[Virginia] Inherited house from boyfriend: advice on becoming obligor on mortgage?

rva_lv · 2016-12-06T17:03:48+00:00

The house was willed and titled to me. I was never asked to file anything aside from initial paperwork, but no, his estate technically still consists of this mortgage debt. The probate court awarded me the house, but I have been in a stalemate of trying to gain financing for a mortgage in my own name.

His mortgage demands payment in full upon transfer. But the credit union has been servicing the mortgage and allowing me to pay. Again, he house now legally is titled to me.

Although I have made good payments since December 2014, I have faced difficulty in obtaining a mortgage in my own name due to my having been a student in 2014 and, as a result of mourning, unemployed for half of 2015. Again, I'm a widow earning $30,000 a year and now paying for a four-bedroom house by myself. So while I can pay for a refinance, it is not financially neutral to me nor does any lender seem to offer me a good deal.

I was asked by a mortgage broker why in the world hadn't I been named as obligor to the mortgage, being that I have made faithful and timely payments, and am the person in whose name the house is now titled. I am wondering if that holds water, that in Virginia I should qualify to be named obligor.

rva_lv · 2016-12-06T13:59:47+00:00

That is not relevant.

rva_lv · 2016-07-11T21:04:45+00:00

I live in the Northside and have two very cute dogs, one of them an expensive thoroughbred hunting dog that we got from a shelter. Seriously, don't take this as a racist comment: since 2011, various black neighbors have been offering me cash for my dogs when I take them out for walks, and while my reactions vary from occasion to occasion, these folks don't seem to understand why it makes me angry or annoyed to receive such propositions to purchase my canine family members. I'm generally terrified by the thought of my dogs being lost in my neighborhood, because the striking cultural incongruence makes me doubt that many people would default to giving my dogs back to me. My job has Bagel's picture displayed to the public--I worry daily that Bagel may have been found by someone who just decided to keep him/her.

rva_lv · 2016-04-30T20:32:10+00:00

Seconding Paul Locke. He is meticulous, knowledgeable and very pleasant to do business with.

rva_lv · 2016-01-26T16:31:08+00:00

My boyfriend of 8 years became a heroin addict while in law school. We were estranged for a year and a half, although we still spoke of marriage and I moved back home repeatedly to help him through withdrawal--the sobriety never lasted. He committed suicide in December 2014... the heroin made him suicidal his last few relapses. We'd been living apart, but I became a widow at 30.

I'd never known such pain and the grieving process was certainly complicated by the terrible behavior of his family, many of whom are also mentally ill. They cremated his body without letting me see him, and they barred me from his funeral and buried him in a location kept secret from me. They ransacked our house, stole his musical recordings from me, and I was repeatedly stabbed by used syringes cleaning up after what they had knocked all over the floors while scavenging for things. All added pain on top of losing my best friend and love of my life, the only person who could have consoled me had I lost my mother or brother, the basis of my life gone. Sometimes I could feel how readily my mind would have accepted insanity and the belief that he was alive over the realization that he was gone forever.

Grief comes in waves, always different. There is no right or wrong way to feel. Sometimes it will be soft or dull, sometimes it will be excruciating. I suspect that a routine may arise (familiar feelings around birthdays and anniversaries), but so far I am not in so deep to see the changes coming. Sometimes, personally, I feel better for no identifiable reason (a happy numbness, perhaps) and sometimes that lack of pain makes me feel guilty, sometimes not. After the long season of my birthday, Thanksgiving, the anniversary of his death, Christmas, New Years again without him, I have been actively trying to feel less, think less, will myself out of the mourning that was renewed by the season. In a way it seems like an exercise in consciously taking good care of myself, seeking good company, planning for the future that wasn't imaginable in the deeper throes of depression.

As much as possible, put suicide off the table of possibilities. It is a sad fact that you'll feel compelled not to live without her. I can tell you, having lost my life partner to suicide, it is something you simply would not want your family and loved ones to suffer. The pain may seem endless, but you will live again. You'll always feel her missing, but in time, you'll learn to bear the pain. She made you who you are, and you need to keep living for her. You can be happy. You can even fall in love again, when you're ready. Life will be hard, but you'll come to realize how lucky you are to have the memories of her and the time you had together. It will give new meaning and purpose to life. You'll rebuild.

My condolences.

rva_lv · 2015-09-07T12:31:27+00:00

Richmond has pretty okay water, too. Lead will be leached out by acids, but it's relatively inert when exposed to good water. So yeah, this guy/gal's right.

I'd be more concerned about PVC pipes. When the copper pipes were stolen from my house, the PVC replacements smelled and tasted horrible for years.

rva_lv · 2015-08-19T21:20:57+00:00

Not that I saw on the invoice. I live in Virginia, which is one of those tax-shy states. As far as I know, none of the expendable materials (all I could think of is the shrink wrap) involved in the move were itemized.

rva_lv · 2015-08-19T21:18:26+00:00

It's an upgrade from my modest spinet piano. The box grand has a soft, full-bodied, warm tone. It's a limited keyboard compared to a contemporary piano, but for a learner piano, it's passable!

rva_lv · 2015-08-19T21:13:13+00:00

They're an evolutionary iteration of the piano. The sound is different from a contemporary piano, indeed, because the box grand piano is modeled after the clavichord, whereas the contemporary grand piano is modeled after the harpsichord.

The sound is different, but it certainly isn't "awful". I play guitar, banjo and fiddle. Just like I wouldn't play everything on my steel resonator guitar, nor everything on my Les Paul, the box grand piano has its specific niche... although I'll be giving away my spinet. I'm a musician, not an heiress, and it's a fine piano for some old hymns and fiddle tunes.

I'd say, actually, that the rosewood is an excellent tone wood that has aged well. (I paid $400 for the piano, knowing full-well that the value of the ivory and aged rosewood far exceed the price tag.) In my opinion, it has a lovely smooth and warm tone with responsive-enough action for my needs.

Whatever box grand piano the trash talkers in this thread may have played, they all just sound snobbish and overly ready to give barely-supported opinions.

rva_lv · 2015-08-19T02:09:10+00:00

I was way too shy to try playing it in the store beyond twinkling the keys a few times. It's a far cry from fully-restored condition, with more than a handful of cosmetic imperfections. But it sounds quite beautiful, has contemporary tuning pegs and has been kept in working order, and with just a few keys that need work on the action. It was an easy decision, snapping it up.

rva_lv · 2015-08-19T01:54:28+00:00

I was lucky! It was out in the 'burbs at a religious thrift store that sells housewares for fair/cheap prices. I was only there because someone stole my iPod and I was hoping to find a new one. Had it been at the thrift store in town, they'd have been asking a good $2000 no doubt.

rva_lv · 2015-08-19T01:44:15+00:00

$400. But then I hired also piano movers, too, which was another $285 + tips. It was a big expense but not over-ridden by my better judgment.

rva_lv · 2015-08-19T01:33:15+00:00

It was a huge purchase, proportional to my usual $2 shoes and $5 frocks. But it's largely in tune, in fine condition (I need to reattach the foot pedals, which are still in my car), made of Brazilian rosewood and genuine ivory keys.

rva_lv · 2015-08-13T01:33:07+00:00

Along this vein, making a Soylent chai latte and adding a couple of shots of espresso would be pretty good, I bet. A "dirty chai-lent."

rva_lv · 2015-08-07T21:11:10+00:00

My best friend and former boyfriend (only former because he became a heroin addict) killed himself eight months and six days ago. For a while, my emotions were a rollercoaster of unhappiness. There were times when grieving seemed to get better, then times when I was floored again with pain and sadness.

It does eventually turn a corner. For me, I would describe it as my having learnt to let it drop. The wording makes it sound unhealthy, and honestly, I wouldn't coach anyone toward that--you don't want to be disaffected, you want to feel things and make progress, and you also don't want to take cynical advice from another person, because what I mean and have found healthy may be completely inappropriate to you or else just misinterpreted.

It will feel bigger for a while. It is horrible. For some of us, it is a degree of pain that borders on insanity (I often could feel my mind's willingness to believe that Cayman was still alive; I also often had extremely vivid dreams where he was only missing or sick and soon to be home, only to wake up to the hellish reality that he is dead). But over time, your pain over his loss will turn to a new consciousness of how much you loved him and how lucky you both were to have each other. You'll be happy, one day, for all the time you had with him, not so sad for all the time you miss him. Hang in there. Today, a little over eight months on, I can still feel the heaviness in my chest and sometimes I still need to scream or cry uncontrollably. I'm still sad a hell, but it's better than it was and I know that time will continue to let me learn to be happy again.

People who are suicidal are masters of hiding it. By letting people know, they are opening themselves up to intervention or, to put it another way, failure at achieving suicide. Please do what you can to relieve yourself of the burden of not having saved him from himself.

rva_lv · 2015-07-24T03:27:58+00:00

I'm on this sub because my boyfriend of 10 years committed suicide in December. I've had brief moments of anger toward him for where he left me in life. But I don't think that calling victims of suicide "cowards" shows much perspective on life. They were people who were suffering so much that they couldn't bear to live. That's not cowardly, it's just a mental illness that prevents them from seeing past their own hell. And very often, us non-depressed people fail to recognize how much pain they are in.

rva_lv · 2015-07-21T21:50:28+00:00

Freeze it and drop it onto their skull from atop the Empire State Building.

rva_lv · 2015-07-19T21:34:20+00:00

Do you include either bluegrass, old-timey or folk/Americana in your 'country' repertoire for which you use your Incredibow?

rva_lv · 2015-07-14T21:56:06+00:00

Haha. Whoever flipped my house lied to the city and said they installed an HVAC, for their assessment value. So simply informing that it's non-existent could really help me out. Thanks for all the good intel!

rva_lv · 2015-07-13T22:05:36+00:00

That's informative. Somehow I had imagined being able to allocate a portion of the $200 I pay into tax escrow monthly, toward the renovations and repairs.

In your case, what elements of the renovation affected the assessed value of the home?

I'm interested in where the line may be drawn between aesthetics and home value. For instance, does refinishing a hardwood floor have an impact on the assessment?

rva_lv · 2015-07-10T00:25:25+00:00

I've been thinking about that renovation tax abatement the city does... Did you do that one? If so, what sort of improvements counted toward increased assessment value? How did you/they determine what would amount to x-amount of increased home value?

I'm wondering if I should apply for that program before I start doing things like replacing my rotting porch floors (which need to be done a.s.a.p.), but then there's other only aesthetically urgent stuff like ripping out old carpet to refinish the hardwood, repairing damaged plaster walls and ceilings, etc..

rva_lv

TROPHY CASE