Buying A Home
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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.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
USDA loans?
Anyone have any recent experience with USDA loans? The town we are moving to has many houses listed as qualifying for USDA loans, but I haven't heard much about that program. The website has a lot of info but just curious about personal experiences.
My two PCOS miracles!
Re: USDA loans?
Let's see... aside from the area restrictions that you already know about...
There are income restrictions (you can't make more than xx amount - I don't remember the exact limit).
Credit requirements are similar to FHA.
It's a gov't funded mortgage, so there are times that funding runs out and you have to wait until there is more money available.
There's no downpayment required and no PMI.
The interest rates are similar to FHA, but usually a little higher since there's no risk of PMI if you don't have 20% equity.
You'll need to make sure your lender works with USDA mortgages. Not all of them do, especially the smaller local banks and credit unions.
The contract to closing time is usually a minimum of 60 days.
Anyone else want to fill in some more blanks? That's all I can remember right now.
http://pandce.proboards.com/index.cgi#general
The housing condition requirements are the same as FHA - no peeling painton homes built prior to 1978, no health or saftey hazards, the roof must have at least 5 years of life left etc.
The appraisal is going to cost more and probably take more time than a conventional loan because in most cases, you have to be FHA certified to do them.
We briefly looked into a USDA loan in Feb 2011 do my info might not be 100% accurate. I believe there is a "funding fee" of 2-3% that can be rolled into the loan. Basically I thought of it as a prepaid PMI. And you should google this but I believe they added an annual fee for 2012 of around .3%. I have no idea how long that has to be paid but remember reading an article about it.
Also, I believe they can take the average of a few years of income to determine if you meet the income requirement.
I have no recent experience with the program as we bought our first house in 2008 through the program. But their website has lots of information, as would your local USDA Rural Development office.
http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/HSF-About_Guaranteed_Loans.html