Home buying thread

CnCGOD said:

Zillow is an appraisal algorithm that works with imperfect information. And hell informed appraisals are often wildly different so it does a 1/2 decent job imho.

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While I do agree with you about appraisals in general, at least the appraiser actually goes into the home where Zillow does not. You can have two homes that are exactly the same in sq footage and acreage and zillow will a lot of times put the two houses relatively close to each other in value where in reality house A had a ton of upgrades inside that raised it"s value by 10-15k.

So yeah, I have less than 48 hours now to sign papers, and my loan is still in underwriting and hasn"t been sent to the title company.

How much shopping around to do for home loans? We can get a deal through our employer that basically gives us $500 off closing costs if we go with Wells Fargo, but we don"t have a Wells Fargo account. Not sure if that matters.

I"ve read that if you have your credit checked multiple times in a short period of time that can hurt your score or raise a flag or something, so I didn"t want to run out and check with 5 different places (not sure if that"s true or not). Rates seem to be pretty set so I don"t even know if it"s necessary to shop around.

Looked through the thread and didn"t see anything specific about this part of the process.

My Credit took about 7 weeks as well.

I ended up going with Quicken Loans and did the entire process online. It was incredibly easy and smooth. Seriously, I couldn"t believe how easy it was. Basically they give you access to a website, they request things and you fax it over. Its all done in easy painless steps. As a bonus they randomly sent me $500 as a Thank You about a month after we closed.

Still working on finishing my basement. I may try and get some pics posted in the Home Improvement thread in a bit.

"in line for final underwriting" aka "wont be to title and ready for you to sign until a full day after the close date in your contract, and you have to start rescheduling your UHaul and half a dozen installs and appointments that you were hoping to do day 1"

MrGraham said:

How much shopping around to do for home loans? We can get a deal through our employer that basically gives us $500 off closing costs if we go with Wells Fargo, but we don"t have a Wells Fargo account. Not sure if that matters.

I"ve read that if you have your credit checked multiple times in a short period of time that can hurt your score or raise a flag or something, so I didn"t want to run out and check with 5 different places (not sure if that"s true or not). Rates seem to be pretty set so I don"t even know if it"s necessary to shop around.

Looked through the thread and didn"t see anything specific about this part of the process.

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All residential loans right now are originated from the government or one of their "entities", so their won"t be much difference in value. I"d go with one of the bigger providers where they can keep costs down. Wells sound as good as any if you get $500 off. You"ll also get the benefit of possibly being able to buy your loan back for 70% of what its worth when they go bankrupt next year.

Quick question:

I was browsing Yahoo real estate prices for different parts of the country and noticed that housing in the mid-west, specially Indianapolis, is mega cheap compared to where I"m at on the east coast. I saw a 3000sqft home going for less than 200k and it looked really nice.

I can understand why housing would be cheap if it"s in areas one wouldn"t want to live but Indianapolis is a fairly respectable city. I"ve seen similarly ultra-cheap house prices in Ohio as well around the Dayton area. I"ve also checked housing prices in really remote areas like Alaska or Montana and prices there aren"t near as low as Indiana/Ohio locations I checked.

I guess my question is, what are the underlying factors that contribute to the value of real estate when comparing across country?

Lefazz said:

Quick question:

I was browsing Yahoo real estate prices for different parts of the country and noticed that housing in the mid-west, specially Indianapolis, is mega cheap compared to where I"m at on the east coast. I saw a 3000sqft home going for less than 200k and it looked really nice.

I can understand why housing would be cheap if it"s in areas one wouldn"t want to live but Indianapolis is a fairly respectable city. I"ve seen similarly ultra-cheap house prices in Ohio as well around the Dayton area. I"ve also checked housing prices in really remote areas like Alaska or Montana and prices there aren"t near as low as Indiana/Ohio locations I checked.

I guess my question is, what are the underlying factors that contribute to the value of real estate when comparing across country?

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From Louisville - everything is cheaper in the midwest, not just real estate. Having 200 grand to spend on a house means you"re doing pretty fucking well here. Also, the reason why prices in Dayton are low is because it"s shitty. Seriously, walk around downtown after 8pm and you"ll see how dead it becomes. But then you run in to places like Bloomington IN and the prices are higher than Louisville even, just because it"s a really nice place.

meStevo said:

"in line for final underwriting" aka "wont be to title and ready for you to sign until a full day after the close date in your contract, and you have to start rescheduling your UHaul and half a dozen installs and appointments that you were hoping to do day 1"

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My wife and I had all kinds of problems dealing with Chase. We were buying a house that was a short-sale and the sellers had a first and a second through chase. Over a period of 3 months we got the biggest run around from Chase. We were basically waiting for them to assign a negotiator to get approval from the underwriters to sell the house for less than what was still owed.

They kept telling us that things would move very fast once the negotiator was assigned but kept pushing back and pushing it back. Then they would tell us it was finally assigned, but oh, wait, that was for the second mortgage not the first, a separate one was needed for the first mortgage. Basically they would always come back saying "expect an update by the end of the week" then the end of the week would roll around and we"d get "expect an update by the end of next week."

Basically it got to the point where we could only come to two conclusions. First was that they were intentionally dicking us around waiting for a better offer. Second was that things were so screwy over at Chase that the right hand had no idea what the left was doing so to speak. But because we waited so long a better house in a much nicer neighborhood dropped into our price range so we were able to bail on the short-sale and now we sign final paperwork tomorrow! (And hopefully get it recorded so we can move this weekend).

I wouldn"t sweat it too much if your offer "expires" though. Usually once a house goes into "Sale Pending" no other offers would come in and even if one did the sellers would probably rather give you an extra day or two to finish your shit than start the process all over again with a new buyer whose financing may or may not go through.

Lefazz said:

Quick question:

I was browsing Yahoo real estate prices for different parts of the country and noticed that housing in the mid-west, specially Indianapolis, is mega cheap compared to where I"m at on the east coast. I saw a 3000sqft home going for less than 200k and it looked really nice.

I can understand why housing would be cheap if it"s in areas one wouldn"t want to live but Indianapolis is a fairly respectable city. I"ve seen similarly ultra-cheap house prices in Ohio as well around the Dayton area. I"ve also checked housing prices in really remote areas like Alaska or Montana and prices there aren"t near as low as Indiana/Ohio locations I checked.

I guess my question is, what are the underlying factors that contribute to the value of real estate when comparing across country?

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Indiana is one of the lowest cost of living states and while Indianapolis is not bad at all it"s also definitely not Tampa Bay or New York when it comes to entertainment either. Depending on how badly you need an active city atmosphere 24/7 it can be one hell of a trade off but then again if you can manage to make a salary above 60 or 70K here then you will be very comfortably middle class with a 2 story home and 2100sq ft of space.

And of course if your a millionaire they also have the 1.5-3mil homes on the giest resivor that have heated indoor pools, elevators, boat docks, and other silly stuff.

Every additional dollar you earn and spend in Indiana tends to go much farther.

Hatorade said:

Yeah we don"t make much but aren"t retarded with our money either, 100k or lower 30 year loan(hopefully paid off in 15-20) will allow us to keep same lifestyle. We have no debt at all just rent, car insurance, life insurance.

House is looking good man, exciting stuff.

Also how do you not use a realtor? Aren"t all properties tied to a realtor unless being sold by owner?

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Makes me cry and want to move to Texas almost. 1800 square foot house is 3-4x even in this Market in Southern New Hampshire.

I"m looking to start this process right now and seriously... just to get a little bit of land (not talking much here) in an area that isn"t close to the fucking shithole section of my city is 200k min.

I mean shit, I"d love this if it was like 40k less.
Nashua, New Hampshire FSBO, Nashua, New Hampshire FSBO Home - ISoldMyHouse.com

Signed everything tonight... now going out of town for the weekend for a reunion of my wife"s family and when we come back hopefully have some keys waiting for us.

Finally.

Keys werent waiting for us, and someone in the escrow office dropped the ball thinking something was needed and it wasnt...

Long story short, im typing from the room where my computer desk will go... when we have the energy to haul it up from the garage. Had the key for less than 24 hours, and couldnt be happier (or more tired).