Wut?

That seems high for closing costs. My closing costs were less than a third of that and my down payment was more than 15k. We put about 9% down only too.

Get a prequal letter as soon as you start looking and use a local lender. Credit unions are great and they’ll give you better rates if you open accounts with them.

Took me a year to get my full rebate - and I had to appeal the initial decision that said I was not entitled to the full rebate (due to my pre-installation heating bills not being high enough to justify the full rebate - who knew?). I sent photos of my electric baseboards in each room and a letter from my installer. The full rebate check just showed up one day after I gave up on it. It was not a great experience….

Paying extra toward principal is the way to go. We're fortunate enough to do $500 extra a month and it's cutting 7 years off our mortgage and saving us interest in the long run. We're about 3 years in, so only 20 years to go now.

Western Mass btw. I imagine it's a little more in Eastern MA and that includes first time home buyers putting 2-3% down and rolling that percentage into your mortgage.

You can essentially 100% finance a home... Well more like,you pay 3% down payment and roll that into your mortgage so the bank gives you a little extra to cover it. In that case, though, you will still need around 15k in the bank to pay for all the closing costs.

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I would go ahead and get pre-approved as soon as you are seriously looking, things can happen very fast!

I would HIGHLY recommend Shant Banosian and his team at Guaranteed Rate. They were amazing when I bought my home and have provided exceptional ongoing support helping through refi.

You can 100% finance a home? What about a down payment? Is that from a loan?

Ours ran about 4 months

Only 15k? Damn I can’t wait to build my credit up

It’ll take that long if not longer 12-16 weeks as of right now

2 things

• Actual news title is: Stop & Shop opens Boston's 17th in-school food pantry at Mattahunt Elementary
• The source is here: https://www.wcvb.com/article/stop-shop-opens-boston-s-17th-in-school-food-pantry/43240392

Rule 8 is in the works...

Exit 1&2(Berkshires)then exit 3-8(Western Mass), then 9-11(Central Mass), 11a with on ((Eastern Mass)

Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden county are Western Mass.

Oof yeah, Im just going to assume it will take a long time

-We got pre-approved then immediately started looking for houses. They last 90 days and don’t have a huge impact on your credit score

-Shop around. We started with 4, 2 local and 2 online. Ended up using Chase because they got us the best rate at the time. I’m happy with my lower rate but there were a few moments during the process with Chase that I wished I could just go to a local office down the street. There’s pros and cons to both.

-I’m echoing the other comment about the first time homebuyers class. I used the link below and took one and it was invaluable. It was fairly inexpensive and I learned a lot. It’s a 2 day course and you end up hearing from people from every aspect of the home buying process from lenders to inspectors

https://harborlightcp.org/housing/first-time-home-buyer/first-time-home-buyer-class/

Sent in rebates forms In Nov . Mass save sent back looking for a utility bill In Dec 1. Provided. Mass save sent back 2x looking for a copy of the energy audit. sent Jan. Mass save requested a site visit to verify the work was done properly. completed March.. Assuming it will be at-least 12 weeks from now to get any money back.

We got pre approved right as we started looking and happened to buy in the timeframe but we prepared to look for months or years. We got realtor and mortgage recs from a friend and they worked great. We used Applied Mortgage and they were very on top of the process and communicated regular plus had the ability to track your application and underwriting on their app. Def get all your records in order first, that makes it easier. Know your mortgage is likely to the sold soon after you close. It’s normal.

Sounds delicious

We loved our experience with Leader Bank. We used Kate Garbedian. Prior to Leader, we used a broker and were unhappy.

We also had our pre approval before we looked.

Make sure you have at least 15,000 USD in your bank account cause closing costs can make a home that is otherwise 100% financed to being unaffordable.

Oh my...

Getting multiple pulls for a pre-approval doesn’t really impact your credit that much. Maybe like -2 pts each time, so it’s not something to worry about unless you have a thin credit file or have a score right around the threshold (760 for prime rates)