Buying A Home
Hmp123
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Completely Clueless about buying/selling a house..please help!
My husband and I's current house was given to us by his family. We did have to take out a mortgage however to fix it up, but his uncle took care of all that for us. The house has now become too small for us since we started our family and we are looking to move somewhere bigger. I have no clue on the first step to even take! Do we apply for a mortgage first, do we talk to a realtor first about listing our house, do we need a percentage to put down if we find a home, what if we get an offer we want to accept but haven't found a house yet, what if we find a house but haven't sold ours yet. I am so completely clueless on this whole process. Please tell me whatever I need to know!
Re: Completely Clueless about buying/selling a house..please help!
I would start by talking to a realtor or two, ideally, the same one should be able to walk you through/coordinate both the selling of your current home and buying the new one. That is what they get the giant commission for
It will also be helpful for you to talk to a few bankers to get an idea of what size mortgage you feel comfortable being pre-approved for. You don't necessarily need to do one before the other, but having an idea of your price range will help your realtor know what kind of homes to show you.
Well, you'll need to be approved for a mortgage first.
The other order of things is up to you. You can buy before you sell, and then you'll be paying 2 mortgages (if you still have a mortgage on your first home). You can sell before you buy, but then you'll probably have to move into an apartment, which means moving twice, possibly paying to store things (or selling then rebuying furniture) and either finding somewhere with a month to month lease, or breaking a lease when you find a new house, both of which can be pricier than renting with a longer lease term. You can also have both listed at once, and if you buy, you can have a clause that makes the purchase conditional on selling your home. It basically means that you will buy the house if and when you home sells within a certain time frame. The downside of that is that if someone comes in with a better offer (closing ASAP) your offer could be passed over in favor of the better one.
Most people recommend having 20% to use as a down payment for your house. You could do this in several ways. Either through savings, or roll your payment from the sale of your house over to the new house. You'll have to know about how much you'll get from the sale of your house, though. You can put down as little as 3.5% with an FHA mortgage, or around 5% with a standard mortgage, but you'll pay PMI (extra insurance) if your DP is lower than 20%. You could also buy with a lower DP and then put the money you get from the sale of your house towards your mortgage later. If your equity in the house is over 20%, you can cancel PMI.
40/112