So after the complete hell my wife and I went through about a year ago with getting a house, I finally got my credit to a point that I felt it was worth it to go back and try again. Had my appt. today and was pre-approved for more than I thought I would be, and at a rate of just 4.5%. I am excited beyond belief b/c I can FINALLY get a real workable garage.
Most you probably don’t care, but I do and I am going to celebrate.
That’s all.
Congratulations! Im currently working on knocking out some debt before I try to get a loan, it must feel great.
4.5%, isnt that like…rediculously cheap for interest? Good luck dude, better to pay a mortgage then rent! 
4.5% is a great rate. but the owning vs renting debate will continue on for a long time. experts are saying its actually more beneficial to rent during this economic period than to buy, unless you are buying with the intentions to use the property purely as additional income.
congrats man. Me and my girl were trying to get a house but we decided to put it on hold until after the wedding simply because planning a wedding/house in the same year is waaaay to much stress.
Congrats man! 2 bay FTW.
Congrats. I too am trying to knock out some debt by the end of next year and then starting to seriously save for a home.
For those that didn’t know (and actually want to…lol) The hell we went through last year was this (Warning: Long read):
We were pre-approved for a house around March or so. We looked at close to 25-30 houses and finally found one that fit out budget and something we liked. We put the offer in and it was accepted. 2 days after it was accepted, the seller was given another offer that was just over ours and managed to use the lawyer clause of the contract (contract is subject to be viewed by a lawyer to be accepted and can be cancelled within that time) and had his lawyer make up some crap to get out of it… so there was blow #1.
We looked at probably another 10-15 houses and again found one we liked. It was a short sale so we acted quickly, put an offer in, the offer was accepted by the owner and about 2 days later the bank declined the offer because once again they were offered a better amount… blow #2
So once again we were on the hunt. This time we looked at close to 30 more houses and found one that we actually liked better than all the previous ones. It had a beautiful adirondack style huge master bedroom, a decent size 2nd bedroom, a beautiful bathroom with a sunken tub (straight scarface style… lol), and a huge stone wall fireplace that was beautiful. It had a great yard for my dog, a 3 season room that would be perfect for beer pong/a pool table/ bar room and right off the 3 season room was an oversized single car garage with its own dedicated oil furnace that was able to get the garage to almost 90* within about 15 min. (was roughly low-mid 40s that day). The house was at a great price well below the appraised value and it had plenty of potential to do some updating and make a nice profit off of it. The sellers accepted our offer and we went through the whole 9 yards… we had the appraiser look at it (roughly $1k), we had a full inspection done ($500), did all the lawyer stuff (roughly $1k), payed all the various fees (roughly another $1k) and COMPLETELY packed our current apartment and were ready to go.
Well we get a call the day before the closing from our realtor asking if we had any idea why the seller’s realtor was being asked to extend the date for a second time (we never even knew about the first). We told her we had no idea and that we were 100% ready to sign everything and start moving in. She did some investigating for us and found out that apparently after we were not only pre-approved, but even got a final approval for the loan (started out through Country-Wide which was bought out by Bank of America during the process), the under-writer decided to be a complete bitch and didn’t like my wife’s salary because she was a nurse on the night shift which gave her a shift differential… which she has been getting for over 5 years now and had proof of that. So the under-writer declined the loan without ever contacting our broker, us, our realtor, or anybody. Apparently she was supposed to get in contact with us before declining anything so our broker fought it and forced it to be reviewed by a different under-writer which reviewed it and said it was fine… but by that point it had already raised a red flag to the FHA under-writers who decided that they wanted to look it over themselves. And with all that was going on, the FHA under-writer decided to decline it as well.
So after paying upwards of $4k in various fees and completely packing up our apartment we were now declined and left in the ditch by the bank… who still kept the over $1-2k that we had given them for their various fees (appraisal, etc). Needless to say I will NEVER EVER EVER do business with bank of america again.
Since then we have both been working on getting our credit up and I was finally satisfied enough with mine that I decided to give it another go… and here we are… ready to start this “wonderful” process all over again. The only plus side to it is that the rate we had before was around 5.25% and now we are down to 4.5% (which is not locked in until the final contract, but if anything looks to be continuing to go down).
congrats and GL
Um… you got snookered last time.
#1- every real estate attorney I know gets paid upon closeing… knowing they sometimes dont get paid, much like a realtor, if it doesnt close… nature of the business
#2 a single family apprasial is generally $350… never higher thand $425 from the many I know
#3 No idea what other fees were involved, other than application fees, which are often $200 or less… and processing fees, which are refunded if rejected.
#4 FHA story with additional underwriter is an odd story. FHA is a type of loan a bank offers, thats backed by the gov. ODD
Best of luck this time around! What bank are you using?
so are you moving out of your moter in-laws rental house? or are you building a garage?
I am happy for you, man. I bought my house before the market crashed and the rates were high… I am going to try and refinance here shortly, but my credit sucks (my wife has real good credit though).
Congrats, that’s a great rate.
Congrats man, the one thing I miss about my old place is the garage. Having your own garage is so goddamn important, sometimes you forget how much you need it until you don’t have one.
Its great to hear people getting homes with the way things are now a days. i have been busting my hump to improve my credit for house shopping in the next 2 years or so.
I’ve got a question, how important is it to have 10% down these days or in this current market. I remember someone telling me if you dont have atleast 10% down dont even try to get a mortgage for a home
I picked up a computer for my friends body shop and while we were there, the guy (who happened to be in the broker business) said sometimes your better off just putting like 3-4K than 10%. I forgot the explanation, but I know he said at least that much.
Congrats!
Congrats man, good luck on your new search. i just bought a place this summmer, it was so worth all the bullshit and disappointments. i had 2-3 instances just like yours.
Happy as a clam now, and dead broke 
i agree with jammer you got rooked. 1000 dollars for an appraisal? generally speaking you pay for the inspection at least and maybe the appraisal thats the only thing you should pay before closing on the house. and again the preapproval is the easy part its just a credit check if you have a 620 credit score you will be preapproved for whatever amount they decide based on your debt to income ratio and their max DTI allowed.
Whoever told you that simply doesnt know what they are talking about or is oblivious to the options out there.