Re: Buying a home..
credit rating drives your interest rate. Yes. However the bulk of the monthly payment is driven by your earning power and the price of the property. If you make $100k a year and want to buy a $1m property, then regardless of how great your credit history is, you can't afford it.
Re: Buying a home..
So what does credit history/score affect when it comes to buying a home?
Guess I can kiss that Upper East side apartment goodbye.. can’t afford that on $6/hour. :hinna: 
Re: Buying a home..
There are free online calculators available that tell you how much your monthly mortgage is going to be based on price of the property, downpayment, term of the loan and interest rate. You can punch in a range of interest rates to see how much it affects the monthly payment. Check any realtor's website.
Secondly, if you want to set up some goals for how much you need to earn to be able to afford a certain property, then the rule of thumb is that mortgage should ideally be 33% or less of your monthly gross income.
Most home loans are amortized over 30 years (some 40 year loans are beginning to appear now). Interest ranges from 6-8%. Ideal downpayment is 20% or more, though for your first home, very rarely you can make any downpayment or 20% in any case. You can down whatever you can afford, and banks can advance you the rest at a slightly higher interest rate. Price of the property is, ofcourse, dependant on where you want to live. Check Yahoo's real estate listings or something similar.
Re: Buying a home..
Faisal, i've read somewhere that there's even fifty-year-mortgages emerging, though not as common (yet).
If someone has a 20 year mortgage but decides to sell their home after 10 years, do they lose/gain any money? Is it even possible for them to sell, since its not totally considered their own home yet?
Re: Buying a home..
win a lotto :p
Re: Buying a home..
You can sell your home after 1 month if you want. Whether you make a profit or loss depends entirely on whether your home property has appreciated or not. An average American family lives in a house for 7 years. Very few actually live in a home to pay it off completely. There are costs involved in buying/selling a home (including commissions paid to realtor agents which can be as high as 6% of the property value). If the property value has appreciated considerably, then you can make money by selling it. Most people just upgrade to a better house by using the equity as downpayment for a more expensive house. Whether property values will appreciate or not and how much, depends on your location and future housing trends. This is more of a crystal ball question then anything solid.
Re: Buying a home..
^^ That is the very reason, your open balance on the credit cards is considered a debt against you, meaning that creditors take it as, "you may be prone to get in so much debt". If one has about 100-150 on 4-5 store cards, it does not reflect a huge amount of debt one can get into. But if if every store has given you 1000 or above limit, your risk of getting into debt is 4-5 K. And Creditors don't taek it as "risk" they consider it debt. This is creditor's language. That's why majority of the creditors tell people to cancel if they haev too many credit cards (though they cna easily lower their credit limit and cna still keep the cards). And it is equally important if you are buying a house or selling a house!
Re: Buying a home..
^ Having no balance outstanding, but having credit limits approved in your name means you are a responsible person. On the other hand, having too few accounts can really seriously bring down your credit rating. Though, by no means, I am advocating excessive credit cards. Personally I don't recommend carrying more than 4 or 5 and make sure you decline the free T-shirt offered to you for the credit card application when you enter the mall.
Re: Buying a home..
Okay wait.. if you have a credit card but never use it, dthey can consider you in debt? What??? That doenst make any sense! My mom had a victorias secret card (well i kinda wanted one 
) but she cut it up and threw it away a year later After paying off everything i owed though.. i still had 350 left on it to spend, but my mom threw the card away 
Re: Buying a home..
^ 350 left on it to spend? Was it a credit card or a gift card?
Re: Buying a home..
No it was those store cards
Re: Buying a home..
So how can there be 350 left on the card to be spend, unless your mom overpaid the balance or you take it upon yourself to max out the cards each month, in which case, I strongly urge you to keep as few credit cards as possible.
Re: Buying a home..
no no.. i had the card for about a year (was an authorized user) .. there was a $500 limit, and every 3 or 4 mnths I'd spend about 70-80, til my mom got mad.. she just paid for whatever I had bought so there were no debts on it..
Re: Buying a home..
What about the fact that receiving or paying interest is haraam? What do you think about that when deciding to buy a house? Thoughts please........
Re: Buying a home..
You must be confusing smth Sara. Balance usually means how much you owe to the card company. If you have paid all bills, there's no balance. The credit limit of 500 only means that in one go, this is maximum you can purchase on your card. If there's 350 dollars credit left on the card, that means, you mom made 350 dollars of extra payment or returning product to the store of that amount. If you have that credit left on the card, you can either request the company to send you a check or merchandise credit certificate for that amount, or you cna simply go and shop in the store for that amount. Store credit cards, even if you don't have the card, if it was under ur name/SSN, you can go to that store, present ur ID and they can call and get your account number, so you can still put the purchase on the card.
P.S. If you have a credit card, the credit limit reflects your vulnerability to go that much in debt, esp. if you have a history of making the minimum payments due. As I said earlier, you need to have some bills, credit cards in your name and use it regularly (but wisely) and keep making the payments to build a credit history. Why don't you visit the sites Faisal and I recommended, and then if you have some concerns, you can come back and ask here.
Re: Buying a home..
I wud suggest, open a new thread on this topic!
Re: Buying a home..
Its okay, we’ll all just live on the street then 
Re: Buying a home..
...well i purchased my first house when i was 21.
I'll add to this later aswell as provide some info. for first time buyers, but for now g2g.
Re: Buying a home..
When I bought my home (flat) I was single and working, soon afterward I meet my husband got married and he came to live with me our new flat. Well before that it was just empty, couldnt make myself leave my parents place before marriage. But it was good offer and something like this I will not get again!
Re: Buying a home..
so on a more cultural/social level than anything else, would a guy really object to moving (w/ or w/o his parents) into his wife’s home? I know even among non-desis, single women buying their own homes/apartments is still not very common (though getting there) .. most desi women wudnt’ even move out of their parents home and rent an apartment, so it’d be kinda interesting to c how ppl view someone who buys her own home 