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You have the right of it. Number 1 concession most ask for is seller contributions to closing costs.
Home buying thread
- Thread starter Pasteton
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
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For finding houses etc. I found Redfin to be the best. We found our agent by clicking the view this home button and it assigns an agent. Turns out we really liked her. Redfin partner agents give 15% of their commission back.
I personally found the guidance helpful from ours , she'd say I think this property is over priced etc. Also in our market houses were getting multiple offers the first day on the market. Having an agent working with you, makes it easier to get into those houses before or after work or at lunch exactly. Then you need an agent to be there for home inspection, or in my case. I had my contractor, plumber, and electrician walk through all at separate times which also needs the agent to be there.
I think for my first house purchase using an agent is correct. If I was buying an investment property where I could walk away, I feel like I wouldn't need an agent as much.
I personally found the guidance helpful from ours , she'd say I think this property is over priced etc. Also in our market houses were getting multiple offers the first day on the market. Having an agent working with you, makes it easier to get into those houses before or after work or at lunch exactly. Then you need an agent to be there for home inspection, or in my case. I had my contractor, plumber, and electrician walk through all at separate times which also needs the agent to be there.
I think for my first house purchase using an agent is correct. If I was buying an investment property where I could walk away, I feel like I wouldn't need an agent as much.
To update my own saga. Appraisal paid for 12 days ago now. No word from them to either agent. Agent called lender and left a message no call back.... Means I'm gonna call and inquire/bitch.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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LOL I just went through the same thing. Went to the property Sunday before last and found appraisal company card there (so they had probably done it AT LEAST on Friday, likely earlier). Still didn't come back today. Broker said 'oh no they said they are sending it' over and over since Friday last week after I started getting annoyed.
Eventually I got pissed and told my agent she should call the appraisal company because I was going to issue a chargeback for services not rendered. They found it in the 'QC department' and it was 'just finishing up' and the broker had it in 10 minutes. Everyone started getting in a tizzy about us 'directly contacting the appraisal company' and not going through ambassador chucklehead or whoever is in charge of this mess, fuck off. I paid for it, do your jobs or get fucked. Jesus.
I mean, I get it... mistakes get made... but don't you think the ninth time in 5 days after an inquiry you stop trusting your 'in process' notification in your system and get your ass up and go ask Jeffrey what the fuck he's been doing for 12 days? It's like talking to 10 guys in a store who keep checking the system for a product and none of them will actually go check anyplace else, they just keep wondering and checking the system and rechecking the same place the system tells them it should be.
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I fucking hate RE agents with a purple fucking passion. Our house sale went sideways in December, so we disputed the buyer deposit. Broker acted like he hadn't heard from the buyer and he would do his best to get an answer. Told his stupid ass we would see them in mediation, suddenly the broker got in touch with the buyer and he was willing to settle.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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RE agents really don't do anything in the modern day and age. You can use Zillow to browse for houses that are up for sale in the areas you want to look at. My RE agent literally was just a door unlocker. She was worthless. In fact, she was the reason the first house I put an offer on fell through. She never made the seller get us the signed acceptance letter back and they pulled the rug out from under me after they had verbally accepted my offer... 4 days later. I had no idea she hadn't gotten anything signed from them until she called me to tell me they retracted their acceptance.
But I was required to have an agent by my mortgage company. They wouldn't finance my purchase unless I had an agent. Actually I think that was the reason, it was almost 7 years ago now and I can't remember, but I do know that I was required to have an agent because I tried to forego one after I realized she was doing exactly jack and shit.
By the way one troubling thing about your reason for buying a house. Saying it makes absolutely no sense to rent over buying is not true. There are a ton of factors and commitments that come with owning a house that do not exist when renting and a bunch of extra money that you'll need to spend year in and year out on top of mortgage payment. Comparing Rent price to Mortgage price and saying "well renting is just throwing money away" is the single biggest mistake most people make when they decide they should buy a home.
But I was required to have an agent by my mortgage company. They wouldn't finance my purchase unless I had an agent. Actually I think that was the reason, it was almost 7 years ago now and I can't remember, but I do know that I was required to have an agent because I tried to forego one after I realized she was doing exactly jack and shit.
By the way one troubling thing about your reason for buying a house. Saying it makes absolutely no sense to rent over buying is not true. There are a ton of factors and commitments that come with owning a house that do not exist when renting and a bunch of extra money that you'll need to spend year in and year out on top of mortgage payment. Comparing Rent price to Mortgage price and saying "well renting is just throwing money away" is the single biggest mistake most people make when they decide they should buy a home.
Gravel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm not sure if this was in regards to me or not, but I'll respond like it is.
Deathwing hit on it above, but in my circumstance I kind of addressed this. Our current rent is $1200/mo. and the comparable houses are in the $140-160k range. So we're basically paying for the owner's mortgage (on a comparable, probably $800/mo. at most but likely $600-700; they're paying considerably less due to the age of their loan), taxes ($118/mo.), and insurance (probably $50/mo. or so?). So all in all (for a comparable) it'd be like $975 a month to buy our current house. That means we're paying an extra $225 a month for maintenance, and I can guarantee nothing remotely makes up for that cost in the 3 years we've lived there.
To me, the only advantage in this town to renting is that I can move at will. But we plan on staying here for a while. In my mind there really is no reason to continue renting. We're paying a substantial premium by renting since the rent is so out of proportion to real estate in this area.
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Only advice on home buying I will offer is never ever buy a house build in the late 19th century! Wife bought her house before we met, cause she really loved the charm of an older home. Fuck that shit right in its ass. Stack stone basement, mother fuckers taking short cuts. But hell, I at least got to see how it feels to redo your own mortar and fix a hundred jillion micro holes leaking in the basement!!! Not to mention all the other bullshit that goes with something that old.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Sorry but that's just not true unless you are renting in a very affluent area. Renting is a marketplace just like anything else and as a landlord I have to price my rentals appropriately or they will be vacant.
4 months after I bought my house and rented it out I had a massive retaining wall failure. It cost me $13k to fix. Up front. Right then and there. That kind of out of the blue expenditure simply does not happen when renting.
Rental income is a long term investment, it's there to help pay for (or fully pay for) the mortgage of the property you are renting out until the mortgage is paid in full, and then it is an true income generator. Minor expected costs can be accounted for in rental pricing to some degree but disaster recovery like the aforementioned can't be. You'll price your units out of the market.
Dig up exterior and put a drainage membrane on the outside of the wall. You're not stopping water by slapping some more mortar on the inside and if you claim you have you're a liar
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If the market is forcing you to rent out at a price below your total average costs, it's due for a correction. That type of situation just isn't sustainable in the long run.
And of course, someone looking to rent vs buy should consider broad and local market forces. If rent prices are depressed due to lack of demand, maybe hold off buying for another year. Or, if interest rates on loans are really low and forecast to go up, maybe accelerate plans to buy a house.
It's obvious from Elurin's response that he has taken it far beyond "rent is just throwing away money".
And of course, someone looking to rent vs buy should consider broad and local market forces. If rent prices are depressed due to lack of demand, maybe hold off buying for another year. Or, if interest rates on loans are really low and forecast to go up, maybe accelerate plans to buy a house.
It's obvious from Elurin's response that he has taken it far beyond "rent is just throwing away money".
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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There is no way to know that going into homeownership and that's the point. When you rent you know what you'll be paying for the life of your lease. When you buy you have no clue what you'll really be spending. And saying renting just doesn't make any sense is ALWAYS false because homeownership is not the beacon of financial responsibility most of this country thinks it is. In most cases it's financial tomfoolery.
But yes, he has clearly thought it through. But he should also be aware that the estimated $225/mo he thinks has not even come close to being spent in his tenure at his current property is $8100 over 3 years, and I just gave an example of a $13k expense within the first 4 months of my homeownership. Is that typical? No. Is it typical to have to spend thousands of dollars close to that amount in a 3 year span? If the house is more than 15 years old, yes.
Frenzied Wombat
Potato del Grande
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It's even worse buying a brand new house built by unskilled Mexican labor loosely supervised by one slackjawed idiot that kind of know what he's doing. I bought something brand spanking new and it was an endless litany of leaks/cracks for the first few years while fighting with the builder to repair them. For instance, from day 1 the master bedroom toilet wouldn't flush and they discovered that the pipe was at too tight an angle for the water to drain properly. They had to open up my 2nd floor ceiling to repair the pipe below the toilet, then refused to repaint the entire ceiling because the builder's warranty didn't oblige them to. Like seriously, you built/sold a house without even ever testing the toilets? Three months in the polished cement floor on the ground level developed a huge crack that ran the length of the house (foundation settling), and under the terms of the warranty all the builder was obliged to do was run epoxy along the crack, which obviously looks like shit. No obligation to redo the floor. Builders are scammers, and the canned 3rd party "warranty" they give you isn't worth the paper it's written on.
IMHO the best "aged" house to buy would be something 5-10 years old where most of the major latent defects have been discovered and possibly repaired.
Guess what, I sent an email last night, and magically the appraisal shows up in my email this morning. Date completed is the 27th. And magically they need another consent form signed to pull business tax returns that I've already filled out. For not wanting to harass them. I feel like if you don't hound over them, they just leave your name at the end of the list. I'm sure they're handling way too many loans at a time, and just put out fires as they pop up during the day. The guy who doesn't start a fire, doesn't get taken care of in time to close a house apparently.
Asshat Brando
Potato del Grande
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I'm not a real estate agent and I would agree most of them are turds, the reason for that though is probably 90% of them close 2-3 deals a year and that's enough for them to live on. With that said if you get a good one and it's a competitive bid market they'll usually have a relationship with the other agent that a lot of times helps. Not to mention they also are required to carry T&O insurance so if something goes wrong you just sue them and their insurance kicks in. This is just like the housing inspector arguement from earlier in the thread and those you pay for, there's nothing wrong with another set of eyes to help you in a transaction you rarely do. Worst case is they don't help you but without them anything you miss is on yourself.
As far as rent vs. own, in my mind this should just be a comparison of what you can afford to rent and what that place is vs. what you can get at the same housing payment owning. If you're renting a palace and at the same housing payment you would own a shit hole then you're probably better off renting even with the tax and interest breaks. There's certain markets here where rent is going up so quickly that builders are repulling permits as condos as the monthly payments will be almost exactly the same which is somewhat crazy but in that instance with two equal products at the same monthly cost then you always buy if you can.
As far as builders, almost my entire career has been working with builders from large publics to basically 1 man GC's running their own show. I've never seen anything like Wombat's example in 15 years and I'd have more issue with the City or County inspector who did all the inspections throughout the build process though the builder sounds like a real sweetheart as well. Someone signed off on that house and gave it a certificate of occupancy as livable when it obviously wasn't.
Corndog get a new lender. Seriously I've had some files go terrible in my career where the borrower thought I was probably lying through my teeth because it just sounded so improbable that something so stupid would happen but at the same time not where the people are having to harass just to figure things out or get an ETA on an appraisal that is accurate. Just sounds like a total shit shop and I doubt they'll close on time for you.
As far as rent vs. own, in my mind this should just be a comparison of what you can afford to rent and what that place is vs. what you can get at the same housing payment owning. If you're renting a palace and at the same housing payment you would own a shit hole then you're probably better off renting even with the tax and interest breaks. There's certain markets here where rent is going up so quickly that builders are repulling permits as condos as the monthly payments will be almost exactly the same which is somewhat crazy but in that instance with two equal products at the same monthly cost then you always buy if you can.
As far as builders, almost my entire career has been working with builders from large publics to basically 1 man GC's running their own show. I've never seen anything like Wombat's example in 15 years and I'd have more issue with the City or County inspector who did all the inspections throughout the build process though the builder sounds like a real sweetheart as well. Someone signed off on that house and gave it a certificate of occupancy as livable when it obviously wasn't.
Corndog get a new lender. Seriously I've had some files go terrible in my career where the borrower thought I was probably lying through my teeth because it just sounded so improbable that something so stupid would happen but at the same time not where the people are having to harass just to figure things out or get an ETA on an appraisal that is accurate. Just sounds like a total shit shop and I doubt they'll close on time for you.
General Antony
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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When you look at it on an expected value basis maybe your numbers are right, but you aren't accounting for the risk you're taking on in the adverse outcomes. Things like the unexpected, large expenses mentioned. Transaction costs involved with buying/selling. If interest rates increase how negatively are asset prices going to be affected? A lot of the increase in home prices over the last 3 decades was due to falling rates allowing people to purchase more - if rates are set to increase then that means there will be downward pressure on prices going forward.
You can't look at a home as a safe investment anymore like it was since the early 80s. You're effectively investing in a single asset with massive leverage when you mortgage a home. If the return isn't a steady increase - which I don't think it can be expected to be anymore - then that's a lot of asset risk you are assuming.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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I don't think it's wrong to view housing as something other than a surefire investment post 2008. That said, your viewpoint is very academic and fails to take the context of the necessity for shelter into account. Most people cannot simply do away with rent AND owning property. The best case scenario with rent is you are out 100% of your money. It is a fairly safe bet to 'gamble' your money on literally any other venture, and since you need someplace to sleep, it might as well be owning property. Worst case scenario for real property is values depress a great deal and you lose a ton of money. It's still better than losing 100% via rent.
I'm not sure how rent was in 'the old days'. But with markets the way they are in many areas, rent prices are absurd, you certainly are not losing anything by owning, even if you stand to lose some value in your home after another ripple once interest rates start to increase.
I'm not sure how rent was in 'the old days'. But with markets the way they are in many areas, rent prices are absurd, you certainly are not losing anything by owning, even if you stand to lose some value in your home after another ripple once interest rates start to increase.
Gravel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Does anyone have any experience or opinions on using an out of state lender?
We're in California and were looking at Penfed (and also USAA) for a VA loan (3.25% with .5 points, and 3.15% with 1.25 points), but Penfed I believe is headquartered in Virginia. So when we go for an appraisal, I'm worried about who they send to do it. We're not near any major California cities, so it's almost assured to likely be someone from LA or Bakersfield who doesn't know the local area.
Worst case scenario is we pay out of pocket for the difference in appraisal/sale, but I'd prefer to avoid that kind of uncertainty.
We're in California and were looking at Penfed (and also USAA) for a VA loan (3.25% with .5 points, and 3.15% with 1.25 points), but Penfed I believe is headquartered in Virginia. So when we go for an appraisal, I'm worried about who they send to do it. We're not near any major California cities, so it's almost assured to likely be someone from LA or Bakersfield who doesn't know the local area.
Worst case scenario is we pay out of pocket for the difference in appraisal/sale, but I'd prefer to avoid that kind of uncertainty.
Refid with penfed and a local appraiser did mine. I'm in Wv
edit reread. I live in a city so my concern wouldn't be the same as yours. It seems like the appraisal process is pretty formulaic. Penfed also has no closing costs sometimes on 5/5 arm so you could camp out for that and it's no big deal.
edit reread. I live in a city so my concern wouldn't be the same as yours. It seems like the appraisal process is pretty formulaic. Penfed also has no closing costs sometimes on 5/5 arm so you could camp out for that and it's no big deal.