you only have to pay back a prorated portion.
i received 11,200 in 1st time homebuyer grants last year. if i were to sell before 10 years, i would have to pay back whatever percentage of time is left.
i was upset that i couldn’t qualify for this program when i bought my house, i am over the limit for income. it sucks because i couldn’t get any grants whatsoever for closing and what not, i even bought in the city.
luckily, i still managed to lock in a rate of 6.5 which isn’t terrible, so i guess it’s not that bad of a thing. plus i make enough where i wont have to worry about paying my bills.
I have a sonyma loan on my house. The qualifications must have changed since my loan which I took out in 2003. I think the income restricition was 65K and you only had to live in the house 5 years to not have to repay the 5K loan on closing costs.
yeah and my mom is also a realtor for Hunt, she has worked there since 1986.
Is the $5k part of the federal housing grant? I wonder how this differs (if at all) from the First Home Club through HSBC? Any time constraints on building the money? I’m looking for faster, not longer - HSBC’s takes 10 months to mature.
Good thread :tup:
yep.
i had my wedding a few months before and they gave me a ton of shit about my deposit and withdrawl activity…
i had to get documentations that some money was a gift etc…
then, since i recieved money, i lost the closing cost grant.
because I used some for my down payment.
apparently, they did not consider it my money…
and the lady @ HSBC was nice enough to NOT call me when we ran into
endless paperwork holdups. homeowners threatend to sue me…
that got them to hurry right along.
but, i have a 4.25% mortgage. 
and still reccomend the program.
so long as you have money in your accounts for a year i think they do not bother you.
FHA rates are pretty low right now. I just locked in at 5.875% on a 30 yr mortgage. Unfortunately I didnt qualify for any additional city housing grants because I exceed the income limit.
On a side note, realators are pretty much worthless. If you can find a way to avoid using one, do it. I found every house I looked at on my own. All the realators did was talk up to property and try to convince me to spend more on a place than it was worth. I put offers on 6 different places, in which my agent dropped the ball on some of them causing me to lose the houses. Somehow one lost me a house where my offer was significantly higher than the rest. Now that I finally found a place where my offer has been accepted, the 2 agents jobs are done and shouldnt even be involved, as it is in the attorneys hands, but they are complicating matters even more by giving my bad information. My attorney tells me neither agent knows what they are talking about and what they are telling me is wrong. In the end, they walk away with a few thousand dollars for simply unlocking a door for me and then blowing smoke up my ass for 2 months.
^ You had a terrible agent.
There is no question that I never would have got our house without the buyers agent we had. If you’re buying in a hot area the houses are sold before the general public even has access to the listings. We tried the “go it alone” route and couldn’t figure out why a house that showed up online on Monday was already in the process of closing when I called about it the same day. The reason is that agents got access to the listing prior to it being listed publicly and their clients got offers in.
When I bought my house the agent called me about it at 5:30pm Friday night while we were on our way out to a company party. We swung by the place on the way there and based on her description and looking at it from the outside we called her back and said she had to get us in Saturday morning. We saw the house, went back to her office and got an offer letter put together and submitted before noon. That offer letter canceled the 3 other appointments that were scheduled for Sunday.
Most of the homes in my neighborhood were selling in 1-3 days of being listed. It was 5-6 days before those listing were even made available to the general public.
got mine before the realestate agents since the homeowner has passed.
saved me lots of $$…
neighbors think i got a “GREAT DEAL”
my commentary is that they have not had to fix a 50 y/o house that had not really been updated.
and since the bank too so long, they had 4 other offers but accepted my “as is” offer.
at least the same house across the street sold for $51k more than mine…
joehip, you definately just had a bad realtor. Just because you had a bad experience with a couple bad agents does not mean that they are all worthless. Next time do your own homework and find an agent recommended from someone you trust with years of experience with the types of homes your looking for. Im sure you will have a different story to tell then.
Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you about these too. What were the homebuyer grants you got?
you can get them through M&T, HSBC, pretty much any lender that writes mortgages. just ask for 1st time homebuyer grant programs and sonyma, and they will give you the lowdown on what you qualify for.
:tup:
Yeah, that’s what I’m looking at right now, the HSBC First Home. Essentially, place $167 per mo. for 10 mos. in a dedicated account - at the end of the 10 mos. you get the $5K plus your saved $1,667. I was wondering what else you went through to get the other $5 or so K.
There is no doubt about it, my first agent was a complete bust. I was new to the area, and nobody I knew seemed to know a good agent to recommend. Actually, there was a good agent, but he had sense moved to Arizona so that was no help to me.
I was looking for, and finally found a house, in the Elmwood village. I wanted a multi-family with offstreet parking and a garage and those properties would only stay on the market for a couple days at most. Every house I put an offer on had a minimum of 2-3 offers when presented to the seller…so in many cases you had to go over the asking price to have any chance.
Im not saying there are no good agents out there. They are just few and far between. Luckily, I dont have to worry about that nonsense anymore. Come January I will close on my house, and can begin dumping all my money into it.
Ill have a 3 bedroom w/ offstreet parking and a garage to rent if anyone is interested. haha.