Home buying thread

Khane_sl said:

Not that it isn't a silly thing to say but I do have friends that are constantly having people over their house. Multiple days a week and especially on the weekends.

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How many times are you worried about having a large island and breakfast bar flowing into the living room with attached formal dining so the "girls" can be hanging out in the kitchen while the "guys" are watching TV like every single person on House Hunters? Everytime I hang out with my friends and their spouses we're just on the couch drinking beer, eating some take out and watching tv/movie/video games/board game.

Tenks_sl said:

How many times are you worried about having a large island and breakfast bar flowing into the living room with attached formal dining so the "girls" can be hanging out in the kitchen while the "guys" are watching TV like every single person on House Hunters? Everytime I hang out with my friends and their spouses we're just on the couch drinking beer, eating some take out and watching tv/movie/video games/board game.

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So... I guess it really depends on the people you're friends with? All of my friends have kids. I am literally the only single one with no attachments. They have big open kitchens with islands and it's actually pretty nice because they put a shit ton of food out on there and yes we do hang out around it. Maybe I'm just a yuppie piece of shit but my friends and I don't get together to watch TV. We talk to each other and other weird shit and they can all keep an eye on their kids while they play in the other rooms they can see from the kitchen.

We've been casually looking to buy a house so were just letting listing agents spend their time opening properties to us until it got too unbearable as everything is a super cute charmer with tons of updates!!! Half the time the dumb fucks just painted over dirty walls or put down some shitty, smelly laminate and are trying to tell me I should be paying them 30k more than they paid for it 8 months ago because, duh, super cute charmer with a ton of updates!!!!

Finally just got our own agent to get us into places. He's a good sport and knows we're looking very casually, but he learned I'm low maintenance and will do my own research and just want to hear about what is shit and how to unshit stuff instead of trying to pretend it's a sandwich and selling me on it. All the flipping and fixer-upper shows have definitely warped the market, though, and made buying so annoying I'm not sure how long I can deal with it before just resigning a new lease on my apartment that is shitty but they at least don't try to sell me on how great it is like it's a privilege to pay out the ass for it.

I'm planning to move back to North Carolina in about a year and a half. I own a town house in Clarksville, TN as of now. I'm not really sure when to start looking for where we want to live and when to put our current place on the market. I'm in the Army, so Nov 2017 is the tentative date that we will be headed elsewhere. The townhouse is 1344 sq ft. and we want something bigger, preferably with a backyard and an additional bedroom. I've owned my current place since Oct 2014 and there are a few projects in the works for the area. One place that is approximately one mile away is supposedly bringing 2k jobs (tire plant) and they are also opening up a Google Data Center 2 miles down the road. Outside of that, there are 3-4 restaurants opening in the next 6-12 months within a mile of our place.

The best part about where we live is that we live right beside Interstate 24 and right across the street from a hospital. There is a mall about 1 mile away and all of the places to eat and shop come with it. My mortgage is only $675 and we have $100 in HOA fees each month. So we end up paying $775 for mortgage essentially. We have a community pool and water and electricity usually rounds out to around $180 altogether for the month.

I like where I live a lot, but my wife and I really want to move back to NC to be closer to home. We had our first kid this past year and both of our sets of parents are getting older and want our daughter to get to know them. I know that living in an urban area around Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, or even Wilmington in some cases will be costly, but I'm just looking for some advice if anyone has any to give about moving from a place that has a lot for cheap to a place that is similar for arguable $600-1,000 more for what we already have. There are places around these cities in rural communities that would be an upgrade at a comparable price to what we are paying, but I just don't know when to get the ball rolling.

When I bought my place, it had been on the market for 10 months and we are in a military town. It's genuinely one of the best neighborhoods in town, it's just 15 miles from the base and that makes for a good 30 min. commute to work in the mornings and drives home so a lot of people are turned off because of that. Just looking for some advice or input at this early stage and anything that I can get would be appreciated. Thanks.

You can choose to pay more and get less or commute a lot. *shrug*

Trying to find a 2 family house to buy in the Boston area is ( Budget is ~1.5mil.
In-laws are going to move in with us in order to be closer to decent hospitals for Father in-laws future treatment.

Want something like this but split in 2.
https://www.redfin.com/MA/Arlington/.../home/52327462

My wife and I are looking to move in the next year or so. I bought my place back in 2009 before we met, much less married. We have some significant repairs to make before looking seriously, but I'm starting to work on a plan to get all that done in a cost effective way so that we can get a place closer to where she works. I work at home, so I can live anywhere, but her commute is over an hour one way, and getting worse as they build a giant fucking stadium right on the busiest intersection in Atlanta. And goddammit I am sick of keeping up with pool maintenance.

I've used a couple of mortgage calculators that give me absolutely ludicrous estimates for what i can "afford." It's consistently telling me 500k+, which... no. That buys a palace in Atlanta. I make a good living, and my income has nearly tripled since I bought this place, but there's no way that would be sustainable. It's no wonder a bunch of idiots ended up in foreclosure.

What do people think will happen with the housing market come November? I've heard competing views about the impact the election might have.

I wasn't looking for the secret truth of the universe, just asking for the sake of conversation.

Personally I think, like anything else, you assess the value of a transaction at a single point in time.

Sounds like a market ripe for another meltdown. Sounds to me like you should sell.

Similar shit going on as in 2008, sans the sub-prime bs. Bottom line is, interest rates are in the floor. People only give a shit about what that monthly payment is and if interest rates are low, they can afford more house. This just means the house prices have rocketed. All the while, salaries have remained stagnant for the last 10+ years. People can't magically afford these houses, its just the fact that this unprecedented historic low mortgage rate has inflated house prices. Fed is raising rates, loan rates of all type will follow after. Once mortgage rates go back up, suddenly we are back with everyone underwater again on their loans.

Shit isn't going to be pretty.

mkopec_sl said:

Nahh, not moving again, this is my final resting place. I will die here.

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That's honestly the most reasonable way to home shop if you ask me. All this "starter home" nonsense is for fools. Don't buy a house unless you know you plan on spending a large chunk of time there, preferably forever.

Khane_sl said:

That's honestly the most reasonable way to home shop if you ask me. All this "starter home" nonsense is for fools. Don't buy a house unless you know you plan on spending a large chunk of time there, preferably forever.

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^This^

Your first 5 years on a traditional 30 year loan are almost entirely interest payments and very little going to principle. People who bounce around houses every few years are only giving money away to the bank.

I've been here 7 years, and I'd stay where I am if I were happier with the neighborhood but it's just not a reasonable location for us anymore. Hopefully the first house my wife and I buy together will be the one we keep for decades.

Jysin_sl said:

^This^

Your first 5 years on a traditional 30 year loan are almost entirely interest payments and very little going to principle. People who bounce around houses every few years are only giving money away to the bank.

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Yeah after 5 years you're getting an extra 100 a month off the princ on a 240k 30 year.

So many variables involved that's a mostly a useless dumbass statement.

Picasso_sl said:

Yeah after 5 years you're getting an extra 100 a month off the princ on a 240k 30 year.

So many variables involved that's a mostly a useless dumbass statement.

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What are the variables in his statement? Amortization is part of every mortgage loan I've ever heard of.

I guess I could list about 2 thousand things in each category of market fluctuations, mortgage types, the unpredictability of life, and changing needs for a home but instead I'll just ask for you to point out the distinctive factor of 5 years in this chart.