I am refinancing right now, It helps a lot when your wife represent abstract and title companies.

Another thing I am sure most folks are not aware of is that Wal-Mart through Arvest is buying up title and abstract companies all over this country. The other thing is banks are keeping everything in house. This would have been illegal in 1998. I don't even know why we bother calling them banks anymore.

You'll never go wrong by being frugal. Just being out of debt is the greatest stress reliever I've ever taken.

Chas

Bought two houses in Canada, never heard of or ever saw a title company, AFAIK they do not exist up north. Mortgage stays with the bank as a 5/25 deal, 25 year life span, interest re-negotiated every 5 years, thends to keep the rate lower. Oh yeah, one signature on one piece of paper, whole document about 6 pages long.

I guess the system here explains something I saw driving across the northern U.S. I saw a sign stating "Entering the NNNN National Forest". We saw exactly one tree.:rolleyes:

Guess it all depends on when you bought; paid $1000 an acre for the 4.5 acres. Three years later they were selling lots 6 miles up the road at $135,000 for three acres. House cost $125,000 to build. County now values the land at $325,000 and the house at $250,000.

Think of all of the taxe revenue........Is the local economy really that strong, or are property valiues up just because the county assessor says so?

Dave

Happening there too I see.




Barney

Happening there too I see. Guess it is nice to know I'm not alone.




Barney

I was real close to paying off a credit card then cutting that high interest bugger up. Then, this bulge appeared on my belly. I can't wait to see the bill for that.....:mad:

Dave

Been happening here for the last twenty years, or so. According to relatives, it's happening in Ohio now too. I wonder what causes that?;)

Dave

The reason that the land is valued higher than the house is that just about all of the vacant land hereabouts is disappearing under McMansions and what is left is even further out from DC.

I used to be that you needed a minimum of 3 acres to build out here, mainly because of the 10,000 sq ft septic drain field and a well. Then some genius, prodded no doubt by developers, came up with the idea of cluster housing with smaller lots, individual wells but a common septic system. Should have called it a clusterf**k.

There is nowt funnier than a city dweller and his/her first septic system. T'ain't like city sewers, you need to be careful of what you throw down the drains and it needs a packet of yeast once a month. Forget that crap they advertise on TV, first laundry load kills it. Well the clusterf**k 3 miles up the road had all these McMansions full of city folk. No one was on charge of the septic system and it backed up.:p