Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with house and credit

Buying a car right before buying a house

glenngulia — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:34:17 -0800

How much of a bad idea is buying a car a month or so before buying a house? My credit score is very good, so no worries there.

I drive a piece of shit car by intention. It just made the ten-year mark for me (it was three-years-old when I bought it, so it's 13-years-old.) FWIW, it was a shitty car when it was new.

I wanted to drive the thing for ten years to prove to myself that I could make a sound financial decision. March 2013 has been on my calendar for a long time! I can't afford to buy the car I want outright, but after my year end bonus that I'll get soon, I can afford about half of the cost as a down payment.

Fortunately, I work in the central business district of a mid-sized city (thus park in a garage a few blocks from the office) and don't have to drive clients around, so my bad car doesn't matter much. (Except for when the EVP of my division asked for a ride home last month, which was pretty embarrassing.)

Thing is, I just got a crazy, big promotion. Hooray, right? But it's at a satellite office across the country, so the family and I will be moving, i.e. selling our house here, buying one there. All advice points to waiting to buy a car until after buying a house.

But this satellite office is small, with a small parking lot with assigned parking spots. My assigned spot will be next to the assigned spot of the head of this satellite office. I never want to drive my piece of shit car to this new job. In fact, I don't want to bring it to my new state.

Let's say the earliest I want to buy a car is Mar 15th when my bonus is deposited to my checking account. And let's say if the sale of my current home doesn't take forever, I'd be closing on my new home in late April at the absolute earliest but more likely May or June.

Should I buy a new car in March? Or should I suck it up and wait until I'm in my new house? Or is there some other option I'm not thinking of.

P.S.- My piece of shit car doesn't have working A/C. It's only a problem a few months out of the year where I live. But I'm moving to a very warm city, so driving this car at all there in the late spring (or Gold help me, summer) sounds terrible.

P.P.S.- I wear a suit to work.

I Inquire ...

CollectiveMind — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:33:18 -0800

I had a high credit score, no inquiries and no late debt. I bought a car and refinanced my house with the low interest rates. But I am considering starting a small business and may want to borrow for that. I am paid ahead on the car an the house, but I expected my credit scores to drop because of the new debt They did, but mostly because of the inquiries pulled by the lenders. But pulling credit is what they say they must do before they can give the loan. Two loans, six inquiries. The more inquiries they pull, the worse my score gets. Why is the borrower punished for going through the process to borrow, which, by going through it, makes him a less attractive borrower? Is there any way to avoid this nonsense?

continuously paying on credit to close?

grablife365 — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:46:54 -0800

I'm asking for my mom who is worried for her sister - Should my aunt/her sister continue to pay to keep clearing her credit while waiting to close on her house? My aunt found her house and put a contract on it at the start of this year. We expected to have Easter in her new house. Her credit was clear, she had them do a rapid re-score thing and she hadn't put anything new on it.

Old things like a 6 (I think) year old credit card, old phone bills, etc have popped up one at a time. They tell her she can't close on her house, she pays whatever it is, they wait a month, recheck her score and something else pops up. Its been a big circle. She has paid over 4000 dollars and is worried she'll lose her contract especially after the deal she got on it.

My mother isn't sure she pays the company that pops up or what.

Does this sound normal? Should my mom tell her anything? She's worried my aunt is being scammed and may not get her house.

Thanks.

Want to buy a house even though we are in lots of debt.

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:43:56 -0800

My wife and I have a LOT of credit card debt and no savings. We can now afford to start paying off the debt. We'd like to buy a house as quickly as possible, what can we do? Over the past five years we racked up about 70k in credit card debt. Obviously our credit rating isn't so great any more. My wife was chronically ill and we weren't sure she was going to make it so we were a lot less than responsible. Now, she has made a miraculous recovery, and we want to get on with our lives. I recently received a large pay raise so that I am taking home $4,000 a month after taxes. Our credit card minimum payments are about $1,200 a month, so we could afford the payments on a mortgage for a $100-150k house, but we have very little savings for a down payment. We are living with my parents but we are miserable here.

Our plan is to make paying off the debt our primary focus until it's done, but we are so miserable and depressed without our own space we are willing to pay more over the long term to get a house now. As I understand it, it is possible to get a "shitty" mortgage now and in 5 years when our debt is paid down refinance into a more reasonable mortgage. Is that true, or are we doomed to live with my parents for a while longer? We have three dogs so it is impossible to find an apartment, and we hate the idea of throwing the money away renting. Please e-mail wanttobuyahouseindebt@gmail.com if you need more information. Thanks.

If my mom lets her house be foreclosed and leaves the country, can I get in trouble?

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:49:30 -0800

If my mom puts her money in my bank account, lets her house be foreclosed and leaves the country, can I get in trouble? My mom has decided she wants to leave the states and move to europe permanently (she has both US and UK citizenship). Her house has been up for sale for a while but there's no sign of any takers. Being somewhat impulsive, she decided to pick a date and leave, whether her house sold or not.

So now that the date is almost here, she wants me to open a checking account in my name. Then she will write me a check for a bunch of money, I'll give her my debit card and she'll use that in foreign ATMs until she can manage to open a foreign account, which apparently takes a while. Plus she's not sure where she'll be settling.

She doesn't want to consider other options and she's stressed out, so I don't feel like I have much of a choice if I want to keep up good relations. My question is: what kind of trouble can I get into for doing this, if any? Could my credit get hurt or something like that?

Buying a house soon: is it better to pay down my credit card partially, or pay off a small personal loan?

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:24:37 -0800

Buying a house soon: is it better to pay down my credit card partially, or pay off a small personal loan? I'm buying a house in the U.S. and will be looking to get pre-approved for a mortgage soon. My credit score is currently in the 700s, and I make appx. $65,000 per year. I'd like to get pre-approved for a mortgage in the $130k-$150k range. I have about $8,000 in credit card debt (with $18,000 available) and a small personal loan (not a car) of $4,500. Before I buy the house, I'll have that $4,500 personal loan completely paid off -- unless it would make sense to knock $4,500 off of my credit card balance. Or does it matter?

Help me grow up, dammit.

damnjezebel — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:52:41 -0800

[GrownupFilter] Many credit threads on here, but I couldn't find one that really helped: I have shit credit, and I hate throwing money away with renting. In the next 12-18 months, what can I do to help me buy a house? I suppose I could use a credit forum, but I know a lot of you have dealt with credit repair personally, and I trust you. So help!

My credit is so superbly horrible, it's insane. Neglect, a parent, and lack of funds have destroyed my credit. Mainly old electric bills, cell bills that were never paid - alot of it has fallen off with age, so right now there's only a handful of things on there that I'm dealing with now.

A bit more info: I can't get approved for any credit cards - the only ones I can find that will take me are cards with bad reviews that tell me to put $300 down and immediately take half of it for "setup" fees. I can't even get approved to get a laptop for work, I'm having to save up for it or use a rent-to-own place. Curiously enough, recently I was still approved for a new car with $500 down from a very reputable dealer in the area.

Every month, I pay for rent, electric, phone, internet, car. That's it. Yes, I know I'm in somewhat of an enviable position - I don't have any credit card debt or student loans or medical bills or anything like that. And what little bad stuff that's on my credit is probably only equal to a couple of grand. But every month, I'm throwing away cash on rent and renter's fees and I'm sick of it. In a year or so, I want to try to buy a house. Maybe it's a pipe dream, I dunno. But they wouldn't have approved me for a car if I was that big of a risk, right?

Here's my question. What can I do in the next year and a half or so to help me get a mortgage? And I'm not talking about the "oh, put $50k down and take a million percent interest and we can get you into a $200k house for $3k a month" bullshit. Do the Fannie Mae/whatever they're called programs work?

Side question: I presently work two jobs so as to stockpile cash - for the first time in my life, I'm almost at a point where I can save the cash from one job and live on the cash from the other. If I so desire, I can pay off my 5 year car loan in less than two years. From a credit-building standpoint, would paying off my car in two years behoove me, or should I stick with the five year loan?

Moving somewhere affordable!

hamster — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:22:58 -0800

Can I sell my place if I'm on a repayment plan for its mortgage? I own a home, but have had trouble making payments on the mortgage--my parents talked me into buying it, but it's been too much to handle on my salary.

I worked out a payment plan with my lender to avoid foreclosure, and will be able to get things back to normal by May.

I'm planning to move across the country this summer, and want to list the place as soon as possible because I know the housing market's crap. How would this work if I'm not up on payments?

Also, my parents don't know that I've worked out a plan--this is a long story about family dynamics. They will be helping me to list the place, but I don't want them to find out what's happening. When will I need to come clean? When we have a buyer? Before I list it?

Thanks in advance.

I can't get no credit respect

ZackTM — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 08:52:50 -0800

How can I Build Credit Quickly? And will taking a small loan out and paying it off way ahead of schedule be good or bad for my credit score? I've read this thread http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/16847 but I've still got some very specific questions.

So this July I bought a $250,000 house with a friend. I'm 23, he's 28. We went through a complete idiot to get our mortgage (he had several references but he definitely was an idiot). The plan was to have the loan in 3 peoples names: Me, my investment partner, and my father. Both my father and my partner have great credit scores. I had no credit score. After the dust settled from the worst mortgage process in history, the loan turned out to be in just my father and my partners names. The mortgage agent ended up paying us $900 because of how bad a job he did.

We want to refinance the loan, and hopefully just have it in me and my partners names. I have the bank statements that can show I paid my 'rent' on time every month and I have a good paying job.

I got a credit card and have been paying on it on time (and ahead of time) for 6 months.

What can I do to quickly build a strong enough credit report that I can put my name on this loan?

I work for a small finance company that can give me short-term small loans (with ridiculous high interest rates). Is it a bad idea to take out a $2,000 loan with an 18% interest rate, pay it off within 3 months (imagine the term is 6 months or 12 months). I want the money to replace the engine on my boat anyways (summers here, and I could wait and save up the money and miss half the season, and i don't like dipping into my savings).

I would be very thankful for any input.

Overwhelming Debt Problems

jeresig — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 10:48:27 -0800

A friend of mine has just taken on a large amount of debt since splitting with his girlfriend. What can he do to keep on top of it? A friend of mine recently split with his live in girlfriend who had lost her job, leaving him to pay her half of their mortgage. Additionally, debt collectors are after him for her car loan that she is not paying, for which he cosigned. She's agreed to give him the car, but he can only sell the car for less than half of the outstanding loan debt. On top of this, he's struggling with trying to find a way to pay his mortgage and the other monthly bills he has (such as his own car loan, his school loans, and credit card debt).

He'd prefer not to enroll in credit counseling, but he is in need of some sort of financial help/consulting before this snowballs out of control. He is also set on keeping his house, as he just purchased it less than a year ago.

Does anyone have experience with something like this? Any suggestions of what he can do to stay on top of this? Thanks.

P.S. This is in Buffalo (Upstate) New York, if that helps at all.