pre-approval for loan

[T9D]

He's making you get paranoid for no reason. The county or City will regularly do an assesment of homes and up the price. Sometimes they are not always up to date on that. Depends where you live. If you are in CA yes you can end up being screwed. Because they have it set up so you dont get taxed out of the house you've lived in for decades. But most other places regularly keep up to date with the home value. I lived in Portland City limits and about every year they would raise the taxes a little and it said right on the tax payment what they assessed it at. It was always pretty close (but usually a little lower) to what the going market was.

Sounds like you are already in good shape with that and they county has kept up with the assesment just fine.

Anyway I would go ahead and get the approval now. Also go ahead and get the approval for as much as you can. See how much they will let you do. You dont have to spend that much. But at least you will have room to play with. Just find out what the most you can get at the lowest payment.

You do not want to have to deal with moving twice if possible. Try to go from one house to the other. So if you are preapproved that is a lot easier. Also you can start looking for houses yourself and get an idea of ones you might want to make an offer on as soon as you get a sale offer. You can go to Realtor.com and look for places yourself. Maybe go drive by some places. (just email the realtor for the addresss). Get a few lined up. When your's has an offer call the realtors up and go look at them. Pick the one you like and make an offer to close on the same day that your current house is closing on. They will both close the same day. Then you can move from the old one to the new one.

 

[alkemyst]

Home owners are usually protected by increases in assessed values, they usually have a max a property can change per year no matter how high it rises to protect the current owners. Here that limit is 3% per year.

The average home value person moving after 5-7 years here is probably sitting in a house assessed at around $100k but would sell for $250-350k today. There current taxes would be around $1700...if they moved to the same exactly house their taxes would be between 5000-7000. That is for a lateral move...no upgrade.

Saying you can get boxes for free would have me believe you must not have too much stuff. While some boxes you could probably find, some are pretty specialized sized for an average move.

The whole point is you can paint whatever picture you want too. Until you sit down and see what a mortgage company is willing to do for you and what that new property will actually cost you, you are just walking in circles.

 

[CU]

We have been looking at house online since day one, so we have found some houses we like and would want to look at. We plan to go look at houses the first weekend after we get an offer we like.

Seems they keep up with the assessed value here but not every where so that is why I was not understanding the taxes being higher on a cheaper house. Thanks for clearing that up.

I guess I know cheap people, because I have helped friends and family move and no one has bought boxes. They always used free boxes from stores. No one has moved farther than a state away either, so that may have something to do with it.

Thanks for all the help.