TWO

i own a nice mortgage. i concur with Skack on the 27606 area, that's where i scored my sweet deal.

[Edited on December 11, 2006 at 11:56 PM. Reason : .]

12/11/2006 11:55:22 PM

I bought a condo near NCSU just because is was so cheap, and is a great way for my wife and I to build credit and equity while living way within our means. Since we are saving to buy a house, this has made a huge difference for us and will probably allow us to get something super nice instead of just a starter home when we do purchase.

The place we bought was only 59k, has 2 bedrooms, and an office, 1.5 baths. We now are just paying 250 per month, plus 118 in HOA fees. I honestly dont think we could have made a better decision. We fixed it up alot on our own, and if we were patient we could probably sell it for 65k pretty easily. The prices of the condos in our area have gone up over the past 2 years, and the average place that is smaller than ours is selling for about 61k now.

Condos arent necessarily bad investments, but you just have to be honest with yourself about what you are really buying, and you shouldnt count on being able to get rid of it super fast in order to "upgrade" to a house or something, because they take longer to sell lots of times.

12/12/2006 8:42:51 AM

Quote :

"then why did you chose not to do it?"

Because I wanted the lower interest rate associated with putting in a downpayment, and, I only plan to pay PMI for about a year. I put down 5% and I bought the house for less than it appraised which gave me another ~5% of instant equity. I'm expecting it to go up in value and I'm doing some nice upgrades (hardwoods, new bathrooms, kitchen updates, etc) this year. I'm hoping to have it re-appraised around late-summer 2007 and I'm expecting to have the required 20% equity in the house to drop PMI at that time.

Long story short, once I get 20% equity and have my house re-appraised I will have the benefits of no PMI, lower interest, and an equity based line of credit that I can use for other investments. If I did the first time homebuyer's program or an 80%/15%/5% type of loan I'd have to pay closing costs all over again and it's likely that interest rates will be higher at that time than they are today.

[Edited on December 12, 2006 at 11:12 AM. Reason : l]

12/12/2006 11:08:34 AM

FYI, Credit Unions seem to have much lower PMI than other lenders. My credit union explained why, but I don't remember the explanation. I pay about $45/month for PMI, but it was $90-$100/month with all the other lenders. That's just one thing to keep in mind. If you're a member of SECU you might want to talk to them about your options.

12/12/2006 12:07:21 PM