Home buying thread

lindz_sl said:

Awesome, congrats! Are you guys going to do a year of new home warranty just in case? Our agent has mentioned she is happy to gift us a year and I think we'll probably take her up on it since there are a few little things we want to make sure don't cause a headache in that first year.

Our sellers approved of the repairs we asked for so we're officially in contract now. Close date is April 30th. Pretty excited.

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Home warranties are great in theory, but truthfully really suck. Somewhere in the last few pages it was talked about, but basically the home warranty only covers major big problems with appliances, which is why people get it. AC goes out, and you don't want to be stuck with a $5k bill, right?

Well, it'll be a damn miracle before you ever get them to replace anything like that. They'll just send out a repair dude over and over. Had this happen with our 20 year old AC unit, and they refused to replace it. Meanwhile, sure, it's fixed, but it's costing us hundreds of dollars, if not more, every year because of how in-efficient the thing is.

All the appliances are brand new and still wrapped.. so I'm honestly not thinking the warranty is worth it unless it was free.

We just got a frantic call from our lender that we need to officially apply in 2 days. Talk about cutting it goddamn close. FUCK.

The best part about this is my two brother-in-law's are HVAC professionals with over 15 years of experience, so we are set in that regard. They do everything at cost and we feed/liquor them up.

We asked for the sellers to pay for a home warranty since the A/C was from 1974 and the furnace was 15 years old. They declined and we were advised to not even bother with it for the same reasons Crone stated.

Luckily it turns out our A/C, while old, was likely turned on only once or twice a year for damn near 35 years. So while it's inefficient as shit, it still works perfectly for now.

Seller asked us to push back closing to 5/1 because he'll be out of town. After knowing we scheduled 4/25 way in advance and it was included in our offer. FUCKER

The only reason we may do the warranty is because our agent said she would gift it to us. If it is free, may as well.

Yeah there is no reason to turn it down if sellers are going to pay for it.

Noodle our closing got pushed back from a Friday to a Monday, then on Sunday they tried to push it back another week. Our attorney was all over it and we ended up closing on Monday. Not sure what he threatened them with, probably money of some sort, but whatever. We weren't planning on moving in right away anyways.

Crone_sl said:

Home warranties are great in theory, but truthfully really suck. Somewhere in the last few pages it was talked about, but basically the home warranty only covers major big problems with appliances, which is why people get it. AC goes out, and you don't want to be stuck with a $5k bill, right?

Well, it'll be a damn miracle before you ever get them to replace anything like that. They'll just send out a repair dude over and over. Had this happen with our 20 year old AC unit, and they refused to replace it. Meanwhile, sure, it's fixed, but it's costing us hundreds of dollars, if not more, every year because of how in-efficient the thing is.

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Yea but it's probably still paying for itself by repair since repair bills can get incredibly high. We've been considering a home warranty because we have one of the Apollo water heaters that heat the home and I heard they are incredibly expensive to repair if there are issues. Anyone have any experience with those?

Eyashusa_sl said:

Yeah there is no reason to turn it down if sellers are going to pay for it.

Noodle our closing got pushed back from a Friday to a Monday, then on Sunday they tried to push it back another week. Our attorney was all over it and we ended up closing on Monday. Not sure what he threatened them with, probably money of some sort, but whatever. We weren't planning on moving in right away anyways.

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One week isn't huge, it just pissed me off because we put in an offer that said "closing on 4/25", talked to the guy about it multiple times, confirmed over and over, then magically we sign the p&s and he says he'll be out of town. Now I have to scramble to schedule this around both of our jobs, the bank, etc.

lindz_sl said:

The only reason we may do the warranty is because our agent said she would gift it to us. If it is free, may as well.

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Half the stuff in our place was newish, and we were going to replace the rest, so we declined our agent's offer, so he sent us a check... This seemed incredibly strange to us that our agent was SO intent upon giving us this gift - really made me wonder what the whole thing is about.

Okay so I need some advise. We purchased a home 6 months ago (repo) with the intention of refinancing once the 6 months was up to repay my parents for the renovation. We bought the house for $108,000 and it appraised at $147,000. Since then, we have completely gutted the place (new doors, windows, bathrooms, kitchen, repaired and retextured all walls, removed popcorn, new appliances, exterior siding repair and all new exterior trim, all new trimwork inside, new 16x9 garage door, new roof, new floors) and have basically finished everything inside. The exterior has all new trim (just primed) and one section of the garage has new siding (all LP smartside/trim, some of the existing fiberboard was crumbling so it was replaced).

My question, should we push back the refinance until it is warm enough to paint? We have primed trim and some primed siding, and the existing color was this ugly ass plum color. Also, I still need to replace the fascia. How big of a deal is exterior paint when it comes to an appraisal? Would it make the difference from $170,000 to $190,000 which would save us from PMI? Are appraisers that dumb?

EDIT: Oh and we have put 40k into the remodel, so we are hoping to get $155k for the loan to finish a few final projects (one fake wood panel room downstairs, exterior paint, and fascia... and a few other minor projects)

I have one dealt with one appraisal during remodeling but they were very rational about the thing. I wouldn't worry about paint

So everything is going according to plan now. Our loan documents are on the way to be signed along with our GFE. The appraisal is scheduled, everything looks good.

Is there anything we need to do in the meantime?

I know (or think) we need to have insurance before closing, anything else?

Yeah you'll need homeowners insurance effective the day of closing... or earlier I suppose. I ended up having 3 different policy statements with different effective dates with me at closing because they kept on changing the date.

Anything else we need to do? I didn't realize we needed to pay for a full year premium in advance, another surprise lol.

We have the money, so it's ok. Just don't want to miss anything.

You'll need a cashiers check to cover closing costs. Your attorney will tell you how much to bring. Our advised us to bring a little extra just in case, which we did and didn't need so we just got that money back from the title company. Not a big deal except for us we still banked at a community bank 45 minutes away from our house near my work, so it was just a two hour trip a couple days before to get the cashiers check.

I can't think of anything else to be honest. One interesting thing that might happen is if you have gone by different variations of your name on different legal documents in the past, they might make you sign the same document twice with both names. Like Timothy and Tim, or Jim and James, etc.

More often than not, your first years worth of homeowners insurance will be bundled in with the rest of your closing costs. 99% of the payment checks we get after a customer closes on a new home are from the title company, not the individual buying the home.

I get to play the "when to lock my rate" game as of today. I've been watching rates on my lender's site (up .15% from last week /sadface) but was wondering if anyone has recommendations on best way to watch mortgage rate trends. I could just lock now, but I'd like to be a bit more informed than just the casual watching I've been doing for the past couple months.