Hola, I am in the process of buying house and being first time buyer is making it scary. Being immigrant, not completely aware of the market gain, process, build materials etc adds to the complexity apart from the higher costs of the house. Looking for tips and advises. Thanks in advance! Total comp: 300k #mortgage #housing
Do you have a green card or citizenship? I personally wouldn’t buy unless I knew I could stay here.
Yes. I’ve green card and my wife has citizenship
Oh nice! Then you’re good to go. My only advice is not to over leverage yourself. Make sure you can make the payment (scrape by) if you halved your salary. A lot of people here are buying with RSU money and you’re kind of gambling. Don’t be house poor.
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With 300k you could get your amigos to build you one in a week 👌🏽
I don’t think he’s that kind of immigrant my guy
Why do you need to buy a house being an immigrant in the first place? Don’t you know that renting is always better than buying long term ? That’s like asking to play with fire and then complain when you get hurt
No longer immigrant. I am looking for long term investment and the rent rates are super high in Bay Area. My thought is to pay mortgage rather than rent.
Renting isn’t always better than buying in the long term. As with everything it is case dependent but buying can make very strong financial sense (and renting sometimes can too). The longer the timeline, the lower the mortgage rate, and the smallest amount you can put down (assuming a good rate) typically all help the case for buying.
Look for an agent that’ll charge a flat fee and give you max buyer’s rebate. They’ll never tell you to pay more for a house than what it’s worth. We used shopprop for both of ours houses and got both of them under asking price. You’ll just have to do some legwork yourself like going and seeing houses via Redfin and use shopprop to go over disclosures, negotiating an offer and putting an offer in. They do offer showings as well though, it’s just that it’s not free like Redfin.
Buy in good school district, and with good schools assigned to the house, that automatically means you will be living amongst safest neighbourhood, those houses would see maximum gains. Try to get manageable commute to your office, people look at commute distance from resale aspects too. Buy what you can afford. Buy the appropriate number of rooms for your future needs. Try to get some backyard if at all in your budget. Schools, manageable commute, enough bedrooms ( not just large square footage), large neighbourhood, close to parks, grocery, restaurants. - everyone look for these things in the house. A lot of h1b immigrants buy houses you infact have green card dude, what are you waiting on.
This infatuation with schools is nonsense, the ratings can and do change. And school ratings have nothing to do with how safe an area is, there's no correlation. Canada doesn't have school ratings, I'm not sure about the rest of the world. It's all these tech people in the U.S. thinking their little snowflake is the next Einstein LOL
Which bubble are you living in achronix. It's okay if you bought the house in bad school district. Go to redfin, and see house prices quite directly relate to school districts and ratings. Rich people will buy in those places. It will have less homeless people. most of the people want to live where their kids can go to better schools. People move and rent house in better school district and keep their current house on rent. There are multiple posts on blind.
The only mistake you can make is to not buy the biggest house you can afford.
I do agree with you but the trade off would be the make year of the house as I see 1920 houses, which are bigger but hard to judge their longevity
With that tc and without knowing your hhtc and your NW. I am afraid you cannot afford Bay Area.
Curious to know your math for buying. What I learnt, With 20% down payment, my guess for a 900k to $1 million should land a monthly payment of about $8K which may not be very hard for a monthly income of net $13k
I think you can get away with a condo or a town home in that price range easily. Sfh is a tough ask.
@ zhAe04 I sold a house in 98012 and moved rural, IDGAF about school ratings. It's flat out stupid, and the only people that seem to care are new to the U.S. Americans aren't all hung up on school ratings. I paid half what I would of in a shit hole like Bothell or God forbid BRK and have a much better life. If you're so concerned about your snowflakes send em to private schools, the "ultimate" in education.
Where did you move to ? How's your lifestyle in rural ?
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