We spent the weekend selecting the floors, carpet, cabinets, countertops, etc that we’ll be putting in our new home. We also got the final contingency expired or removed for selling our house in VA. We’re actually going to sign all of the seller paperwork tomorrow at the bank. We’ll be getting about 82k estimated by the HUD-1, plus about $2500 back from escrow, and $2500 from USAA’s MoversAdvantage. Well more than the 20% we need for our new place.
We’ll be putting down only 20% on the new place, and saving the rest to buy the appliances that the house doesn’t come with (fridge, washer/dryer, freezer, blinds) and networking. We’ll also be saving about 2k per month towards “extras” while we have no mortgage. Our new mortgage plus “escrow” will be about $2100, more than we originally thought, but we’re also getting a lot more than we originally thought, and it’s still less than we are paying on our house in VA, so it’s an improvement. We’re probably not going to escrow – it may depend on any fee/interest rate hit we take by not escrowing – but we’re leaning towards not escrowing. We have the discipline to save it ourselves, and almost 9k/year gaining interest, even at less than 1%, is still pretty good.
The movers are coming this Saturday to take everything out of the house and put it in storage, then we’ll be “homeless”. Closing officially happens on October 1, and we’re 95% of the way there. I’m not going to say 100% until the money is sitting in our account though! Interest on ~85k for at least 5 months will be kinda nice.
How exciting! I love picking things out for a new house. Happy for you =)
We were helped by having a limited number of choices (dictated by the builder). But there was enough selection that we didn’t feel that we had to settle on something we didn’t like.
Nice! Clearing $80k post sale is pretty sweet!
I’m not going to claim that money until it’s sitting in our bank account (hopefully by Friday), but I’m looking forward to it!