Anyone know or have had experience?

[howie09]

I have made the decision to start the separation. Problem is paying rent and buying a small place can be pretty much the same. Anyone know how long I need to be separated before I buy so as to avoid having the wife take half of it later?? Do I have to be fully divorced?

 

Anyone know or had experience with this?

thanks

[Gunny376]

You don't have to fully divorced, your not entangled with the wife in either case (lease or buy) in so long as she's not a signee on either the lease nor the mortgage.

 

The problem arises if you and she are still financially entangled to such an extent that whatever she does or doesn't do affects your FICO (Fair Isacis Score ~ aka "Beacon Score" which will determine your interest rate and with whom you qualify for a mortgage with.

 

If you've a FICO of 650 (which is considered poor) and qualifty for a VA loan, you can most likely quality for a VA loan without a down payment, (although you will need to come up with about $5K for closing and "funding fees"

 

Otherwise in today's market you're looking at the $5K + another 10 to 20 % downpayment.

 

Your best option if your a typical person, would to be buy a used but liveable single wide mobile home (about 15K to 20 K) and pay cash if possible, zero out or minimize your housing cost to zero, live in it for five years or so, save the savings in rent, mortgage. Then you could put boo-koo cash down on a real house. Then you could either sell the trailer, (at a much depreciated price) or buy a lot on a lake and put the trailer there and use it as a vacaction home. (That's what I did, using my equity in the home to purchase the vacation lot on the lake)