For those of you that don’t know, I’d been looking (and waiting) to buy a house. Now, it’s official. I’m a homeowner.
After signing more paperwork than I had signed when joining the Air Force, it’s official. I’ve dropped my trailer over there, and started cleaning the place, but I won’t “post the guidon” until this weekend–waiting for the utilities to get hooked up (phone, cable TV, and most importantly, the internet).
Man, that was surreal. The seller and the real estate agent were talking about things like church, and who’s back in town, and so-and-so got married, yadda yadda yadda. I’m sitting there signing Lord knows everything, paying attention to each thing I even think of putting a pen to paper on. And it was all over in a half hour. Wow.
Although, just simply from all of the paper, the Amazon rain forest is now 14 acres smaller. :smack:
Congratulations! I did okay at the paperwork signing, until they showed me the one that was like, “And if you make every payment on time, an the end of 30 years you will have paid . . . one BIIIILION DOLLARS!” Okay, not really, but the figure was holy-shit! high.
You’re absolutely right! I’ll be camped out in a tent in the backyard I just bought. The house is where I keep my stuff. [sub]For the uninitiated, that’s basically my last three years in Great Falls, MT, except it was an apartment which I rented[/sub]
I’m RED HORSE, and I’ll put a damn addition on the place!!
Tripler
But thanks to y’all, I will enjoy the new ‘Rancho Triplero’.
Oh, yeah - if you can scrape out an extra $100 principal to add to the PITI ten months out of twelve, you can take ten years off your 30 year loan.
Everybody should know this.
They should also know that when the bank offers to help you do it, in the form of splitting your payment into two bimonthly payments that are $50 higher, they’ll hit you with ridiculous fees to do it for you. When you can much more conveniently do it yourself by adding fifty or a hundred bucks in additional principal to your monthly payment (there’s even a line on the payment blank to do it), and omit it whenever you have a tight month.
gabriela, that’s exactly my plan. Once I pay off my truck this February, I’ll have enough money on the back end to throw several hundred at it again. I don’t know if I’ll stay in the house that long, but it will help me build up a lot of equity should I decide to sell. I am kind of glad the first mortgage payment isn’t due until October 1st. I can use the money up front to decorate the place a little bit.
And thanks for the virtual housewarming party! I’m seriously considering a bit of an ‘Open House’ / Barbecue to celebrate. Details to be announced.
Tripler
But now I gotta go to work and do that voodoo that I do, so well.
Oh, the paper signing! My mostly illegible signature became downright scrawl-like after the first dozen or so pages. But soon the joys of painting the walls anything but off-white erased the memories of the hand cramps.
Welcome to the world of the mortgaged! I offer you the traditional gift of, um, this throw rug that the previous owners left behind in my house. It probably won’t match anything you own, and it’s pretty ugly, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
The stuff about fees is also true for things like your 401-Ks. Waaaay back when I had a Real Job in Miami, I got a call from HR asking why I wasn’t putting any money on mine. For two reasons: I was (still am) a foreigner and wanted to keep my assets more liquid than that, and I’d done the numbers and figured out that if I put into the 401Ks offered through HR the maximum allowed amount every two weeks - Merryl-Lynch would be taking away 11% of the amount in fees. She reviewed my numbers, found them correct and started looking for other options, good for her.
I did the paperwork part monday of last week, but here in Spain you don’t really get your copies of everything for a while; the Notary keeps the originals, files the proper copies wherever they have to be filed (he shows the originals to do this), then finally gives you your copy along with a list of the places where each paper has been filed. Do you get them straightaway in other places?
