Home buying thread

Sanrith Descartes said:

Someone ai know in Orlando also mentioned Lake Nona. But when I looked at Lake None High School demographics it was like 50% Hispanic, 35% white. "Not that there is anything wrong with that" disclaimer. I just took that to mean low income immigrant area. Am I wrong?

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$100k mean, $83k median household income, 86% white collar. Make of that what you will.

Yea if you’re going to make the move there do it soon. All the new hospitals were built there too. A lot of house holds that are Hispanic are Puerto Rican police officers from Orlando PD or Sheriffs office. So I wouldn’t discount those schools right off the bat due to the numbers.

...and sold! Offer accepted. It wasn't the pie-in-the-sky price that my RE agent was shooting for, but I knew it wouldn't bring that cash. Doesn't hurt to try. It came in at $50k over my happy price, so I am comfortable with the deal. Better yet? No contingency.

Sold the house I inherited. On the market for 4 days and guy made an offer of more than asking, sight unseen from out of state. No inspection, nothing. Software developer from state of Washington buying a house with acreage in TX in a county of 6,000. Couldn't have gone better. I figured being that middle of nowhere it would take longer to sell. They didn't even ask about the mineral rights until the agent told him they were reserved and he was "ok". Agent said he would just wire the money on contract signing for the entire thing, no financing. Also very very very rare to buy acreage in the part of the world and not have someone appraise (cruise) the timber. Just "take your word on it", good for me I guess. I hope he likes quiet. He's gonna have two neighbors, my annoying as cousin who is 3/4 in the grave and 9,200 acres of Weyerhauser timber land that wraps around and butts up against the national forest. I already had a list of people I could recommend (not me) to appraise the timber. Wait till he realises it's 30+ minutes to a gas station.

Now I gotta go and get my shit out of the shop.

Just went under contract for second house after the first one fell through (no internet). Got slightly under asking but can't shake the feeling I'm buying the top. Getting 13+ acres and a house built before the 70's in pretty good condition so I feel alright about it. At this point it seems to me that we only have the inspection + appraisal as hurdles and control over those is on my end.

Seller's agent already showing herself as incompetent. How much damage can she do to this deal once the contract is signed? So far she's just made us re-sign the contract multiple times because she can't/won't get it signed by the deadline, but I don't trust her to do what she says she will do as a result. I'm trying to figure out what other hurdles she can throw in our way that could screw things up. Have a tight closing date at seller's request so trying to think ahead to avoid any issues. Gunna sell some tendies and don't want to realize gains and then have the deal fall through

Lanx said:

how much earnest money was paid?

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$1k

Another offer on the house I can keep in the back pocket if needed. Another more than asking price. It was priced at 50% above appraised price to begin with. Probably one of the poorest counties in Texas that's not on the border. Of course that's all in the small town and the very few in the county in rural areas is pretty nice. 3/4 of the county is either national forest or the largest lake in TX. As long as you don't live in "town". Sign coming into town says "oldest Anglo town in Texas" lol. Anglo being a huge stretch now after the Carter admin put housing projects in the town at the same time the one industry in town moved off. Same families living there 40 years later for free.

Repair list on this house:

2 new power outlets. $5
1 capacitor for AC unit. $125
A few hose bibs.
Fix leaky faucet fix. Took me 10 seconds.
Cleaned out gable vents.

That's it. I've been here 10 years and replaced one water heater and put in new smoke alarms a few years ago. Well, and new faucets for the bedrooms and a new spout for one of the showers. It got a new roof 5 years ago, but insurance paid for it. Hail storm. Pretty cheap living. The guy who built this house was a gnat's ass about everything, and it showed in the durability of everything. Ooh, I replaced closet door wheels. $2. Going to clear $425k after everyone gets their cut...which is decent, especially since I didn't want to live here, anyway.

My last house:
New roof.
New log oil.
5ish new windows. Winter storm blew a tree onto the side of the house and popped them all.
New furnace.
Downstairs bathroom reno.

I was going to do it all anyway. Ended up going a tiny bit backwards on it, but I wasn't expecting anything else.

The big winner in all this is my GF's kid sister. She's going from 1k sq/ft starter home to 2.5k+ well built house. HUGE upgrade for not a single red cent more than what she is paying now.

I find myself in the market for a house. I'd forgotten how much of a pain in the ass this all is, arranging financing, viewings, etc, etc. Argh. I live in LA, and when I moved here in 2014 the rental market was low enough in relation to the purchase market that it made sense for me to lease instead of buy. With interest rates so low and rents rising, that's not so much the case any more and I'm forced to reevaluate.

I visit this calculator every couple years, and it's been very useful. Most such tools don't include the relative tradeoff between your down payment and investing those funds in the market.

Tmac said:

Article is paywalled.

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You can access it for free by creating an account.

Cad said:

NyTimes account? Eww.

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It's a calculator, not an editorial. In fact, using their tool for free incurs hosting costs on them, so you should load it up right away.

Well fuck. This construction company fucked me. We were supposed to close sometime in September. Wife and I had been going by every week to check on progress, and in August the only things they accomplished were laying the driveway. We had an angry conversation with our realtor, and then the construction company last Friday. They blamed it on covid that they weren't able to get an electrician in.

Miraculously the electric was completed this week.

They just reached out and said our closing would now be October 19. Basically a month later than we expected. Only problem is my employer fucking sucks massive cocks and has a mandatory vaccine policy in place, and I'm not doing it. I put my exemption in today, and maybe it'll get approved. But I'm expecting it won't be and I'll get fired/quit before the end of the month. There's a chance if that happens that we can explain to the lender our financial situation (we have enough cash to cover like 3 years of mortgage/insurance/taxes, plus another 7-8 years in liquid investments we could use to cover it too). Not sure if they'll go for it or not though.

But what I'm expecting is this all blows up and we just never own a home ever again. Rent rates are going to make retirement pretty difficult (I mentioned we're paying $1900/mo now, where the mortgage would be about $1200; so about $8k a year we need to come up with, indefinitely, not inflation adjusted). So yeah, whole thing is a pile of shit.