Home buying thread

I had a really good mortgage broker, thankfully. I'd use him again in a heartbeat. Was on the level, always communicated, didn't care what you chose just gave the options and ran the math out on everything.

I'm sure it helps to be an informed consumer, but there are good ones out there.

Sheeit, should I worry about my mortgage guy? I just went with the guy at my Chase bank as he's really boring and just ran all my finances, gave me my absolute cap, printed up a letter, and didn't bother us again until we went under contract. I guess VA loans can't be too shady these days and he said they're very straight forward, just take a long time to process and jump through all the bureaucracy. Have had quite a few agents recommend we talk to their guy who would give us a really great deal with like 3 exclamation points in their voice.

More worried about shifty stuff with the title company as I work in the court system and suckers trying to quiet titles get boned all the time when people actually show up and/or respond, hah.

joeboo_sl said:

Thoughts on doing For Sale By Owner when selling a house? My father is retiring and needs to sell one of his homes, and I'm trying to convince him to do it FSBO. In this day and age of Zillow and various websites, if you take good pictures and give good details, hundreds of people per day will see it that way.

The home he is going to sell is in a neighborhood that is ON FIRE this year. 3 homes on his street alone have been listed in the past 60 days and had contracts within 48 hours. I personally think it will basically sell itself, so why give a realtor 6%

anyone here that has gone through the FSBO experience that might have some things to do that helped, or pitfalls to watch out for?

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So rather than doing FSBO, my father called a realtor. House went on the market 10am Tuesday, he had a contract on it for full asking price by 8pm the same day. Realtor didn't have to do any open house, only showed the house to 1 couple early that evening, and did a pretty half-ass job of listing it on Zillow/Redfin. All of about 2 sentences of a description and a dozen small, crappy photos.

Not a bad days work for 6% of a $225,000 sale.

Christ, I'm in the wrong business.

He'd only be getting half the commission, with the buyer's agent getting the other half. But yeah, the real estate industry is a scam.

joeboo_sl said:

So rather than doing FSBO, my father called a realtor. House went on the market 10am Tuesday, he had a contract on it for full asking price by 8pm the same day. Realtor didn't have to do any open house, only showed the house to 1 couple early that evening, and did a pretty half-ass job of listing it on Zillow/Redfin. All of about 2 sentences of a description and a dozen small, crappy photos.

Not a bad days work for 6% of a $225,000 sale.

Christ, I'm in the wrong business.

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Real Estate is feast or famine, but if you're on the feast side of the equation there probably isn't a profession out there that has so much upside for so little work. I know a local real estate that makes over a million a year easy, and all she does is show big houses that practically sell themselves. She's basically tits and blonde hair that works 30 hours a week, shows a few houses, and fills out some paperwork.

I was extremely happy with the process dealing with Howard Hanna as my realtor, they had 1 agent working for me, 1 agent working for the seller. The mortgage guy was seperate, just wanted to make sure my loan approval went as easily as possible getting me the lowest rate avaiable (entire process only took 3 weeks after I settled on a house and an "accepted" offer with contingencies). The seller fucked up and didn't fix something required to be fixed in the contract (electrical wiring conduit in the house identified by my house inspector, they had called the city and the city showed up and say "our end is good" and thought they had complied with what I needed done) and howard hanna's notary/closing/title agent (barrister) was on the phone with both agents as well as the manager of the operation to ensure that we could still close on the correct date while ensuring that the home owner would have it fixed (always make sure you do a walk through prior to close) or I would still be able to walk away while still signing all the documents. (and I got it in writing).

Used a VA loan. Essentially it really was as simple as "I want a house, please take my future money" "ok" I was approved for up to 300k, bought a 150k house, which was still a lot of house in Ohio for a single guy.

And naturally of course, not even 2 weeks go by before my home loan was bundled and sold off to Well's Fargo, so now they're the ones in charge of my escrow account too.

At one point in a town near me there were 10 licensed realtors for every one listing. Not that all of them were activity buying/selling houses, and I'm DEFINITELY not defending that obsolete profession, just pointing out the fact that it can often actually be difficult to make a living at that profession unless you are a great shameless self promoter.

Probably why it is only a hobby for a lot of house wives.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

You have any idea how complicated real estate is???

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To be fair, commercial guys do earn their commissions at least somewhat. But residential shit is a joke.

Cad_sl said:

How many people always come with their own agent? I bought my house with no agent, and the person who bought my old house had no agent. But past that I have no idea.

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I was wondering this as well. I'm guessing if I need to sell my house in the near future it would be for a decent price. At that point if someone has a buying agent I'd probably just turn down their offer since in effect their offer is ~$6500 less because of their agent fees.

Tenks_sl said:

I was wondering this as well. I'm guessing if I need to sell my house in the near future it would be for a decent price. At that point if someone has a buying agent I'd probably just turn down their offer since in effect their offer is ~$6500 less because of their agent fees.

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What are the laws in your state? In CT it's legally required to have a realtor as a buyer.

I'm having a really hard time figuring out if one is required or not in OH. Any idea for CA?

Paying a seller is very much worth it to me over FSBO

Eomer_sl said:

To be fair, commercial guys do earn their commissions at least somewhat. But residential shit is a joke.

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Depends on the state, but in TX you can use a title company and get the same service and they actually will put their 2 cents in since their fee isn't a comission based on the sale. That's how I have bought and sold every piece of property/house. Just have the title company deal with it, they take care of all the paperwork, all the scheduling, dealing with the buyer, their banks and the rest of it. Just pay them a flat fee, and show up for the closing to sign some paperwork.

Xarpolis_sl said:

So we're just checking the normal housing market right now.

I went to a place last night that was enormous. 2600 square foot rancher, but in reality it's closer to 5000 square because the basement is the same size as the main floor. The only thing is the basement isn't exactly a basement. The house is nested on a hill, but it's a hill side to side. You park your car in the garage (basement), then walk up the hill to the left to get into the main house. Or you just go through the garage and up the steps. There's also no back door on the main floor into the back yard, however there are 2-3 doors located in the basement to get into the back. It's enormous.

On top of that, the house is very well (old style) built. Extremely thick joists and what not. And for a house that size, they want right around $300k. It's a steal.

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So I saw an updated post in this thread, which made me browse it again. I remember looking at the house from this post (page 1) before deciding to move out to Hawaii. Anyway, that house is STILL on the market for some reason. I don't get it, unless people are just afraid to do a little bit of labor themselves. This house was amazing.

950 Bluebell Ln, Warrington, PA 18976 - Home For Sale and Real Estate Listing - realtor.com®

Anyway, Hawaii is awesome.

Short sale puts off a lot of people, especially who need a house in a certain time period.

I had an offer in on a short sale for over 6 months, bank kept jerking us around. In the mean time the housing market kept falling and we ended up in a much better situation. Current house isn't as big, but on a much bigger lot in a much more desirable neighborhood. Can't believe the amount of BS we went through in the mean time on the short sale, and most of it was AFTER we had an "accepted" offer. Worked out for the better, but fuck dealing with a short sale.

House will be going up for sale soon. Realtor we will be using sells 50%+ of the houses in the town. Typical 5% cut split between buying and selling agent.
Hoping we can get rid of it in a weekend (houses which stay on the market more than a week tend to be severely overpriced in my town).

Wife and I are going to move into an apartment while we locate our next house (will just break our lease). Looking for something in-town in the 1.2-1.5m range. (~3500 square feet and preferably has an in-law apartment or is built in a way we can put up a wall or two to build one)