Closing on Friday!
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 amDH and I will close on our house on Friday!! I feel like I've been talking to our mortgage company every day, but I think it's all coming together.
Today I was informed that the sellers agreed to pay more money than was allowed due to the particular circumstances. We had the sellers pay 3% of the selling price towards closing costs, that amount covers all the closing costs plus the $1000 binder and $350 fee to lock in the mortgage rate, which is great. The problem is that there is an additional $250 "owed" to us. Unfortunately it's not allowed for us to just pocket that $250, so our mortgage agent was calling to see what we wanted to do. Our options were:
1. Do nothing and forfeit that $250.
2. Use that $250 and pay $500 of our money to buy down the interest rate.
3. Use that $250 to help pay the VA funding fee, if allowed.
Well I don't like walking away from free money, so option 1 is my last choice. Option 2 doesn't make real financial sense. It would take 3.5-4 years to recoup the costs of buying down the interest rate, and I don't know that we'll keep it that long. So that leaves option 3. If our contract is written so that the money can be used towards the VA funding fee, then we'll take it. It won't really adjust the mortgage payment, but it will lower the balance to below $150,000.
Since so much is up in the air, I figure having cash on hand is better than having it sunk into a house that we aren't planning on keeping that long and we will be doing some upgrades to.