For the first time.
I'm completely terrified and completely thrilled.
This journey started and stopped abruptly a year ago, when we had a junky agent who refused to show us short sales or anything she didn't "like". We gave up a couple months into the process and figured we'd wait to move across the country and buy a home there.
Then our apartment complex took a weird turn for the worse and we looked at our lives and realized that we needed someplace to call our own, someplace quiet, someplace where there weren't gunshots and loud car stereos.
Commence finding a home. We knew nothing at all about the process, even though we had looked just a year before, nothing had looked good enough to consider buying.
We have pretty much no money down, so our lender said the FHA (specifically VHDA) loan would be the best option. What's the difference between an FHA and a Conventional loan? Put shortly as I understand it, FHA won't let you buy a home that needs repairs. Our agent said "it can be God-Awful ugly but can't have wood rot on the windows or damaged siding." The idea is that the bank has to know you won't have to come in and spend money right away. This includes TINY things that, if necessary, you come in the middle of the night to fix before the FHA inspection.
Now for something called the GFE (Good Faith Estimate). When you go to a lender to get pre-approved, you can ask for or they will give you a GFE. This lists ALL fees associated with them lending you money. There's something called Junk Fees (that's the clickable link to Investopedia, where there's a lot of good information) which is fluff matter that they don't really have to charge but they will because you don't know what the hell it means. What the junk fees mean is they just get a little more money out of you in a contract form. You NEED to read about the mortgage contract! Learn what the terms all mean. Ask the lender guy (or gal) to explain things to you AFTER you've spent a few hours learning about them so you can ask knowledgeable questions. Click around at the Investopedia website I linked above for a couple hours and you will learn a ton.
One very important thing I learned about is Private Mortgage Insurance. This is $141 a month that you pay because you don't have 20% down. It's a VERY BIG DEAL. You pay this insurance until you owe less than 78% LTV (Loan to (assessment) Value), then you have to pay for an assessment to get it taken off. Our broker said that after June, PMI will be PERMANENT for the life of an FHA loan (but I'm not certain on a conventional loan).
So we are currently at the point where we have put a bid on a house and the other agent asked for $1000 more and we agreed, so we have a verbal agreement. We will find out today if they signed the contract or not, and we go into a whirlpool of getting to closing in 34 days.
Here's the house we picked. There is no picture of the large back yard for some reason. I don't know if the listing will stay up at that link after closing though. If this is meant to be, it will be. Keep us in your thoughts!
