Home buying thread

I just locked ours in.. it went up from our original pre-approval and was afraid it would go up again.

I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be keep renting, but I wanted some opinions.

Currently renting a place for $1200 a month. Been here for 2 years in July.

I've been seeing a lot of houses for sale lately, and the average home price here is probably $120,000 to $180,000 for similar sized homes. Average tax looks to be around $2000 annually for those homes.

The prospect of buying a place where the mortgage plus insurance would be $600-700 (we'd be looking on the low end, or even in the $90-110k range for a fixer upper) is very appealing to me, as it would be a significant monthly increase in savings. Even putting aside $200-300 a month for repairs we'd be coming out ahead.

I'm a government employee and on a ladder promotion system. Currently making $50k, which bumps up to $60k in August 2014, then $70k August 2015. I'm (hopefully) being groomed for an additional promotion shortly after that which will likely bump me up another $5k.

The negative is, I don't want to live here long term. At most, I'd want to stay if I can get that final promotion within 6 months, and then I'd probably look to leave a year after that. That means by February 2017, I will absolutely be on my way out. At the least, I'll bounce as soon as I get my promotion in August 2015. So a range of 1.5-3 years. To start with, that's incredibly short term and I don't think I should buy a house with that little time remaining here. I also worry about that fact that Iamseeing so many houses for sale, that it'll be difficult to get rid of the property when I leave (although I could rent it out, there are several good property management companies here).

The wife works for a credit union, so we would likely be able to get an incredibly good rate (she's part time, and brings in about $20k, so add that to the above salaries for our income by year). We don't have a house fund, but we've got about $8,000 in our emergency fund, $4,000 in a car fund, and another $5,000 in a "fun" fund (which we never use). So we have lots of liquidity if we need it. I'm also a veteran, however, so I can get a VA loan and not worry about PMI.

I probably wouldn't buy if I was in your situation unless I wanted to keep the house as a rental property, or there's any chance that your employer would purchase your house if they transferred you(doubt it since it's the government). Between paying closing costs for the initial loan, and a real estate broker fee when you sell, I doubt you would come out ahead if you had to sell that quickly(3 years), and it might even be pretty difficult to break even.

I guess the other exception would be is if it's an extreme fixer-upper/foreclosure that you can get for dirt cheap, put some money into renovating in the next couple years, and then sell for a tidy profit. At that point you're basically flipping a house for profit, just on a slightly longer timeframe than normal since you're living there in the meantime also.

I think that's why it appeals to me. There was a house on our block that I think was a foreclosure that I believe a company bought for about $80,000. They spent 6 months renovating it (I have no idea why a company took that long, that seems like a lot of holding costs), and put it back on the market for like $160,000 I think. It's currently in escrow, so it's one of the few houses that actually seems to be moving as opposed to all the others.

But either way, the wife and I considered buying it at one point but decided to keep renting due to the scenario above (I also worry about electrical and plumbing issues, everything else I'm ok with). But we could have bought it and used like $500 a month on renovations over 2 years and fixed it up nice as hell. Then offloaded it, even if only for $120-130k, and come out on top by a lot.

If you can buy for 600-700, then rent for 1200, I would consider it, even after repairs it could be a few hundred a month in income in the future

It's important to keep in mind every other expense that comes with owning a house. Lawn maintenance (either buying the equipment to do it yourself or hiring a service), tools needed to fix things yourself, what are the gutters like, are there a lot of trees over your roof? Major appliances all in good shape? Does the furnace/water heater look like it needs service or need to be replaced? You mentioned electricial and plumbing, also prospectively two big expenses any time something goes wrong.

All these things you don't need to worry about when you rent. Let's say your mortgage payment was $800/mo including taxes, insurance and escrow, that's $400/mo you're saving over renting which comes out to $4800/yr. Is the house in the kind of condition you believe you'll be spending less than that each year to maintain it?

We're cleared to close as of today, but we weren't really prepared for that from a schedule standpoint so we are still scheduled for May 1st. Kind of crazy, 2 weeks left. Thanks for all the help along the way.

Yup two weeks for us as of yesterday. I've been so freaking busy I feel like I am going to explode. Between packing, registering kids for schools, communication with agent, lender, etc and hours on the phone transferring stuff on top of normal like I'm ready to be done. Oh and my husband is out of town for a week making this all the more fun.

But honestly, it has gone pretty smoothly so I'm feeling pretty lucky. Waiting on roof certification that is due tomorrow, which is the very last outstanding item. Should be set to close on time. Definitely getting excited to be done with landlrods and property managers!

When is your actual moving date Noodle? Are you guys able to do it on your own or hiring someone? We've finally accumulated enough shit that our families don't want to help so we had to hire a moving company. Jerks imo!

Next time we move (hopefully not for 5+ years) we are definitely hiring movers. Friends are nice and I truly appreciate their help and try to pay them with more than pizza and beer, but last time we moved we had 3 of them cancel on us that morning which left me, my 63 year old dad, and one other guy to move all the furniture (my wife was 5 months pregnant so she couldn't do much). My brother in law was available to help us load the truck but not unload, so that helped a little.

On top of that, the place we rented the truck from "lost" our reservation and gave us a truck that was due back to them by 1 P.M. because they had someone else who reserved it then.

My main problem with using friends to move is that a) they break your shit all over the place because most people don't know how to move things without breaking them and b) they will expect you to return the favor, the dicks.

I think we'll move in the Sunday after we close. Thursday is too awkward and I couldn't get Friday off (she works Saturday and doesn't want to miss the move in).

Good thing for us is this is our first home and we're moving from a 1BR apartment. We have a decent amount of stuff, but with a Uhaul it's going to be 2 trips max (and the house is 5 minutes away). I also have: 1 muscular brother, 1 scrawny sister with medium boyfriend, 3 large brother-in-laws, 1 father, 1 father-in-law all willing to help. We unloaded everything from the Uhaul into our current apartment in like 2 minutes flat.

Next time we move I'm saying fuck it and hiring. I honestly just hate the packing/unpacking.

I haven't relied on friends/family to help move in a very long time. They expect you to return the favor, and in one case, I helped someone move, and they gave the stupidest excuse over why they couldn't help me move about 6 months later. Said F it, and hired people from that point on.

We don't have that much stuff, and the $200-400 it costs for movers, is damn worth the work and headache you saved yourself.

Then I met my wife, and she doesn't none them dirty movers with her stuff. We are moving from Arizona to Texas this year, and she's packed our entire house, over the last 3 months or so, as we get it ready to sell/stage. She's labeled every box, and has a notebook that has exactly what's in every box. Smart, but damn, that's a lot of work.

Our house should go on the market tomorrow! Huzzah!

My issue is that when people ask if I can help move I will immediately ask them "Are you packed and ready to go? Am I just helping move shit to a truck and unload to your new place?" "OF COURSE!" they will say. Though every. single. fucking. time. I get there and they have 2 boxes packed and I'm expected to help them pack their whole house up and then move it. So what should be a 2 hour gig of me helping them move shit, I spend all damn day doing what they should have been doing for the weeks prior. F that noise.

Why would you not pack in advance? That is such a foreign concept to me.

One time actually I helped my step-father move his mother. She told us she was ready to go. Entire family showed up and she didn't even have boxes - nevermind packed boxes, she didn't even have boxes. It was the shittiest day of my life, and her place was beyond disgusting. Then we had to move her into a roach-infested trailer. Now I only help immediate family and good friends.

Crone_sl said:

I haven't relied on friends/family to help move in a very long time. They expect you to return the favor, and in one case, I helped someone move, and they gave the stupidest excuse over why they couldn't help me move about 6 months later. Said F it, and hired people from that point on.

We don't have that much stuff, and the $200-400 it costs for movers, is damn worth the work and headache you saved yourself.

Then I met my wife, and she doesn't none them dirty movers with her stuff. We are moving from Arizona to Texas this year, and she's packed our entire house, over the last 3 months or so, as we get it ready to sell/stage. She's labeled every box, and has a notebook that has exactly what's in every box. Smart, but damn, that's a lot of work.

Our house should go on the market tomorrow! Huzzah!

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Damn $200-$400. I'm jealous. Our lowest quote was $1200 for a ~1800 sqft place. I was really surprised how much they charge for just the moving around here. They said it will take 4 guys 8 hours, which I was really not expecting given that the last few times we moved it was me, my husband, father-in-law and mother-in-law and we did in about the same amount of time. Don't think we have accumulated that much more stuff. We're going to move as much stuff as we can down to the garage to cut the time down some.

You're essentially paying 4 guys EACH $37.50/hour. I know they aren't getting paid that much because companylol, but that's pretty crazy

I'm paying everyone with pizza and beer, the downside is I owe each of these people like 3 moves now.

That is with us doing the packing too. Apparently they just charge a lot up in Seattle for loading/unloading. We even chose a company that is only 10 miles away from us to cut down on transit time.

Wife and I moved the smalls and let movers move the furniture/heavy boxes. Cost us $300 and that is some of the best $300 I've ever spent. Felt bad I didn't have any cash on me to tip the guys as they worked fairly hard.