Preparing to Buy a House

I am preparing to buy my first home, and I am very excited. I have sold most of my stocks. I was sorry to have sold BGF and BGS, which were one of my best investments. But I did make plenty on them - my average cost was $9.42 (BGF) and $3.70 (BGS) and I sold them at $14.43 and $7.96. Not a bad return at all. My average price for AOD was $6.83 and I sold it for $7.88. The return for these stocks is even greater when you consider the dividends I recieved.

The only stocks I kept were HTE (I do think gas is going to go higher in the future) and ACAS (I think this will certainly go much higher, plus I have 2 options out on this for August).

The first place I tried for a mortgage was ING Direct. I was able to get qualified for a ING Saver Mortgage at a 4.25% APR, which was awesome. But there were two problems - you had to do atleast 25% down and it's ony for 5 years - after 5 years you'd have lock it in at the current rate. I think I could come up with 25% down, but that would involve completely cashing out my 401k and spending every cent I had saved, which doesn't leave me with anything left over for an emergency - I'd basically be living paycheck to paycheck, which doesn't appeal to me at all. The 5-year thing is also a little unnerving. I do plan on paying extra on this, but I don't think I could do it in 5 years. At the end of the 5 year period, you may not qualify for it again if your credit changes (or if you lost your job), so you'd have to come up with the remainding balance! Also, I think that interest rates now are probably about as low as you're going to see them for a long time - so 5 years from now who knows what we'd be looking at.

I filled out an application online at Bank of America and was pre-qualified. I got a call from them, but they wanted $400 upfront to actually apply. I told them I'd call them back.

I tried going through my local credit union, but I was pretty dissapointed. Last year I went in to see what I would qualify for and they were very nice and helpful, and we determined I had better wait a little bit. This year I tried to do that again but all I got was "we just do all that online now" and they referred me to their website. I filled out the form and they said someone would be contact with me. About two weeks later I finally got a call from someone asking if I was still interested, told them that I had already found someone else.

I am going to go through another local bank for the mortgage. I just called and asked to come in, and was told I could come in right away - they'd even come to my local branch for me, or I could meet them at the main office 10 min away - that's service right there! I am so glad that I did, too. I was told about a program NY state does - SONYMA. They will pay my closing costs up to $3,000, my interest rate will be 5.75% (or 5.25% if I did not want the closing cost assistance) and I only need a 3% downpayment (though I would probably do more).