Buying A House: C or D?

I'll let you know in a few weeks when we've finally exchanged.

But on the other hand, I'd have to let an icky BOY live in my house then.

xpost.

I think it's a pain in the ass. I rent out a house I bought last year as a fixer-upper, to people I'm friends with, and it's a pain just making arrangements to do any little amount of work that needs to be done without intruding. So, put that into your basement .. someone always being around would suck, and if you need to pull out the tennant's bed to make sure water isn't leaking from a pipe, you can't just walk in and do it. Seems like too much work to me, but other people may be willing to put up with it for the extra money.

I've never been a landlord but dave's advice seems to make a lot of sense. What area of the country are you in? are real estate prices outrageous there?

We're still waiting to exchange too. Time is running out - once mortgage offer expires in four weeks it's all over as we can't get an extension (Pam will no longer be a full-time employee on additional maternity leave, she'll be unemployed).

This has been going on for five months. I've completely lost any enthusiasm I had for the move because every time I glance at the property section of the local freesheet or open an estate agent email, I see something better which needs less work. Each time we've decided we've had enough (early August when the estate agent couldn't find us a buyer; early October when the delays up the chain seemed neverending), we've been encouraged to stick with it by some new piece of progress. This time we're only half-heartedly looking elsewhere because it's not very likely we'll find a chain-free place that we love and that we can complete on in four weeks.

Meanwhile, we eat off the two or three plates that haven't been bubble-wrapped and listen to the handful of CDs that evaded the pack, surrounded by 90-odd boxes.

So, "D" then.

the actual house collapsing sounds like it would be far worse.

We've been looking for the past few months but the market here is quickly spiraling out of our range. stupid yuppies.

See, lodgers are different from tenants - or they should be, anyway - because they don't get an equal share, so you don't have to give them an equal amount. They are renting a room in your house, not renting half the house. That's how it works for me anyway.

::thinks about beautiful flat of mine own::

::calms down::

Also classic because our outgoings are less than they would be if we were renting, and we get to live on our own and do what we want and IT'S OURS! As Pleasant Plains said, it's the I do like the whole ownership and "this is my wall that I can put holes into" feeling feeling that makes it worthwhile.

Buying new appliances for a house seems like the most fun part of the process. Ooooh stainless steel cooktop. Ooooooh subzero wine fridge.

living room/dining room before
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/pics/livingrm2.jpg
after
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/newpics/house_livroom2.JPG
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/newpics/house_livroom3.JPG

kitchen before
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/pics/kitch2.jpg

after
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/newpics/house_kitchen.JPG

master bedroom before
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/pics/master2.jpg

after (with my old roommate using the computer)
http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/newpics/house_bedroom1.JPG

and here is the bathroom, the before pic is too big but it used to be all pink and black.

http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~feb/newpics/house_bathroom1.JPG

My wife and I have owned our house since early 87. We love the place. Single family, 90 plus yrs old, awesome mountain views and we'll be here a while yet. Of course there's always something in need of work, but you gotta live somewhere.

this is the second house we've owned, we sold our condo and made $75000.

Living room before:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/cmvenuti/lvingroombefore.jpg

Living room after (nice hardwoods under shit carpet):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/cmvenuti/livingroomafter.jpg

I have 2 houses *smug grin*, but no money :0( First one was my first ever wee fixer upper flat, that I now rent out to various weirdos and misfits.

The 2nd is the one I just bought off the bastard ex for a HUGE amount of money that I can't really afford - but it's MINE all MINE mwah ha ha...and I LOVE living on my OWN in MY house! It's the best feeling....I've just moved back in, so I still think everything is fab...the bubble will burst very soon methinks...

i am not a fan of white kitchens and bathrooms but at the time i was so tired of renovating that I was just shouting JUST MAKE EVERYTHING WHITE!!! because i could not deal with color schemes and tiles anymore and white appliances are the cheapest and renovating takes 3 times as long as you think it will. when those pics were taken probably 6 months after moving in we still did not have a kitchen trashcan and the vaccuum was always out. IKEA was so helpful. We splurged on things that mattered like faucets and sinks and our custom stainless steel counter, but otherwise we just went to ikea for standard white cabinets and like, the toilet paper holder. I would never get seating there though.

anybody see the documentary about estate agents on bbc last night?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4826444.stm

This seems as good a place as any to ask a question about mortgages...

Me & the missus are about four months away from the end of our fixed-rate term on our repayment mortgage; we want to bundle all our unsecured debts on the new mortgage, cut up those credit cards (possibly only symbolically in my case - y'never know when I might pass a branch of Jessops with a Sigma 30/1.4 going cheap in the window), wipe out those overdrafts and live sensibly within our means like nonidiots for a bit.

Called our vendor today (a lovely Scottish woman named after an Orchids song) and, after she'd done her sums, she said we'd be unlikely to make their affordability criteria for the necessary loan amount (since we last applied Pam has gone self-employed and our joint income is much lower). However, if we got an interest-only version of the same product, the deal was back on (I guess the monthly payments are £100-£150 less or so).

Now, thanks to a little loophole that she probably wasn't supposed to tell me about, we could switch back to a repayment mortgage later cos they're only duty-bound to do affordability assessments when the loan amount changes, not when the product-type changes.

Does this sound like a good plan? As far as I know, the mortgage vendor doesn't have to see any proof that you've taken steps to cover the capital when setting up an interest-only mortgage, do they? I mean, they don't care - they're getting shedloads of interest off you PLUS they get the house at the end of the loan period into the bargain if you've failed to make adequate provision. So it should be straightforward.

There's also the interim possibility of an Additional Loan - a secured loan at a higher rate that's very quick to set up and isn't as picky in its acceptance criteria - to wipe out the debts, that could be bundled with the new mortgage product (at the mortgage rate) when we switch in the new year.

I'm entering the club and discovering a whole new world of paranoia about dodgy roofs and walls...

Buying a house: dud. Having a mortgage: dud. Owning a house: classic!

Living in Australia off the back of the Howard era: DUD DUD BIG FUCKING DUD. We both work and we can't afford a cardboard box in the country.

anyone have experience buying a home in pre-foreclosure?

I have friends who are fundamentally against this concept and cited 'house of sand and fog' (which I have neither read nor watched) as an example of why this is 'mean' but frankly, fuck that. the bank is going to take it anyway. and people in my own family have lost homes to foreclosure themselves.

UK people, is it worth buying the freehold on my flat?

My upstairs neighbour has been talking to the owner of the building about it, however, we all have to agree before we can do it.

Obviously it will increase the value of the property (as if that means anything in the current climate) - but what kind of control/liabilities does it give us as leaseholders turned freeholders?

Apart from escaping service charges - does that outweight the lump sum that I'd have to come with up front?

What is the length of your lease?

You won't escape all service charges as you will still have to buy buildings insurance between you and it would be wise to keep a contingency fund going for future repairs, exterior painting and the like. Generally how it works is that you and your neighbour set up a company that buys the freehold and the share of the company gets sold along with the flat and I think you can write that into the deeds. This is very ordinary stuff for solicitors. The company then charges you a service charge which then goes for buildings insurance, contingency fund, cleaning of the common parts (Which you don't have) and you generally set out how this is to be calculated in the articles of the company, again bread and butter stuff for a solicitor.

Might be a good time to do it as you will get it cheap and be able to lower your outgoings on service charge a bit. Not sure about the affect on price but a share of a freehold is more attractive and might make it easier to sell at some future point.

Depends on sooooo many things, and with all due respect to ilx peeps you might want to take legal advice on the leaseholder/freeholder aspect. Why does the owner want to do this now I wonder?

Basically what Ed said.

It's not the owner's idea, it's the upstairs neighbour's idea. I believe it is quite cheap, as far as buying freeholds go - if I had steady employment right now, I probably would scrape together the cash and do it.

However, there's not much point in buying the freehold if I can't pay the mortgage 2 months from now when my contract runs out!

I guess I have to go and have tea with my neighbour and talk about it.

Yeah, at least that way you'll get a cup of tea out of the deal...

Just closed. Landed gentry, y'all.

congrats!

I am in the middle of replacing most of an exterior wall in one of the bedrooms. dryrot laid waste to siding, framing, sill, trim, and even a bit of the joists and footing. oh the joys etc, at least I can do most of it myself.

Congratulations, (assuming here you did your due diligence).

Just remember that a house is a place to live, not an investment instrument. Don't get caught up in the fallacy of spending more than you can afford, thinking you'll recoup when you sell because "it will increase the resale value!" There are several millions of people today who found this out in the most painful way possible.

Congrats. Just had a list of stuff that needs fixing from our tenants :( (mostly minor stuff but most of which means cooperation from our clueless neighbours...)

Wow, talk about bringing a man down.

Congrats I say, I'm currently on my third year of home ownership and finally to the point of really loving it! We had to replace tons of shit in the first few years - garage, AC, furnace, water heater - but now that its mostly little upkeep and yardwork, I'm totally enjoying it. Good luck!

No bringing down intended! I loved having my own place from the minute we moved in, even though it was a total fixer-upper - no central heating, broken windows, dodgy wiring, acres of woodchip on the walls.... Eventually saved enough to blitz everything and it's a palace now. Just a shame I'm not living there, but w/ev, it's great to know we've got some bricks and mortar we can call our own.

owning a house is awesome. even when its shitty and stuff breaks, its yer shit which makes fixing it feel like a worthwhile endeavor.

ezackly

owning a house is pretty rad. not paying rent PWNS. Mortgages are feh, but, not having to chase dodgy landlords and beg for plumbing fitting replacements is k-awesome. and I say all of this despite being in the middle of a) trying get foundation repaired on a 97 year old house, and b) discovering a swarm of termites in the same week. Oh, old house, I love you like my crazy grandmother. You are so old you are almost beyond most people's comprehension of how to fix you, but so strange and lovely and dear to our hearts that we love you anyway.

sigh.

getting ready to help buy a house. 1940. so so excited. inspection happens soon, am really looking forward to what he uncovers

or, y'know, dreading

so do you people who pay mortgages (in the US) have way less withheld in your taxes every month from your paycheck? I'm trying to figure out if I can afford to do this.

Our mortgage is only $100 more than what we paid in rent at the time we decided to buy, so no.

Finally moving into our house this weekend that we bought in December (yay remodelling). Wish me luck. I still can't believe I'm doing this.

classic, even tho my home's value is slipping back down toward our 2004 purchase price. C'est la vie.

Yeah, we were unfortunate enough to have bought at the end of 2007, so our house has dropped about 16% in value from what we paid. :(

But we also built a new garage and have put tons of work into it, new windows are up next when I get finally get a full-time gig.

ours doubled in value within a year after we bought it. then it began a long, sharp slide down.

to be clear, i have no regrets. in fact, i love our house and our neighborhood. i plan to hold it for a long time, and i'm don't rely on it as an investment, so whatever value it has today is okay.

I'm stressing out because it seems like such a good time to buy, but it seems like such an ordeal!

It's a total ordeal, but it is also totally worth it if you really love the place you purchase.

I am looking out my window right now at the sun shining on a small tree in my yard. Yesterday, while looking out the very same window at the same tree, my wife and I saw a Wilson's Warbler, a small yellow bird much like a goldfinch, flitting around the branches. The birds love our yard.

Yeah, owning a house can be totally worth it.

I had a stretch where I really hated our current house, but last year when I found out how well it can take an oak tree through the roof, I fell in love with it a little.

so do you people who pay mortgages (in the US) have way less withheld in your taxes every month from your paycheck? I'm trying to figure out if I can afford to do this.

The part of the payment that's interest (most of the whole) is deductable from your income for the purposes of figuring your tax. So determine that amount, then determine what your final tax rate (percentage after all deductions) was last year, take that percentage of the monthly interest, then figure how many deductions to add to cover that amount (there's probably a worksheet in the tax booklet that does this last bit).

thanks, that's what I assumed and was looking for. I suppose i could go see a mortgage broker and get this really clarified.

I'm looking at purchasing a bank-owned house. we're going to look at it tomorrow. as far as I can tell the worst thing about this now is that, since there is no seller aside from a bank, there is no-one to fix anything before you buy it, so you have to make sure your inspection is thorough. we know someone who's realtor told them doing this was 'a pain in the ass' but I have a feeling that's because the realtor wasn't going to make any money finding them an REO. anyway, wish me luck, I will probably want to kill myself if I do this. but since I fully expect to be in bankruptcy one year from now, I'd better buy a house while I can.

uk people, is now a good time to think about buying a house? (so so sick of giving money to a useless and intrusive letting agency)

also how easy is it for a couple to get a mortgage when one person lives on topsy turvy freelance wage? could a set of parents step in as guarantor or does it not work like that?

It's worth taking a few weekends to look at as many places as you can, just to get a feel of what's out there. You'll also find it easier to spot a 'bargain' if you see one as well (eg a mate of mine was lucky getting her house because the owner had died and the next of kin wanted a quick sale rather than have the process drag on). Not saying this will happen of course but it's good to be ready if you see somewhere worthwhile.

Parents can act as guarantor - I was in a similar situation, only on a fixed-term contract which the financial advisor said could be difficult. Looked into getting a parent to act as guarantor but at the time the guarantor had to have an income of £30k minimum which I think mine didn't quite reach. After a lot of fussing over my fixed-term contract (and me considering quitting just to go get a permanent job at Tescos or something) it all worked out ok and the mortgage co didn't seem to care - I imagine it would be different today though.

I'd recommend finding a non-shysty (free) financial advisor who can give you an idea of the ins and outs, but they won't always be able to recommend you the best actual mortgage. The bigger deposit you can get together, the better choice you'll have of mortgages too iirc.

It's a total ordeal, but it is also totally worth it if you really love the place you purchase.

so so so so otm. and 2 weeks after the ordeal of closing & moving all the hassle is a distant memory.

Everything that NtrVP said. Mrs A and I completed on purchase last month, having seen our old house (bought in 2005) go up a good deal in value and down a fair bit too; we love the area of Manchester we're in and looked at more than 20 houses within a mile radius of the old gaff before finding one we both agreed on - in the end it was sheer luck as it was just going onto the agent's books and they told us about it when we were looking at another house. The things I learnt this time round:

1) Plenty of people still think their house is worth what it was in 2007 so be prepared to make offers that you might think are "cheeky" and to walk away if the vendors won't see sense. If they are serious about selling they'll come back to you.

2)We scraped together a 15% deposit from the remaining equity in our last house, but would have been f'cked otherwise. I think the mortgage deals have improved a little since then though, but DEF. throw as much as you can into the pot if it will get you a better rate.

3)The house we bought is in an area which we'd dismissed initially, simply because we didn't know it too well (despite it being a stone's throw from the old place). Get out and pound the pavements and walk around your target areas, otherwise you'll never get a real feel for them.

4)Get all your finances and mortgage agreement-in-principle in place asap. This will ensure you know exactly what you *can* afford and also shows agents that you are in a good position for them to recommend them to their clients.

5)It goes against my natural instincts, but make a real nuisance of yrselves on the phone to local agents and get to know who their main selling people are - once you know them by name you can steal a march on other potential buyers.

On a final note, I rented for years and know exactly what you mean about being sick of it. Imo there is not much to beat the feeling of getting home from work and closing the door of your own house, even if it needs decorating and renovation from top to bottom. Good luck!

no serious regrets, but if i had to do it over I would've definitely gone with one that needed little more than a coat of paint. I've spent right at half of the original purchase price (in 2004) in improvements. fuck a fixer-upper imo. unless you're on some Bob Vila shit.

Yeah "luck" seems to come into it a lot more than you'd think from reading newspaper property supplements about house price trends etc. We didn't even think about looking at our flat originally because we assumed (from looking at the outside) it would be cramped with low ceilings etc, and had actually put an cheekily low offer on the flat below but didn't *LOVE* it. We just looked at ours because we were in the building and both knew straight away we had to have it.

i looked at the saddest property today, completely beautiful, but occupied by a tenant, an infirm 87 year old man whose wife just went into a nursing home; everyone has told him that he'll be able to stay when the house is purchased. the price of the house has dropped $200k since it went on the market because no-one really wants to evict this guy, although he told us "I'm not going to live forever!" of course if I bought it that would guarantee that he would.

As I see it, the problem there isn't him dying or not dying, so much as it is what happens if he becomes unable to function and unwilling to admit it. Who takes care of him, if he can't care for himself? It would really suck to take him to court to be declared incompetant.

akm that story broke my heart cleanly in half

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That is pretty sad. I hope someone can break it to the guy gently. Or that he passes peacefully in his sleep soon and makes the question moot.

Different subject: I have a problem understanding the concept of home "ownership" that doesn't involve owning an entire building and the lot it sits on. Like, "owning" a flat or a condo or whatever. If the main sewer line pops or the roof leaks, and several "owners" have to get together to figure out which plumber or roofer to call, that doesn't feel like true home ownership to me. Or, what if you're technically an "owner" but have to deal with 3 a.m. death metal enthusiasts on the floor above or below? I'd have a hard time thinking of myself as a homeowner if I was still subject to a renter's miseries.

owning a house is pretty rad. not paying rent PWNS. Mortgages are feh, but, not having to chase dodgy landlords and beg for plumbing fitting replacements is k-awesome.

otm. Yet there isn't a week when I don't suppress second thoughts. Condo association meetings suck, even though mine is the least intrusive imaginable.

Condo associations, God bless 'em, function a bit like mixed-markets economies, seeking their ideal Nash equilibria through compromise and intuitive game theory, and all the while confounding one's impulse to live like a bear.

our house on MVI is officially on the market. we are crossing our fingers. we would love to buy something here with what we get from a sale. we are renting right now. we love it here and want to stay 4ever. we shall see. if it languishes on the market too long we might need to rent it out again to help pay the loan money we owe. i hope it doesn't come to that. but who knows. it kinda looks a little dumb and prefab on the outside, but its really quite nice on the inside. big and breezy. we just got back from a week of scrubbing it down and cleaning it out. the people who were renting it had huge dogs and were chain smokers and had big huge 18 year old sons and the walls were really gross. why did we paint them white again? but really it was lovely to be on the island. the weather was amazing. the birds! i had forgotten about the birds. its like one big bird sanctuary. even walking the beach by the lagoon next to our house with the kids was so nice. (without the day to dayness and my job woes and money woes we could just enjoy the island for what it is, a big beautiful rock in the ocean.)

http://oceanpark-realty.com/propertydetail.php?id=263

We were meant to exchange last Wednesday, but annoyingly we still haven't, and now my dad's trying to persuade me to make the removal of an asbestos-roofed shed from the garden of the property a condition of sale.

He's got a point - we don't want it, it's a non-permanent structure and it'll be costly to remove (never mind the asbestos, it's in a stupid position). But we don't want to upset the apple cart and delay the exchange (and thus the completion date), which would be really inconvenient to us.

Is the last-minute addition of such conditions of sale a common thing? The thing is, I know that if we ever try to sell the pace and the shed's still there, the buyer will inevitably say "we're not touching it till that asbestos is a long away away" so we'll have to pay to have it done then, even if we leave it for now. How much is asbestos removal anyway?

the people who were renting it had huge dogs and were chain smokers and had big huge 18 year old sons and the walls were really gross.

My mother used to rent houses out. Some of the things that her renters would do to her houses (and we're talking about 90% of her renters) would beggar belief.

Not sure if I've mentioned it here or not, but our brother-in-law bought us a house. It's a poor people's house--a decrepit trailer-plus-extensions and a shed way out in the woods in Central Florida, and half the family is going to live there with us--but it's a place to live.

Is the last-minute addition of such conditions of sale a common thing?

It's not uncommon. A ballpark for removal would probably be about £1000, although your local council may offer an almost free service to dispose of the shed roof as a single piece (assuming you are able to remove it and bag it up securely intact). If you don't want to delay the exchange the best option at this stage is for your solicitor to negotiate a discount based on the cost to you to get rid of it, so you need to get a proper quote from a local builder/asbestos removal firm and use this as a bargaining tool. This kind of thing is usually called an "allowance on completion" ie. when you complete the money is knocked off the price you pay.

I'd recommend against trying to get the vendor to do the work before you exchange as this WILL delay things and you'll still have to get the work independently inspected once done.

Christine: imo, any house is better than no house - congratulations, and whatever state it's in now is just a starting point for renovations!

All this is probably moot now, as we've just exchanged, an hour ago! OMG we pretty much own our own first home, crazy.

So now we've exchanged, we don't have a negotiating leg to stand on, do we?

Yeah, I think you're stuck with your shed. But it's yours! Your very own lump of asbestos!

Woo, asbestos! Maybe I can make something useful out of it like, uh, a barbecue. Or crush it up and lay it around the outside of the house to keep people away, like a toxic dust moat...

Whats up, homeowners?

I have to vent here. In addition to the Federal New Homebuyer's Tax Credit, California also has a tax credit in place which can provide up to $10,000 in tax credit for first time home buyers. Needless to say, with the property values out here, EVERYONE is claiming $10,000.

Problem is that you need to send in your application within ONE WEEK of settlement. 7 days.

And, if your realtor, escrow agent, or accountant don't give you the heads up on this, you miss out on $10,000.

Now, I've taken out a serious load of student loans, and have lost my share at the poker table, but just watching a $10,000 tax credit disappear because paid professionals in my employ were not diligent in providing me with information re: a FILING DEADLINE?!?!?!

If I were to be so lax and fuck something up like this for one of my clients, I would be unemployed.

I am SO pissed off right now. It might take a few extra minutes on the exercise hamster wheel to work this one out.

Wow, that really sucks. REALLY. Are you sure there's no comeback or anything?

Having total mortgage woes today, fuck em all.

I went ahead and filed the application anyway - took literally 5 min from print to fax. Unfortunately, the folks at the CA Tax Board informed me that late is late.

According to my accountant, who I trust to a great degree, the escrow company typically takes care of this sort of pro forma paperwork. Their response was "Not our problem" and "That's not something we take care of here." I want to go just yell at them for however long $10,000 would be worth.

So mad.

Just to give a countervailing opinion, we just moved into a rental house and are delighted. We're paying rent and not building equity, but on the other hand we're not paying property taxes. And what we get for our money is that when anything needs fixing in the house it is SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROBLEM. (It helps that our landlord actually gets things done effectively and promptly and is very into keeping up the house, landscaping, etc.)

And that feeling of "getting home from work and closing the door of your own house?" It turns out you have it even if you don't own the house!

fuuuuuuuuuuuck that sucks BLAM. i'll see if we have $10K lying around the house that we can bring down when we visit.

In addition to the Federal New Homebuyer's Tax Credit

I thought this was over with??

Nope. We did the deed in enough time to take advantage of THAT one. This CA one, however - I'm just freaking so pissed.

damn man, you got my sympathy

Christine, don't harsh on your new home! My mom was just saying that a few otherwise-WASPy members of my extended fam did the same when they were newly married: young couple pays off trailer home within 1-2 years, puts rest of money in savings for next and nicer domicile.

A roof is a roof is a roof, and as long as there's love and refuge and all that shit underneath it, it's doing its job. Congrats!

finally in a position next year to do this....due to the charity of our friends, who just bought a house but now have to move overseas for work for 10 months, they're renting their house to us for super cheap, allowing us to save a ton of money. hopefully the housing marketing will only get worse for sellers in the next year and we'll find a bargain by the time they come back.

that's a kickass situation right there

BLAM, I dunno if this helps, but if you think of the $10K in the context of the gigantic sums of money involved in buying a house it's actually not that much -- e.g. if somebody came to you and told you "I just talked to the sellers and they admitted they would have sold it to you for $10K less if you'd pressed them" you wouldn't be that mad, right?

so what's the situation at the moment are house prices rising again? what about like mortgage rates and that? i am also in position to save some mad cash at the moment and considering waiting a year but wonder if it's worth having a punt now if it's worth it (while things are cheap???)

I believe they'll keep going down, down, down but the truth is no one knows. Cognitive bias validates decisions you've already made, so people who've bought think prices will now go up, while people who haven't (like me) think the trough is still to come.

Like anything with property, it depends on the area.

Laurel: First off, we've been married since 1993. My husband is disabled and can't work, and I'm a 40-something ten-dollar-an-hour home health CNA with bipolar disorder. There's a more-than-zero chance that we may be stuck there for our entire lives.

And his brother is mentally ill, and may throw us out at the slightest whim.

i just bought a house!

I'm buying a flat too! Homebuyer reports are scary :(

BLAM, I dunno if this helps, but if you think of the $10K in the context of the gigantic sums of money involved in buying a house it's actually not that much -- e.g. if somebody came to you and told you "I just talked to the sellers and they admitted they would have sold it to you for $10K less if you'd pressed them" you wouldn't be that mad, right?

Not THAT mad, but still pretty mad.

I mean, look - we found out about this and found out we didn't get our stuff in to take advantage of it all within like four days. So, we just have to forget about it. Unless we somehow qualify with our late filing, and then yeah! But I'm not holding out hope.

Jel - part-time librarians have had a pay rise?

in a conundrum: need to move soon, really sick of rentals, have a moderately high salary (also a lot of debt though), not much for a downpayment that is easily accessible...yet, it seems like I should buy a house at this point. they are going for nothing here (nothing being mid 400's for the bay area) and I'm sure will appreciate in ten years. still it would maybe kill me on a monthly basis. also, I am terrified of everything. what to do?

you have a 401k or IRA

We just bought in N Oaktown w/ an FHA. We're definitely paying more than we were for rent, but we have way more space and feel like we're finally settled. For us it's definitely proving to be worth the pain, since we are doing something we've had as a goal for a very long while.

Also keep in mind that while $0 of your rent is tax-deductible, a significant amount of your monthly mortgage payment is (property tax & interest).

Also keep in mind that while $0 of your rent is tax-deductible, a significant amount of your monthly mortgage payment is (property tax & interest).

plus, if you have to get "mortgage insurance" and if you have to pay points. However, that isn't forever -- once you get to the point where you're paying more principal than interest, it doesn't have that much in the way of tax advantages.

you always get the prop tax deduction though--at least under certain income limits.

It's important to note that mortgage insurance(aka PMI) is mandatory for FHA loans, which allow you to borrow w/ 3.5% down) can end up around $250/mo. To my knowledge the deduction for mortage insurance can only be claimed through tax year 2010--it's over.

Homepath properties are supposed to be a good value--they let you buy @ 5%, with no PMI.

I own my condo, and, yes, getting the interest back in the form of an IRS return is nice, although it fails to compensate for depreciation.

yes, but the property tax deduction is nowhere near the deduction you get in the first few years of mortgage interest. And it might end up being smaller than the standard deduction.

man i am glad we had enough money to put down to avoid paying mortgage insurance, i had no idea it was anywhere near that much per month

i have friends that pay $200/mo.

jesus christ

Yeah our PMI is +- $250. It's a percentage of your loan. It just went up at the end of last year, between the time we put in an offer and when it closed.

Yeah, I was able to avoid mortgage insurance as well. We paid about 11% down, borrowing against my 401k. But my house was less than $140,000. The advantages of the dying Great Lakes region.

V. much trying to make extra payments to shorten the life of that PMI

yeah, i also have bay area friends that bought cheaper places and/or borrowed money from their families so that they could put more money down and not have to get dumb mortgage insurance.

if only I had a family with a dime to loan me (or that I spoke to). I'm beginning to think buying is a very bad idea for me, but who knows.

but yes to answer above, I do have a sizeable 401k. not sure borrowing against it is a good idea since I'm likely to leave my job soon and go elsewhere.

the key things to keep in mind are: can you afford it? and Do you want to live there for a significant amount of time?

About a year ago, my friend Amy encouraged me to buy a loft/condo near hers in West Oakland, which was really cheap -- like well under $200k cheap. I could have afforded it. But, I really did not want to live a block away from where there were 2 dozen shooting deaths/dead bodies dumped in the previous year alone.

where in the bay are you thinking to buy?

berkeley. I have a kid and public school and all that.

I feel like the city's a good investment tbh

lol

Phil where are you located at?

I'm looking at buying a house in Wisconsin and you can get some pretty good looking homes around $120k (or less). Crazy that the mid 400's is "cheap" for the Bay Area but it makes me glad to live here!!

aim for something close to transit and you can always rent to a bunch of college kids if you have to leave for some reason.

i mean I'm looking at 2brs in berkeley for rent and who the fuck are these people who think they can get $3k a month for a 2br apartment? That is as much as a mortgage. I guess they are planning on rentint to like, three students or something. I had a fairly nice flat in a good area but we really had to move out of there after my wife had cancer and went through chemo in that flat, it just was starting to feel like a trap. we had seven months of renting a friend's house for cheap and now we've got to find something permanent...yuck.

also any recommendations for something other than craigslist to find rentals is appreciated. 1/2 of the listings on there are spam now or some kind of scam crap.

frogbs, I'm in Cleveland, or Cleveland Heights anyway.

Yeah I would imagine Cleveland is a cheap place to buy these days; still that's cheap if you're that close to a major city.

maybe I will try to buy some cheap foreclosed property and if it all falls apart move into some shit apartment temporarily, or go move my family to tilden park, eat wild animals and steal stuff from rich people's houses

I would have liked to end up in Berkeley but prices were $50-$100K more than Oakland for comparable properties. It depends on your space needs too--if you can do something less than 1000SF, you should be fine finding something in Berkeley

our friend's house (the one we're in now) must be like, 850 sq. it has a partially finished attic though which is nice. i thought it was a fucking hobbit hole when we moved in but now I'm used to it.

I'd live in oakland in heartbeat if we didn't have to send our son to school in september. bigger houses, more character, city is generally more interesting, etc.

Oakland homeowners have to pay a mosquito abatement assessment on their property taxes. I don't think i've ever encountered a mosquito in Oakland.

well it's working then

yeah, but are there even mosquitos to abate?

true I haven't seen any mosquitos in the bay area...but maybe there are some around the lake?

I'm sure this is just some way for crooked Oakland city government to line their pockets though

I'm sure this is just some way for crooked Oakland city government to line their pockets though

that was my assumption as well

like SF, but not as much so, Oakland has a lot of renters, so we pass a lot of kinda wtf property tax measures and special assessment taxes.

well here is the whole history

http://www.mosquitoes.org/history.htm

this is quickly becoming the most depressing and frustrating experience of my life

i'm sorry -- at least you didn't buy 3 1/2 years ago and aren't dealing with being underwater and having a mortgage company that won't respond to your phone calls/emails/letters

a couple of my friends just went through that, and it almost ruined their marriage.

We have an assumable fixed-rate mortgage -- might be useful if/when we sell.

When my wife gets back from the middle east, we're planning on buying as well. I'm kinda terrified by this whole process.

I'd live in oakland in heartbeat if we didn't have to send our son to school in september.

I heard people lived in Albany to avoid the Berkeley schools!

we're planning on buying as well. I'm kinda terrified by this whole process.

i thought it was fun. frustrating, but fun. there's a lot to learn. a good agent helps.

xp - people live in Berkeley or Piedmont to avoid the Oakland schools, and other people live in Albany to avoid the Berkeley schools.

people who live in albany to avoid berkeley schools are snobs

albany does have good schools, but it's at least 100k more for a comparable home there. that said there aren't any really 'bad' parts of albany to live in, and there are certainly bad parts of berkeley. i mean I'd live in them if I didn't have a wife and a son and didn't care about my safety and I was 21, but not now.

are the 'bad' parts of berkeley really much more dangerous than the parts of oakland you'd want to live in?

'bad' berkeley always just felt like oakland to me

yes, there are parts of berkeley that are "bad", with sacramento/ashby being kind of the nexus of that, stretching up and over several blocks in both directions. this is a worse neighborhood than a great deal of oakland. It's also where it appears I can afford to buy! hoorah!

love owning a house, best move i ever made

we are loving it, frustrations and all. The pain of the process melts away after you've made it in.

That first tax refund after you buy your house is one hell of a count your chickens incentive
As in, you have every reason to doubt people who tell you what a deal it is to be a homeowner - there's so much justification going on, especially in an overpriced market (which it still is in DC, apparently, since my property taxes are still going DOWN, not up) - but seriously, I can paint my walls however I want, we can hire our own handymen, the condo committee here is good, and for the first time in my life I have neighbors as friends and peers instead of feeling like there's some kind of weird transient situation or some caste issue. And then on top of that, the tax shit is for real. I always owed as a renter, now I'm seriously considering adjusting my W4 so I can have some of that interest to myself.

otoh mortgage bankers really are the worst. not as bad as a bitchy landlord, by far (bitchy landlord is just another person who has to play middleman between you and said mortgage banker, anyway) but they have no reason to be helpful after you've signed the papers - mortgage maintenance really is a loss leader for most banks nowadays and they display that pretty openly - the call center folks you have to talk to, as nice as they might want to be, have almost no power to fix anything (like correct your escrow payment to reflect their own employers' incompetence at paying property taxes on time, instead of indirectly saddling you for the late fees as their pigfucking overlords would prefer)

Oh shit I made an offer on a house

hey congratulations

well it hasn't been accepted yet and my loan hasn't been approved, but, fingers crossed

In the middle of buying and selling a house and so sick of the stress.

xp good luck! i keep hearing horror stories about unresponsive mortgage brokers and loan companies. Like you would think that now they have less business, they would pay more attention to the customers they do have, but, apparently not.

mortgage brokers can't get a god damn thing approved from their higher-ups at banks, that seems to be the real hold-up for lots of people right now

yeah, i'm pretty sure that's what's going on. I was telling a friend of mine this ... that brokers work on commission, so I'd think the problem is higher up the chain.

the mortgage brokers i know are just frustrated as fuck because you're exactly right, they can't make their money w/origination fees if houses aren't selling. banks are still scared

Closed on a house a few weeks ago, moved in last week. I was kind of apprehensive about the whole process, given how frustrating it is for a lot of people, but... it was really, really easy. My boyfriend and I kept asking each other, "When does this become stressful?" And it never did. I think it helped that we were looking in the middle of winter. There were a lot of houses available in our price range (under $150k in South Minneapolis) and zero competition from other buyers. Also, I'm a chronic saver, so the down payment wasn't an issue.

I had a great realtor, who was recommended by a friend, and he set me up with a small mortgage company that was quick and responsive. Looked at a dozen houses over the course of a few weekends, picked one, and put in a low-ball offer. The sellers--it was an estate sale, so the sellers were the previous owner's kids--met me halfway and that was it. It's an old house, so the wiring was dangerously outdated, but we got that taken care of before we moved in, and now we're just trying to get settled. Classic!

in fairness, moving out of rental/parents/whatever and buying a first place isn't generally stressful (unless you're unlucky or get messed about by sellers etc). But per jon just upthread:

In the middle of buying and selling a house and so sick of the stress

the key point here being having to sell a place at the same time as buying one = open to so many possible horrors it's not even vaguely fun.

It seems to me that it would be easier not to sell and buy at same time. I think i would prefer to sell then move into a rental and then buy from there

Buying our place (as first-time buyers) was a breeze. I think we were the only people I know to actually get decent solicitors that didn't hold up the process as well. Being in a chain does seem incredibly stressful though.

Yeah, at this point its just trying to find a buyer for ours. We've gotten the pre-approval, found three or four houses we like, but all the interest in our current house has fallen through so far.

my mortgage broker keeps telling me he can explain away any weirdness. but I am following up with a second option just in case.

I just had an offer accepted. Originally $115k but they dropped it to 99. We decided to offer the money they wanted, but we asked for nearly all their furniture (and their 50" TV) instead. Surprisingly, they accepted.

where the heck do you guys get a house for $115K?

Wisconsin, in kind of a rural area. It's in this tiny village but it's also a minute off the highway which is close to two decent sized towns. Real estate prices here are very reasonable; I mean they're not super low but they're not really inflated either...you generally pay what they're worth

wow.

I bought my house last year for $135 an hour outside of DC. It's certainly not a model home or anything, but there's lots of stuff like that around.

Congrats frogbs.

To those out there who are in the middle of the approval process, seeing your 30 day closing stretch to 45-60 days is more and more common, the banks are being nitpicky in the extreme. Our FHA loan took 2+ months to close, during which time we signed about 4 contingency extensions and had to straighten out a case of mistaken identity and clear ourselves of being responsible for $50K in loans made to someone whose SSN was one digit off from ours.

In short, the nauseous stress you feel will disappear upon moving in, or shortly thereafter.

God, that stress was unbelievable though.

around here you get nothing for less than $250.

Yeah stuff in the DC area is typically super expensive, so 135 doesn't seem bad

BTW my place is a condo, so you are paying more than that since you have to pay ~ $1300 in condo fees every year; the upside is you save on insurance (and don't have to mow or shovel snow)

Where are you located bingo??

nothing habitable short of $400k in my town, someone put a bullet in my brain

friend of mine just bought a place for $450!

central mass

yeah that'll do it...I hung out with my little brother who lives in Virginia and it's largely the same there (nothing good for less than half a mil). the upshot is that you generally make much more money. my brother makes about $15k more than I do even though he's two years younger...but he does pay $2k rent. everyone has nice cars there but the attitude seems to be super professional and self-absorbed.

we bought our place for $230 5 years ago. now its worth $200, i fucking hate it.

Bought ours for $250 four and a half years ago, have put about $30k into fixing it up, now we'll be lucky to get $215 for it. Really fucking hate this economy.

three cheers for buying 10 years ago, is all I can say

We bought 2400 sq ft plus 300 sq ft detached office/shop for $87K (9 years ago), but it's in the middle of nowheresville, so it's no brag.

of course we haven't put a dime into it...minus all my fab landscaping.

I haven't even had my offer accepted yet and I'm already going insane with nerves. It's a bank-owned property but the bank is Ocwen which as far as I can tell used to be the most shady thing in the world, and outsources all it's 'realtors' to bangalore, so you can't actually get ahold of anyone who seems to know what they are doing. If we buy this I hope the title turns out to be clean.

Did you go for Berkeley or dear old Oakland akm?

akm, did you look at el cerrito? i have no idea about property prices round here, but we live at the del norte bart end, on the hillside, super pleasant area, our place is 2br duplex, garage, laundry, over 1000sq ft, excellent condition and private (small) backyard - for just under $1200p/mth

yeah I know. no, berkeley. it's a school thing. I know schools (elementary) in el cerrito are ok but we aren't ready to compromise on that yet. we'd rather just rent for another year until something happens and we can buy something in town (I've lived here for 20 years already)

we were thinking about homeowning last year after we came into a large sum of $$ but my FIL talked us out of it. kinda relieved in a lot of ways: i love the ~idea~ of owning my own place and not having a landlord to answer to but buying a house here seems like a mountain of shit to climb and conquer. we ended up just sinking the money into investments, so hopefully that pays.

the way i look at it, rent vs owning, is that if you get a cheap house and the sellers' market starts doing really well, it doesn't matter how much your house is worth, bc you're still also a buyer, so you're gonna pay the same exorbitant price for the next place, even if you're selling your current place at a huge profit. unless you're willing to massively downgrade.

yeah that is true. I am planning (in my mind) to stay, for quite a while, and then move to argentina where my wife's extended family is, or something, honestly.

we just bought a house in Seattle. dealing with the mortgage broker was a struggle. they are incredibly paranoid about everything. i feel like they've placed the burden on the consumer when it was really the financial institutions that were mostly responsible. anyway, we found a great house at a good price in a great neighborhood. not a full on 'fixer' but definitely on the low end for this area. our agent was really great and other than the mortgage broker, it was a pretty fun experience. we've been in the house two weeks now and i finally found my razor. i still don't have my records unpacked and stereo hooked up but my clothes are in drawers and i can make coffee in the morning. yay!

Oh shit I made an offer on a house

― akm, Sunday, April 3, 2011 3:21 PM (4 months ago)

well that only took 4 fucking months. finally closed. What a giant nightmare this has been.

i'm just this minute dealing with paperwork that will probably eventually end with ours going into repossession.

but good luck!

congrats akm. where in berkeley did you end up?

south berkeley, right by near san pablo park. nice area (now, apparently used to be nothing but drug dealers). nice neighbors, decent price on a 3 bedroom with a tiny yard. needs a bunch of substructural work that I luckily got most of the money to cover. this was an REO, which we thought would have gone quickly. But, it was an asset that was jointly owned by several banks. Ocwen was also involved though they weren't the name of the bank that held the deed. Ocwen (based in florida, FTC investigations up the wazoo) has all of their actual employees that aren't sockpuppets in Bangalore. All paperwork routed through india, all communication came via emails from India, often in barely-coherent english. A counteroffer we sent out caused a 1.5 month delay of confusion. Ocwen also controls the title company that held title to the house; title company was in California, but never answered their phone; sent incorrect documents for notarization; basically entire process was about as awful a clusterfuck as I can imagine. On the plus side, I have stayed on top of all other homes for sale in town and we would not have gotten a better deal.

I am never owning a home

unless I move to a better country

http://thumbs.trulia.com/pictures/thumbs_3/ps.29/d/6/c/1/picture-uh=59a38deb64392015c3ff28261dead68-ps=d6c13f16116bd402d80fc82174ca763.jpg

that is gorgeous. it would cost 1.5 million here. we really should move one day.

i'm just this minute dealing with paperwork that will probably eventually end with ours going into repossession.

WAH? :-(

I still wonder if I should buy one to rent out. My pension is gonna be crazy low so I need something else. :-(

Buying a house/flat is kinda fun...It gets better when you get to the buying furniture, decorating, planting a garden phase!!

but it gets worse when your garage door breaks and you try to Tim Taylor the thing only to destroy your hand on a gigantic spring

Yeah, the first few months are great until you sign the paperwork to start construction on a new garage, but then the air conditioning dies when its 98 degrees outside and your furnace is 39 years old and you end up replacing those too. Then a month later you learn that the plumber that installed your water heater two years before you even bought the house used incompatible piping material without proper seals and now the reaction between the two metals has eaten a quarter sized hole out of the top of your water heater and is leaking all over the utility room. Then, literally the next day, the rubber hose is your kitchen faucet breaks and shoots water all over your kitchen.

my current worry is that my savings will soon be redenominated in Euros Nacionales (as opposed to the Convertible Euros they will have in Germany) and will hence be completely worthless. This makes me think that running out and buynig anything houselike with them might be a good idea.

Yeah, that all suck, sorry dudes :(

Just hoping the boiler lasts another winter...

I would think housing prices in America at least should continue to drop over the next year or two. Still hearing tons of stories about people who bought their houses for $375k and wound up selling them for less than 150. I'm not really sure if it'll ever rebound (which is good news if you're in your early 20's)

Yeah, we are currently trying to sell our house so we can take advantage of the lower prices to upgrade in size now that we have a baby on the way. We, stupidly in retrospect, bought our house in November of 2007 right before the world went to shit. We put about $75,000 worth of work into the house so far and, as of right now, are asking 73% of what we originally paid for it.

Buying the house was one of the worst decisions we've ever made, we regret it daily.

I still wonder if I should buy one to rent out. My pension is gonna be crazy low so I need something else. :-(

yeah but with stocks and shares really cheap now (and getting cheaper), your pension fund can buy up loads of them, so that by the time you have retired they will have appreciated so much in value that you will be rich rich rich!

That's what I am hoping.

the main thing is, we're all happy

Just got qualified today. So it begins..

gotta get rid of some of my records before we move. take them to the store. oy...

Fucking hell. The house we've had our eye on for the last five months closed today, and for a price about $40,000 lower than what we were all set to offer just before our potential buyer pulled out.

I cannot stress enough how goddamn fucking painful it is to try to sell a house. Not a week goes by where I don't either feel like screaming or crying. I'm ready to just give up and accept that fact that we will never ever be able to move out of our house.

I mean, seriously, unless you are planning to never, ever for any reason have to sell your house, do yourself and don't buy one in the first place. Trying to sell a house is a special kind of hell that will literally destroy your house and make you miserable for a large portion of your waking hours.

"literally destroy your life" I meant

See? I'm so angry I can't even type properly.

it seems more poetic and mysterious the first way

sounds more like vinnie jones tbh

sorry for your stresses tho jon

Just, ugh, so fucking hard. I've never been so stressed out about something in my life.

this might have popped up on the graphspergers thread

http://insights.truliablog.com/vis/rent-vs-buy-q3/

you know jon, you might not want to hear this, but it sounds like you should find a middle ground between as of right now, are asking 73% of what we originally paid for it and accept that fact that we will never ever be able to move out of our house? can you stick it out for ten years?

The short answer is no, we really can't. Honestly we're not too concerned about the losing money on the house part, thats just how the market is right now. We're hoping to make up for it on the other end by getting more than we'd have been able to afford at 2006-7 prices. The bigger issue is that, while it was a great starter house, its revealing itself to be way too small for children. Our first is on the way in less than a month and we've made sacrifices to make it work for him (moved out all of my music collection, got rid of my wife's work from home office, etc) and it's fine. But we're hoping to have another at some point and there's just not room for it. We've looked into adding on, but its just not feasible given our lot restrictions.

Really what makes it so hard is that we've been busting our asses to save and get ourselves in a position where we can afford the new house financially. And we're set there, we've got a down payment covered, we've got closing covered, we've been pre-approved for much higher than we'd ever want to spend, etc etc. We just need a goddamn buyer now.

have you thought about contacting one of those "we buy any house" brokers, if you are that desperate?

why **right now**? during the worst market since ... ?

to me - a complete stranger who is probably being way too free with his opinion - it sounds a bit like "i bought some stock, it lost roughly 50% of its value in the worst recession since the 70s, the entire economy is in a tailspin at least through next summer, but i need to sell NOW"

the whole "houses are solid investments" line of thinking was not built around the thinking that you could flip houses like used cars every couple of years ... you're buying dear and selling super-cheap and as an unbiased observer i don't exactly see what the rush is.

i mean i know there are crackhouses on your block. i don't have that problem but there are definitely crackhouses in a five-block radius of here (as well as historic million dollar bungalows) and we have 11 pm - 1 am police chopper w/ spotlight over the house at least once a week. haven't ever heard gunshots, thank god, but i find the occasional beer bottle on the lawn. my neighbors have a three year-old, they seem to be coping okay.

when he had me my dad gave up ham radio *and* model airplanes!

I totally get what you are saying, our timing could not be worse really, its just frustrating because my wife is really wanting to "nest" with the baby coming and she is anxious about space concerns.

How much space does a baby take up?

Anyway, I was trying to vent yesterday. Its not the end of the world, we can make do with what we've got now and it'll work out eventually. Just stressful.

The baby, not much at all. All this shit you need for one, lots.

you are making sacrifices for the future, god bless

at various points in history people the managed to raise children in not enormous houses

jon are you feeling what your wife is feeling, again/still? Like, your frantic need to sell NOW is still being driven by your desire to provide for her? I am way, WAY sympathetic to the nesting urge and I do try to listen to those things in my life, at least, but maybe you guys could focus on making certain rooms or corners of rooms nicer, that you already have? Like a nursing corner with a screen and a low table for her tea and book and a window to look out of, or something, whatever would be meaningful and comforting to her?

caves are kinda roomy

the = have xp to moimeme

Oh yeah, thats a big part of my feelings right now, that I'm not properly "providing" for them. Which is total bullshit, esp because my wife makes more than I do, but the ingrained part of my brain tells me I need to provide better. Anyway, we are making do and settling in the best we can. We're both thrilled with how the nursery turned out and really excited. I mean, its fine, we'll survive.

And, no, we aren't looking for an "enormous" house, fyi. Our house right now is 890 sf, so its not exactly trying to buy a mcmansion to want something with a tiny bit more flexibility.

890 sf is rough

There's so much STUFF sold to us for babies and I haven't had a babby of my own but I have a feeling about 2/3rds of it is bunk and mostly a bulwark against feeling unprepared (which you're going to feel like anyway because you ARE, pretty sure it's impossible to be prepared for babby, in truth). The kid's gonna sleep with you or in your room for a while, and then no one is going to be sleeping at all for a while, and then when they start sleeping again, you won't care which room it's in compared to the minor miracle of sleep happening, and then you're at like 1 year-ish, and that's 13 months from now.

but still, 890 sf is 2 10x10 bedrooms, kitchen, living and bath? should be do-able?

the dude who built the 2-br 1100 sf house i am in right now raised three kids in it until the oldest was about to go to middle school. at that point he could afford to move out somewhere a bit less urban. bunk beds!

Yeah, its totally doable. I was just trying to vent yesterday about how stressful selling a house is, particularly when you are in full-on "nesting" mode (part of why I wanted to wait another year before putting it on the market, but I was outvoted there). Anyway, its fine, we'll be fine. I kind of feel like you guys might be reading more into this than I intended.

Well yeah, you say you own a house and you have a separate nursery, and I as an NYC resident am like SCHA, WHATEVER, DUDE. YOU HAVE A NURSERY because I don't even have a coat closet.

Well, you were talking about screaming and crying and having your life destroyed and never EVER being able to move out of your current house. It seemed kinda dramatic?

Fair enough.

good luck jon, hope things turn out <3

I was venting yesterday, problem with not having any irl friends to do so with.

consider us yr irl friends

feel free to vent

I'll buy yr baby

Not for sale sry

barter?

I got some very nice slightly used Nikes, size 10.5

vintage?

sadly no, they're one of the running shoes from last year

market for houses may be shot but babies are garnering good prices these days. sayin

anyway, wd like to buy a house but they're pretty spendy : /

and anyway property is slavery

otm, especially when I have to mow it and weed the garden

for a second I thought you were still talking about the baby

Our baby has never been in her 'nursery'. She's 14 months now and has slept appx. 10hrs in her giant, expensive crib. I missed how old your baby was or if it was on the way, but you won't really need much room for the baby until the baby is walking and even then they are happy to walk around the coffee table. Don't force a move. Loving your wife and baby is providing enough for them. The stress you're adding to the situation is going to make everything less enjoyable. Give it time and the right situation will happen.

jon - feel like there's no way you haven't already considered this, but is renting the place you want to get out of an option?

rent for a year or two and then try to sell again. something like that.

Definitely considered that, but with what comparable houses are getting in our area for rent, it wouldn't be enough to cover the costs. We may be able to reasses that in six months or so though. But, tbh, the thought of being a landlord scares me.

ah, that's a bummer.

man K and I were talking recently about whether our house would be big enough if we decided to have one or two kids and after reading this thread i feel like an idiot and a spoiled dick :(

actually house ownership in general has to be the source of 90% of my first world problems when i really think about it, like i should hire somebody to follow me around and slap me every time i think something like "woe is me the roof damper for my fireplace is broken" or "the paint on my ground floor bathroom is cracking HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN YOU CRUEL AND UNJUST GOD"

very very otm

mine are about to become 45% house, 45% car

watching my property taxes go up while my value goes down thanks to idiots voting in a republican majority in my state is somehow a justifiable shake my fist at the heavens thing somehow though.

xpost see this is why i never learned to like cars

I used to work with a guy who put it best: "90% of the time, having a car is awesome, but that 10% when it's not is among the worst 10% of modern life experience"

See I don't get that worked up over car problems, because those are usually much less expensive to fix than house repairs.

gf's mom is saying she wants to sell 2000 sf house that is literally two blocks from carleton in order to finish paying condo five blocks from guthrie ... i am telling her she is craaaaaazy

wait what why?

please dont say that it is because the condo is a sound investment because uh i have seen the vacancy rates of those condos and no

I can't imagine buying a condo in the Twin Cities as my primary residence

unless of course it was like a condo the size of Mall of America

buying a house: dud

finally moving into house: classic

congrats!!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/mortgage-tax-deductions-may-soon-be-in-play/2011/08/08/gIQARA60AJ_story.html

I don't even want to think about this, though if it doesn't happen this year it's almost guaranteed to happen.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/mortgage-tax-deductions-may-soon-be-in-play/2011/08/08/gIQARA60AJ_story.html

I don't even want to think about this, though if it doesn't happen this year it's almost guaranteed to happen.

it's hard to justify both as an overall policy and in terms of who gets most of the $ from this tax break (rich ppls)

Well it would be a massive bummer considering the amount of prop tax we pay and the tax break I was expecting to get.

4 bedroom house two doors down from us is for sale for 99 grand if anyone wants to join us here in god's country:

http://www.trulia.com/property/3068816811-69-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

huge garage too. kinda envious of that garage. you could live in the garage. we don't have a garage. our next door neighbor's garage is as big as a house. he even has a nice deck on his garage!

Looks like a big house for the price!

But –

http://thumbs.trulia.com/pictures/thumbs_4/ps.36/4/e/6/c/picture-uh=41d6f2f4906a3fb82f7afc4a6cbe4c8-ps=4e6cb4dafd1cb287b598491ba561b11.jpg

that art is amazing; it's the drop ceiling that's giving me the shivers

might need a little work.

we just did the state home energy audit thing for our 100+ year old house and the guy came and looked at eveything and said we were good to go! apparently, the former owner took really good care of everything and reinsulated and we don't have much to do or spend right now. nice surprise. he kinda felt funny that he couldn't do anything for us, so he gave us lots of extra lightbulbs.

selling our house and buying a new one has been the most unpleasant, arduous, and stressful event of my life. it's really killing me. i think i'm almost done with process, but if our inspections don't go through it'll be just the latest bite of gigantic shit sandwich.

feel like if my family can survive this intact we've really accomplished something.

favorite part so far- getting contract written to sell our place, then having another bidder suddenly pop up and outbid us for the house we were going to buy. it looked like 75% chance of moving the family to apartment just before xmas, where we could chill out and wait for a house that suited us and our budget.

The year we bought a wonderful new house, but had to wait nearly eight months to sell the old one were some of the most stressful in our lives.

Earlier this year my parents finally sold their house in NY which had been on the market for 3+ years and while the sale was under contract they bought a house in Floriday and scheduled it so that the closing in FL would be about 5 days after the one in NY. Long story short the sale in NY fell through AFTER they'd moved to FL and bought that house so now they live there and their empty house in NY is on the market again. :( It's not a good situation at all.

terrible.

http://www.trulia.com/property/1075389366-122-S-Ocean-Ave-Bayport-NY-11705

I think that's considerably lower than the first asking price but I know that they're just going to keep dropping it until someone buys because they literally can't afford to keep paying for both houses. The property taxes on the one in NY as astronomical. Which is a) the reason they moved in the first place b) probably a big reason why nobody has bought it yet. It's a really nice house in a great area. I think the taxes are playing into it big time.

Decided in the last week that we are gonna do this thing.

99 grand! In our preferred neighbourhood in Toronto, houses begin around $400K. So.. it's gonna be a little while more.

Weird seeing decent houses like that one we could afford. Here it's just a unattainable dream

we four brothers messily kind of own the house i'm currently in, bought for 205k in 2005 current value prob 110k maybe, mortgage 170k lol

Scott what's Greenfield like? How far is it to Northampton? Nearest city would be . . . Springfield?

Basically wondering how in the middle of nowhere it is or isn't. 99,000 is just . . . unbelievable.

selling our house and buying a new one has been the most unpleasant, arduous, and stressful event of my life. it's really killing me. i think i'm almost done with process, but if our inspections don't go through it'll be just the latest bite of gigantic shit sandwich.

feel like if my family can survive this intact we've really accomplished something.

I hear this, although we've put it all on hold for a few months. Its just a neverending nightmare it seems. I'm sure it'll be great when all is said and done and we're in a new house that we love (no matter how much of a hit we have to take at this point), but going through it is a level of hell.

How about a two-story, 70-year-old house with 3,480-SF? The price is so low, we can't reveal it here. Just put in your cart for checkout.

i have to add, jjjusten upthread is right. i'm v. fortunate, i'll have a home pretty much no matter what, so if you see me with my by-now customary distraugt face, slap it.

"Scott what's Greenfield like? How far is it to Northampton? Nearest city would be . . . Springfield?"

greenfield is considered kinda the bad boy of the valley around here if you live in northampton or amherst. but they are snooty like that. 25 minutes to northampton and amherst. 25 minutes to brattleboro, vermont. close to new hampshire. an hour+ from hartford. two hours+ from boston. not far from providence. when the train station is finished in greenfield you will be able to take a train direct to nyc. excited about that.

i mean, it has its problems. its had its dog days. but we love it here. and we love the proximity to other places. a couple of hours to my brother in hudson. 3 hours or so to my parents outside saratoga. we love turners falls the town right next door. lots of great people. lots of great music. lots of great book stores and cool places to go. lots of forests and trails and mountains and lakes and rivers nearby. its a lot cheaper here than in northampton obviously. we bought an awesome huge house that has four bedrooms and a massive attic and basement that is in amazing condition for 142k.

oh and the house on our block that is 99 grand is probably so cheap because its being sold by the family of a very old couple that lived there (and who both passed away in the last couple of years) and i think they just want to sell it and be done with it. they don't want to mess around.

And it's close to downtown, PP! Must have a high walk score.

x-post

and, yeah, springfield is about an hour away. i can't say i spend a lot of time in springfield. unless its to stop at white hut on my to/from somewhere else.

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/ae866fce-ad7d-4d67-9d5a-d18500db15c6.jpg

oooh what's white hut!? I like the look of it.

wow, erica, that house is swanky! beautiful spot there.

http://www.whitehut.com/

"relish the experience"

i really should investigate springfield more. but there are no record stores there! so that makes it hard to entice me. i think they have a few latin/rap cd stores and that's about it.

Which, my parents'? Yeah, it's so nice. We moved into it when I was about 6 and they did so much to it over the years/put a lot of work into it. The backyard is like a tiny personal forest! It's also right by the water too.

I just feel so bad for them with all that's happened now. I mean they're retired and really can't afford to pay two mortgages, two property taxes etc. I pretty sure that if they don't sell it by the spring they're going to have to drop the price DRASTICALLY. It's really stressing my dad out. He's on the phone to the realtor every day asking for updates. :/

WHITE HUT LOOKS AWESOME. :)

Sorry about your folks. I was happy to sell my house in NJ, i just lost quite a bit of money on it. No big deal, because i still walked away with cash after paying off my mortgage. But it was a long, slow frustrating process.

I'm moving to Atlanta from New Jersey. The house i was going to buy failed inspection miserably so I killed the deal. Still, housing prices are much lower than where im coming from, so that's a good thing. Very much looking forward to moving south.

yeah that sucks. we kinda/sorta went through something like that last year. long arduous story and i won't go into it. and the process of buying the house we bought this year kinda made me want to jump out a window, but i lived and we love it, so all is well.

x-post

x-post - Good luck Bill Magill!

Yeah - I just hope it sells sooner rather than later. Also, I'm glad you guys found someplace you love!

I've actually never been to your part of Western MA which is why I was asking. I need to change that someday. We used to stop in Springfield on the way back from Vermont when I was younger because there is was a German restaurant there and my dad knew the owner, Ruprecht. Other than that I've only been there for work a couple times. It's a pretty depressed town one where most storefronts are empty but you get glimpses of what it might have been like at one time when things were better.

x-post - Good luck Bill Magill!

^thank you!

lol this is totally that German place in Springfield: http://www.studentprince.com/

i do want to go to the german place. i've heard good things about it!

this is our spot. gonna stay here forever.

http://images.neighborcity.com/source_3/massachusetts/greenfield/d8158f81b395cfa4dc9453cce031dcc4_0.jpg

Oh, I love it. PORCH!!

lotsa great porches in greenfield. so many of the houses in town are 50+ or 100+ years old.

i never want to buy a house, and this thread is not making me change my mind

its kind of a nightmare.

that house looks great! i want to buy one so bad. so many things i hate about renting. i don't think anyone's going to accept a 3% down payment though, but that's about all the money i've saved so far!

i never want to buy a house, and this thread is not making me change my mind

house next to ours is for sale. come share a driveway with us!

http://www.trulia.com/property/3080203081-71-73-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301?ecampaign=con_day_propertysearchforsale_bk&eurl=www.trulia.com%2Fproperty%2F3080203081-71-73-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

2 family house. have someone pay your mortgage for you! the garage is as big as a house. you could make it into another house.

I inherited a house. It needs a lot of work but I love it too much. Old houses are great.

A 6-bed house for $189,900?! Is that common where you are?

we're looking right now, and if only we were happy to live far far far from a BART station, we could live in a semi-mansion for under 300k.

putting in an offer today

could be a home pwner by may wtf why would the govt allow this

that house looks great! i want to buy one so bad. so many things i hate about renting. i don't think anyone's going to accept a 3% down payment though, but that's about all the money i've saved so far!

― tunnel joe (harbl), Monday, November 14, 2011 5:00 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw we are doing this, it's an FHA loan

My lease is up at the end of July and I've been half-looking for new apartments. For funsies, I looked today at some foreclosures and REO's online and couldn't believe how cheap they were going for. If I could get a loan, my mortgage + condo fee on some of these places would still be less than $600/mo.

I basically have zero credit, though. I don't even have a numeric score.

Wasn't even considering buying anything, tbh. But now I've been looking online at condos/lofts I've seen around town (in reasonably nice/cool areas) and gritting my teeth when I find out how cheaply I could get one.

i think i want to look at some houses now. irl, not just on the internet. there are 2 i have in mind but i've never done this before! i know the selling agents are happy to show them to people but i don't know what questions to ask, warning signs, etc. m bison tell me!

I'm not m bison but I don't think you have to have any questions in mind--just go out there and LOOK. Look at stuff in your price range/desired neighborhood(s) even you're not even interested in the property from the listing; pretty soon (~15 properties) you'll start to get a sense of how things *should* be priced.

Honestly, just get out there and look. You'll probably see tons of crap you hate, but that will still be time well spent in terms of getting to know the local market well. And if there is something you love, you don't have to do anything about it by yourself. If that happens, get yourself an agent (good advice is to interview ~3 and pick the one you like best). Do NOT tell the selling agent you are interested in the place and can he/she recommend an agent! That is how real estate shenanigans ensue.

how much do you have to pay your own agent?

Nothing, as a buyer! The buyer's agent gets the % cut designated by the seller. But you want to have an agent that is disassociate from the seller's agent so they are less likely to get into cahoots to jack the price and therefore maximize their payout.

% of the selling price, I mean.

Actually there are some benefits to going in without your own agent, and you being lawyerly is an advantage, but I'm not sure I would recommend that for first-time homebuying. Long story short on my second house purchase: husband and I did not use an agent, but instead paid a flat fee to a real estate lawyer to represent us in the contract negotiations and to handle closing shit. This saved us a shitton of cash in the long run, but by that point we had both done enough real estate transactions to make us feel reasonably comfortable navigating the deal more or less on our own.

yeah i won't do it without, i have no idea about real estate law. maybe i will start doing this next weekend. i drove by a place i think i would like today and the kitchen is not tiny and it has enough room in back for a small garden omg!! also a back overhanging porch i can hang windchimes on. those are the big 3.

Definitely visit stuff you like online, but go see stuff you don't like, too! That's an advantage of having an agent--you don't have to depend on open houses, you just say "hey dude/tte, I have two hours on Saturday, let's go see everything in the XXXK range in Hampden" or whatever areas you are thinking about. Not a bad idea to go see what the same $$$ buys you in "up" or "down" neighborhoods, too.

IMO the key to being happy with your real estate purchase is to know you paid the *right* price. If something you love is going to cost more that its real life value (to the market, not you), it is easier to walk away if you just get into the mindset of "I will not pay too much, no matter how much I like it."

lol how did you know this place was in hampden

Anyone here have experience of trying to buy you a property you are renting? Not as in rent-to-buy but as in, ok we like this place, how much do you (LANDLORD) want for it and are you interested in selling?

No, but we did put an offer in for the apartment below ours (before we saw ours, which is way better anyway) and it turned out the seller was selling it to his tenant who was currently living there, but wanted to get an idea of an asking price by putting it on the market. It was a bit of a half-arsed offer so I hope we did him a favour.

i hope so too

doing this now too, & selling one also, & uggggggh

imo find an agent you trust, someone who will tell it like it is about a place but will respect what you want and not try to push you in the direction of some you're not wild about buying
seller will pay them their commission
we ended up pulling our offer bc the house we liked had HELLA problems and needed many significant repairs to be safe, so we are back in the hunt *shrugs*

We put in an offer on a house last week which apparently received 19(!) offers. The counter was $125K OVER asking and it will probably go for even more! It's more a lack of supply, but I'm thinking we've just passed the bottom of the market (in the hotter US markets at least).

It sounds like you're going to be stuck with a low-interest rate but enormous dollar-amount mortgage, mr. chow. I hope it works out for you.

There's no lack of supply in some of the once-hottest markets here in Oregon. For example, Bend, OR was growing at about a 22% annual rate in the decade before the bubble burst and was among the top 20 growth areas in the US, iirc. Its housing market is still in the toilet. Foreclosures by the bushel basketful.

(rings dinner bell) Come and get it!

Oh we walked away from that one!

Here's a good article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577366294046658820.html

certain in-city neighborhoods of seattle have been starting to see the same thing in the past few months: multiple offers, bids over asking, all-cash offers. but still very localized and dependant on location and lack of new supply.

I'm in LA.

Also Aimless, I don't mind a big mortgage especially at an historically low rate (great inflation protection too) - the problem is if the appraisal is for the original amount. Then you've got to pay the down payment and the difference if there are strong multiple offers.

NYC has had kind of a perfect storm lately of (1) low interest rates (2) a back-up of condo projects that were approved or started pre-bust and are coming back to market (3) TAX ABATEMENTS on these projects that don't really make sense (the abatements were later phased out) but that make the condos more buyable, and (4) super high rents. So yeah, defnitely have noticed an uptick in buying. I don't think it will last that long.

we put my house on the market recently, under contract after just more than a week of being listed. got a second, back-up offer a few days after we took the first offer. so I dunno, I'm ok with the market right now! also have a new house under contract, & b/c of the silly low interest rates right now my mortgage payments will barely budge despite buying a lot more house than we're selling. yay economy?

Nice!

One caveat to historical low rates, though, is that eventual higher rates will eat into your eventual resale value, as the next buyer will have higher monthly costs per dollar of house, if that makes sense. But as long as your not buying "because prices will go up," it's not a concern.

nah, we're buying because we're moving & need some place to live, & we wanted more house b/c we have three kids & have been in a smallish house for several years now.

Sweet. I am envious.

well it's the Midwest, so maybe don't get too envious! fine with me though

I am envious of homebuying being within reach and kind of sick of the northeast, or at least NYC

bought a house y'all. it's pretty rad.

Our purchaser isn't ready to exchange and won't be for a couple of weeks or more, so our purchase in turn has fallen through, as our vendor can't wait.

that's rotten, I'm sorry to hear that

Oh shit, really sorry. We've put our place on the market and have a place we want to buy, but things are incredibly slow at the moment. Should pick up a bit after this week I think. I've only ever been a first-time buyer before, chains seem like they have no hope of ever actually working :(

How long did it take to find the one you were going to get? Is there any chance it won't fall through? Surely it's easier for them to wait a few weeks rather than find a buyer from scratch, or do they have a ready interested party?

The one we were meant to buy had been on the market for months before we put a bid in; they were about to take it off the market and let it out. They didn't want things to drag on past July as they've already moved across country into rented accommodation, and they're paying both mortgage and rent. They can't afford for it to roll on any longer.

There's a similar property, actually better decorated for us, close by that we're going to view tomorrow. Parents have said we can move in with them if we need to - sale of our flat is going to take a few more weeks due to nonsense with freehold and the treasury - so we're ready to put stuff in storage if needs be and do that.

We'll actually be better off financially, because we'll be able to get a better mortgage deal after September 3rd, so maybe it's for the best, but it's just incredibly frustrating.

Feeling a lot more C than D after refinancing (or at least setting the process into motion) earlier this week - five years into a 30 year /6.25% mortgage got turned into a 20 year at 3.375%, and costs us $100 less per month. Plus the bank dude estimated the price at $10K more than we paid for it and the lender didn't ask for an appraisal meaning we probably aren't totally fucked if we ever want to sell.

The things that excite me these days...

That house I mentioned above ended up going for $165K OVER and the accepted offer was ALL CASH. Apparently so was the backup!

The two bed flat above the place my parents rent, which is smaller than theirs and doesn't have a garden, has already had a number of offers meeting the £625,000 asking price and might well kick on beyond £650k. I'm losing the capacity to be astonished by this stuff.

Jesus, is that in London?
I found a £30 million apartment online in Kensington the other day. Thirty. Million. Pounds. THIRTY!!

Yeah, North London. Apparently all the bankers who are feeling the pinch after the financial crisis are buying £650k flats in places like Highbury rather than £1m flats in Kensington these days. This one has gone up in value by about £100k in the last three years.

Fucking hell.

Have had an offer accepted on a house two streets away from where we were buying, £2k cheaper and much nicer; all the things we'd have wanted to do to the other one (knock through livingroom and diningroom, put original fireplaces and stained glass back in) are already there. So things appear to be working out for the best.

Hurray!

Excellent! One thing that's been slightly annoying since we moved is seeing incrementally better houses in our area become available as the market drifts down into our price range - like if we'd waited a few months we could've got further from the main road, then a bigger garden, and now an extra bedroom. But then we'd never've got our flat away if we hadn't moved when we did, and we're years older now anyway, so put this down to an unexpected stroke of luck and forget about it imo.

Hope all goes smoothly, Sick!

Went to look at a house last night. Lovely garden and conservatory, unusual in our area/price range, but the inside rooms were tiny compared to our 2-bedroom flat. A bit disappointed by how few houses there seem to be in this town where the latter isn't true, though, even if I bump up the max price to something well out of our range.

I fear I'd have to type the best part of a million into rightmove to get somewhere with a main bedroom and living room noticeably bigger than those in our flat - which isn't even a particularly huge or expensive flat. (At least, it's a lot smaller than the one in another town the bf moved out of to join me in it.)

Our flat has a big living room/dining room/kitchen open plan area, because it's the top of a Georgian town house basically. Finding a Victorian terrace that could take our sofa (and hifi) has been a ball-ache. But methinks we've done it.

I'm sure I typed "I think" there. I'm not fucking Blackadder.

hope it all goes through sick.
the legal/paperwork side of house moving is just nasty.
the shit/hoops we had to jump through when we bought ireallylovemusic hq 13 years ago still sends shivers up my spine, hence why when a few weeks ago at a local 'do' i was asked by two seperate people if the place was on the market (small town rumours due to probate valuationsi suspect) i was quick to make them realise that i aint going through that stuff for a very long time. (hopefully !).
as i said, good luck sick, sounds like things are working out for you.

man this is a sweet deal in turners. right down the road from greenfield. i could walk there. anyway, one of the good things about buying a place around here. lots of 2-families for sale. rent out half and pay no mortgage.

http://www.trulia.com/property/3093363102-5-Chestnut-Ln-Turners-Falls-MA-01376

Oof, $165k for 6 bedrooms... or live here and pay at least $450k for 3

hang on scott

.. is that really $740 per month !?!!?

f&ck us brits get ripped off ..

i would seriously want to know how many mass murders/people under the stairs etc there are at that price ..

honestly there are all kinds of houses around here for that price. nice ones. i mean are house is really nice and we got a steal.

love owning a house, best move i ever made

― buzza, Monday, March 28, 2011 9:46 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

chestnut lane looks nice, but the commute would kill me.

here there's a newly listed 1 bed flat over the road from me = £300k

I like it but really old houses (built in 1880!) creep me out a bit. I just don't want to deal with all kinds of funky construction methods, ancient wiring and plumbing, old radiators everywhere, lead in the paint, asbestos in the floor tiles, crap insulation. That said, I wish their were more duplexes/quadplexes around my neck of the woods. I live in one now - two addresses encompassing four total units, but I rent. The last one that sold - and that was about 5 years ago even though there are about 40 of them - went for over $1 million. And that's for half the building, 2 units.

Mine was built around 1790, it's solid as a rock and brilliant. Didn't have radiators, had to put in a v good central heating system. Same as SM, in a top of a Georgian building and looking to move into a house.

I do like old houses and old buildings - just not sure I'd want to own one and be responsible for the upkeep.

ok, just to check, in US is a 1939 build regarded as "old" ?

cos in UK this is still a new-ish house i.e. all elec/plumbing/ec meet modern needs

our house is turn of the 20th century. 1910's. its totally solid. we will have to rewire though.

all depends what the people have done before you. how good they've kept it up. how much they replaced. our heating system is new. roof is relatively new. chimney was recently redone. electrical is our biggest expense. everything else is great.

lots of old houses around here. i like old houses. i feel at home in them. i grew up in a house that was built around 1825.

if you buy a nice cheap older house around here and have to put some money into it, chances are you're still gonna get a great deal.

i like old stuff though. old wood. you can't get the kind of woodwork an old house has unless you're rich. it costs too much now. i like our humongous old windows. and the fireplace. and the crazy ancient wallpaper that came from that hotel in the shining.

you can see the wallpaper here. be warned though, when i filmed this we had spent the whole day at home and we wrecked the place. to be fair though, we always wreck the place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEeUd0Yf-pY&feature=plcp

old houses are cool, but I wouldn't want to be on the hook for maintenance and upgrades for a big one. My brother has a 1930s Craftsman-style house that I may buy in a year or two - I'd want to rip out all the interior sheetrock (at some point was redone in 1/4" drywall), reinsulate, probably rewire (CAT-5 and grounded electrical throughout) and replace the windows with double or triple-glazed. Thankfully it's only ~1300 sq ft, but heating and cooling costs a fortune. When I patched a wall for him, the insulation in that part was shredded newspaper.

xxxp - 1939 is 'old' in most of the US, yes.

My 1950s home still has some original knob-and-tube electrical wiring, odd since that was mostly phased out by then.

There are definitely things I like better in old houses, like real attics that can be turned into an extra bedroom, rather than the useless attics in newer houses that are full of trusses (diagonal wood beams) holding up the roof. And then there's those interesting floorplans that have things you just wouldn't find nowadays, like the house my aunt lives in that, in addition to a main staircase that runs through the four levels, also has stairs leading directly from one of the third-floor bedrooms to the kitchen. From what I understand, this was so a paid cook could walk to and from the kitchen without disturbing the rest of the household. Some old houses I know have had several renovations and additions over the years, leading to a hodgepodge of architectural styles and rooms without any obvious purpose.

also we wanted something in town that we could afford and there aren't really any newer houses in town in greenfield! its an older town. you have to go out further into the woods for newer stuff and those houses are more expensive. so we figured $140,000 for almost 2,000 sf house with 4 bedrooms was worth the future upkeep.

yeah our attic is amazing and huge and could definitely be turned into something. our basement is great too. and relatively dry which is rare around here.

and its not like newer houses don't have problems too! they can be just as much of a headache sometimes. depending on who built them. i figure old houses have stood the test of time. this house has seen a ton of northeastern winters and storms! and its still here. need that kind of solidity in a post-warming world.

agreed - especially the McMansions that were built all over the US during the housing bubble 10 years ago. Cheap, cheap, cheap. It's like the builders used a computer to determine the thinnest possible walls and floors that wouldn't collapse by themselves. Forget listening to vinyl - the floor will shake with every step you take, causing the needle to jump to the next groove. Rare in the US, my house is built mostly of masonry and steel framing - I could jump up and down on the floor and it wouldn't shake. I can barely hear the people upstairs.

We had been trying to come to a price agreement on a house we liked (long story short, vendors have reduced the price three times now but can't let go of the original price and so are determined not to budge on what it's on for just now, whereas we're looking at it knowing it needs building work to make it good) but after a week of being £10-15k apart decided to look at other things. Viewed another yesterday (the first to look at it), put an offer in this morning which I pretty much know is too low but is really for them to tell me what they want/need for it because we are definitely buying it, the only debate is how much for.

Do you mind saying whereabouts it is? I think we live in the same city so wouldn't mind picking your brains about neighbourhood s. We've been looking for ages. Webmail might be better!

Yeah, drop me a email. We're moving out of the city to Three Counties but have been in Bristol for 15 years so have plenty of opinions on areas.

our house is turn of the 20th century. 1910's. its totally solid. we will have to rewire though.

We call that relatively new around here. lol Part of the shop we rent is 18th century. You can see it on the tiles (engraved date).

We don't own ourselves. We live in my parents owned house. Really great (4 to five bedrooms, three bathrooms). Big yes, but it really doesn't feel that way. Probably cause I stuffed it full of furniture. lol
But we'll be the "naked owners" of the flat my inlaws will be buying. OMG!

I wish I could afford this house: http://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1048-W-Oakdale-Ave-60657/home/13364482

woah, flicking through those pictures, specifically 3 and 4 and 7 and 8, it's obvious that they are systematically replacing that wallpaper with magnolia paint. 9 and 10 also. leave it alone!

Oh yeah, I'd want it as is.

oh, it's just photoshopped. can they do that? mock up pictures like that without pointing out what they are doing?

"We call that relatively new around here."

well, duh. you can buy an 18th century house around here, but most of them are expensive show house historical landmarks or museums.

for instance:

http://www.trulia.com/property/3089609239-26-West-St-Hadley-MA-01035

this is dreamy. 14 acres. next to a lake and the mountains. deal of the century.

http://www.antiquehomesmagazine.com/Properties.php?task=View&id=14906

woah, flicking through those pictures, specifically 3 and 4 and 7 and 8, it's obvious that they are systematically replacing that wallpaper with magnolia paint. 9 and 10 also. leave it alone!

― koogs, Thursday, August 30, 2012 10:36 AM (2 hours ago)

Yeah, what's the deal here? It's like, "hey potential buyers, here's what the rooms would look like if you painted over the wallpaper"....

One house I looked at was advertised online with several nice-looking photos. When I drove up to see it, I found out it was the last house in the residential-zoned area, and backed up against an ugly industrial complex behind the rear fence, full of dumpsters and trash bins. I took some pictures, which I later compared to those that were posted by the seller's agent. The latter had been 'shopped to remove the trash receptacles.

This is around the corner from she we are now. Wish I had £1.65m.

http://search.knightfrank.com/exe100278

See I would change nearly everything about that! No original fire places or Coving or ceiling roses! Plus I have a personal loathing of beige bathrooms. There's one coMpletely clad in those beige tiles on the place we're interested in and my heart sinks to think of ripping them out but I want to re create our current bathroom.

have to say sick, that place looks clinical and heartless ..

give me a lived in home with scars of life over a showcase house anyday ..

Oh I like both extremes. Every house had to be new sometime! Also the non-furniture furniture they've filled that modern house with is the absolute WORST, and they don't have any window treatments, probably to show you the maximum views etc, but who lives in a house with no shades or curtains??? That's ridiculous.

Coveting those bathrooms hardcore.

I like the rooms where you can sit around and look at the views, but I'd feel a little ridiculous doing my cooking business on a pair of kitchen worktops dumped in the middle of a giant open-plan non-kitchen area, even if those two worktops + the space between is bigger and more kitted out than my whole current kitchen

(but then for me cooking involves making a mess and dropping stuff and swearing and being too tired to clean up afterwards, so that's not really something I want on view to any guests who are sitting in other parts of my imaginary spotless luxury design house. Not that I'd actually be able to keep those tastefully uncluttered either)

omg we looked at this amazing place today. Detached Georgian place, want to sell quickly so will accept an offer we can afford, amazing huge rooms like a palace, everything we've been looking for, just unbelievable. BUT it's right on a main road on one side so the garden is really noisy. Inside the house it's ok. We've already nixed another nice-enough place on the basis of noisy garden (is as good as no garden?) so we're totally torn up about this one. Argh. Is there such a thing as noise-sucking machines?

Shrubbery and water features?

A tall baffled wall covered in vines on both sides oughtta do it.

Yeah, foliage and water, soak up that noise.

Doing some google-fu on it. There's already a fair bit of foliage but not all the way along. It's always going to be a gamble!

Well, the last two weeks have been hell, and there have been some serious contract wranglings and it looked as if, six months from accepting an offer on our flat, it might all fall through. But this morning our buyer has signed the contract and our solicitors ave been instructed to exchange. We will complete next Weds or Thurs. half a year of uncertainty and expense (it's cost us £2k more than anticipated because of lease / management company issues) is nearly over and we'll be in and settled for Christmas.

Phew.

Wow, was actually going to ask you how it going as we're about to embark on same. Offers all agreed as of Friday but not getting overly optimistic yet. Our management co i.e. worst person in the world is causing massive hassle although not directly to do with us buying and selling.

Good luck. Remember, if you want things to happen, you can make them happen.

Cheers. Yeah we have that attitude, sadly this often means reducing prices/ paying more :-)

gl all. Hopefully this is another few years away yet for us.

Contracts exchanged, moving next Thursday!

We've changed estate agents because the one we had just wasn't getting people in the door. At least the house we want isn't gone yet.

We've just had ours emphasise the importance of staying on the good side of the management company as their delays can hold things up badly. The management company is a woman who's avoided actually living in her flat for the past week so she doesn't have to speak to us...

Our estate agents were pretty good in that they cared a lot about getting good pictures and made sure all their agents had gone around the place before doing any viewings. Can't really fault them except ... we didn't get a particularly good price for our place. Lots of people were viewing. It's downhill for the rest of the year pretty much, if we hadn't found anywhere we'd be trying again in Spring.

Did/do either of you have to do a fire and asbestos risk report for any communal areas of the building (if you're in a flat)? It's the most pointless thing ever and doesn't seem to apply to communal areas of domestic buildings but apparently have to do them anyway. Just spent ages trying to find anything that might have asbestos (the guidance is all 'if you don't know ASSUME IT'S THERE') but our reports are the shortest documents in the history of mankind. Not sure if it's petulant to answer 'source of oxygen' with 'air'.

Ha, thank god we didn't have to deal with that. Did become a fast expert on asbestos when we bought this place as there's some in the roof tiles or something, but it's the least harmful type. You'd have to eat the tiles to get ill.

We're all packed, bar the TV, shower gel, and my bottle of beer. Feel stressed and knackered in equal measure. Roll on THS time tomorrow when it's all over.

good luck! We've just taken some of the family around our house-to-be, a third viewing kind of thing. It's an amazing house, won't believe it if it all goes to plan without something going wrong.

And we're in.

pics!

Soon as the Internet is back on! Meant to be tomorrow.

excellent. are you fully done with the new place or do you plan to work on it etc as you go on?

bravo sick.

we too had this kind of crap b4 we got hq.

we x-fered the deposit over to arrive before a certain hour, and then with minutes to spare we received a phone call from our soliciti-scum advising us that an hour b4 the deadline the money was not in their account.

after a heated discussion during which we explained that we did not pay the soliciti-scum to be so relaxed and nonchalant re such situations we decided to transfer more ££ into the relevant account using a much more expensive and direct banking electr-system.

thankfully we got the outcome we needed, and 10 years on, i am still in hq proving that all that short term crap was worth it.

hopefully you too get the outcome you deserve.

for all the politics, there is nothing like having your own house.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7273/8151292287_7ae9dc75fd.jpg
Bedroom mantelpiece by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7138/8151304406_aa79018c5e.jpg
Second bedroom mantelpiece by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8482/8151261379_80eb5d7455.jpg
Kitchen sink by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7127/8151291992_d839bc4af6.jpg
Kitchen windowsill by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8063/8151273940_7ae48d4d1d.jpg
Hi-fi by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8348/8151277356_2f9d4bdd19.jpg
Cornicing by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7277/8151283298_2b6d6d3277.jpg
Stained glass by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/8151301484_518471ebe8.jpg
Green toilet seat by sickmouthy, on Flickr

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7133/8151306972_e55a342869.jpg
Desk by sickmouthy, on Flickr

i love that green toilet seat!!

£12 in B&Q: bought and installed today because the previous owners' one was crap. First toilet seat I've ever installed! It's awesome.

685's. Nice.

Nice hi-fi. Oh and the house is cool too :)

Your mantelpiece is the same as our current one

Ready to punch some solicitors right now
Stuff we asked them to send as a matter of priority has been sitting there for 8 days and another thing for several weeks
what in the actual fuck

Since changing agents we've had a steady stream of people through the door, but still no offers. :-(

I'm hearing that quite a bit - I imagine it's not going to get much better before Christmas? :(
But... should get better after that, I would've thought.

Yeah, this agent isn't worried at all. He seems to think as long as people are coming in then everything will be fine.

Actually, the guy who just left sounded kind of promising, but then I've thought that before about people that have viewed.

Bizarrely, the agent has just turned up randomly with a couple who were viewing further up the street and he talked into looking. Completely unplanned.

me having a house would equate to far too much time buying different mood lightings, installing them, and then exiting and re-entering rooms to see how i feel.

Are you there when they're viewing? I think I might find that a bit odd? That might be based on my one experience viewing when the owner was there (she was a little insane and so was the house). And I know how much of a pain it is to organise cleaning and getting out of the house in time.
Actually, that said, having the owner there for the second viewing was really good.

Not usually but am for this one as I'm being picked up by a work colleague from here at some point in the next hour - plus they weren't scheduled in.

I've viewed both ways and I don't actually mind either way. Sometimes it's nice for them to be there as they often know/push things the agent doesn't.

Yeah actually I remember when we rented our place out, I was usually out but happened to be in one time and pretty much had to do the agent's job for her. She was all 'look at this minor quirky feature!' and I was 'no, look at our shiny brand-new appliances'

Mine is stuff like "people further up the street have knocked the room through, so you must be able to do it".

Offer! A bit low, but if we can talk him up £10k we'll shake hands.

He'll only come some of the way. Might be a step too far unless I can lose it in the chain.

Well done. Our first offer was a lot under but they went up to +10k which was just about doable as our seller accepted a little lower in order to get going quickly.

Yeah, it's going to come down to whether we can do the deal on the house we want. Luckily they've been on for a while so you'd think they'd be open to lower offer.

Offer accepted, the guy had a second view last night to confirm. Agreed the price for the house we want to be in as well, and it's all just about affordable. Phew.

rah

been looking at mortgages. lower than rent and probably gettable if we could only settle job/location wise, which is the rub

In this process right now, super excited. Closing is tentatively set for Jan 2nd. We are renting out our current house, which went very well. Our house went live on the realtor's website on Sunday night and we had three showings on Monday, with two of them wanting to rent. So glad to have crossed that hurdle. Now the packing.

gl jon

Do i remember you moving into that place a few years back?

We bought it back in 2007, just before everything collapsed (which is why we are renting and not selling outright yet). It was a perfect starter home, but we rapidly outgrew it when our son was born.

as long as renting keeps you above water, i spose- got a lot of friends in that situation, rent covers the mortgage but they can't sell with so much negative equity. Banks won't lend for a new mortgage, so for instance one of my friends is on 120k or thereabouts but can't get a mortgage. It's crazy.

We actually had no problem getting the mortgage for the new house, which was let us pull the trigger on this house we fell in love with. But, yeah, its not a fun situation to be in. Even more frustrating when you've been a model homeowner, always paying your mortgage on time and having done nothing "wrong".

i'd imagine the banking/housing situation here has some bearing on it- by the time he's likely to get lending again, he'll only have a few years left on his first mortgage so he'll probably just stick with it. Lyfe.

Our buyers are seriously taking the piss at the moment. I can't wait for this to be over and just move the feck in

FFS. Withdrawn his offer after some personal issues with his partner that he wouldn't discuss with the agent.

Agggh.. Sorry to hear. Cannot believe how long this process is taking. Covering solicitor p much flapped for two weeks and stressed us out immensely. Proper woman came back and sorted a bunch of shit out in a single day.

You'd think it would be easy to transfer shitloads of money, wouldn't you?

check this baby out. 135K. killer barn too. you know you want to move to greenfield now.

http://www.newenglandmoves.com/property/details/557406/MLS-71465706/143-Wells-Street-Greenfield-MA-01301.aspx

The cheap real estate in W.MA kind of boggles my mind.

Well, that's it, I capitulated and am selling. It was nice having a house but it's clear I'm not up to snuff, just as well.

I have to be more competitive in life and more responsible and that means selling. I can't wait until the market turns around, I have to make some more responsible career and financial moves and move on in life.

I'm going back to renting, it's the more responsible thing for me at this time.

Good luck.

Our first viewing of the year is in 5 minutes. Hopefully this is going to work out, I'm getting sick of it.

Good luck. Our sale is being dragged out, with days I feel like i'm taking crazy pills and nights where I can't sleep. It's making us both really exhausted on top of a bunch of other shit.

We have two different people coming back for second viewings this week. Hopefully that means this is all coming to an end.

I have been a nervous wreck this weekend, don't want to discuss on public board but things could've gone horribly wrong. Think we are about there, over four months later and obscene amounts of money lighter. Can tell you which solicitors to avoid, if you like :)

I never updated the thread! But I am stupidly happy in my new house. We have a surprise pond with frogs and our own front door and a nice GREEN room and the location is proving to be even better than I imagined - we're in 10 minutes' walk of pretty much everything. The previous owner has done tons of useful stuff that we didn't really notice before (like putting in lights in cupboards that turn on when you open the door, lots of network sockets everywhere, a water filter) which is a great surprise.
Really need to make a complaint about the way the solicitors treated our case but I also don't want to sit down and drag up a load of hassle again. THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT.
How's it going Aldo?

Still here.

We had a guy who insisted on a survey into the damp in the cellar (which was exactly the sort of non-event with minimal cost to fix that we suspected) who's completely gone to ground - had the flu and was out of circulation for over a week, and isn't returning calls this week.

The vicar that came back for a second viewing got convinced by her daughters (who came for the second viewing) that what she really wants is a new build on a housing estate 6 miles outside of her parish rather than a Victorian house in it.

The guy that was supposed to be coming for a second viewing the same week as the vicar didn't manage to do so until last weekend. Apparently he got quite involved in buying somewhere else in the interim, but the chain was too difficult for him so he pulled out, but ours is a really simple one. He's now talking to a friend who's an architect (who supposedly viewed in his own right some time ago, back before we changed agents) about what can be done with the basement but we are "top of his options", whatever that means.

New viewings today and Saturday on the calendar.

Something has to happen soon. We're holding off a price drop until mid-March, although we've got a red dot on RightMove that says 'Open to offers' which seems to have sustained footfall. The agent has shown us their metrics and we're consistently out-performing other houses in their office in terms of interest and viewings so he just thinks we need to wait for Mr Right.

We had a lot of viewings before we got a bite, which kind of baffled the agents. Good luck though.
Anyway I have just seen a place on rightmove that is nearly as good as ours (the living room and bedroom look identical, down to the paint colours and cornicing) but for about 25% less. Would've likely bought it if we'd seen it first! Grr.. ours needs less work, I suppose.

I was going to bump this. We had the guy round for a THIRD viewing on Saturday, this time with the aforementioned friend. She's given him a shitload of ideas about what he wants to do, and he's knocking money off for every new idea - which has taken him down to a number which is, frankly, insulting. Part of me thinks it could just be a cack-handed attempt to find out what our bottom line is, part of me just wants to tell him to fuck off.

nice one near us. come to god's country!

http://www.trulia.com/property/1055922337-39-Riddell-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

couple more nice ones:

http://www.trulia.com/property/1040601802-31-West-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

http://www.trulia.com/property/3109914305-3-Grove-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

i don't know if the chickens come with that last one...

those prices!

my 2 bed flat in London costs nearly double all those gigantic 4 bed houses

western MA real estate will make you cry if you don't live in western MA

Holy crap at those prices. I've found I really, really hate anyone asking how much I've paid for my house, because I know it is probably a bit more than people would expect to want to pay, and I have tons of friends desperately saving for their first place. Is it rude to say you don't want to tell them?

considering pulling the trigger on a queens coop. gonna make an offer and see how it do.

in forest hillz?

Is it rude to say you don't want to tell them?

Not as far as I'm concerned. And after Scott's links there's no way I'm saying what our sale price is or what we're prepared to pay for the house we want.

ha! well, it ain't city living around here. so many nice old houses though. you gotta like old houses. if you have a little more cash to burn you can get yourself some sweet 4000 sf beauties:

http://www.trulia.com/property/3070589141-19-Highland-Ave-Greenfield-MA-01301

I bid 50k over asking price for a house last week and it went for 85k over. The Bay area is rough.

in forest hillz?

― iatee, Tuesday, February 26, 2013 3:39 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, saw a place that has most of what we want, feel like there's no other neighborhood where we're going to get what we want in our price range zoned for a good public school

xp polyphonic, what parts are you looking at? we started looking a couple years ago now, first in el cerrito... too pricey, so then the annex... that's skyrocketed, so now we're looking at north&east richmond :/ there are a lot of really nice small areas in richmond, not even including the hills, but they're surrounded by super sketchy areas which is tough if you don't drive.

http://thumbs.trulia-cdn.com/pictures/thumbs_4/ps.49/7/2/6/0/picture-uh=38f14459bea7f705a3c391e2d2fdf0-ps=7260421eef2f9cad3125e2f89a60b8.jpg

trying to parse this room

what parts are you looking at?

My range is El Cerrito to Eastmont Hills, nothing west of Foothill.

ugh, apt we want supposedly has three offers, although none at the listing price (all the broker will tell us). Hard not to offer more than you originally wanted to offer under that circumstance, even knowing they could all be low offers.

trying to parse this room

everything about that room SCREAMS "New England" to me, I assume it's from one of Scott's listings?

Well, we made an offer on the place that has three offers. We'll see. I don't intend to get pushed into a bidding war, and will probably say no thanks to anything over the listing price. Number of listings in my area is a little low right now other than overpriced/unsellable stuff that has been on the market forever, so I think that accounts for the multiple offers.

FWIW I offered only a few percent below the list (which seemed high) but asked for seller to pay all closing costs. Hoping to substantially out-offer the others on the first shot. We're also not using a broker, which ideally means they get to keep more of the price we pay.

Apartment is good space-wise, layout is reasonable, renovations are basically perfect (new everything, we like the style, nothing needs to be done), good light, etc. Building is nice, very affordable, good school zone, close to train. Neighborhood actually seems like something of a steal right now compared to "hot" areas of Brooklyn and Queens, probably because it's mostly middle class Chinese, Russian, Israeli middle class people who don't care so much about having a farm-to-table restaurant or an art gallery scene.

What do you mean by 'we're not using a broker'? They put the house on the market without a real estate agent?
Good luck, anyhow, sounds good. If you're genuine and non-flaky you prob stand a good chance tbh

I mean no buyer's broker, seller's only.

Buyer's broker is an alien concept to me!

Two agents talking to each other this morning. No fingers left to cross.

Agents were the ones who actually got shit done ime...

Still talking. JUST AGREE YOU CNUTS.

Agents were the ones who actually got shit done ime...

― kinder, Thursday, March 7, 2013 8:19 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure I follow. In New York, the agent who works for the person selling the place is called a seller's agent or listing agent. That person works for the seller and not you, and therefore is acting in the seller's best interests and not yours. If you have your own broker/agent, that's a buyer's broker/agent.

btw didn't get the apt. Already starting to feel like the market in my neighborhood is getting artificially hot, or at least sellers are getting crazy ideas -- I keep seeing list prices that are like 50% over the sale price seven years ago. There's no justification for that. Haven't seen any evidence that those sellers are actually getting what they're asking though, so \o/

We only have selling agents here, but because of chains the agent selling the property you want to buy often deals with the agent selling your property.

I was a seller in the above btw. I mean the house w were buying had a seller's agent too but we had zero hassle with buying

buyers agent saved us from shitloads of pitfalls, i would never buy a house without one.

FWIW, there seems to be kind of a rental investment property craze going on, so don't get carried away trying to buy a place. Foreign groups, big investment firms, etc. are swooping in and buying up huge numbers of properties.

Man, real estate in this city. At first I thought FH was full of deals -- huge apartments for much lower prices, but now I'm seeing the condition of a lot of these places in pre-war apartments. It's not so much that I have high standards as the question of whether I want to bother to buy something that will ultimately need a good amount of work or might even be hard to resell. Meanwhile, gentrified brooklyn pushes ever southward and eastward, and the areas we could afford are mostly a pretty long commute.

Accepted an offer and had ours accepted. Letters of introduction going out on our sale today and our purchase tomorrow.

I feel like I can begin to feel confident things are going to go well, not least because everybody is looking for a quick (4-6 weeks) exchange but I'm not counting any chickens.

Congrats Aldo, hopefully the pain you've had so far is the sum total of pain the process and it runs nice and easy from here.

Of course, as luck would have it we're on holiday during the process. Which probably means we'll need to give power of attorney to the agent.

congrats! here's hoping your agent doesn't run away with your deed

ok i'm gonna start working on this for real

Keep going back and forth about it. Inventory seems tight, I hate bidding war situations. May just want to save some more money, wait a few years, buy something better.

it's starting to look a lot more difficult here than last year when i was just kind of thinking about it. they even did a thing on npr about houses in baltimore being listed for 2 days. hopefully not so much in neighborhoods i'm looking at.

guy i know in chicopee just sold his house in 23 hours! they have to be out in 2 weeks. a couple of years ago it would have taken him...uh...a couple of years to sell his house.

buy now or be priced out forever!

The downside is...Chicopee. I mean, it's nice proximity-wise, but there's not a lot going on in the town itself. Wait, except for the Hu-Ke-Lau. OK, that probably makes it worth it.

xp

come on, what more could you ask for?? its even blessed by jeebus!

http://www.trulia.com/property/1044612503-165-Main-St-Charlemont-MA-01339#photo-1

not far from me. right up the road as the crow flies. charlemont is so pretty. can't believe nobody has bought it yet.

I wonder what denomination it was.

Basically, fuck a building society. Failing to send out docs, failing to action the ones they have, falling to meet their internal timelines... To cut a long story short, they have only sent their surveyor out today. We're going to have no option but to move out to hold on to our seller while the ogre end gets worked out. Hopefully it'll only be a week or so.

Contracts exchanged, out in two weeks. Have offered completion dates on our purchase without being able to exchange yet and two enquiries still outstanding. AAAARGH.

Good luck, hope it's all downhill from here. You're purchasing the one you were after originally?

Not originally originally, but the first one I mentioned on here, yes.

Well, we moved out last Friday and have finally exchanged on our purchase to complete next Tuesday. Nearly, NEARLY over.

I'll post more details once I can look back and laugh about it, but NEVER go to Barclays/Woolwich for a mortgage.

Good to hear! Are you renting in the meantime?
my quality of life is so much better now i'm on a main bus route, thanks to moving.

Because it was for such a short time we've just used cheap hotels. Having to do it for another weekend is a pain, but I'll get over it.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02576/Over-valued_and_un_2576718b.jpg

what is that from and what is it based on? I just read that the price-to-income ratio in the US has gone up massively in the past year or two.

i saw it here, but it's originally from the economist

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/houseprices/10088467/OECD-British-house-prices-are-31-too-high.html

sorry, no, it's originally from the OECD, but there was this in the economist a couple of weeks ago

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21578043-our-latest-round-up-house-prices-reveals-some-sharp-contrasts-boom-and-gloom

that graph is what i'm going to show to my mum every time she tells me i "need" to get on the "ladder"

i think i found a house i want to make an offer on. feels weird, i'm not sure i can do it.

Made an offer on another co-op. Think we may have found a diamond in the rough -- place was on the market 220 days and just reduced, and I think the real problem was that the owners had so much clutter and crap in there and a lot of ugly furniture and blinds and such that it didn't show well. But great light, trees right outside the windows, good layout, nice kitchen, etc.

Is that chart saying that US houses are UNDERPRICED? Seems hard to believe.

yeah I also find that hard to believe

If it's relative to rent, it might just be that rent is unusually high right now (which it is)

got a hot one for you guys. pretty as a picture. western mass awaits you...

http://www.trulia.com/property/3096729051-73-Beacon-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

sweet cobblestone wall!

fucking damnit man, all that can be yours for $169,000? Why do I live in New York again?

Wow, awesome house!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so, uh, our offer was accepted.

But now I have a question that I should have asked before: the people don't have an apartment yet. What do we do to protect ourselves? Like what if they take forever to find a place?

Your possession date depends on them finding an apartment? Usually it's the other way around.

Nothing depends on anything yet, we don't have a contract put together yet. So I guess we just get a firm possession date and other than that it's their problem?

Yeah, you agree on a possession date and put that in the contract. You can negotiate for the timing that's best for you. Most sellers want the possession date moved up to limit their mortgage (interest) payments and taxes on a house they're walking away from anyway. They'll be highly motivated to find a new place -- it's on them to be out of the place by the date you've agreed to.

Since your contract isn't put together yet, I'd strongly suggest you attach a house inspection as a condition of closing, with an option to withdraw or amend your offer based on the results. Long time on the market with recently reduced price might mean a previous sale has fallen through for some good reason. If your inspector finds something significant you'll be able to take that into account in negotiating a fair price.

walking through with my own hired inspector was the moment where i was sure "yeah i should buy this" also it's fun to do

Is that chart saying that US houses are UNDERPRICED? Seems hard to believe.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:38 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I also find that hard to believe

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:44 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If it's relative to rent, it might just be that rent is unusually high right now (which it is)

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:45 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i kinda believe it. my gf and i have been thinking about buying a house in the next year or two and she's been asking coworkers and friends who own houses in the area for advice. by their account many of their mortgages are comparable to what we're throwing at rent every month and in just as many cases quite a bit cheaper. kinda feel like i'm on the wrong end of a con at the moment.

Since your contract isn't put together yet, I'd strongly suggest you attach a house inspection as a condition of closing, with an option to withdraw or amend your offer based on the results. Long time on the market with recently reduced price might mean a previous sale has fallen through for some good reason. If your inspector finds something significant you'll be able to take that into account in negotiating a fair price.

― Plasmon, Monday, June 17, 2013 12:09 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That makes sense. I spoke to our attorney this morning and he seems very sharp and thorough, and he said we might do an engineer's report condition but since it's a co-op apartment most major issues are going to be the building and not the seller. We're also actually renting right now and on the verge of having to renew our lease, and we might actually not mind a longer wait period as long as our mortgage rate is locked in, because our rent (on a 1BR) is less than our mortgage (on a 2BR) will be, and we'd save some money in the meantime to put toward furnishing and renovation.

i kinda believe it. my gf and i have been thinking about buying a house in the next year or two and she's been asking coworkers and friends who own houses in the area for advice. by their account many of their mortgages are comparable to what we're throwing at rent every month and in just as many cases quite a bit cheaper. kinda feel like i'm on the wrong end of a con at the moment.

― arby's, Monday, June 17, 2013 10:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You really shouldn't compare your rent to their mortgage payment as a sole benchmark. (1) They all had to make down payments. (2) They all pay taxes and maintenance costs on top of their mortgage. (3) there are other factors in both directions -- buying a home builds equity, but the benefit becomes greater when you stay longer. There's also the mortgage interest tax break. There's also the headaches and lack of flexibility that come from owning vs. renting.

The NYTimes rent vs. buy calculator is pretty good if you can manage to put in accurate numbers and not get ridiculous with your price appreciation assumptions.

Owning a house is awesome until you spend the monetary equivalent of two nice European vacations on a new roof. Which looks exactly the previous roof that still worked just fine other than the fact that it was old and could have stopped working at any time.

Reroofing is hell. I was never more grateful to whatever god there is than when a storm dropped an 80-foot oak on our house, just hard enough to need reroofing but not hard enough to total the house or damage the AC ductwork.

This is the crazy redesigned bachelor pad that we ALMOST talked ourselves into buying:

http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/79/bigphoto/350/2590350_0.jpg
http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/79/bigphoto/350/2590350_2_0.jpg
http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/79/bigphoto/350/2590350_4_0.jpg

Awesome apartment. But it's on the ground floor with the windows not set back much from the sidewalk, the space was less practical for having a toddler (let alone if we ever have two), and the price was a bit high. We sucked it up and bought something more practical, but still nice. Great light, trees right outside the windows.

Wow, that ceiling light thing is wild.

Having the space be toddler friendly is a very good idea.

Our little bungalow started to feel crowded this year with the kids growing up and taking up more space. Thinking of moving somewhere bigger, get a couple of extra rooms (computer/office out of the living room please) and an attached garage (no need to scrape off the windshield on winter mornings), have a deck with a kitchen window overlooking. Looking at having it built custom in a new neighbourhood with a view of a prairie lake/wetlands and access to trails/parks from our back yard. Small city, so moving to the edge of town would only add 5-7 min driving time to most places. I could still walk to clinic but it'd take 40 min instead of 25.

yeah the designer (who lived there previously and had renovated it himself) built this custom "sculptural" kidney-shaped table to "echo" the light thing. I didn't really like it, but I did like the apartment. Except that it was open plan, and he had put in all these custom closets and cabinets that took up a lot of floor space so that if we closed off what had once been the rooms, the smaller room wouldn't have much floor. And the ground floor thing was an issue.

It had built in speakers throughout the house. It was pretty wild. I know this might sound weird, but another thing that got to me about it was "This might be the nicest place we'll ever live." Like, when we eventually "upgrade" to a house, we probably won't be able to afford the luxury kitchen, bathrooms, etc. that he had in there.

throughout the apt I mean

Open concept is nice as long as you've also got somewhere to stash sleeping kid(s) and their endless toys. We're looking for a 2 storey so there'll be better sound insulation -- right now there's nothing separating their beds from the living room (they want the BR door open so it's not dark), so I can't even listen to music off headphones after they go down.

One of the house builders we met offers built in speakers throughout the house controlled by an iPad so you can play different tracks in different rooms, adjust the volume all from one control, etc. also integrates lighting and thermostat zones. Imagine that would drive me crazy. I'd rather have one set of good speakers set up proprly than a dozen mediocre ones. Having constant overhead music is also weird (we walked around their show home), feels like you're in a grocery store.

We have a sonos system (got the parts bit by bit from Ebay) so w have a speaker and controller on each floor linked to the same system. You can play the same thing around the house, or different in different rooms, or add my husband discovered to his glee, subject your wife to whatever awful music you please while she's slaving over a hot stove...

Ooh boy, the lot we want to build on (for sale from the city land office) got a secondary hold placed on it by another interested party. We have until tomorrow to decide whether to buy the lot (through our builder) or give it up.

i'm going to see this very small house again on saturday and probably make an offer after that if no one else does

interest rates going nuts all of a sudden, fuck this is stressful

i KNOW. i should have done this in january, i didn't think this would happen. have a contract now btw.

!

Yeah we have a contract (not signed) as well and we are very close to signing. I had assumed rates might go up, but I was thinking like 4.1, 4.2, now they're 4.5 or something? Makes me wish I offered a little less. Probably will still go through with it but the extra monthly money sucks.

smdh

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100845777

welp, got approved by co-op board, locked in a mortgage rate, just waiting to see when sellers want to close.

well fuck me, I'm an apartment owner now. Just went over to see the place empty. I need a drink now.

Congrats (I think)

The walls and floors are pretty bad. I knew this going in but it just looked worse than I remembered. We're getting the whole place professionally repainted so I guess they'll deal with the grime and visible settling cracks and whatnot. Similarly, the horrible, filthy carpet they have is coming out, and we're refinishing the worst of the floors. Hideous vertical blinds will have to be replaced as well. These people were a little neglectful. Somehow, miraculously, it has a nice renovated kitchen.

The layout still seems good overall but it's smaller and a little less open than I remember. Our place right now has a really great open layout and I'll miss that a little. Won't miss living in a one bedroom though.

Things always seem smaller without furniture in it. Also one thing I learned is to always request in the contract that the seller remove anything you don't want to deal with (carpet, blinds).

after we closed on our place, i remeber suddenly noticing all the cracks and peeling paint, etc. different eyes once it is yours.

Empty is the best time! You can really get down to fixing things up when they're empty. And cleaning! SO much easier.

after we closed on our place, i remeber suddenly noticing all the cracks and peeling paint, etc. different eyes once it is yours.

Things always seem smaller without furniture in it.

This is oddly true. Our current rental looked way smaller to me when we first saw it (empty) than it does with our stuff in it.

Yeah walking into "our" house for the first time was a crazy experience of seeing all the awful, horrible things that were terribly wrong and realizing we'd made the worst mistake in our lives (still there six years later, nothing has gone wrong).

Congrats though, and it's still fascinating to me as a lifelong small/medium sized town person to think about buying an apartment. Everyone I know who lives in big cities rents and I have no idea how such a thing works.

the empty rooms looking smaller thing is true

why would that be the case?

paint and cracks are nbd as long as the structure behind is okay. cosmetic problems are fun to fix. i've almost totally forgetten the huge black smear across one wall that we painted over once we were finally in

Is it true that buying an apartment at 1.5x your current salary is a good guideline?
It seems that a mortgage payment on an apartment would be about the same
As the rent I'm paying now, but co-op fees add around $500-800 on top of that,
Which would be a stretch.

Rooms look smaller because it is hard to determine scale without furniture in it. My broker told me they always want furniture in rooms for pics (unless it is terrible furniture).

VP, I think coop boards want your monthly payments to be under 25-35% of your total monthly gross income.

Whether it's a good guideline depends on a lot of things. For one thing, the mortgage "guidelines" probably don't have co-ops in mind, where you pay high maintenance fees (although on the other hand, those fees generally include your real estate taxes and the maintenance of the building, whereas in a house, you pay your own taxes and maintain the house yourself). But you also have to consider your whole financial picture in terms of debt, monthly expenses, stability of your job, how long you plan to stay in one place, etc. I don't really believe in going solely by the "guidelines" when you can do a more detailed budget and really figure out what you can afford.

I don't have much debt but I have a relatively small salary; what's a public servant to do? So, even if a bank approves you for a certain
Monthly payment, the coop people could decide you can't cut it?

Oh I think I misunderstood what you were asking. But yeah, that could happen. We had friends who got rejected for a co-op because the guy had had a few different jobs in the last two years, so their income didn't look stable even though they could currently afford it. They also care how much you have in the bank. But if you have a stable job, some savings, and can afford the payments (mortgage and maintenance) on your salary you should be good.