| Loan questions
Hello.
I'm brand new here. We just moved from Central California to San Diego. We sold our house and have $230,000 to put down on a new one. We could probably afford $1500/month payments, no more than $1600/mo. If we borrow $250,000 I think that puts us in the range of a $470-$480,000 house, tops, depending on closing costs.
Of course we would like to go much cheaper, but we are looking in one of the most expensive areas in the country, and the ideal houses for us are probably in the $500-$600K range. But I think housing here is still going down, so perhaps we might find something.
Our house closed yesterday and we are living in a temporary place with a lease until Oct. 17. I am just stepping my toe in the water of how to do this.
I think our biggest problem will be that since we have moved, we have not been in our jobs for the 2 years that people seem to ask for. But we have good-excellent credit (I don't know our Fico scores yet) and we have no debt.
Is our very first step to get our credit scores so we know what we're dealing with? Once we do, how do I go about finding a reputable lender? We had a Chase loan before, and we liked the rate, but I think we got taken on the closing costs. I don't want to make the same mistake this time, and we need to be very precise in knowing how much we can afford.
Also, my other question is about points. The last person I asked said, "Don't ever pay points, it's just a fee in advance." How would I go about figuring out if paying points is good for us, or how long it would be that it would even itself out if we had such a high interest rate because of not paying them? (I hope I said that right.)
I know this section of the board is new, but I hope someone can help. We just had the most horrible experience selling our house. The agent was an unethical slime and she probably cost us a good $10-20 grand because of it. Of course, we are novices at this (we bought our first house from our landlord, so no agents were involved) and I thought we were doing the right thing, but we didn't really find out until the contract was signed. I'm so shellshocked from the whole miserable experience, I'm sort of feeling like I never want to own a house again, just so I don't have to have someone abuse us in that way again.
So I want to be triple-y sure that I understand what we are doing every step of the way. I read everything -- our first loan, from Chase, the lender forged our initials trying to put us into an impound which we had specifically rejected. I caught it because I read the paperwork and then he had the audacity to ask us to pay for the re-write. I bitched enough about it that we didn't, but it delayed our escrow by 2 weeks, and made us close in the middle of the month. Now, I'm not exactly sure how that cost us money, but I understand that it did. Our lender when we refinanced was not much better. I just don't want to go through this again.
Any help or advice you could give would be greatly appreciated. If it hadn't have been for one real estate agent that I spoke with during this ordeal, that I found on a real estate board, I would have a very bad opinion about *all* real estate agents. Hopefully someone here can show me that there are good lenders out there as well.
Thank you for your time.
Caat  |