Home buying thread

r3probate said:

I don"t know much about Canada other than some old guildies who used to live in Victoria. Why are the home prices so expensive over that way? Are wages comparably high to make it affordable? I didn"t think west Canada was such a hotbed of economic activity.

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No, it"s a bubble that hasn"t burst/deflated entirely yet. Vancouver is one of the highest priced markets, if not the highest, in north America.

r3probate said:

I don"t know much about Canada other than some old guildies who used to live in Victoria. Why are the home prices so expensive over that way? Are wages comparably high to make it affordable? I didn"t think west Canada was such a hotbed of economic activity.

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Western Canada has been in a huge boom. Alberta because of the oil sands and energy in general, and BC because of commodities as well as the construction boom in Vancouver for the Olympics. I don"t think it"s a "bubble", because it would have burst over the past year. Prices pulled back at most 5-10% in the major markets in the past year, and they"re rising again. I would think that Vancouver will see a pretty long hangover after the Olympics, for sure, but all it will take to reignite the boom in Alberta is one or two large oil sands projects going ahead (a half dozen were deferred or canceled in the past year, but they can be restarted at any moment, as a couple already have).

Vancouver has some of the most expensive housing in North America, or the least housing affordability (prices vs. incomes), but Edmonton and Calgary aren"t that out of whack at all when you take income in to account. Keep in mind for example that minimum wages across the Western provinces are $8-10/hour. Median income is also way higher than most of the rest of Canada and the US. The Edmonton/Calgary corridor is one of the richest parts of the world.

Victoria is fairly expensive because land is in short supply and it"s a popular vacation/retirement spot with the mildest climate in Canada. Great city, I personally way prefer it to Vancouver, although they"re not really similar at all.

Eomer said:

Victoria is fairly expensive because land is in short supply and it"s a popular vacation/retirement spot with the mildest climate in Canada. Great city, I personally way prefer it to Vancouver, although they"re not really similar at all.

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Reminds me of the problem they had in Aspen, CO. Land/property is so expensive to live and/or rent, the people that teach, protect, and clean up couldnt afford to live in or near Aspen. Was causing a problem with just getting anyone hired. I believe the city had to start subsidizing or supplementing income or giving them special discounts on property or rent. Couldnt find the article, did a quick, lazy google search.

Kind of funny how that works out.

Bought a little 3 bedroom ranch on the Texas/Louisiana border. My first home, and really wasn"t too excited about it at first, but honestly buying a home would be a lot cheaper monthly than renting, and I really didn"t have a ton of time to look around. I"m in the military, already spent enough time away from the family in the past 2 years so as stupid as it may sound we weren"t wanting to spend a few more months apart while we shopped around.

I know pretty much nothing except the basics about homes. We ended up paying about $90,000, which is about how much other very similar houses have been selling for recently, so I feel pretty comfortable with how much we paid.

Hoping to make a lot of improvements over the next few years to hopefully increase the value some. Since it"s our first home we"ll get the 8k tax credit, and thanks to how military moving works we"ll probably earn about 10k for moving here. Going to use that money to start improving the home a bit over time (New roof is first, then new kitchen, and remodel bathrooms).

There is something about owning your place be it a condo or house that lets you stand there and go "damn this is nice". At least there was for me, its also so much more a home that you look forward to coming home to ya know?

Signed the bank counter today on our first home today... /fidget.

$140k - 1725 sqft 2 story 2 car garage on a 2613 sqft lot.

This was our 18th offer. I"ll be excited once we"re past appraisal.

The irony of the IRS auditing you because your wife works for them made me laugh.

TheCutlery said:

Why? Seems rather reasonable that you should ensure your employees aren"t cheating on their taxes.

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I was had an audit done to me when I was 21 I think for my income at age 17I was doing CNA work without the certification and working at a grocery store stocking. The nursing home situation is horrible in Florida so they would hire anyone and pay them obscene amounts of money to keep them. I was working like 60-75 hour weeks, they paid me for it so I stayed. Hell sometimes I would just sleep in a room for 4 hours ish and get up to go back to work. Had no time to cash my checks let alone spend it so when I deposited about 10k worth of paychecks I must of been redflagged.

I got it all done in a weekend because I kept all my stubs and blew my cash on a motorcycle, gear, and a bunch of custom parts. If I was audited now I don"t know how it would go, I sure hope that doesn"t happen because we are about to file for that 8k soon.

So I"ve been pretty restrained and level headed through this whole looking for a house process (to balance out the emotional wife for the most part as we went through 18 offers), but today while I was dropping off a cashiers check to the title company and they asked me to write my new address on the thing and I was suddenly a nervous wreck, like it was all built up and it just hit me. I could barely even write.

I just don"t want to mess anything up any of you guys have it just kinda hit you out of nowhere like that? I"m now suddenly really ancy and nervous even though we"ve got almost all of our ducks in a row... have all of our paperwork, have inspection lined up for tomorrow, waiting for banker to call me back so I can give him a CC# to do the appraisal... i should be a happy guy but i just can"t even sit still at my desk now that im back at work.

Anxiety is a bitch. Everything is good and we just waiting on the agreed apon closing date because the seller is moving out of state. Even with everything 100% confirmed the waiting still sucks.

Also yeah bringing money to the title company before an inspection? The inspection could come back and you might not want to buy it.

It"s our earnest money. Some rule changed and the blank check we were using on our offers can"t be used for it, so I had to bring a cashiers check to wherever for escrow. Plenty of outs still if the inspection turns up something unexpected.

I"m just following directions from an awesome Realtor who has sold 20+ homes to my coworkers.

Ah ok, our earnest money was like 750 just be sure you get that back if you buy.

Also what is everyones average electric bill? Currently sitting at 80.00 a month in the apartment but we are very conservative with the AC and all that. I imagine it will go up but I keep hearing like 300.00 electric bills and that can"t be right.

We were doing between $60 ? 80 with basically no AC usage during that time period. At the house we?ve been seeing roughly $130 - $150. I have a fairly large koi pond with a pump that runs full time, 3 sump pumps, a water softener. Besides that, we haven?t turned the heat pump on yet, we do a single load of laundry a week and have changed all of our lights out for the energy efficient kind.

Hatorade said:

Ah ok, our earnest money was like 750 just be sure you get that back if you buy.

Also what is everyones average electric bill? Currently sitting at 80.00 a month in the apartment but we are very conservative with the AC and all that. I imagine it will go up but I keep hearing like 300.00 electric bills and that can"t be right.

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1350sqft manufactured home, 100+ degree temperatures for 3 months in Vegas, I just paid 3 consecutive $250-$270 power bills (NV Energy they just got another rate hike approved before the summer I think)

We could use a little less AC, wife can"t sleep while it"s hot... and have fans going all the time and stuff.

Have used the AC for all of an hour in the last 3 weeks, will tell you what next months looks like

Inspection done, only appraisal issue may be a cracked 2nd story non-opening window. Yay.

Also that earnest money is going into escrow and will be part of our down payment of $4900, I hope to never see it again

Edit:

House!