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My husband and I are building a new home out in Queen Creek. We are young and first time home buyers, very new to this sort of stuff and have rented apartments the 4 years we've been married. Anyway, on with it. We will have a mortgage of $160,000. The lender that we are going through has quoted us a monthly mortgage payment of $1240-ish (this includes taxes, HOA fees, mortgage ins, etc.). We were just wondering if that was a fair/good payment. I'm a long-time lurker here and know there are quite a bit of wonderful people here with the expertise to tell us.
A couple of things. First, is this a fixed rate 30 yr mortgage? Also, what's the interest rate? Where I live in Florida, if you're building a new home, the first year the property taxes are much lower because they only assess the land and not the house. The next year they assess both the house and land, so the property taxes jump a good amount - you might want to check just so you're not caught off guard. Also, if it's a new community the hoa fees might increase after the builder is finished with the community and it's turned over to the homeowners because the builder rarely factors in enough reserve funds.
steve brings up a good point.
I can't tell you how many folks I know get the dreaded "your escrow is short" letter and end up either having to come up with a chunk of cash or pay an extra $100 + a month to catch up.
This is why we do our own escrow.
Well, I paid about $1900/month PITI for a $160k, 6.35% mortgage on a $300k house in Dallas, TX. So $1240 sounds very low to me. What's the property tax and insurance in your area?
My husband and I are building a new home out in Queen Creek. We are young and first time home buyers, very new to this sort of stuff and have rented apartments the 4 years we've been married. Anyway, on with it. We will have a mortgage of $160,000. The lender that we are going through has quoted us a monthly mortgage payment of $1240-ish (this includes taxes, HOA fees, mortgage ins, etc.). We were just wondering if that was a fair/good payment. I'm a long-time lurker here and know there are quite a bit of wonderful people here with the expertise to tell us.
A couple of things. First, is this a fixed rate 30 yr mortgage? Also, what's the interest rate? Where I live in Florida, if you're building a new home, the first year the property taxes are much lower because they only assess the land and not the house. The next year they assess both the house and land, so the property taxes jump a good amount - you might want to check just so you're not caught off guard. Also, if it's a new community the hoa fees might increase after the builder is finished with the community and it's turned over to the homeowners because the builder rarely factors in enough reserve funds.
I don't know if it's always done this way, but I had a choice whether I wanted to pay the taxes on the fully assessed value the first year or not. I opted out of it and will owe the money in about a year. This choice is reflected in my GFE. The amount I'll pay in a year is still gonna be too much, though. The assessed values here take years to catch up with market values and never really do. Seems like it happens faster with newer houses, though. However, I was told I need to have some (4-months worth, I believe) RE taxes and hazard insurance reserves because opting out of it will adversely affect my mortgage rate.
Sounds like they're talking about AZ, so they wouldn't need anything other than hazard insurance (banker asked about it). FEMA is trying to make (and of course will...) some places pay for flood insurance (redrawing maps), but I haven't heard about Queen Creek being one of them.
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