Courtesy of Grace Lucchese
For the first-time homebuyers, finding an affordable, well-maintained home in their area was challenging.
“During our homebuying search, we looked all around Boston,” Lucchese said. “We could not find a home that was move-in ready and under $650,000. We put offers on probably seven different homes and got into bidding wars on two.”
After months of searching and nearly giving up, Lucchese and Riccard finally found their perfect home: a 1,600-square-foot, two-story Colonial built in 1885 with three bedrooms and one bathroom.
The home also came with an assumable mortgage.
“Our home was originally listed for $429,000,” Lucchese said. “When we were negotiating with the seller and trying to talk him down on the price, they brought up the assumable loan — I had no clue what that type of mortgage was.”
After learning about assumable mortgages and realizing they could take over the homeowner’s 2.6% rate, they jumped at the opportunity.
Courtesy of Brian Sankey
Sankey said he learned about the assumption feature of Veterans Affairs mortgages years ago but had forgotten about it over time.
It wasn’t until he came across the four-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Elizabethtown that his memory was jolted.
The home’s proximity to an Army base led Sankey to suspect that the sellers might be connected to the military and have taken out a VA loan, making an assumable mortgage possible.
He was right.
However, getting the seller on board wasn’t as easy as Sankey had hoped.
“They weren’t inclined to do it at first because they felt the assumption process would take too long, and they were looking for a quick sale,” he said. “But after about 30 days, they realized that cash buyers wouldn’t be throwing money at them and agreed to proceed with the assumption.”
According to Sankey, the assumption process took just about six weeks from the time he and his wife first viewed the home to closing the loan.
“I’m happy I remembered it because it made our home purchase more affordable,” he said. “Despite the current market conditions and higher interest rates, my wife and I were able to purchase a larger home with lower monthly payments.”
A smaller mortgage is allowing Sankey and his wife to retire more comfortably.
“I can now use the money I would have spent on high-interest payments to cover living expenses,” Sankey said. “We should also have more discretionary income.”
A couple is able to pay down medical debts after buying a house in Oregon
In 2022, Amy Yzaguirre was diagnosed with cancer.
At the time, she and her son were living in Idaho while her husband looked for a job in Oregon.
They had planned to reunite in Oregon after he found one and their Idaho home sold. However, following her diagnosis, the couple decided it was best to be together before the Idaho home was sold.
Faced with the financial burden of paying the Idaho mortgage and Oregon rent at the same time, they moved into an RV on her parents’ property in Tigard, a suburb about 20 minutes outside Portland.
“It was pretty rough, but we made it work,” Yzaguirre told BI.
They lived rent-free in the RV for months while waiting for their Idaho home to sell and Yzaguirre to recover. Then, they began searching for a home to buy in Tigard.
Courtesy of Amy Yzaguirre
In March 2023, the couple purchased the townhome for $418,900. They made a down payment of $48,000 and assumed a 30-year fixed-rate FHA loan with an interest rate of 2.5%. They have 28 years left on their mortgage.
The money they are saving each month is helping them pay down Yzaguirre’s bills.
“Even though I was fortunate to have good insurance during chemotherapy and have excellent insurance through my current job, I still had quite a few medical bills to pay off,” she said. “With the extra money we have saved on our mortgage payment, I’ve been able to pay them down.”
The family also used some of their extra funds to pay off other debts and purchase a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck with cash, covering the full amount upfront