Home refinace attempt going badly... 15 year 2.75% no points.

[ultrarunner]

I think a lot of people might not quite understand all the west coast numbers, and how they are so much higher just due to cost of living. Almost all skilled jobs (and "non-skilled") pay much, much more than they would elsewhere, due to having to pay to get the workers to work...and live, etc.

The numbers aren't nearly as crazy as they may seem, to the rest of us.

The SF minimum wage is $10.55 an hour and with 20 employees... the employer must kick in another $1.55 towards health care for every hour worked..

So a couple working minimum wage full time would earn 42k in wages plus $6,200 towards health insurance premiums.

 

[clemsonfor]

The SF minimum wage is $10.55 an hour and with 20 employees... the employer must kick in another $1.55 towards health care for every hour worked..

So a couple working minimum wage full time would earn 42k in wages plus $6,200 towards health insurance premiums.

and that is not much money!!! so how can you even buy a 100k house on tht amount of money and pay all the other bills there including the $4.50 gallon gas?

 

[ultrarunner]

and that is not much money!!! so how can you even buy a 100k house on tht amount of money and pay all the other bills there including the $4.50 gallon gas?

They can't... that brief window closed about 18 months ago... there were actually a number of distressed homes in Oakland and Richmond under a 100k for about 9 months.

I don't know too many places were a couple earning minimum wage can buy a stick or brick home... mostly, I'm think mobile home?

Filled up this morning with 89 at $3.99 a gallon... all bets are off what it will cost next fill up.

Most that earn minimum wage in the city rent rooms... and a lot rent rooms outside the city... SF is still a big draw for young people from everywhere...

I'm renting a 3 bedroom house to a young lady of 18 from Denver... told her family she was moving to San Francisco after High School and she did... within 48 hours she had a job waiting tables and has moved to better locals ever since and she goes to school... each of the three pay $450 ea.

Her parents sent her a one way ticket home for Christmas... she went and had a good visit and came right back... her Mom and Dad worry about her and said she can always come home...

After the process I just went though... I really don't know how anyone just starting out without a skill like engineering, nursing, law enforcement could live the dream in the Bay Area...

 

[J F]

***poof****

 

[clemsonfor]

that's the reason that I went to college and looked for a job I liked and wanted to live in a rural area where your money goes farther. I still could not afford to buy any land with a house on it that suited our needs and wants in the county that I wanted to be in within 40 mins of my office. But Im lucky and have the farm in this state that I can go to for weekends etc.

 

[crazyal]

Not long ago the Fed decided that banks weren't loaning enough money. So it's now buying up underwater mortgages from banks to free up their money and the justice department is backing away from going after the banks for making bad loans. The end result is that we are going right back to where we just were.

 

[ultrarunner]

Not long ago the Fed decided that banks weren't loaning enough money. So it's now buying up underwater mortgages from banks to free up their money and the justice department is backing away from going after the banks for making bad loans. The end result is that we are going right back to where we just were.

After the process I went through since Jan 15th... it was anything buy easy and it should have been a cake walk based on 38% loan to value, 834 credit score and 21 years on the job... and I paid down my mortage by 1/3...

I have a couple of friends/co-workers that decided against even applying because they do have credit issues or no equity...

I can honestly say I have even less understanding of how banking/lending works the older I am...

 

[Turbys_1700]

Supply and demand.

Always has...
Always will be...
In labor, goods, real estate, etc...
That is the way the market works...

 

[brain55]

We recently refinanced too. Except we were/are upside down. We were sble to take our mortgage from 5.875% to 4.125%. They told us it would take 30-90 days to close. The first couple of weeks we got them all the info they asked for. Over the next 60 days we would get emails from the person doing the loan saying everything was moving along. About two weeks out I started getting letters from the bank asking for different forms by number, I had no idea, so I'd email our contact and get no response, or I'd get the form letter email telling me everything was fine not once addressing my specific questions. At about 87 days her assistant starts calling my wife with a bunch of hoops to jump through. I just about lost it. I don't think we closed until the 95th day. If I wasn't so grateful for the opportunity to refi being upside down I would have unloaded on our loan person on how poorly the whole process was handled.

Brian

 

[clemsonfor]

After the process I went through since Jan 15th... it was anything buy easy and it should have been a cake walk based on 38% loan to value, 834 credit score and 21 years on the job... and I paid down my mortage by 1/3...

I have a couple of friends/co-workers that decided against even applying because they do have credit issues or no equity...

I can honestly say I have even less understanding of how banking/lending works the older I am...

I may come across on here as a just plain old country boy. I guess i play the part well, i have a normal job and chose a career that interested me not that will make me lots of Money, and its a career of normal intelligence folks and some i wnet to college with i wonder if that could of been said about them??? Anyway i say all that to say this , i have a masters degree in economics in my field which is forestry. Now granted its not an MBA but i did have at least one of those high level classes in school as well as a pile of other econ classes to get my masters in forestry economics..

Talking to my loan lady and trying to decide when to lock, the amount of points to buy or not buy and playing the game for a week, when i was told it may never get better and it may. Anyway here first offer seemed good but by the time i talked to the wife and such it was noo good anymore. the initial offer was X% with no points. Then the next few days it was way worse so i kept calling her every mourning. Well one mourning i called and the rate was a tad higher than the first offer even when i bought a half a point which is all that made financial sense with that loan, turns out the payments were actually lower than the first rate i got even though the rate was slightly higher??? I asked what that was about and how come some days i did not even have the ability to buy a point if i wanted to?? She said "welcome to the banking/home morgage world" I said that this did not make any economic sense to me on paper, and before all this (i delt with her before) i know she could realize i had more intelligence than the average person and asked way more questions and was really involved with all the numbers and such, her response again was dont " try to understand it, its really complicated and wont make any difference, just worry about loan length, your rate and payments. " I said ok and all was done a little over a year ago. I was able to get 20% equity and drop the PMI so not only did i drop a % point i also lost that PMI payment each month which saved me either $50 0r 75/month.. Odly enough the new lending laws they put in place to "HELP" folks out a few years ago, actually doubled the PMI payments from before !!!