Home buying thread

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Heylel

Heylel

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Ravvenn said:
Those kitchen floors! I see why that was your first target.

Great looking house, your front porch and back deck are awesome.
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Yeah, the floors aren"t even straight, it"s pretty obvious at the doorway. I was looking at the cost of flooring, and tile isn"t that much more for materials than linoleum, it"s just more costly to install. I figure if I can do that myself, I learn a new skill and save myself some money. I"m not afraid to get my hands dirty, I"ve just never had the living space to do it.

It"s out of my budget, but what I"d really like to do is take out the upper half, or even the entire wall between the breakfast area and the living room and just open the whole thing up. A half wall would let me expand the bar space a touch, or taking the entire thing out would make the room just plain bigger.

I"ll need to get an engineer to tell me where the load bearing beams are so that I can see if that"s even feasible.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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CnCGOD said:
I love my hardwood kitchen floor but thats probably an expensive option
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I like hardwoods fine, but honestly there"s already so much of it that I"d rather do something else.

I"ve started to compile a list of priority fixes and modifications. Gonna get the cheap stuff done first like painting, etc. then get some deck furniture, update media wiring, and buy a grill. That should get me a lot of mileage until I can get to the more expensive stuff.
 
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Darkko_foh

shitlord
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Is there any chance that the $8000 tax credit for this year could be extended for a greater period of time? Hopefully, I"m going to be in the market for my first home in about a year. Would be nice to take advantage of it.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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I didn"t wait around to find out, I went ahead and scraped it together to get it done now.

If you"ve got any family resources you can lean on, just buy now. Interest rates aren"t going to go significantly lower, and the credit is due to expire in December. I fully expect things to have turned around enough by then that they won"t wait. If you have to take a family loan, you"ll have the money to repay them from the credit as soon as you file a tax amendment.
 
chaos

chaos

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Wow nice. I"m about to do the VA streamline down to 4.5%. I am considering 15 years vs 30, I"m not sure what to do. We"ll be staying in this house for the foreseeable future, but I don"t want to put too hard a strain on our finances as my wife isn"t going back to work so it"s all on my income. One of those things I am going to have to see about.
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

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Well, stumbled upon a house that may end up being a pretty sweet deal. 2500 sq feet, multi-level, 0.20 acre, 2 car garage (which doesn"t really count, since I don"t think my truck will fit in it), 3 bed, 2 bath, fireplace, mother in law apartment with full kitchen upstairs, good highway access, but out of the way enough to not be noisy, and right next to a park. 89,900. Been on the market 400 days, price dropped from 223. Bank owned, foreclosure.

Went out and saw it yesterday, there"s something off with it. It"s been recently painted, but there"s the telltale signs of water damage on the upper level. Basement looks solid, but water stains on the outside under the soffet, and some ceiling tiles were ripped out on the upper level, I"m guessing by an inspection on a previous deal that fell thru. In one area, you can see daylight by looking up at the roof from the upper level.

All that being said though, that"s a LOT of fucking house for dirt cheap. It was at 99,900 when we saw it, and they dropped it another 10k the next day. With the availabilty of foreclosure rehab loans now that enable you to roll the cost of fixing the place up into the mortgage, I think this could turn out to be a pretty good deal. Even if the roof needs major work, that wouldn"t amount to more than 10k-20k I"d think and we"d still basically get the house for a song. The kitchen in the mother in law apt needs something done with it..there"s a fridge, oven and dishwasher up there, and you can see the floor is bowed, so something has to happen there. We"d probably just get rid of it, to be honest.

Now I"m really just kicking around what to do about it. We"re going back out to see it again tomorrow, but at this point, I"m leaning towards putting an offer on it contingent on an inspection to see what"s wrong with it. $300 to get it inspected and get a rough idea of what needs to be done to it sounds like a good investment, considering what we could get out of this in a few years. My wife and I make 100k a year, paying off a 100k mortgage would be nothing, and when the economy recovers, we turn it for 200k and all of a sudden we"ve got a ton of equity for very little investment/interest.
 
Heylel

Heylel

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If you can see daylight anywhere, I"d be very cautious especially if the water damage is present in multiple locations. Serious structural damage could end up costing you an awful lot more than you think.

Plus, do you really want to be living in a house that"s functionally being rebuilt from the ground up?
 
Cutlery

Cutlery

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Heylel Teomim said:
If you can see daylight anywhere, I"d be very cautious especially if the water damage is present in multiple locations. Serious structural damage could end up costing you an awful lot more than you think.

Plus, do you really want to be living in a house that"s functionally being rebuilt from the ground up?
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I"m well aware of what could be wrong with it, but we don"t know for sure the depth of it until we get it inspected. One other deal fell thru, but I don"t know at what point in the markdown process that occurred. Without knowing exactly what"s wrong with it or when the deal fell thru, it"s hard to say. Did the deal go bad when it 30k in repairs were discovered when the price was at 200k? Who knows? What"s a couple hundred bucks for an inspection?

And we won"t be living in it at that point. We"ve got till August on this lease, and the payment on a 90k mortgage is so low we can afford to be paying for both for a few months. There"s shit wrong with it for sure, but there"s the possibility of shit being wrong with every house. Who"s to say something huge won"t come up a year into owning any house? At least with this one, we"d know up front.
 
Borzak

Borzak

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You can put that heavy textured paper over paneling as well then paint it. It comes in basic white. I did that in my parents house and it came out really good. WHen you are done it will have no relation to paneling at all and you don"t have to take it down and all the associated stuff.
 
Cad

Cad

scientia potentia est
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I"ve been looking at a lot of houses, and someone needs to unify the county appraisal service, MLS feed, zoning maps, and the westlaw real estate transaction log into one page with all the records. Would save me a lot of research time. :p
 
Heylel

Heylel

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MLS and the county tax assessor"s site usually gave me most of what I needed. My agent generally found the rest.

I know a ton of people advised me that short sales and foreclosures were a bitch to buy early on. I sorta glossed over it because the prices seemed so low, but I can now definitely saythey were right.Foreclosures and especially short sales are a huge pain in the ass, and you never know right up until the last moment whether you"re even going to be able to close.
 
Cad

Cad

scientia potentia est
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Heylel Teomim said:
MLS and the county tax assessor"s site usually gave me most of what I needed. My agent generally found the rest.

I know a ton of people advised me that short sales and foreclosures were a bitch to buy early on. I sorta glossed over it because the prices seemed so low, but I can now definitely saythey were right.Foreclosures and especially short sales are a huge pain in the ass, and you never know right up until the last moment whether you"re even going to be able to close.
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The agents can look at the transaction log that is available on Westlaw, but I just like to look at stuff myself. It also gives you a good idea of who is gouging you on the price (for example I looked at a house that sold for $300k less than it is being offered for in 2007..big clue on where to start offering.. ) and it can tell you how much they mortgaged the property for and if they have any second mortgages, etc. Fun stuff.

How long are the foreclosures and short sales running? Like 2-3 months?
 
Heylel

Heylel

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At minimum, yes. It depends heavily on your market. I had a strong interest in one until I was told it would be over 90 days before the bank even considered my offer.
 
Cad

Cad

scientia potentia est
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Hmm I actually don"t mind that, I own my current house so I"ll just be buying my next one free of entanglements.. I guess if I find one I like I just have to wait 3 months. No worries.. thanks for the info.
 
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Aetos_foh

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Guy I just bought a bike from bought his house in a short sale. I asked him about it and he said they wanted him to close in under a month
 
R

Ravvenn_sl

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Aetos said:
Guy I just bought a bike from bought his house in a short sale. I asked him about it and he said they wanted him to close in under a month
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What he"s talking about is different than the closing process. You put in an offer, you wait3-6 monthsto find out if your offer was even accepted. AFTER that point, they usually request a 14 or 21 day close (and you"re safe to bet no lender will want to do 14 days for a distressed sale).
 
Erronius

Erronius

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Heylel Teomim said:
The only other problem is apparently the circuit breaker is a design that was recalled years ago, and he recommends I try to get replaced if possible.
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Can you toss up a pic of it? I can give you my 2cents.

If it"s a Pushmatic, Stab-Lok or, heaven forbid, a Zinsco, I"d get it changed as soon as you can afford it. It"s cheaper if you keep your meter and service cable in place and simply change out the panel, but you might have a 60A-100A service. If your house is smaller and you don"t have a number of electrical appliance loads, you should be fine. Otherwise, it"s a good idea to change your entire service up to 200A (Meter channel, triplex/URD, SEU, Panel, etc) at the same time and get it over with. It"s more expensive than simply changing the panel by itself, and one of the reasons why it"s somewhat common to only change the panel for a customer.

Hopefully your inspector was thorough, as I"ve seen many who are not.

Slightly off-topic, I had to change this the other day. I don"t want to be all "Doom and Gloom", but please take electrical seriously.
 
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