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We're shopping for our first house. We have a modest but reliable
income that doesn't depend on our location, so we're looking in
Kentucky, because it's famous for being a nice low-cost place to live.
Be we could just as easily look in Missouri or Oklahoma or anywhere in
the USA. We definitely want to remain in the USA, for reasons
unrelated to real estate, so Costa Rica etc. are out of the question.
I've questions about buying a house, and am not sure where to get
the answers.
My first question is where to look. Is Kentucky really the best place
for people who can live anywhere and just want to get the best place
for the least money? And where in Kentucky should we be looking? We
would like a fenced yard for our kids, and we would like reliable low
cost broadband internet access. If necessary we could live without
broadband and just get more than one phone line for dialup, but of
course we would strongly prefer broadband if possible. I assume
broadband would not be available in most "country" locations, so it
might be a hard choice between a bigger cheaper country place vs a
city house with broadband.
My second question is how to shop for a mortgage. We can pay a big
down payment, such as 30%, but we do not have good credit. Our credit
might be good enough to qualify for a high-interest mortgage, but what
we want is to leverage our big down payment to get a low-interest
mortgage.
Actually, our down payment is big only relative to the size of
mortgage we would want. We're looking for a relatively cheap house,
which is what really makes our down payment big.
My third question, is about mortgage calculators, such as the one at
bankrate.com, which tell you how much your monthly payments will be,
etc. Those do not take credit scores into account. How much your
monthly payments will be obviously depends on your credit score. The
mortgage calculators seem to assume you have perfect credit. Where
can I find one that takes credit scores into account?
My 4th question, which would become relevant once we find a house
we're interested in, is how to shop for a real estate lawyer, assuming
we need one. From reading this newsgroup I get the impression that in
most eastern states real estate transactions are normally done with
real estate lawyers, and that in a lot of western states they're
normally done by escrow companies instead of lawyers. I assume
Kentucky is an eastern state, so I'd need to shop for a good real
estate lawyer. I get the impression that the competence and honesty
of the real estate lawyer is a major factor in how successful the real
estate transaction will be. So how do I shop for a competent and
honest real estate lawyer? And how much should I expect to pay? Also
how much should I expect to pay the appraiser, the inspector, etc.?
Where can I find a summary of such costs?
Kentucky seems to have a huge number of FSBO's. It seems like we
shouldn't get any brokers or agents involved if we end up buying any
FSBO, because brokers or agents could be harmful to FSBO transactions,
not only by charging commissions, but also by imposing restrictions,
and possibly annoying the seller, causing us to lose the transaction.
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Should we buy a house in Kentucky or where?
