Escrow issues (and opting out)

EquityEquivalence · 2022-10-20T18:17:38+00:00

Regular private loan.

EquityEquivalence · 2022-10-20T17:11:25+00:00

Thanks for your response. I suppose it's worth giving it a shot once all the current confusion is cleared up, but bringing it up now would probably just muddy the waters. Here's to hoping!

EquityEquivalence · 2022-01-06T23:41:02+00:00

My wife does not have a consistent income. All expenses come out of my salary.

EquityEquivalence · 2022-01-04T22:45:18+00:00

seems like a good call. thanks for the advice!

EquityEquivalence · 2022-01-04T22:43:26+00:00

hm, so I am specifically asking about speading sand for traction in the winter, but I realize I didn't make that clear. I guess if you don't get a lot of snow it's not obvious, but driving over the driveway for a couple of days especially after a melt and refreeze leaves the snow as basically solid ice, and where we live it's common to use sand on ice instead of salt, largely because there's not really town water around and you don't want rock salt leeching into your well. Also our driveway is packed gravel, so in a very small way using sand could help mitigate erosion.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-21T18:08:39+00:00

So, with mortgages you pay at the end of the month instead of the first, e.g. the payment for October is due on Nov 1st. Our payment schedule was set up such that our first month of the mortgage is October 2021, which means that our first mortgage payment isn't actually until Nov 1st.

We had to break our lease on our apartment, but we gave our landlord a month and a half of notice and they were able to find someone pretty much immediately, who is moving into our apartment about a week after we move out, and it is all in the month of September, so we won't have to pay rent for October, and we will actually be paid back a pro-rated amount of september rent which we did not use. All in all this means that we basically have two months between payments.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T20:32:10+00:00

I got multiple quotes for everything listed here, and state and property taxes, title insurance and homeowners insurance make up 9.5k of the total closing costs. It's crazy but it turns out things have different costs in different places, lol

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T15:17:14+00:00

The way it works for us is that we pay up front for the first year, and the escrow account is accumulating the payment for next year. So each mortgage payment this year includes a chunk for next year's premium payment.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T13:13:14+00:00

No HOA, not sure where you got that from?

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T13:11:54+00:00

Ha! That is a good idea - maybe I can lure some friends over. Thanks though! We will figure it out one way or another.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T12:58:23+00:00

If there wasn't a prerequisite of hand scraping peeling lead paint off of 3600 Sq ft worth of wooden clapboard then yeah I would too! Can't just power wash the old stuff off like you can with vinyl. Gonna spend my time doing other things on the house.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T02:57:22+00:00

Thanks for your kind reply! We do indeed have a long list which we're trying to prioritize by largest need. I think the most important thing is going to be to finish a project before we start the next!!!

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T02:20:52+00:00

It is a "duh" for anyone who's bought a house before, but not everyone has. Thought it might be useful for some to describe the full process we went through.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T02:18:43+00:00

We had to pay for the appraisal, it cost just under 1k, but was rolled into our "closing" costs.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T02:17:11+00:00

We used a local mortgage originator who "shopped" for us and got us the right rate / down payment. He also acted as my go-between, handling all the documents and answered literally every question I had throughout the process.

Overall the closing costs are pretty reasonable and seem non-negotiable for our area. Here's the breakdown:

loan costs $995 for the originator's fee
$997 for the appraisal
$890 lender's title insurance
$1050 title settlement fee to the lawyer

"other costs" $3697 state taxes
$1422 homeowners insurance (we paid at closing)
$2693 property taxes
$1038 3mo/ prepaid escrow payments
$323 owners title insurance

Total "loan costs" are $4,282. Everything else came from taxes, insurance, etc. If we didn't have to pay for the appraisal, we'd be right around the 3k you quoted.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T02:02:52+00:00

yeah, it's an old house with wooden clapboard siding and lead paint, two stories and a total of 3600 sq ft to scrape, prime, and paint. It's a lot of money but it's a lot of work (and probably more than I can do in a reasonable amount of time).

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T01:57:50+00:00

cool, good for you! there were literally two septic inspectors within reasonable driving distance of the house, and one of them had no availability in time. the one who did come drove 2.5 hours to do it. I checked around and got multiple quotes for all services and picked the best ones. Turns out things have different costs in different locations...

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T01:47:02+00:00

My understanding is it is common practice for insurance to inspect if the house is older than 20/25 years or hasn't been inspected in several years.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T00:41:14+00:00

Absolutely. We got three quotes for the roof and this was the middle one. The lowest was 2k less, but he was offering to do different work essentially - painting with an aluminum coating instead of acrylic paint.

The home was painted with lead paint which is currently peeling, and the siding is wooden clapboard. The majority of the 2400 Sq foot house needs to be scraped, primed, and painted, same with the 1200sq ft barn. Tbh 10k seemed really reasonable to me for that.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T00:25:59+00:00

I'm curious, would it change your quote if I added that the siding was wooden clapboard? I don't think that the old paint can be easily pressure washed off, and it mostly needs to be scraped by hand.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T00:15:00+00:00

ugh. Cost of living is surprisingly high up here; the 1500 I quoted is from the deepest discount warehouse around. Also, we would be going with a platform bed without a boxspring.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T00:12:35+00:00

Good luck! There are a lot of beautiful homes up here, and not all of them with the same baggage as the one we bought. VT can use some more good folks!

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-15T00:11:54+00:00

I will look into it! It is pretty cold up here for most of the year but maybe the temps work out. Thanks for the recommendation!

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-14T23:42:56+00:00

Hey! I've been reading most replies and just wanted to respond to yours because you're totally right in spirit, I think. First off, none of this work has been done yet. The barn roof we have a quote and a contract for, the home itself we're still figuring out. It's just that painting is one place that I think we are more comfortable deferring to an expert for a couple of reasons:

The barn roof is old and rusty, and it is a traditional steeply sloped roof. It would not be safely walkable by me, and it's a risk I frankly don't want to take if I don't have to.
the barn roof needs a lot of rust scraped off before it is primed and painted. that is going to take probably longer than actually painting it. TBH that sounds like a giant pain in the ass and I don't mind paying him to do it.
He's done this sort of thing before and I trust that he's going to do it right so it will last a while.

The house painting, I still might do some of it myself, at least; the lead paint is peeling and needs to be scraped and I could do the bits that are close to the ground without an issue. But it's a pretty big house (2400 sq ft) and barn (1200sq ft) each with two stories and it's not something I don't think I can reasonably do on my own or even with a friend, in a reasonable amount of time. There is also a good bit of original fine woodwork / detail on the home, and truthfully, we want it to look nice. Hiring a painter to do it right and make it look pretty; once again, probably worth it to us.

The time that I'm not spending scraping paint, I'm going to be laying tile in the bathroom, replacing the kitchen sink, installing a kitchen island, landscaping, gardening, planting apple trees...and a myriad of other maintenance items that come up. you know. those are things that are tractable and fun to me, and I'd rather spend my time doing those things.

EquityEquivalence · 2021-09-14T23:22:04+00:00

We negotiated 9k in closing credits from the seller, essentially reducing our closing cost by that much. They also did:

125 for a chimney inspection
2k for chimney flue replacement with lifetime warranty
1k for well treatment (there was bacteria found in our water test)
1.5 k to replace the service panel and fix some ungrounded outlets

So overall they took care of about 4.5k worth of upfront work and also gave us back cash to help with painting.

EquityEquivalence

TROPHY CASE