What can I do to help my mom out with getting another house?

Dec 052011
 

Right now my mom only makes about $ 20k a year. She’s a widow, and I live with her helping out with a lot of stuff. I’m capable of doing my own things, but I’m not married right now (and don’t plan to be within the next 2-3 years at least)…I enjoy helping her out, and we get along very well.

I make a little over $ 16k a year. I have excellent credit (a recent random score pull had my score at an average of 763). I have $ 70k in available credit spread over 6 credit cards – about a little over $ 5k currently being utilized and I’m paying that down as quickly as I can. Her recent MyFICO score was 719, and I know she has some credit card debt probably ranging from $ 5k to $ 8k.

We’re sick of our current house. We have 3 people living in a 2 bedroom house, basically…with one bathroom. It also needs a lot of repairs that I’m not qualified to do. $ 53k left on the mortgage…my mom refinanced about 6 years or so ago to pay off a debt that a family member caused her to have because of their stupidity in involving her in something (she learned from it, big time). However…that may go down to like $ 40k or maybe a little lower if it was paid off immediately and all of the other interest was eliminated due to us selling the house.

We need at least a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house. Looking to buy in or around McDonough, GA (currently living in Atlanta, GA). I don’t want to co-sign on a house and have my name on it for 30 years or whatever. I’d rather it stays in her name, since it is basically what she wants to be her “last house.” I help her with bills and such, and I’d like for my income to be somehow considered in addition to hers…but not as a cosigner. Is there any way to do this without my name getting on anything as if I’m jointly purchasing the house with her?

I’m pretty handy…I can fix a lot of things around the house. We’re looking at getting a house $ 80k at max. I’ve seen a lot of foreclosures and also general house sales online at various websites, and we’re going to go look at some in person today, just for the heck of it. I don’t want her to get in over her head for anything once I do have a life in the future and move out to get my own house. But I also want her to have a nice house to live in, in a better area than where we live now. I don’t even know how to go about selling our house in that it needs so many repairs on various things that we’d just rather not bother with (changing out all the galvanized piping, etc.)

I know there are closing costs on our house and the new house, as well as lawyer fees, realtor fees, document fees, and probably some other fees that they’ll come up with along the way. She can get a “hardship” loan from her job, where they sell stock they’ve given to her for free in the company…and she’ll get at least $ 6k+ from that. I’ll be spotting for a few thousand, as well. We pay over $ 550 a month for mortgage now…and it looks like it may be a similar monthly mortgage if we got a house at $ 80k or so and put down around $ 5k at least for a down payment.
Also…what can we do if the house we’re currently in does not sell for enough to pay off the existing mortgage? I’ve been told they don’t “roll over” the remaining balance to a new mortgage anymore. That concerns me a good bit.
She also wants a “fixed rate” mortage…instead of the current, crappy adjustable rate that keeps only going up, and never down or staying the same.

general question to the smart fico’ers

Mar 252010
 

My current experian credit score is a 589 i know its aweful, I got a credit card with zero balance and its only a 250 limit one of them premier bank deals that give u the card with 73 dollars on it anyays, i got like 4 collection accounts and thats it I just paid one off and they agreed to put paid in full i know that thats not gonna help. I hear so much about getting a merchandise card i know there is a thread about it on here but do you guy think that would be a good idea to try and get my credit score a little better? my other credit scores from the other 2 are withing a 20-30 point difference. I only got like 2000 in debt thats in collections but it really hard when times are rough and I can’t get a job because of my stupidity of not managing money, a lot of companys check your credit now for a job in a way i don’t blame them. thanks all

Major Change to FCRA Dispute PRocess

Mar 072010
 

In what I have always thought to be one of the stupidest and most restrictive provisions of the FCRA, the only dispute process previously availbible to consumers was to file any and all disputes against any creitorl by way of dispute party dispute with the third-party consumer reporiting agency to which they were rubber stamp. Disputes should be directly with the creditor.

 

Consumers could not previously dispute direcltly with the creditor.  They  had to, stupidly, first got trough CRA pre-processing, and the ruthless dossimiation of their brainless and automated E-Oscar process; referral of their much-sanitized reaasn s to a  credior, thrugh a limioted E-Oscar code number, and and referral oof whateer trought anoother code.

Congress recognized the stupidity of this dispute proocess a decade, and yet enacted FCRA 623(a)(8), permitting direct dispiute between the contesting parties to be delayed for more than a decase,  That delsy is now GONE!

 

It was just on hold pending final rules plublished in the Feferal Register.  Those final rules will become effeciive July 1,2010.

 

Consumers, as of 7/1/2010, can now dispute, under the statutory provisions of FCRA 623(a)(8), any reporiting of information to a CRA directly iwith the party who provided the information, without having to use the CRA as an intermediatary.