Home buying thread

Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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Still waiting on the seller"s bank to approve the short sale we have. Seller came back pretty quick with a counter that was near identical to our offer, 5k more, nixed a couple of "fix this shit" lines. Good enough.

245k, 2500 sq feet, 5 bed 3 bath, 0.8 acre lot adjacent to 10 acre pond. 2 fireplaces, in ground pool. New roof, new siding, new windows, driveway looks good. Needs a fridge and a washer, other appliances newer. Bathrooms will probably need to be updated, but other than that, pretty awesome condition. House sold for 310k in 2006.

Bank is a local one, seller"s realtor says this will be the 4th short sale she"s pushed thru this particular bank, average 3 week turnaround, so we should know by the 27th. Close on the 14th, house is vacant, and the foreclosure is set for september, so all parties are very motivated to get this shit done and over with. I"m so goddamned sick of looking at houses. Probably seen 50, and my wife has probably seen over 200. They"re just all the same after awhile, I was willing to take damned near anything acceptable, but we lucked out and found something really nice instead.

Couple more weeks of thumb twiddling, and hopefully it"ll all get worked out.
 
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Cheers_foh

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Any of you guys in the San Diego area? I own real estate in SC (dead), Florida (getting rid of, but not taking a loss), and NorCal, but my wife and I are thinking about buying in the San Diego area. I like San Marcos (near SD, Cal State, cheaper) and have seen some good deals around Mirimar. We"re looking for some kind of investment property, maybe rent, maybe flip. We can comfortably spend up to $700,000 now, but I"d like to keep it under $500,00 if possible. If we went with $700,000 it"s be a while until we could buy any other properties, or at least until we paid off our most recent mortgage. Right now two of our properties are vacant (and have been for a while) but that should change when I get back (hopefully). Just had a bad renter streak and left one of them empty for like a year ~~ The economy hurt.

I like detached homes, but my wife like the idea of a condo/townhome or even a duplex. What do you guys think in terms of investment purposes?

With all of our properties we have 15yr mortgages around 5%. You other real estate investors, you go with 30yr or 15yr? I always assumed 15 because the total taxes are significantly less, but then again I"m not that smart. Let me know what you think.

-Cheers
 
Dis

Dis

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Just got out of the Design Center. $243k is our damage. While I am not pleased as it is over 10k more than I wanted to spend, my understanding from friends is it could have been much worse. This is pretty much our dream home (unless we can win the lottery). Pictures will be incoming once it is done being built.
 
Cad

Cad

scientia potentia est
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Dis said:
Just got out of the Design Center. $243k is our damage. While I am not pleased as it is over 10k more than I wanted to spend, my understanding from friends is it could have been much worse. This is pretty much our dream home (unless we can win the lottery). Pictures will be incoming once it is done being built.
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With the existing home market as it is what made you want to build?
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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Cad said:
With the existing home market as it is what made you want to build?
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Probably the same reason I considered it....no home worth a shit is on the market right now.

Anyone who can"t get what their house is worth, and CAN stay in their home is doing so. The only things on the market in my area are complete pieces of shit, and the obvious forclosures/short sales that people have no choice over. The good ones get snapped up quickly, but wading thru 50 piece of shit homes to find something that"s actually decent gets tiring quickly.
 
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scientia potentia est
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TheCutlery said:
Anyone who can"t get what their house is worth
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If you can"t get a certain value for it, is it still worth that?

I guess I just don"t see that here in Texas, there are all sorts of properties languishing with no buyers. Prices haven"t gone down as much as in some other areas, but at least here in Dallas you"d have to be crazy to pass up the deals you can get on existing homes.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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Cad said:
If you can"t get a certain value for it, is it still worth that?

I guess I just don"t see that here in Texas, there are all sorts of properties languishing with no buyers. Prices haven"t gone down as much as in some other areas, but at least here in Dallas you"d have to be crazy to pass up the deals you can get on existing homes.
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Okay, I guess I shouldda stated it differently. People who can"t get what they bought their house 3 years ago for don"t have it on the market

There"s actually one house that"s a block over from me right now that"s been on the market for something ungodly retarded like 15 months, they refuse to drop the price from 250, even though I"d say it"s barely a 190k house.

And like I said, the deals are pretty few and far between. I"ve seen shit like original owners of a house built in 83 that"s split entry, and the fucking thing doesn"t have a deck coming off the sliding door on the upper level. There"s nothing there, just a 8 foot drop. How you can live in a house for 25 years and not put a fucking deck on, I will not ever understand. People with houses that are actually worth the price sell right away, but right now the market is glutted with a bunch of overpriced shit.
 
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Sharmai_foh

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There are many benefits to building vs existing as well as negatives. I spent more then a year going over both before choosing to build but honestly the decision was still close. It all came down to the final area I wanted to live in and potential problems I would need the reserve cash to deal with.

When you build new problems such as getting a new (or redone) roof, new appliances(furnace ugh is a common one), hidden water damage, bad wiring, bad home repair or home upgrade jobs, cracked or bad foundations and so on and so on are almost all non-existant. At the very least they are all warrantied for many years right from the start if you buy new.

Now if you really know what your doing and your 3 or 4 hired inspectors are good then none of those problems will really get you but if your a first time buyer there is a nice reassurance in knowing those are not going to be some of your worries.

Then there are some other benefits like the newest of the new home energy efficiency technologies. Our electric company sends out a chart showing your usage in comparisons with your immediate neighbors, township, county and so on. In our county the average electric bill is $430 for the last 6 months. In our new home neighborhood the average electric bill was $250. My average electric bill for the last 6 months was just under %150 per month. That"s some damned fine and damned huge savings right there and it adds up. Other things like extra wide roads for cars to get around people who park on the side of the street are real nice and allow wide berths around playing children. I noticed many established neighborhoods often have much narrower drives in Indiana.



And finally it may be cheaper say 10-20 grand to buy existing over new but unless your handy or have some cheaper labor around your going to pay that much in repairs and replacements.

Then there"s the value you place on living in different places. Does that new home neighborhood where you would be living for 10+ years strike you as more comfortable? For 10 -20 grand that doesn"t seem like a big deal even counting interest, though smart people work around that a bit. (MCC cough cough, double payments cough cough)
 
Dis

Dis

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Cad said:
If you can"t get a certain value for it, is it still worth that?

I guess I just don"t see that here in Texas, there are all sorts of properties languishing with no buyers. Prices haven"t gone down as much as in some other areas, but at least here in Dallas you"d have to be crazy to pass up the deals you can get on existing homes.
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Cad this:

http://www.bridgeland.com/

The only homes in our price range were like a total of 4. 2 from bankrupt builders that homes were like 68-90% done, 1 short sale that the home had some major structural issues (builder went bankrupt as well), and the last one was a 4bed 2bath house for close to the same price on the home we are building now.

The rest of the homes go for like 270k-up to the millions, which we cant afford.

We got a David Weekley home with the following upgrades:

1.) Bay window in master bathroom
2.) Study instead of a formal living room
3.) Front porch
4.) 3rd bathroom, bringing it to 3.5 bath
5.) Extended covered back patio
6.) Fireplace (my wife wanted this, not me)
7.) Tiled whole bottom floor except Master bedroom
8.) Upgraded carpet pad
9.) Upgraded plumbing fixtures in kitchen, master bath, and 1/2 bath (Moen oil rubbed bronze)
10.) Jacuzzi tub
11.) Various tile accents in floor, bathroom walls, and kitchen backsplash
12.) upgraded granite counter tops in kitchen, and master bathroom
13.) upgraded cabinets in kitchen and master bathroom
14.) upgraded mirrors, and shower frame to match fixtures
15.) Iron baulister(sp) for stairs
16.) garage door openers, and key pad
17.) gas line for kitchen
18.) center floor plug in living room
19.) 6 zone sprinkler system (free)
20.) some kind of extra light for the backyard (free)
edit: 21.) Stone on brick upgrade (outside of the house)
22.) Upgraded door, basically all glass, fancy shit my wife wanted.

I am probably missing a few things, but that is the major gist of the house. We also got the most expensive elevation, the house comes in at 4bed 3.5bath @ 2700+ sq ft.

Really we picked this place for my kid(s). I want them to be able to walk out of the house and instantly have like 20 different things they can do. All the schools are within walking distance, and they seem to be selling out there pretty fast.
 
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Wolfen_foh

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Oh, the joys of home ownership. I closed on my house two weeks ago. All the interior walls were white, so I hired a painter to change the colors. He started on Saturday and still had days of work left on Wednesday. He lied and said it was him and another guy when it was just him. He lied when he said he could do multiple colors well. He lied when he said it would be done. Plus, the paint job was crap.

On the fifth day I fired him. He didn"t like that and refused to leave until I paid him the entire amount agreed upon. I had already given him just over half. I ended up needing to call the police in order to get him to leave. So now this paint job is going to cost almost twice what I had budgeted. Yay.
 
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Sharmai_foh

shitlord
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Ah! Glad you have learned your first lesson of hiring a contractor. Check his license. Ask him for past references.Contactthose references and see his finished work. Ask them about how much he charged and how long it takes and lastly make sure you get 3-4 references so he isn"t just pointing you to his buddy or girlfriend.
 
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Sharmai_foh

shitlord
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Oh and I don"t know how much you paid to have your house painted but I spent under $400 for designer colors from Lowe"s and painted the Kitchen, Extended Living Room, 3 bedrooms (including the master) in a week with 2 people. Though with no furniture in the house.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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Paint is pretty easy man, not reason to hire some schmuck to do shit you can do yourself. Plenty of other shit that you"re gonna have to pay for, might as well do the shit you can do yourself.
 
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Wolfen_foh

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I"m the anti-handyman. If I try to hang a picture, the entire wall will fall down. I can recruit pussy all day long, but if I attempt to hook up a garden hose, the house will explode.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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Wolfen said:
I"m the anti-handyman. If I try to hang a picture, the entire wall will fall down. I can recruit pussy all day long, but if I attempt to hook up a garden hose, the house will explode.
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Still man, it"s paint. There"s simple stuff to do around the house, and there"s shit that should probably be done by a professional. Paint ain"t shit in the grand scheme of things. Just like you can handle plumbing too. Plumbing is easy...you fuck up, you get wet, big deal. Electrical...well, might wanna get some help on that
 
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opiate82_foh

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TheCutlery said:
Still waiting on the seller"s bank to approve the short sale we have. Seller came back pretty quick with a counter that was near identical to our offer, 5k more, nixed a couple of "fix this shit" lines. Good enough.

Bank is a local one, seller"s realtor says this will be the 4th short sale she"s pushed thru this particular bank, average 3 week turnaround, so we should know by the 27th. Close on the 14th, house is vacant, and the foreclosure is set for september, so all parties are very motivated to get this shit done and over with.

Couple more weeks of thumb twiddling, and hopefully it"ll all get worked out.
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My fiance and I are in the same situation. We put in offer in on a short-sale. House is 5bd 2.5bth 3 car garage 2800 sq feet. Built in "05 I believe. Sellers were in 360,000 (310k mortgage plus a 50k 2nd) asking 299,900. We offered 290,000 (our absolute max) and they accepted and now we are just waiting on the sellers bank.

Thing that sucks about the waiting is a.)They refused to accept our offer unless they could also accept other offers, so we could get outbid and b.)if the bank takes too long and refuses our offer, we basically can"t go after any other short-sales if we want to close in time for the $8000 tax credit. We looked at probably 30-40 different houses and 2/3rds were short-sales (including both our 2nd choices).

Their agent claimed someone else was thinking of putting in another offer but we don"t know if it ever happened or not. We do know the sellers bank has seen our offer and was actually asking the seller for some more of their information. We are assuming they were looking for up-to-date financials from them to be sure they were still broke and going to loose the house. We know they are very close to their foreclosure date so hopefully we get pushed through quickly.

The waiting game just really sucks though. Our wedding is literally a week away and we don"t know where we are going to live. I do know trying to buy a house and get married all at once is very exciting, but also stressful and expensive at the same time.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

Kill All the White People
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opiate82 said:
My fiance and I are in the same situation.
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I"m basically beyond pissed at how this has all rolled out on this house. We got fucked on a foreclosure before this, the bank apparently refused to consider the offer we put in (which was a damned good offer, honestly), and then just up and took the house off the market. Realtor gave us our check back and said "uhh, yeah, well, thems is the breaks."

So we put in the bid for this one on July 7th, with a stipulation that we wanted to know within 3 weeks whether our offer was accepted or not. Seller came right back with a counter pretty much immediately and we accepted. Bank has been sitting on it ever since. On the 28th, we went in and signed some new paperwork that basically said if we don"t close by Aug 10th, the bank was going to be the owner of the house, and we"d need to file new paperwork in light of that fact. So, now it"s august 10th, which we come to find out is the day that the redemption period for the foreclosure was up, and it is now the property of the bank. The bank"s realtor keeps telling us that they"re going to sell us the house, but we haven"t heard anything official yet. She told us to enroll our kid in school in the new city and put in our notice on the apartment, but still nothing official that says "Hey, yeah, we like your bid, lets do this." And that fucking irritates the shit outta me.

So, as of right now, I"ll be homeless on Sept 30th as that"s when we said we"re leaving here, and even worse, school starts Sept 8th, and one of us is gonna need to get the kid to and from school if we"re not in the new house by then. That"s gonna be a fun little excursion twice a day every day. I"m not comforted by the fact that the bank basically fucked over the owners of the house by not letting them sell it before the redemption period was up like they could have. There"s nothing preventing them from dragging their feet for another 2 months on this, they"ve already had it for over a month now. Supposedly the bank was just doing all the necessary work to transfer the title to them, since it was obvious they weren"t going to be able to close before the 10th, and that"s what"s been holding up the process, but it"s still irritating as shit. Bank"s realtor keeps on saying that they do want to sell us the house, but until they do something official about it, it"s hard to put faith in that. I sit here and wait every fucking week and still don"t know if I"m gonna have a house soon, or if I"m gonna need to go back out and look at another 100.

If I can say anything at all after this, it will be "Do not fuck with banks when you"re buying your house. Fuck it, it doesn"t matter how good the property is, or how good of a deal it is, it"s not worth the months of stress involved."
 
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