Personal Finance - Home Ownership

I have a townhouse here in Vegas that I bought in 2019 and got a 3.875 rate. I don’t want to give this up for anything lol. Mortgage and HOA fees total about 1200. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1500 sq feet. Trying to rent something comparable would probably be 2000+. A teacher friend of mine is about to be forced to buy something like a mobile home because there’s not much else she could buy that she can afford by herself and she makes 80k. If I had to buy something today I would be in the same boat and would have to leave Las Vegas. I will be graduating school this summer at 44 and despite 15 years at my current employer, I might be looking for other jobs that require me to relocate. I would rent this place out rather than sell if that was the case.

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I remember wondering about this as well. Let me know if you figure out a way.

Condo HOA fees seem like an unpredictable nightmare.

Why would the lender want to do that? The idea of a transferrable mortgage would entail all sorts of risks for them (e.g. adverse selection of un-creditworthy transferees) and little benefit (they would probably be better off having the sub 3% mortgage paid off so they can lend more out at today’s higher rates).

There would probably be need to be a huge premium at the initial signing which would deter anyone from buying such a product in a low rate environment.

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I’m annoyed that she actually makes $8k/month from her side hustle and the headline is just lying.

The big problem with mortgages is that when interest rates go up, the value of the mortgage goes down (because it’s a fixed rate loan), but also the duration goes up, because people try to avoid moving. And the opposite happens when rates go down. The lender loses no matter what. This dynamic is the reason no one can own whole mortgages and they have to be parceled out through exotic securitization trusts.

Making the effect worse by allowing the loans to be assumed would, at a minimum, require substantially higher interest rates to cover for the risk. It seems very unlikely that homebuyers would go for that over a traditional mortgage.

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Indeed, thus the “separate legal agreement” call-out.

Yeah, this is true. If I was getting a mortgage at 2.5 and I could make it assumable at 3.5, I’d probably have thought long and hard about it, though.

I never even thought consciously about those billboards much but just assumed reflexively they’re trying to scam vulnerable people out of their houses.

Frankly I’m surprised the company makes such a show of trying to pretend they’re not scamming old or disabled people. You can do this stuff out in the open—this is America, nobody cares.

Not entirely unpredicted, but I got hit with a $2500 assessment this year to help build back the reserves. The entire complex has been underfunded for the last 20+ years and I get to help make up the shortage.

There’s probably a lot of official corporate stuff with strict ethical rules that is mostly for liability protection that is ignored and then a lot of unofficial face to face discussion between franchisees that is about how to best scam old people and make real money.

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seems unethical

I don’t really know where to put this, but maybe someone in here has some experience with reverse mortgages.

TLDR: Grandparents had reverse mortgage, they died, house still in Grandma’s name with tax office, has sat empty for 4 years.

My grandmother died in early 2019, she had one semi-elderly daughter living with her, my aunt, ~70. My understanding is that Grandma and Grandpa did a reverse mortgage on their house in Florida (relatively decent area, nearby houses sell for ~300-350k), and that when they both died, my aunt had one full year to live in the house and then she had to move out.

Grandma passes away, Aunt tells me the situation, she seems pretty confident in that. The having a full year to live there seemed super weird to me and I asked about it a bunch, but she was sure. I don’t live near her, so I never looked at any paperwork (we’re not very close, but I should have had her mail me paperwork or read it over the phone). Grandma and Grandpa had no money (hence the reverse mortgage) so there’s no big will or anything, Aunt was sole surviving child.

I was talking to the Aunt today, and she mentions that she saw a former neighbor recently who said that the house has remained empty, no work has been done, no one’s ever lived there. She also mentioned that she still receives tax bills from the county for the property. I check the county appraiser, and sure enough, my Grandma is still listed as the owner, with the mailing address being my aunt’s new address. It’s been over 4 years since my Grandmother died, and over 3 years since my aunt moved out (she took the full 12 months that she thought she had to stay in the house). She was confident she didn’t have to do anything - the bank was going to take the full house.

I’m worried that she/I screwed this whole thing up. That maybe my aunt misunderstood, and I didn’t ask - that the estate has to handle the sale, maybe there’s a small chance of getting some small amount of money out of it if the sale value is higher than the owed/appraised value.

I’m having my aunt try to find any paperwork she can find so I can read it, I should have done that 4 years ago of course - it’s possible she chucked it all when she moved. I emailed the tax assessor for the county to see if they can tell me anything (I assume they can’t). Can anyone give me any other ideas for where I can look for info? Unfortunately I don’t even know the bank’s name at this point. Hopefully she still has the info buried somewhere.

As said, it’s most likely LOL Bank - or even if it’s LOL us, I’d bet we’re not losing any money, but my aunt doesn’t have much, so I think I should chase it down and know for sure. Feel dumb for just letting her handle it, I should have doublechecked her work.

Property tax records are public, so there should be a reverse mortgage listed as a lien against the property. Check the state database for her property tax records, or hire a lawyer where the property is located to do a simple title search.

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Welp, got notified my escrow payment is going from $80/mo to an “estimated” $635.

My total payment right now is $1800…and these clowns refunded me $1700 and cut my payment by $350/mo around this time last year. The escrow account is currently at a $2k deficit.

:harold:

In the valley? That’s amazing.

I am looking at buying a house with a plan to tear it down and build a new one. What I am struggling with is how the purchase process and the financing process will work together. More specifically, I am going to need a loan to buy the house. I’m going to need a design and a contract with a builder to get a construction loan. But getting a final design will take time and investment, which I don’t want to make if someone can just come along and buy the house out from under me.

Is it common in these situations to do a PSA subject to a contingency for the whole design/financing process? Seems a lot less certain than a contingency for a traditional mortgage, but I don’t see any other way that this would work, unless you’re supposed to be rich enough to buy the land out of pocket if you want to do this…