Home buying thread

Man, fuck New York.

I"ve been looking at houses for probably over a year. "Shopping" more seriously about 4-5 months. I think the more I get into the market and look around, the more turned off I am.

I mean, a MEDIOCRE area - which i"ll classify as a good school district, can walk around at night without getting mugged, and maybe your car wont get keyed or broken into if you park it on the street (maybe it might) is 320k ish for something that needs work and is "ok" (3 bedroom 1.5 bathroom .5 acre property we will say) and you"re going to be paying 10k+ in property tax on that.

The closer I get, the more negative energy I feel about the prospect. I just can"t justify in my head burning literally $25,000+ a year in property tax and mortgage interest and such. I understand the tax benefits, but still.

I want a condo more and more, but I need (want?) a yard for my dog, and I want at least a 1 car garage so my car doesn"t go on the street. Kind of throws that away.

I kind of stopped looking i"ve just become so disillusioned. I seriously think i"m going to just keep investing all my money and wait until my life circumstance brings me mrs chaotic and then I won"t have to compromise in what I want while throwing away half my income to a furnace.

Chaotic said:

I seriously think i"m going to just keep investing all my money and wait until my life circumstance brings me mrs chaotic and then I won"t have to compromise in what I want while throwing away half my income to a furnace.

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That"s exactly what I did. I just rented for years, from the age of 22 when I got out of college to the age of 34, I just rented various places. I was single, no kids, and no pets so I was basically free to live wherever I wanted and come and go as I please with no outside influence. Was great. Friends and family bugged me for years that I was just throwing money away on rent, but I didn"t see it that way, I saw it as freedom to up and move on a whim, freedom of doing NO upkeep/work on a place, doing whatever made me happy.

I finally got married this year and my wife already had a house across the city from where I had traditionally lived. I"m glad I never bought a house as one of us would have to be selling, and we more than likely might not even get what we paid for the home 5-10 years ago.

Dont ever feel like you HAVE to buy a home. It isn"t the best decision for everyone in every circumstance, especially if you are single. Renting isn"t always "throwing money away" like a lot of people think. You"re paying for a low/no maintenance place to live with the convenience of easy mobility if you want to change locations. Who the sh*t wants to spend their weekend working in the yard or doing maintenance/work around the house when you are single? Go out and have fun and meet people, go on a roadtrip, or whatever. I always loved the freedom of getting off of work on Friday and knowing I had absolutely nothing that I HAD to do until I showed up for work again on Monday morning. Maybe I"ll come home over the weekend, maybe not, who cares? I had no responsibility to the property I lived in.

Cad said:

I know you typed this thinking it sounds impressive and all, but holy fuck thats a $120k house in TX, and you feel like you got a steal at $300k. What city in the bay area?

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Lot size sucks ass (imo) but he did get a good deal, unless the roof was collapsing and shit. Really not sure why you"ve take the tack you have.

Cad said:

Not saying he didn"t get a good deal, just want to find out some more details... the perspective is so warped in the home buying world.

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Based on the limited description, that could"ve been 150-250k depending on suburb in the Austin area, but subtract a good chunk for being a foreclosure and for being a wreck, so, yeah...

On the inventory front, every market is different. I just read an article about a city near me that is reporting the area has the lowest inventory of houses on the market that it has had in the past 5 years (7.4 months worth of inventory). The numbers skew even further in the sellers direction when you only include houses under $300k (only 3.7 months worth of inventory on the market).

With so much damage from the real estate bubble burst four years ago, Miller said many owners are reluctant to put their houses on the market until it"s clear that the market is improving. He said it"s particularly noticeable in the distressed property arena, with owners hoping to hold out until prices stabilize or start to rise.

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My real estate agent said don"t bother with short sales. She said most banks are retarded and it takes like 4-6 months to get shit done.

Anyone else get a good 30 yr fixed rate? I managed to nail down 3.99%

Happy day.

I also have a tech coming out to the house to install FiOS tomorrow. Apparently I"m going to have a 70/35 internet line. Just imagine all the porn I"ll be able to have.

IMAGINE IT. WORGEN WRU

Sounds like you guys are arguing over each other rather than with each other. It"s really not inconcievable that different practices go on in different parts of the country even within the same large banks.

We"ve watched the same properties sit on the market and (slowly) get their prices reduced because the banks who own them haven"t done jack shit to keep them in ok condition - not good, just ok. It"s really weird to me, because all these properties have stickers on the front windows/doors saying "property upkeep provided by blank company!" and yet the insides of an otherwise nice house have new-looking water stains coming from the ceiling, 1/4" thick mold on the wall in some rooms, etc, etc. But hey, the front lawn is mowed!

I can obviously only comment on the small market we"re looking at, at the homes priced in the range that we are looking at, but for the most part whoever owns them (mostly foreclosed) really isn"t taking care of them and is only lowering the values of the properties they are trying to sell, while making the properties less likely to sell in the first place. It seems common sense to me that spending a few hundred dollars a month (and I doubt it"s that high) per property to keep them from losing tens of thousands worth of value makes sense - apparently these banks disagree. That little mold problem that opening the windows now and again would go a long way to solving now devalues the house by a large amount because the fucking walls have to be torn down and rebuilt.

I"m sure some banks somewhere are doing a good job on their investments Brando, but in my little market here they are failing miserably. I used to think of flippers as little parasites, but hell, now I think they"re the reason we have any decent property on the market at all right now to begin with.

With regards to banks sitting on offers for months Cut, I don"t understand that. All offers here have time limits on them - hell they have to - they are contracts that"ll cost me money if they accept and then I back out of (for the wrong reason, like, "oh nm changed my mind!"). I can"t be offering on multiple homes at the same time in the (highly unlikely) event 2 accept at the same time. The longest our bids have been good for has been like a week, and frankly that"s long, as the 4 we"ve bid on so far have all accepted offers within a few days. I guess you can do that when you"re part of a small elite group of homes worth buying.

Perhaps the process is long and shit AFTER they accept your offer, but not before. It don"ta maka no sense.