A month or so ago I attended the monthly Silicon Valley broker’s meeting of my company, Realty World. They always have a speaker every month, and last month it was a gentleman from First American Exchange Company. He gave an interesting (if you can believe it!) presentation on Avoiding Capital Gains Tax upon Sale of […]
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Wise Words to Aid Home Buyers
Sometimes the reporting on the world of real estate gets so caught up in the rapidly changing landscape that the elements of buying and selling real estate that are most important for the public are not given the attention they deserve. Yesterday a great article in the San Jose Mercury News came out where a […]
Is 2009 The Year to Buy Santa Cruz Real Estate?
The Housing Crash guy says: A landlords’ rule of thumb is that a house price should be a maximum of 15 times the annual rent for that place, yet in coastal areas, houses are still selling for 30 times annual rent I think he’s got a good point there – which goes to underscore my belief that prices in Watsonville are actually very reasonable at the moment. … Looking over the ads on Craig’s List, it’s safe to say that a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house would rent for about $2,400 a month in Santa Cruz, assuming it was in a not-so-great location. … Let’s look at the payment for a $500,000 house – but let’s assume you’re putting down a reasonable 10% instead of the FHA minimum of 3.5% – so you’d have a $450,000 loan, again at about 5.75% because with only 10% down, you’d still need to pay mortgage insurance. … Let’s say you’re in a tax bracket of 25%, and you can figure you’d save about $640/month in federal and state taxes, bringing your effective monthly after-tax payment to about $2,519 per month, or just about $120 more than renting.
Billions, Trillions and a House in Santa Cruz
I should have just sat there and watched as my hard-earned dollars evaporated, sucked it up, been a man, and lost all that cash, the price to pay for participating in our capitalist system. … So let me assure you – if you want to buy a house in Santa Cruz, and you have decent credit (at least a 580 FICO Score to qualify for an FHA loan, I believe) and you have the debt-to-income ratios required by the guidelines. … Mind you, the median price these days in the county is $585,000 (as of August), so it’s getting to the point where you can actually buy a habitable structure in a somewhat central location for that kind of bread. … That would leave you with a whopping loan of $482,500 and payments (all-in, including principal, interest, property tax, and insurance) of about $3,500 a month (roughly, approximately – and that’s before your considerable mortgage interest tax deduction ).
I’d like to point something out
Or, rather, he loves it when the seller pays the discount points, although it’s all pretty much the same thing, since it’s your money (the buyer’s money) that he’s using to pay the points (typically, unless it’s a short sale). What both Larry and the trainers said was this: seller paid discount points are tax deductible for the buyer in the year that the property is purchased – that’s right, even though the seller pays them. … So…if your lender is going to charge you an origination fee (which is not tax deductible), ask if instead it can be called a discount point on the closing statement, and so then it, too, will be tax deductible. … Now, I’m not necessarily advocating that you get the seller to pay discount points for you – although it is increasingly common, especially as buyers are finding that interest rates are higher than they heard they might be – typically around 6 to 6.5%.