Jeanmarie Trapp

Hi There,
I thought a lot about the best way to answer your question. Let use numbers. You purchased your home 3 years ago, in Bellevue for says 350K. Sounds like you chose not to use your VA at that time. So let’s say you put 20K. So you owe 330K.. Values on condos have dropped so now your home is work 330K. About what you owe. Now you wish to sell. So I am going to assume that you will list your home with a full service agent so your fees will be roughly 6% for commissions and another 3% for Title/Escrow and 1% for any Inspection items needed. So that means 10% of sale. You put your home on the market at 330K and you get an offer (yeah) they ask for 3% in closing costs (which is 3% of the their loan amount!) They have minimum down. 3.5%... So your net before concession is 300K and with an additional 9585 to the buyer. Your new closing net is 290,415. So from what you owe to what you payoff the bank is now 39,585K. Now this is just speculation, if the same agent is helping you purchase to, I am going to figure they may provide some kind of break to you, on one side of the transaction. Also, closing costs are negotiable, but it’s much harder to build them in these days. Appraisers are leery of this. Now you have some working figures and you have yet to buy. VA lets you buy with no down, and you can use seller concessions of up to 6% to buy down the rate and help with your closing costs. You also need to be aware of one other important item in selling your condo. FHA is changing all of the rules regarding Condos. The biggest of them, is that all condos must re-apply for FHA approval and only 30% of all homes within a condo complex can be FHA loans. That means if you have 100 condos only 30 of them can be FHA, and I can tell you that almost all of the lending that is happening with first time buyers is FHA. So, that can have a huge impact if you wait to sell in says another couple of years, depending on what your neighbors do. It’s a lot to consider, but I hope I have added a little something more to the equation. - Wed Sep 16 2009, 20:13