 bedrooms.
There was just one thing holding us back: We are still in a lease. I was under the impression that you could break a lease and just pay half a month's rent penalty as long as you gave 30 days notice. Turns out, no. You pay all the rent you agreed to pay for the entire term of the lease. That's a lot of money.
So, we are not buying a house now. We will wait until our lease runs out. Unless any smart commenters happen to be able to know how to bust the hell out of a lease with minimal penalty.
Also, Delta Airlines can kiss my grits. They cancelled about 250 flights in Atlanta last week, and then gave me a hotel voucher for a hotel that was already full. Worst. Night. Ever.
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5 comments:
I slept in La Guardia airport one night, with about 2000 other people whose flights also got cancelled by a blizzard in Minneapolis.
How long do you have in your lease?
It ends the first day of September.
Start looking. I mean REALLY looking, if you want to be in a house after your lease is up. Your landlord may let you have a monthly lease after that if you need it.
Closing can take awhile, and even if you find a house in June, you can still try to postpone the closing date until August...it would be so much easier to move without being homeless like us!:)
that's just what i was thinking, liz! also...we are kinda going through the same thing with leasing because we are moving in june, but our lease is through august as well.
so i'm planning on doing the following: talking to my landlord today and paying for April, May, and half of june. Then, i'm going to try to get her to agree that if we're out by the 15th and they find someone else to move in for July 1, they can have the apartment for 2 weeks for painting/whatever, instead of a whole month.
not sure if that will work. so i'm also going to put our apartment up on craigslist like i did last year for someone to take over our lease. which might be the way you guys go.
but i agree! you're not going to find the PERFECT house. and keep your landlord up to date on your plans---they may also have something to bring to the negotiation table. it's just better to get more information than to expect the worst. The is something you CAN control. cause didn't you say that your landlords are quite picky with their tenants? so maybe they want more time to pick them as well.
The thing is, we are not exceptionally picky about houses (at least, I am not). There are a lot of houses in our price range that are within a reasonable proximity of my work. We've only been looking casually at houses for 2 weeks and already found 3 houses that Kate and I were both okay with. I assume that with a RE agent things would go even faster?
We are taking the closing time delay into account, and are planning on looking in earnest starting in mid-June, early July. No matter what we won't wind up homeless without at least a month's notice, and that could be fun adventure anyways (kidding Kate!).
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