We’re moving. When I don’t know exactly. First we need to sell our house. Then we need to buy a new one. Then we need to look at movers like Mayflower. Hopefully they’ll both happen sooner than later.
There’s really not too many things in life more stressful than having to move. The packing, the upheaval, the emotional stress, financial burden, paperwork, etc. And when you have to sell a house before you buy one, that’s always a barrel of laughs too. Timing never seems to be on your side.
The real hard part is saving up enough to put 20% down on a new place. Chances are, you need to sell your old house first in order to hit that 20%. There are alternatives, though, like getting mortgage insurance, which can drop that requirement to potentially as little as just 3% down.
That’s good to know, because I found 5 homes I would kill to live in, but I’d need to work until I was 1,4937 years old to just put 20% down I bet. Check out 5 of my future homes, won’t you? Oh and yes, you’re all invited to the house warming party. Feel free to bring food, just no olives in the pasta salad, please.
5. The Haines Shoe House
Photo via deannasakalphotography
Originally built as an advertisement for a shoe company by a zany millionaire, you can actually take tours of the Shoe House located in Pennsylvania. With five levels, three bedrooms and two baths it’d be a total blast living in her with all those nooks and crannies!
4. Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters (a.k.a. The X-Mansion)
While it happens to be a school for mutants, er, “gifted youngsters,” the X-Mansion is just a gorgeous building with huge sprawling grounds. Not to mention some hi-tech medical equipment, souped-up blackbird jet, and the most dangerous home gym you’d ever train in (i.e. The Danger Room). When can I move in?
3. Pee Wee’s House
Photo via atlretro
Who wouldn’t want to live in Pee Wee Herman’s amusement park of a house from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? Every inch of it is crammed with wackiness and pure fun. I’d wake up every morning with a smile on my face as I raced downstairs for some breakfast: A bacon and eggs smiley face and a big honkin’ bowl of Mr. T cereal!
2. Stately Wayne Manor
Photo via Flickr
Okay, fine. So this is really Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, England. But it was used as Wayne Manor in the Batman movies, so that’s what it is to me. How amazing would it be to live in Batman’s house?!? Forget the gorgeous mansion with, uh, just one butler. I’d spend my days playing hide and seek with all those secret passages!
1. Fleur de Lys, Beverly Hills, CA ($125 Million)
Photo via Forbes
It’s like living in Europe, without the funny accents! This Beverly Hills mansion sports 12 bedrooms, 15 baths and more than 35,000 square feet. I would totally turn the East Wing into a comic book museum!
Those are the Top 5 Homes I’d love to own. Tough to pick between them. Though if I could afford any, I could probably afford all of them. So why choose?
Putting down 20% of the selling price is generally what you need to get yourself a mortgage. But seriously, do I look like the kind of guy who has $25 million to just plop down for a mortgage on that Fleur de Lys? Yeah, I don’t think so.
Luckily there are companies like Genworth that offer mortgage insurance. Besides helping you get a mortgage with less money down, mortgage insurance offers financial protection to lenders and investors if you run into trouble and can’t pay your mortgage loan. You can pay for the mortgage insurance completely upfront, monthly or even annually. And the cost of the mortgage insurance can be rolled right into your monthly mortgage payments.
I never knew there were so many insurances available out there. As we start looking at new homes to consider buying, knowing that mortgage insurance can help make some of them more attainable certainly takes a little pressure off.
According to a USA Today article, roughly 12% of women are the main influence of financial decisions in a household versus 26% of men. Women are working more these days and taking on more financial burdens, but their financial knowldge isn’t keeping up with that growth. With so many single moms out there, it’s imperative they do as much due diligence as they can and learn about all the options available to them. They might just be a mortgage insurance away from that dream house they’ve always wanted.
Do you need help obtaining a mortgage?
This moving post was brought to you by Genworth Insurance as part of an online campaign run by those wonderful women over at Brandfluential. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own.
Anyone actually help to create severely posts I’d talk about. Which is the new My partner and i been to your web site webpage and to this time? I actually stunned using the homework you have made to generate this type of submit incredible. Wonderful activity!
The Xavier house is my dream house and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t afford to rent a room for the night, lol.
If you pay an extra $25.00 per month towards the principal you can cut the mortgage down to 1200 years. FACT: Did you know that on these very expensive homes brokers want to see your financials before they show you the house. If you cannot afford it they do not want to waste time.
Those are some fancy houses, of the ones you posted, I like the Beverly Hills one best. However, if I could chose my ultimate, it would be something more like this one: http://www.davidhuntsolomon.com/info/property/residential/A1753125/
We used mortgage insurance when we moved to FL and closed on our house down here because our house in CT hadn’t sold yet and we couldn’t put the 25% down. It was a godsend.
As soon as our CT house sold, we refinanced , got rid of the PMI, and now owe so much less than it is worth, we have a ton of equity. It really helped us out.
I have always loved Wayne Manor, I’d love to visit that place! Pee-Wee scares me….
I can’t imagine have that 20% in this day and age. We didn’t buy too much house than we could afford but we still couldn’t swing the 20%. Mortgage insurance makes the dreams of home ownership possible, although we have a VA loan so we don’t need it.
Y’know, we’re currently selling our house and looking to buy. And as gorgeous as that Wayne Manor is, at this point, I’d take just a nice simple Colonial with a little bit of land. Just enough for my family to live in comfortably and have loads of extra money to enjoy life with.
Too fancy schmancy for me! I’d rather live in the middle of nowhere on a farm 🙂
We were fortunate enough that my husband is a disabled veteran and we were able to get a VA loan with no money down. I love that mansion in Beverly Hills but could totally live in Wayne Manor too and I know it’d get my husband’s vote!
those are way nice,but the upkeep must be a killer an you would have to put beepers on your kids in 3 of those just to know where they are in the house,lol,,,ill stick to my little house where I can see whats going on most of the time,,,an I wouldnt live long enought to even clean one of those,wow
That shoe house is just too cool…lol…gotta love it.
I dunno … those are nice houses, but ideally I’d like to live in a little apartment in a small village in Wales somewhere. Maybe this one … http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk130/vicfest2008/Portmeirion%20April%202009/PortmeirionSatSun366.jpg