Are you thinking of buying a house in Anaheim Hills or surrounding areas? If so, and if you’ve talked to a lender and you’re approved, here are 3 things that you may want to consider before you write an offer.

Assuming that you have been approved by a lender and you have an approval letter, and you know how much your payment is going to be on a certain amount of home that you’re going to buy. So let’s say you’re gonna buy a million-dollar house and you putting 20% down, which is $20,000, to your payment on $800,000. Let’s just assume it’s $3,500. So when you find a house, you’re gonna look for a house for a million dollars. Before you write that offer, please ask your agent buyer’s agent, hopefully, that’s me or any other agent, because it may throw you off the payment that you have, or you may not be able to qualify, or the payments may increase. 

What are those three things?

The 1st thing that you should know is when you make that offer? Is there any homeowner’s association these days on townhouses for example, in Orange County, an average I’d say the association is $250 to $300? Some places in Irvine are $500 to $600 a month so the association adds up to your expenses and your qualification. If there is an HOA and how much it is, confirm with your lender that you’re okay to qualify with this HOA. 

The second thing that you look into is that in Anaheim Hills and a lot of the cities, there are quarterly Homeowners Association, or what we call the HOA to, for example, I live in the Ridgeview track of Anaheim Hills. My monthly association fees are $140 a month, but I also pay to the Anaheim Hills Plan Community Association. I’m not sure exactly but on average about 150 per quarter, or let’s say $50 a month as an average. So that’s an additional cost. So that’s a reasonable number two is to find out if there’s additional HOA.

The third thing is, is this house in the what we call does it have a Mello Rose, for what some Mello roos or Mello Rose, especially on newer homes and newer plan community is like a tax. It’s not really a tax, but it’s like a tax that you pay every month for anywhere from 20 years to 25 years from the date of the construction. So Mello Rose is what we call a special assessment, or is an assessment fee, which the builder charges, the buyers, and all the neighbors buying that community. And those are fees that go towards the funds, which city as the builders to pay them for library and schools and water and things like that. It’s what we call special assessment in the nine to 808 zip code this lot of homes with Mello Rose, could be $200, $300, and $400 per month and that depends on the living area of your home. 

To add it altogether if you did not know that you have HOA number one if you did not know that you have HOA two which is the quarterly HOA if you did not know that is Mello rooms your cost could add up. Let’s take my example and assume that I have Mello Rose, which I don’t but if it did my HOA is $140. Let’s say my quarterly dues which I pay monthly is $50, which is $190. And if my Melrose was here with an additional $300, my costs would be almost $500 a month, which makes a big factor in my payment and I may not want that.