The I need to buy a house thread

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Tue Jan 07, 2020 3:54 pm

let's try this offer thing again on house 2 and see what happens!!!!!!

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 8:45 am

we find out today after 5 if our offer was accepted. we're in a bidding war/multiple offer situation and so we did one of those escalation addendums where you make an asking price offer and then have a price limit and vow to pay $1K more than the next-highest offer if it's underneath our price limit

Our price limit is healthily above asking, so I would like to think that we get the house. and I would like to think that we get the house for just a couple grand over asking too. if someone pays more than us, they deserve it.

we'll see!

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 9:01 am

If there are multiple escalation clauses, do they just take the highest one by $1K? I'm curious, because realtors in my town(s) stopped accepting when the market was peaking because people would go low with the option for high rather than putting in a max bid to get accepted.

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 9:47 am

mister d wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2020 9:01 am If there are multiple escalation clauses, do they just take the highest one by $1K? I'm curious, because realtors in my town(s) stopped accepting when the market was peaking because people would go low with the option for high rather than putting in a max bid to get accepted.

When we bid in a to party bidding process a few months ago, they instantly went to best and final for both, with no option to increase if you lost. Probably shortcuts the whole process and gets a true best and final. We came in $10K under ask, the other people were something like $100 over ask. I actually think the house was worth more than the asking, but there were a lot of things we weren't thrilled with, so not willing to go that high, and not too upset we lost it.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 9:52 am

per the terms of the addendum, they will "independently review" tied offers. so I think the only dilemma comes if two or more people have the same ceiling and then the buyers have to choose from those tied offers.

we came in at 6K under asking Tuesday after the house went on the market Monday and their realtor is playing this close to the vest. she basically told our agent that "there are multiple offers, they can revise or back out" and that's it.

these folks -- the woman is probably my age and the guy is just over 40 -- paid considerably less than what they're asking for on the house 2.5 years ago. they also added a massive deck to it and did some other minor stuff but they're making a good 30K on it I'd guess.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 10:19 am

Might not be a thing because I live in a small lot area, but checking permits on decks are a deal here because a certain % of your yard has to be actual yard. Nailed people on the block behind us.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 10:46 am

definitely not a thing here, or at least in the suburb/area we're going to be in if we get this house. there was a house about 5 min away from this one that had three absurdly large decks on the back side with little/no yard. it was an amazing house that I wanted to go look at but LA thought it was ugly

eta: a selling point of this place is it's fully finished at over 3K sq feet with a perfect basement space for the sports bar and area under the garage was excavated and is a massive room with 10 foot ceilings for a home gym/golf practice area/etc + it has two storage areas off the back side of the house with water hookups to keep lawnmower and tools and everything instead of having them in the garage.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 10:53 am

Brontoburglar wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2020 10:46 am definitely not a thing here, or at least in the suburb/area we're going to be in if we get this house. there was a house about 5 min away from this one that had three absurdly large decks on the back side with little/no yard. it was an amazing house that I wanted to go look at but LA thought it was ugly

eta: a selling point of this place is it's fully finished at over 3K sq feet with a perfect basement space for the sports bar and area under the garage was excavated and is a massive room with 10 foot ceilings for a home gym/golf practice area/etc + it has two storage areas off the back side of the house with water hookups to keep lawnmower and tools and everything instead of having them in the garage.

This would be a friggin dream!

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 11:00 am

Sight-unseen, #imwithher. I'm fine with densely populated areas where no yards is the natural footprint, but additions/fixtures taking up 80-90% of a yard when that's not the norm in a neighborhood is a terrible look.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 11:35 am

fwiw it was in a densely populated area. well, relatively speaking. house was just a couple blocks off the downtown of this small suburb (which is on the river and has a bunch of old boutique-sized brick storefronts) in the older neighborhood with small lots, one-way streets , etc

this is 3 min west of the downtown in a new section of an otherwise established neighborhood.

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 11:55 am

mister d wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2020 11:00 am Sight-unseen, #imwithher. I'm fine with densely populated areas where no yards is the natural footprint, but additions/fixtures taking up 80-90% of a yard when that's not the norm in a neighborhood is a terrible look.

My old neighborhood in BH, there is a maximum 33% non-impervious zoning requirement, meaning footprint of the house, driveway, walkways, patios (decks I've heard both ways) can't be more than 33% of the plot without a variance and potential need for adding a water drainage system. That's what prevented us from the addition we planned. Architect accounted for setbacks on sides and back, deck setback requirements if we moved the deck back, but he forgot to tell us we were outside the impervious limits...

govmentchedda · Post by **govmentchedda** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 4:09 pm

We can construct whatever the fuck we want here in Florida. Superfund site? Sure. Gun range? Put it next to the swimming pool.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:13 am

lol 12K over asking wasn't enough. back to square one again.

rass · Post by **rass** » Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:20 am

Shit!

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:46 am

Brontoburglar wrote: ↑Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:13 am lol 12K over asking wasn't enough. back to square one again.

This is where its going to get rough if one of you starts to "WE NEED A PLACE NOW" the process.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Fri Jan 10, 2020 12:16 pm

mister d wrote: ↑Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:46 am
Brontoburglar wrote: ↑Fri Jan 10, 2020 11:13 am lol 12K over asking wasn't enough. back to square one again.
This is where its going to get rough if one of you starts to "WE NEED A PLACE NOW" the process.

the great thing is it won't get to that point. we have a very nice and very cheap house to live in temporarily starting in March. so if we build -- and it's leaning that way at the moment -- we'd be there for ~6 months anyway

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:31 pm

time for an update because this search is dumb

- we seriously started the process of building. we picked out a floor plan and put down a (refundable) lot deposit. then the builder wanted us to pay $15K in lot premiums, an extra $5K because the "premium" lot needed a deck/elevated patio off the walkout basement and then the realtor for the builder underquoted us the price of a suspended garage -- putting basement space below the garage -- to the tune of $15K

we walked away

- same neighborhood, one street south was a house for sale for $17K less than the people paid for it a year ago. they had lived in it for a grand total of three months after purchasing it new in March of 2019. gorgeous, bigger than what we were looking at building. we offered 13K under their price because they seemed desperate to move. they claimed they couldn't budge.

well, she did. it was a man and woman listed on the property taxes for 2019 and it was just a woman selling it. we figured it was a breakup and as we were in the offer/counter stage we decided to facebook them. well, the reason they moved out (we are 95% certain by connecting the very close dots) is because he killed himself three months after they moved in and so she's on the hook for selling it.

with that holy shit moment in mind, we were very close to accepting her counter offer that didn't budge much because how do you haggle with someone in this circumstance? before we agreed to her counter, I had this weird feeling about the taxes listed on the house. we were using the number on the county site and what the realtor provided on the MLS sheet for our monthly payment calculations. and we would be at/just slightly above our budget line with this search with the tax number that was provided.

anyway, so I started really stewing on this and researching the tax payments of the neighbors. this house was all out of whack compared to the others. I called the assessor's office. sure enough, it's because the county prorates taxes paid for someone who hasn't lived in a new house for a full year. so since they owned the house effectively 9 months of 12 in 2019, they paid just 75% of what the total tax bill would be.

adding that not insignificant sum to our monthly payment was way above our budget (that I'm being a hardass about because of marriage and kids reasons). so we had to walk away from that too -- but not before the selling agent tried to backhandedly tell me I was wrong and basically make me write an email line-by-line explaining why their number, while correct, was totally misleading

so we've got a month of LA's lease and then who knows how long at the house my parents are renovating. probably time to take a full timeout on this for a little bit.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:46 pm

Yikes. There's a house a couple blocks away that was the scene of a pretty brutal double murder that hit the market for about a week and then got pulled seemingly without a transaction. There should be some public fund (perhaps a tax on the highest quintile of earners) to bail people out of those sorts of horrible situations.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 9:03 am

lol so much for the timeout

we went to an open house this weekend to a house that was fully renovated and 4-5 blocks from all the best food/drink in KC and just three blocks from a grocery store. it was awesome so we made an offer 10K over asking. and were "substantially outbid."

Nonlinear FC · Post by **Nonlinear FC** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:53 pm

So, the time has come...

The time to downsize.

Wife had one of our good friends who is a realtor over for lunch today. She told us that we would be selling at the top of the market, many 10s of thousands above what we'd guesstimated. The catch is that she's saying that inventory is almost zero right now, so if we can move now, we'd be able to put the house on the market with a no contingency clause.

We've been driving around looking at town homes and will likely look to rent for a couple of years (back to the state of the market in our area.)

Our mid- to long-term goal is to leave the DMV entirely... Move to a place near the ocean (NC/SC/GA), or perhaps up by the mountains (CO). But the main thing right now is we're paying a shitload on our mortgage and with the kids off to college, it just doesn't make sense.

Selling at the price floated today would turn our finances around immediately and then our cash flow would be ridiculous compared to what we are dealing with now.

Not looking forward to leaving this house, been there for almost 20 years, but it really is the right time for us. Pretty excited to get things rolling, even though it's going to be a pain in the ass/a lot of work.

tennbengal · Post by **tennbengal** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:59 pm

Good luck, nonlinear. We are about four years off from the same decision.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 5:05 pm

Good luck. But what's the benefit? No financing contingency means cash only deals right? If be more interested in the most cash never mind a 30-45 day underwriting delay. Y'all trying to roll out immediately? Not sure a whole lot of buyers are being denied for financing in this environment anyway. Either way good luck. A whole lot better than selling to pay for HS!

Steve of phpBB · Post by **Steve of phpBB** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 5:30 pm

Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:53 pm So, the time has come...

The time to downsize.

Wife had one of our good friends who is a realtor over for lunch today. She told us that we would be selling at the top of the market, many 10s of thousands above what we'd guesstimated. The catch is that she's saying that inventory is almost zero right now, so if we can move now, we'd be able to put the house on the market with a no contingency clause.

We've been driving around looking at town homes and will likely look to rent for a couple of years (back to the state of the market in our area.)

Our mid- to long-term goal is to leave the DMV entirely... Move to a place near the ocean (NC/SC/GA), or perhaps up by the mountains (CO). But the main thing right now is we're paying a shitload on our mortgage and with the kids off to college, it just doesn't make sense.

Selling at the price floated today would turn our finances around immediately and then our cash flow would be ridiculous compared to what we are dealing with now.

Not looking forward to leaving this house, been there for almost 20 years, but it really is the right time for us. Pretty excited to get things rolling, even though it's going to be a pain in the ass/a lot of work.

Damn. That's a pretty big step. Maybe even bigger than buying a house to begin with.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 5:51 pm

I very much romanticize the idea of downsizing (in like 15 years) so I'm curious to see how this goes.

wlu_lax6 · Post by **wlu_lax6** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 6:06 pm

In the DC market it means you can also be a bigger pain on the inspection. However, the question I wonder in the DC market is do you actually get to save money. From the town homes I have seen...man they seem expensive. Especially because they pitch the walkable, liveable, location, etc. On the other hand the people I know who have done this were downsizing but also looking for "Downtown" living type situation. Going from outside the beltway to inside.

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 8:17 pm

wlu_lax6 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2020 6:06 pm In the DC market it means you can also be a bigger pain on the inspection. However, the question I wonder in the DC market is do you actually get to save money. From the town homes I have seen...man they seem expensive. Especially because they pitch the walkable, liveable, location, etc. On the other hand the people I know who have done this were downsizing but also looking for "Downtown" living type situation. Going from outside the beltway to inside.

I picture moving to a downtown area when I downsize. My wife has been periodically scheming to move back to Manhattan, but no fucking way with kids, not that we could afford it anyways. I could see an apartment or townhouse in a smaller city downtown area. As much as I love New York, I can't see living there as I get older.

Nonlinear FC · Post by **Nonlinear FC** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 8:30 pm

I'll keep everyone posted, but just know that my wife and I have spent a decade scoping this shit out.

The key right now is don't sell and then immediately buy, because the market is tilted.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Mon Feb 10, 2020 8:58 pm

We are two years from youngest out of high school and looking at similar idea.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:43 am

as someones on the opposite end of the spectrum we just had our offer on a large house on an acre (in the middle of the city!) accepted last night

maybe we're actually doing this?

ETA: I counted it up and this is the sixth house we've offered on. and we got it for 5K less than list!

Nonlinear FC · Post by **Nonlinear FC** » Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:47 am

Congrats!

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:48 am

Brontoburglar wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:43 am as someones on the opposite end of the spectrum we just had our offer on a large house on an acre (in the middle of the city!) accepted last night

maybe we're actually doing this?

ETA: I counted it up and this is the sixth house we've offered on. and we got it for 5K less than list!

Kansas housing market insane!

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 9:11 am

BSF21 wrote: ↑Tue May 15, 2018 12:51 pm Quick chime in here. What's your emergency savings look like in both cases? That would make a big difference for me.

Also when it comes to living for 3 years then turning it into a rental property, what's the plan there? Pay it down very quickly? Carry 2 mortgages, one for your home and one for a rental? I wouldn't be a fan of that at all, at least not until the property you're going to rent is damn near paid. If you for some reason run into problems or can't get renters, that snowballs into a bad situation very quickly.

Disclaimer that I've gone against a lot of the advice I got about my home, but I'm very happy with the results. YMMV, but certain things have worked out for me. No PMI is awesome, if for some reason you lose that option, pay your mortgage to 78% as quickly as possible to get that thing off there...

I just got mine cancelled at 80%. If you call them at 80% they take it off, but they have to remove it automatically at 78%, right? Anyway, that's $90+ dollars I'd been throwing up a wild hog's ass that we don't have to do anymore.

HaulCitgo · Post by **HaulCitgo** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:18 pm

Yeah the way the housing market has been going a refi to get rid of PMI also allowed me to reduce the term to 20 years at the same payment. That helps a ton with total interest paid.

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:53 pm

Man, the VA loan is a godsend. None of that PMI bullshit. They just take a couple percent of the overall price and then add that to the cost of the house.

Also, once I settle down after the military I think I'm gonna buy land and then look into having a house built. I feel like coming up with my own idea for a place and then going with it seems cool.

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:56 pm

Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:53 pmI feel like coming up with my own idea for a place and then going with it seems cool.

If you've never read about Groverhaus, now is the time.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 1:03 pm

Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:53 pm Man, the VA loan is a godsend. None of that PMI bullshit. They just take a couple percent of the overall price and then add that to the cost of the house.

Also, once I settle down after the military I think I'm gonna buy land and then look into having a house built. I feel like coming up with my own idea for a place and then going with it seems cool.

But according to my rough calculations, that costs about the same but I wasn't paying interest on it like you would be. They get you either way.

P.D.X. · Post by **P.D.X.** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 2:34 pm

Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:53 pm Also, once I settle down after the military I think I'm gonna buy land and then look into having a house built. I feel like coming up with my own idea for a place and then going with it seems cool.

Earthship!

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:36 pm

A_B wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 1:03 pm
Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:53 pm Man, the VA loan is a godsend. None of that PMI bullshit. They just take a couple percent of the overall price and then add that to the cost of the house.

Also, once I settle down after the military I think I'm gonna buy land and then look into having a house built. I feel like coming up with my own idea for a place and then going with it seems cool.
But according to my rough calculations, that costs about the same but I wasn't paying interest on it like you would be. They get you either way.

I guess that's true. It's the price I pay for being able to go 0% down. My mortgage feels like rent because I didn't have to do much extra up front.

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:37 pm

mister d wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:56 pm
Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:53 pmI feel like coming up with my own idea for a place and then going with it seems cool.
If you've never read about Groverhaus, now is the time.

I just Googled Groverhaus on my work computer and got denied for inappropriate content. What did I just look up, and will I be fired?

Johnnie · Post by **Johnnie** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:39 pm

The Sybian wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:37 pm
mister d wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:56 pm
Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:53 pmI feel like coming up with my own idea for a place and then going with it seems cool.
If you've never read about Groverhaus, now is the time.
I just Googled Groverhaus on my work computer and got denied for inappropriate content. What did I just look up, and will I be fired?

I just googled and got several different links about random stuff. What am I trying to find?