Jordy's about to talk @ 10 EST

billt01

Those who have interest rates higher than 6 and a quarter, get that refi paperwork ready....

JohnInCarolina

Did you learn anything?  We locked into a very low rate over ten years ago, so I suspect we’ll own the home before refinancing makes sense again.

caliking

What's an interest rate?

For anyone looking to refi, consider Costco. Fees were flat rate of $550 (vs. $5K from the original lender) back in the day, and we were able to negotiate the rate between 2-3 lenders. Ended up with 2.6ish %. Haven't had a house note in some years now. 

RRP

From the "those were the days" - but in reverse...way back in 1972 when we bought our first home we locked in a 30 yr at 13.875% which we were lucky to get because our seller had an assumable mortgage instrument but it did permit the lender to extend the years. Two years later I refinanced at 11.125%. Then over the years thereafter we built our new home I flip flopped twice using ARMs and paid it off. My point is don't think you have missed the boat and have to settle in at a 30 year rate which gags you - as rates always do come back down. With inflation you are still better off to buy now rather than putting it off  - and besides perhaps in 10 years or so you are ready to move or move on up anyway! 

Foghorn

Yeah.  People think the interest rates are really high now - and if they go down, refinancing might make sense, so I hope people take advantage of that.  But in a recent talk I heard, the basic interest rate for borrowing money has been 6% since Roman times - with the occasional straying from that, like the 1970's and some recent years where it was low.

With that said, isn't the general recommendation that if you have a fixed rate mortgage, it is worth the hassle and cost of refinancing if you can get a rate that is 2% below your current rate?   Have rates dropped that much?

Even if they haven't, just dropping them some and with the recent potential change in realtor pay structure, the housing market may get a bump as the costs associated with buying a house may decrease.

Gulfcoastguy

It’s been a real blast trying to sell my parents home and rental house while mortgage rates are up. People got used to artificially low interest rates the previous 15 years or so. 

My interest rate when I bought my house in 2002 was 6%. I spent the first 3 or 4 years making extra principal payments. My goal was to pay double the principal each month until each monthly payment was more principal than interest. A few years in interest rates were driven down. I considered re financing but decided that with fees I wouldn’t really be saving that much. All in all I paid a 15 year mortgage off in a little over 11 years. I would probably have paid it off sooner but the third time it was changed they made it difficult to make extra payments that were less than a full monthly payment.

JohnInCarolina

Gulfcoastguy said:

It’s been a real blast trying to sell my parents home and rental house while mortgage rates are up. People got used to artificially low interest rates the previous 15 years or so. 

Yep.  The woman who purchased my parents’ home here in Durham last year paid all cash for it. I think this is increasingly how a lot of sales are going.  Obviously very few people can really afford to do that but it might happen with your parents’ place.

Gulfcoastguy

JohnInCarolina said:

Gulfcoastguy said:

It’s been a real blast trying to sell my parents home and rental house while mortgage rates are up. People got used to artificially low interest rates the previous 15 years or so. 

Yep.  The woman who purchased my parents’ home here in Durham last year paid all cash for it. I think this is increasingly how a lot of sales are going.  Obviously very few people can really afford to do that but it might happen with your parents’ place.

The rental house was sold to a girl in her 20’s . Her plan is to live in it for a couple of years then rent it out. Her father owns hundreds of rental properties and she is following in his footsteps.

 Other house , despite superior build quality, is proving more difficult. It’s a ranch with 1980’s style and is on 5 acres. Add to that a roof that is 17 years old(50 year architectural shingles) . Locally insurers will not issue a new policy on a house with a roof 10 years or older. For some reason the Zillow price dropped 14 K in a month.

JohnInCarolina

Gulfcoastguy said:

JohnInCarolina said:

Gulfcoastguy said:

It’s been a real blast trying to sell my parents home and rental house while mortgage rates are up. People got used to artificially low interest rates the previous 15 years or so. 

Yep.  The woman who purchased my parents’ home here in Durham last year paid all cash for it. I think this is increasingly how a lot of sales are going.  Obviously very few people can really afford to do that but it might happen with your parents’ place.

The rental house was sold to a girl in her 20’s . Her plan is to live in it for a couple of years then rent it out. Her father owns hundreds of rental properties and she is following in his footsteps.

 Other house , despite superior build quality, is proving more difficult. It’s a ranch with 1980’s style and is on 5 acres. Add to that a roof that is 17 years old(50 year architectural shingles) . Locally insurers will not issue a new policy on a house with a roof 10 years or older. For some reason the Zillow price dropped 14 K in a month.

That sucks. You might have to bite the bullet and put a new roof on.  My guess is that you’d recover the cost and that it might make it easier to sell.  Easier said than done I know.  It’s tough to put money into a place when you’re just trying to get rid of it.

Legume

I remember as a kid getting dragged to look at houses, my dad had an itch to move for a while. We never did move, I remember talking about this years later and the combination of high rates and the property tax jump that would hit them (California froze prop tax for homeowners in the late 70s) kept him on the sidelines. They owned that house for 58 years.

And when it finally sold, the buyer paid cash.

Canugghead

We were paying our mortgage when term deposits were earning 18%, I was working for a financial company and paying around 12% IIRC even with the 3.5% employee mortgage discount. Mind you, house prices were not crazy like now.

Your mortgage interest on principal residence is tax deductible, no? So stop whining 

alaskanassasin

Canugghead said:

We were paying our mortgage when term deposits were earning 18%, I was working for a financial company and paying around 12% IIRC even with the 3.5% employee mortgage discount. Mind you, house prices were not crazy like now.

Your mortgage interest on principal residence is tax deductible, no? So stop whining 

 Yes but the standard deduction is generally higher than most peoples itemized.

TechsasJim

alaskanassasin said:

Canugghead said:

We were paying our mortgage when term deposits were earning 18%, I was working for a financial company and paying around 12% IIRC even with the 3.5% employee mortgage discount. Mind you, house prices were not crazy like now.

Your mortgage interest on principal residence is tax deductible, no? So stop whining 

 Yes but the standard deduction is generally higher than most peoples itemized.

Yep!    Add to that if Kamala gets her way (from the little info provided) the unrealized gains from your home can be taxed.    Guess we will see if that happens but if it does my family and I are F’d.   House is worth a helluva lot more than we gave for it 25yrs ago.   

DoubleEgger

I already pay taxes on unrealized gains on my house in the form of property taxes. They decide how far to ram it in you annually. Not even the common courtesy of lube either. 

TechsasJim

DoubleEgger said:

I already pay taxes on unrealized gains on my house in the form of property taxes. They decide how far to ram it in you annually. Not even the common courtesy of lube either. 

We get that too.   It’s maddening.   

I just don’t want someone to come in and say hey, the $200k home you bought 1/4 century ago is now worth $600k so you owe us $XXX while you have nothing, monetarily, to show for it.   

Legume

TechsasJim said:

alaskanassasin said:

Canugghead said:

We were paying our mortgage when term deposits were earning 18%, I was working for a financial company and paying around 12% IIRC even with the 3.5% employee mortgage discount. Mind you, house prices were not crazy like now.

Your mortgage interest on principal residence is tax deductible, no? So stop whining 

 Yes but the standard deduction is generally higher than most peoples itemized.

Yep!    Add to that if Kamala gets her way (from the little info provided) the unrealized gains from your home can be taxed.    Guess we will see if that happens but if it does my family and I are F’d.   House is worth a helluva lot more than we gave for it 25yrs ago.   

Even little info provided can be googled. She’s said this is one of a couple of features in Biden’s economic plan that she supports taking forward. It’s a tax on unrealized gains for people who 1) are worth $100MM or more and 2) pay less than 25% rate in taxes.

Congrats if this applies to you.

TechsasJim

@Legume

seeing will be believing.  Don’t want a debate nor argument, there is still nothing on her site to support anything—it’s just hearsay.   Kinda like Beyoncé at the DNC—just hearsay.   

Legume

good lord, you are insufferable

you want to take pot shots based on whatever you’re hearing on fox or whoever is scaring you today

someone takes 30 sec to look it up and say, no, that doesn’t square with what’s actually been said and proposed

‘hey, I’m still scared and I don’t know why but don’t want to argue’

I think what you meant to type above is you are intractably committed to trump or red or whatever and just want to repeat bad things you’ve heard or imagined but don’t want anyone to post otherwise because you have a limitless bag full of doubt and fear.

good luck with that, it sounds miserable.

billt01

JohnInCarolina said:

Did you learn anything?  We locked into a very low rate over ten years ago, so I suspect we’ll own the home before refinancing makes sense again.

I did 

we will have a mortgage payment for a few years and we may see a point drop by the end of the year which would save SWMBO and I a good bit of green backs

also betting on the mortgage lending game in the market always helps with the optimistic view 

TechsasJim

Legume said:

good lord, you are insufferable

you want to take pot shots based on whatever you’re hearing on fox or whoever is scaring you today

someone takes 30 sec to look it up and say, no, that doesn’t square with what’s actually been said and proposed

‘hey, I’m still scared and I don’t know why but don’t want to argue’

I think what you meant to type above is you are intractably committed to trump or red or whatever and just want to repeat bad things you’ve heard or imagined but don’t want anyone to post otherwise because you have a limitless bag full of doubt and fear.

good luck with that, it sounds miserable.

Fair enough man.  Do you and I’ll do me.   Talk about miserable.   

You’re probably the dumbass that believes everything you Google.   Go to Kamala’s website and please site her policies/plans.   I was on there before my last post just to see if she had actually outlined anything…nope.    Just asking for donations-which I get.   No plans, policies, etc.  

sounds like you are pro Kamala regardless.   2 months ago she was a pariah.   Now she can’t do wrong.   

Good luck with that Chief.  

Canugghead

I also wondered why Kamala has released very little if any plans/policies, then I saw someone posted this in OT,
https://bad-faith-times.ghost.io/democrats-are-saying-no-to-leslie-knope-politics/

JohnInCarolina

TechsasJim said:

Legume said:

good lord, you are insufferable

you want to take pot shots based on whatever you’re hearing on fox or whoever is scaring you today

someone takes 30 sec to look it up and say, no, that doesn’t square with what’s actually been said and proposed

‘hey, I’m still scared and I don’t know why but don’t want to argue’

I think what you meant to type above is you are intractably committed to trump or red or whatever and just want to repeat bad things you’ve heard or imagined but don’t want anyone to post otherwise because you have a limitless bag full of doubt and fear.

good luck with that, it sounds miserable.

Fair enough man.  Do you and I’ll do me.   Talk about miserable.   

You’re probably the dumbass that believes everything you Google.   Go to Kamala’s website and please site her policies/plans.   I was on there before my last post just to see if she had actually outlined anything…nope.    Just asking for donations-which I get.   No plans, policies, etc.  

sounds like you are pro Kamala regardless.   2 months ago she was a pariah.   Now she can’t do wrong.   

Good luck with that Chief.  

I’m going to ignore most of this, except the part where you claim that “2 months ago she was a pariah”

On what planet?  A pariah with whom?  

TechsasJim

JohnInCarolina said:

TechsasJim said:

Legume said:

good lord, you are insufferable

you want to take pot shots based on whatever you’re hearing on fox or whoever is scaring you today

someone takes 30 sec to look it up and say, no, that doesn’t square with what’s actually been said and proposed

‘hey, I’m still scared and I don’t know why but don’t want to argue’

I think what you meant to type above is you are intractably committed to trump or red or whatever and just want to repeat bad things you’ve heard or imagined but don’t want anyone to post otherwise because you have a limitless bag full of doubt and fear.

good luck with that, it sounds miserable.

Fair enough man.  Do you and I’ll do me.   Talk about miserable.   

You’re probably the dumbass that believes everything you Google.   Go to Kamala’s website and please site her policies/plans.   I was on there before my last post just to see if she had actually outlined anything…nope.    Just asking for donations-which I get.   No plans, policies, etc.  

sounds like you are pro Kamala regardless.   2 months ago she was a pariah.   Now she can’t do wrong.   

Good luck with that Chief.  

I’m going to ignore most of this, except the part where you claim that “2 months ago she was a pariah”

On what planet?  A pariah with whom?  

Perhaps a Pariah is extreme John but she was unanimously noted to be the worst VP ever.    When she ran for President she was the first to bailout bc she had zero backers.   

She has done absolutely nothing.   Heck, she hasn’t even gained votes to be in the current running—she got there by default.   There were no primaries to put her where she is, she literally got there bc the Biden/Harris platform had monies and the only way they could use those monies were for her— any outsider would have had to start fund raising from scratch.  

JohnInCarolina

TechsasJim said:

Perhaps a Pariah is extreme John but she was unanimously noted to be the worst VP ever.    

I have not seen anything that would support such a claim.  

“Unanimously” would imply that she was considered the worst by both Republicans and Democrats.  Unless you mean something else by unanimous.  

Do you have anything to back this up?  

DoubleEgger

What did Mike Pence accomplish as VP? What did any VP actually accomplish? 

Botch

DoubleEgger said:

What did Mike Pence accomplish as VP? What did any VP actually accomplish? 

One thing.  One VERY IMPORTANT thing.    

JohnInCarolina

Botch said:

DoubleEgger said:

What did Mike Pence accomplish as VP? What did any VP actually accomplish? 

One thing.  One VERY IMPORTANT thing.    

Yeah and they wanted to hang him for it.

You want to talk about pariahs, look no further than Mikey Pence.

alaskanassasin

billt01 said:

JohnInCarolina said:

Did you learn anything?  We locked into a very low rate over ten years ago, so I suspect we’ll own the home before refinancing makes sense again.

I did 

we will have a mortgage payment for a few years and we may see a point drop by the end of the year which would save SWMBO and I a good bit of green backs

also betting on the mortgage lending game in the market always helps with the optimistic view 

Drop a point by the end of this year? Bro.

Legume

TechsasJim said:

Legume said:

good lord, you are insufferable

you want to take pot shots based on whatever you’re hearing on fox or whoever is scaring you today

someone takes 30 sec to look it up and say, no, that doesn’t square with what’s actually been said and proposed

‘hey, I’m still scared and I don’t know why but don’t want to argue’

I think what you meant to type above is you are intractably committed to trump or red or whatever and just want to repeat bad things you’ve heard or imagined but don’t want anyone to post otherwise because you have a limitless bag full of doubt and fear.

good luck with that, it sounds miserable.

Fair enough man.  Do you and I’ll do me.   Talk about miserable.   

You’re probably the dumbass that believes everything you Google.   Go to Kamala’s website and please site her policies/plans.   I was on there before my last post just to see if she had actually outlined anything…nope.    Just asking for donations-which I get.   No plans, policies, etc.  

sounds like you are pro Kamala regardless.   2 months ago she was a pariah.   Now she can’t do wrong.   

Good luck with that Chief.  

I just googled it and, as google does, it serves up links that are likely to match what you entered into the search bar.  I checked four of whatever number of links it returned on the front page that were not tagged as ads.  I also avoided any that have obvious biases - like fox, cnn, msnbc, etc. and three of the four I checked were financial publications. All four were consistent.

So, as far a being ‘the dumbass that believes everything I google’ well, I’m not even sure what that means, do I believe the question I searched in google - it was a question.  Do I believe that it returned links related to what I searched - I do, it did.  Do I believe what I read from four separate sources that aren’t known for political biased reporting when they all agreed? Yes.

Do I think you should believe it because I wrote it here? Absolutely not. That’s why I told you what I did, so you can do your own research.  Clearly you hadn’t searched it out before you decided to post about it, so, draw your own conclusions about yourself and what you choose to believe from which sources. Where did you hear she was pushing a unrealized cap gains tax that would impact you? Maybe a detail or two was left out in the reporting because it’s a better story that way to stir people up?

I haven’t been to Kamala’s website. I haven’t been concerned with her lack of detailed policies as she just dropped into this and I’m sure wants to define her own agenda. We have two months to go, plenty of time to learn more if you wish to - but it will probably take watching or reading sources that do not have obvious bias to find out more.

I care about her character, the general direction she has taken in her career on issues, I care that she is an empathetic human, that she has a strong moral and ethical compass and backbone and that she associates herself with quality people. I can’t say any of these things about her opponent. I do not fawn over her, I did not fawn over Joe, or any president, ever.

Lastly, worst ratings, worst liked, lowest approval rating, etc. are the way now, mostly due to the extreme polarization and the type of polling they do now. It’s just not comparable to anything more than 10 years old and certainly not informative.

RRP

alaskanassasin said:

Canugghead said:

We were paying our mortgage when term deposits were earning 18%, I was working for a financial company and paying around 12% IIRC even with the 3.5% employee mortgage discount. Mind you, house prices were not crazy like now.

Your mortgage interest on principal residence is tax deductible, no? So stop whining 

 Yes but the standard deduction is generally higher than most peoples itemized.

ah, crap - this thread will probably get bounced to the trash anyway, but I just want to air one of my pet peeves when people say "your mortgage interest is tax deductible"... Even keeping it very simple math say your marginal tax bracket is 15% then say your interest paid was say $10,000. Then your tax benefit was only $1,500 - but you still netted out at $8,500. 

Legume

RRP said:

alaskanassasin said:

Canugghead said:

We were paying our mortgage when term deposits were earning 18%, I was working for a financial company and paying around 12% IIRC even with the 3.5% employee mortgage discount. Mind you, house prices were not crazy like now.

Your mortgage interest on principal residence is tax deductible, no? So stop whining 

 Yes but the standard deduction is generally higher than most peoples itemized.

ah, crap - this thread will probably get bounced to the trash anyway, but I just want to air one of my pet peeves when people say "your mortgage interest is tax deductible"... Even keeping it very simple math say your marginal tax bracket is 15% then say your interest paid was say $10,000. Then your tax benefit was only $1,500 - but you still netted out at $8,500. 

I think the point he was making is it’s likely not deductable in Canada, but I’m not sure.