As of March 1, 2004, I own my house.

Now that we have no mortgage payment, we can afford to renovate all three bathrooms (green fixtures, yucky tile, yucky lino, etc...).

Might even do a little landscaping!

Does the list of things to spend money on EVER end?

We're pretty proud of the fact that we bought the house five years ago (our first house, too) and got the mortgage paid off quickly. Of course, I don't have a Porsche anymore (guess where the proceeds from that sale went?) and since we bought "late" in life (33) we had a pretty hefty down payment thanks to being DINKS for many years. We renovated everything but the bathrooms, but did it all ourselves, so that really saved a lot of money.

It feels just as good as I thought it would...

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John Shellenberg
1998 C230 "Black Betty" 240K

http://img31.exs.cx/img31/4050/tophat6.gif

Congratulations. That must be a great feeling, especially when you consider how much people move and never pay off a house. There's not really anything wrong with that, but its got to be great to have it paid off. Did you pay it off early, like in 15 yrs, or longer?

He must have gotten a real good deal on a 5 year mortgage

My dad always said the worst thing he ever did was get his house paid off. Lost that nice tax deduction
Other than that, congrats!

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past MB rides:
'68 220D
'68 220D(another one)
'67 230
'84 SD
Current rides:
'06 Lexus RX330
'93 Ford F-250
'96 Corvette
'99 Polaris 700 RMK sled
2011 Polaris Assault
'86 Yamaha TT350(good 'ol thumper)

We Canucks can't deduct mortgage interest.

We took a 20 year amortization to keep the payments sane in case something happened, but then made lump sum payments as we went along.

I wrote a cheque for the remaining $8875.01 last week. Felt good. I thought about borrowing against the house, and we came within a moment of refinancing 'cause we could get 3% money, but then decided at the last second to just be done with it. We talked about taking $30K and really going to town on some renos with redoing the whole yard and all the bathrooms.

Now we'll just pay-as-we-go...

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John Shellenberg
1998 C230 "Black Betty" 240K

http://img31.exs.cx/img31/4050/tophat6.gif

but now you have a Porch ...


congratulations - i have a long long long way to go with mine ...

Me too. Just bought a house (in Scotland) - very nice, 11 acres, big stone (old) farm buildings, mountain views, about 600K. The catch is about a third of this is debt. We went for this because the housing market is rising at about 20% pa at the moment. It a gamble, it could crash...

Is it wise to borrow more in a rising market? I'm fiscally pretty naive.

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'79 280SE
'87 560SEL
'83 280CE
'01 Nissan Micra
'98 VW Passat
'83 911 turbo

What's a 20 year amortization? Is it a 20 year loan, or interest only and then lump sum loan? That's very impressive to pay off your loan in such a short time. Was the house really inexpensive or you paid it almost all with a down payment? With an average price of a house in my area of $300,000-$500,000, even if I put 20% down it would be insane and impossible to pay it off within 5 years with a $50000 - $60000 salary a year.

great job

Ouch!
And I thought the Seattle area was getting expensive! We're in the 200k to 300k(and rising fast) average last I heard, and I can't and won't afford even that!

__________________
past MB rides:
'68 220D
'68 220D(another one)
'67 230
'84 SD
Current rides:
'06 Lexus RX330
'93 Ford F-250
'96 Corvette
'99 Polaris 700 RMK sled
2011 Polaris Assault
'86 Yamaha TT350(good 'ol thumper)

20 year amortization is the total time it takes to pay off the mortgage. In Canada most mortgages are 20 years, although 25 is becoming more popular. The amortization period is broken down into terms. The term of the mortgage can be 6 months to 10 years plus, with 3 to 5 years being the most popular. Your interest rate is set for the duration of the term. at the end of the term you renew at current interest rates. Since the amortization doesn't change (it can be exteneded or shortened) if rates are higher your monthly payments may go up and vise versa. As was said, we can't deduct mortgage interest so paying off a mortgage in Canada is a good thing.

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Jason Priest
1999 E430
1995 E420 - retired
1986 420SEL - retired

In Canuck-land, you amoritize the loan over 20-25 years, but lock in for shorter periods for interest rates. We took a loan over five years, but payments based on twenty. We had options for pre-payment, which we took advantage of.

We paid $140,000 for our house which is a 1750' four bedroom house with three full baths in a very nice upper middle class neighbourhood. We paid off $10K in the normal monthly payments, another $45K from the Porsche plus the $50K we put down. The rest we paid off in lump sums when possible. After paying the C230 off, we put the payment amount away to pay off the house faster. Then, we took the loan on the E300 which put the kibosh on that, but after we sold the E300 and bought the Subaru we had no car payment again, so we kept putting the $900 a month away for the house, on top of the normal payment.

When we were looking at refinancing, we had the house appraised (as well for updating our insurance) and it came at $255,000. The market has moved up lots in the last five years. However, I don't anticipate any loss since we have just now caught up to replacement value.

There ain't a ton of cash left in the bank (other than long term investments) but at least we're completely debt free now. I have also spent a few bucks lately that have left us not-flush-with-moolah, but you only live once. We upgraded the Subaru from 1999 to 2001 model and I bought the Hayabusa. The bike wasn't too bad as I sold the Honda for an excellent price.

Hopefully the cheque writing has slowed. Well, it has to, since there just ain't much left to write them against!!

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John Shellenberg
1998 C230 "Black Betty" 240K

http://img31.exs.cx/img31/4050/tophat6.gif

Rick - it's even higher. I've been looking in Seattle in the 400K range and cannot believe how many are fixer-upers. And I'm looking at pretty ordinary homes (3-4 bdrms, 10 to 50+ yr old construction) that are at the fringes of nicer neighborhoods.



congrats Blackmercedes

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I'd rather argue against a hundred idiots, than have one agree with me. — Winston Churchill

wow congrats ! makes me want to move back to Canada!

bob - expat canuck in the us of a

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1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

Thanks for the clarification. I wish I could find a $140,000 house here in Brooklyn NY. It seems that $400,000 and up is the norm, crazy. Debt free feels good. Now use that house as a down payment for another one and rent the other one out to make money on top of the mortgage payment and have them pay of the house. In a few years you will have another paid off house and your worth doubled.

Daaayem, son, move south. In my area that's maybe a $120k, max. And we're high for the state. When I lived in S Mississippi we had a similar home in a gated community that cost $75k + clubhouse $100/mo membership fee.


Congrats Blackmercedes .

---chris