Buying a House on EAD

S

samboi

Registered Users (C)
Hi there,

I have applied for AOS December 2008 and have received my EAD last month. No sight of the interview letter or GC Yet.

My Wife and I are looking at buying a house pretty soon and I am wondering if anyone has faced a similar situation. I know mortgage requirements can vary from each financial institution, but do they even treat EAD as a valid status for property ownership? My previous status was F-1.

I know the first suggestion would be to wait for GC, but with the way the housing market is right now, there are some lightning deals to be had.

Feel free to suggest and throw your ideas around...

Thanks in advance,
 
As long as you have a valid passport, you can buy a house here in the US. The only question is how you pay. If you try to secure a loan from a bank, they may look at things differently such as if you have a SSN, your credit score etc.
 
Banks will lend to you even with an H1B or EAD. However, as you probably don't have much of a credit history, you won't get the best interest rates available. You can't get those 5% rates being advertised. When using mortgage calculators on the internet to figure out your monthly payment, add 0.5% to 1% to whatever the advertised rates are.

The banks are also more strict with the down payment. The days of 0% and 5% down are over. The banks already got burned too much with that. Expect to have to provide at least 10%, maybe even 20%. And expect to pay about 3-4% of the house's sale price in closing costs. So you need to have 13% - 24% of the house price available up front in cold hard cash, and you should still have some additional funds to buy furniture and appliances and have a safety net if you lose your job.

The other thing is to be aware about the total cost of buying a house. Whatever the mortgage payment is, add about 50% to account for property taxes, insurance, and miscellaneous expenses (you have to pay to fix your broken A/C or leaky roof yourself, there's no landlord to do that). If you add all of that to the mortgage and the total is more than the cost of renting a similar place, DON'T BUY, just keep renting and save the difference.
 
Jackolantern said:
Banks will lend to you even with an H1B or EAD. However, as you probably don't have much of a credit history, you won't get the best interest rates available. You can't get those 5% rates being advertised. When using mortgage calculators on the internet to figure out your monthly payment, add 0.5% to 1% to whatever the advertised rates are.

The banks are also more strict with the down payment. The days of 0% and 5% down are over. The banks already got burned too much with that. Expect to have to provide at least 10%, maybe even 20%. And expect to pay about 3-4% of the house's sale price in closing costs. So you need to have 13% - 24% of the house price available up front in cold hard cash, and you should still have some additional funds to buy furniture and appliances and have a safety net if you lose your job.

The other thing is to be aware about the total cost of buying a house. Whatever the mortgage payment is, add about 50% to account for property taxes, insurance, and miscellaneous expenses (you have to pay to fix your broken A/C or leaky roof yourself, there's no landlord to do that). If you add all of that to the mortgage and the total is more than the cost of renting a similar place, DON'T BUY, just keep renting and save the difference.
Click to expand...

Great post! and so true.
 
This is interesting -- hypothetical, of course. Buy a House, Get a Green Card?

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/212121/Plan-to-Solve-Crisis-Let-Immigrants-Buy-Houses?tickers=XHB,TLT,TOL,DHI,PHM,UUP,^DJI
 
Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas. I have been in the US for 6 years now and my credit score is good enough to let me in the 5-5.5% range....and can meet a lot of other criteria..... I am about ready to start talking to lenders, just wanted to learn about similar experiences on the board....
 
samboi said:
Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas. I have been in the US for 6 years now and my credit score is good enough to let me in the 5-5.5% range....and can meet a lot of other criteria..... I am about ready to start talking to lenders, just wanted to learn about similar experiences on the board....
Click to expand...
Have fun househunting ... no need to rush into it, because prices are not going to shoot up within the next year. You can take your time and find something that is just right. Don't offer the list price for anything; sellers are desperate and will almost always be willing to drop 5-15% or pay your closing costs to make the sale (exception is foreclosure and short-sale properties that already have rockbottom prices ... you may have to even pay MORE than the list price to get their bank to agree to the deal. Get some good advice from an agent or lawyer with that kind of experience before buying a property like that, as there are legal and financial pitfalls if you don't understand the complexities of that situation.)
 
ohh.... i am hoping the building inspectors would notice out of the ordinary stuff like that....

thanks for bringing this to my notice...
 
samboi said:
ohh.... i am hoping the building inspectors would notice out of the ordinary stuff like that....
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Don't expect them to notice. They didn't notice the thousands of homes already built like that.

In general, you should avoid buying anything built in the past 5 years. During the boom, many places were built hastily and sloppily because builders had so much demand that they could not keep up with it well. In addition, the huge demand enabled a large number of inexperienced contractors to get into the business. People are already having to spend money to fix leaky pipes (inside the walls!) and leaky roofs and other structural defects that were not noticeable when built. Those places built sloppily during the boom are going to need lots of repairs as the years go by.
 
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While waiting for my GC I would like to buy a house. My mortgage broker is saying that it's ok to put on the loan application that I'm citizen. According to him many people, who had similar situation to mine, done it this way before and never had any problems.

Maybe someone has knowledge/experience about this subject?
 
LISAROJER said:
While waiting for my GC I would like to buy a house. My mortgage broker is saying that it's ok to put on the loan application that I'm citizen.
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It's not OK. People may get away with it, but it could come back to haunt you if the government finds out, resulting in denial of citizenship or deportation. If the loan is FHA-sponsored, the government will see the application. And note that the citizenship application actually asks if you ever claimed to be a US citizen.
According to him many people, who had similar situation to mine, done it this way before and never had any problems.
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Most people who said they're noncitizens on the application didn't have a problem either. So why lie?

I would drop that mortgage broker. Seems like he/she is still continuing the same fraudulent practices that led to the real estate collapse, where the mortgage brokers and other individuals processing the loan fudged the information (with or without the applicant's knowledge) to increase the chances of loan approval.
 
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LISAROJER said:
While waiting for my GC I would like to buy a house. My mortgage broker is saying that it's ok to put on the loan application that I'm citizen. According to him many people, who had similar situation to mine, done it this way before and never had any problems.

Maybe someone has knowledge/experience about this subject?
Click to expand...


The broker is concerned about getting his commission, while you will have severe problems in the coming years when you apply for US citizenship. At that time, the broker would have spend his commission and forgot about you. The housing mess was caused by people like your broker, who have disregards for the truth and laws. Don't ever put that you are a US citizen, once USCIS does investigation and find that you claimed on paper to be a US citizen, you will be permanently barred from the US, which means that house which you bought and made it into a home, will be lost. I wonder what else that broker is doing to screw you...:(
 
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It must vary some by bank. I have an I 751 pending and we are refinancing and the place we are refinancing was a little apprehensive. I sent them the I751 NOA and that appears to be enough. 2 years ago, i got the initial loan approved while not having GC in hand. Times'a'changing i guess.

And o yeah, don't ever put you're a citizen on any document if you are not actually a citizen. It will come back to haunt you if you file for naturalization.
 
In my opinion, Buying House has no relation with GC or EAD. its all depends on your decision/dare. you can buy house being on H1 as well, currently people are afraid to buy any houses since the market is going down day by day.
 
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