Home buying thread

Candiarie said:

Way to come out of left field bro, for a moment imagine the incredibly unlikely scenario where the listing agent is the homeowner. From what I understand from my realtor/landlord contacts they can negotiate lower terms with people without agents because they don"t have to pay the 3% to the buyers agent.

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Someone who is selling as a FSBO may not be interested in paying a buyer"s agent. I think that is the gist of your meaning. While true, it won"t stop a good buyer"s agent from trying, if that is really the home you want. In such cases, the buyer would then be on the hook for whatever specified % is agreed to in your contract. This is an item you must bring up with any potential buyer"s agent before you sign any contract.

Otherwise, there is absolutely no drawbacks to using a buyer"s agent. The access to MLS, contract negotiation skills, access to reputable and qualified inspectors, etc. really take the stress out of home buying. Use one.

Hi, guys.

I found a "mold dude". They"re called Environmental Hygienists, the company I went with has a staff of only licensed & certified Environmental Hygienists, Water Damage Inspectors (that may be the wrong name), Mold Inspectors, Mold Remediation people, and two Forensic Scientists.

After seeing such a thing, I can say with 100% certainty the next time we buy a house I"ll spend $265.00 hiring this company to do the inspection because they can see what the normal inspectors can"t.

My test is going to be more costly because I"m getting pictures as well as an air quality test in every room, and 10 samples (paint, mold, floor, whatever looks shady).

We"re well within the statue of limitations in relation to the Seller Disclosure (which she clearly failed to disclose this). What"s really messed up, is hearing so many people who live here talk about slab leaks, plumbing issues, etc. that have been ongoing but no-one wanted a class action against the builder as it could depreciate the home values (which being mold flagged will do anyway).

A lot of people said one builder had the contract to build here, then it was bought out by something Horton. The first builders were mad and put nails in the plumbing pipes in addition to shitting in bags and putting those in pipes, too. I"ve found nothing documented to back this up but a LOT of owners here seem to share the same story with me.

Maybe it wont be that bad, and hopefully the excessive amount of black spots on the walls and ceilings of my garage (which is where a majority of the plumbing is located) are just dirt.

Regardless, I feel pretty manipulated and want to punch the seller in her stupid nose. Of course I"d never hit anyone, but there"s nothing wrong with wishing I could!

I would HIGHLY recommend hiring one of these environmental hygienists when making an investment like this. Not only do they look for damage and test a lot of crap (using little tubey cameras and inferred). They also write a full report, give you a damage assessment, approximate cost of repair and recommendation ("fix it now or end up with brain damage"). In addition to that, they also tell you the approximate "age" of the damage and mold, which is nice in the event you already bought the house. In most states, the statue of limitation starts the day you discover the problem, I think something else applied, but thats what my attorney told me. She"s going to handle everything, which will start with a simple letter demanding the seller pay or go to litigation (then shes facing repair costs, attorney fees, lost time, and maybe even charges for lying on the disclosure).

Mine is coming today, so I"m dying to know what all is going on. I feel like my house is getting an AIDS test.

We just bought a place in San Diego and our inspector used infra red cameras to check the walls for mold and all of that. Some inspectors do I believe.

The funny thing was, some company came to do our air vents and tried to tell us there was mold in the vents and showed us the positive test. They then tried to sell us some expensive sanitation package. They told my wife first and she asked if they found or suspected mold why they would proceed to vacuum the vents and kick it all up in the air throughout the ventilation system. She asked a few more questions and they downplayed it and stopped talking about it completely. Was strange. I would imagine the inspector that came just two weeks earlier would have found the problem.

My inspector seemed pretty comprehensive when I watched him do his thing, but now that I"ve been in my house for a little less than a year it"s pretty clear that he was blowing smoke up my ass. Next time I"ll know better. I still love my place, but all the little things I"m finding are starting to add up. I"m about to have to cut into my bathroom wall to fix a pinhole leak in a pipe, for instance.

How in the shit is an inspector supposed to find a pinhole leak on a pipe that can make itself known at any time? Shit, I"ve seen baseboard nails that puncture pipes hold for 2 years before letting go when they rust out. It"s just shitty luck.

If you have hot water recirculation and copper water lines, you may want to have a plumber come and make sure that it"s balanced properly and that the pump isn"t sending water flying through the lines, because copper pits out very easily when exposed to high water velocity. If it"s been doing it for a few years, you"re fucked and your recirc line is likely paper thin and will continually spring random leaks until it"s replaced. This has been a huge problem in hotels and apartments in Edmonton for awhile, ever since they changed how they soften the water. Or rather, the utility stopped softening the water at all and the increased hardness appears to eat away at copper tube faster. Meanwhile engineers being the impractical dumbasses they tend to be continue merrily spec"ing recirc pumps that are four times as large as they need to be, then blame the plumber when leaks pop up everywhere. Even though he refused to allow CPVC piping that will last forever because he"s a fuddy duddy weirdo stuck in the 70"s and everything has to be metal. But I digress....

It"s shitty luck, yeah. I just used that as the most recent example. The one that really bugged me was that he did an inspection on my furnace which had an attached electronic air filter, but never bothered to check the filter despite it being part of the unit. When I found out later on that the air filter was totally dead, he basically told me to fuck off when I called him about it. I"ve since modified it so that I just use normal, disposable HEPA filters, but that"s not really the point.

I dunno, when there"s a big red button on the air filter I kinda expect him to push it and make sure it turns on. If it was a separate unit I"d maybe understand, but it"s an integral part of the furnace.

At any rate, it was easily fixed by removing the guts of it and buying a HEPA filter.

Ravvenn said:

(using little tubey cameras and inferred)

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=(

TheCutlery said:

Ugh, don"t go that route. My wife insisted on using her Uncle as our realtor, I"ll never use family/friends for anything again.

If you feel someone working for you isn"t doing their job, you gotta get rid of them. That conversation is much harder with people you know and are going to have to see again. I"d strongly advise against that course of action.

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YMMV but dude is right. I spent 6 months with a family friend bringing houses to HIS attention, going into houses getting no advice, hell I was generally clueless he was not even remotely aggressive when I"d even DISCUSS offers. I kept chocking it up to those TV realtors/shows being over dramatic. The guy was a glorified locksmith for all intensive purposes. I"ve been doing my research but cmon you see an obvious problem let me know what you think! I"m guessing he probably just had a general disinterest, don"t know, don"t care at this point.

I ended up going with my friends realtor whom he had purchased a house with last year. I was under contract 2 weeks later from calling the guy, and I close April 28th!

Which is taking far too long to get here!

Just found thistoolfor anyone wanting to compare Rent vs. Buy. It"s from the New York Times and is a lot easier to use then some of the ones we have linked on these forums in the past, otherwise I wouldn"t have bothered...

And while the going theory on renting is that renting for 30 years will leave you enough cash to buy your house outright, I still have never seen, heard, or read of any cases of the average person putting that theory to the test while I have heard countless examples to the contrary.

That"s a great link, thanks.

As far as it being better in the long run to rent or not, as you say, perhaps you can make an academic argument for renting but the practical reality is that most people just don"t have the financial discipline for it to play out the way it does in the ideal scenario. They"ll just spend whatever they"re saving by renting.

That is a pretty easy to use tool with a fair amount of customization. I am going to have to agree with your assessment on the topic though. One of the variables with the most sensitivity in that tool is the annual return on investments. It is assuming that a) you actually can earn that on average and b) you plow all of your cash into that account, always.

The 5% return over time is feasible if we are talking lifetime. But I don"t know anyone who is comfortable putting almost all of their extra cash into an investment account and tying it up for the next 30+ years. Your stomach will really be turning if the market takes a dump like we recently saw and you don"t have anything tangible to show for it (not that homeowners fared particularly better return wise, but they still had a physical asset at the end of the day)

The tool is essentially comparing two investment opportunities. In either case, you will be dropping a shit load of money, that you can"t touch as cash again for a long time, into something that has risky returns.

Personally, the preferred route for me is getting a house paid in full and freeing my cash flows on a monthly basis. Think of how much cash you would have if you never had to pay rent or mortgage payments ever again. That"s why you always see silver haired dudes in sports cars. 600 a month seems like change when you are now pocketing the ~2k that used to go toward your housing.

Tyreny said:

That is a pretty easy to use tool with a fair amount of customization. I am going to have to agree with your assessment on the topic though. One of the variables with the most sensitivity in that tool is the annual return on investments. It is assuming that a) you actually can earn that on average and b) you plow all of your cash into that account, always.

The 5% return over time is feasible if we are talking lifetime. But I don"t know anyone who is comfortable putting almost all of their extra cash into an investment account and tying it up for the next 30+ years. Your stomach will really be turning if the market takes a dump like we recently saw and you don"t have anything tangible to show for it (not that homeowners fared particularly better return wise, but they still had a physical asset at the end of the day)

The tool is essentially comparing two investment opportunities. In either case, you will be dropping a shit load of money, that you can"t touch as cash again for a long time, into something that has risky returns.

Personally, the preferred route for me is getting a house paid in full and freeing my cash flows on a monthly basis. Think of how much cash you would have if you never had to pay rent or mortgage payments ever again. That"s why you always see silver haired dudes in sports cars. 600 a month seems like change when you are now pocketing the ~2k that used to go toward your housing.

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Yeah thats the hard part. Actually putting away what your saving rather than just spending it, for me at least. When I was saving to buy my R1, I transferred the money every week to my brokerage account. Never traded with it, just took it away from my easy grasp so that I would both feel poor, and not have easy access to it for spending

I fucking love not having a mortgage payment any more. Not for any practical reason like I have more money to spend, it just feels better somehow not paying one every week or month.

I know there are a ton of factors when determining the true value of a property, but is there some general rule of thumb of about how low of an offer you can make on a bank-owned property that"s not "insulting" to them?

Dunno about general rule of thumb, but my current place (living there and slowly fixing it with my dad) was a foreclosure.

Bank wanted $250k. I got it for $222k. Great thing, its easily a $300k neighborhood once we"re done polishing the place up

Most of the time they want to get it off their books. You can low ball more than you could if it was another person selling it, but still have to be somewhat reasonable.


Edit: Also this is in an area of Canada that weathered the recession very very well, so if you"re in a part of the States that got pretty hard you can probably low ball even more, supply / demand and all that.

Lefazz said:

I know there are a ton of factors when determining the true value of a property, but is there some general rule of thumb of about how low of an offer you can make on a bank-owned property that"s not "insulting" to them?

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You might be able to offer less if your overall offer is solid. For example: a House is listed at 235K. Buyer A offers 225K and FHA financing with minimum down. Buyer B offers 215K, conventional financing, and 20% down. If the seller is concerned about a sure thing, he might go with Buyer B.

Anyway, take a look at how long the property has been listed. If it"s been up for a couple months, that might let you go considerably lower on the offer, especially if nothing else in the neighborhood has been selling.

But, if it"s a new listing, consider competing bids. If there is immediate local demand (if you have a seller"s agent, you might be able to find out how many showings have been scheduled), you might not be able to go much lower than asking if you want to have a prayer.

The house we"re currently settling on wasn"t a foreclosure, but it had six offers within 48 hours of the initial listing. When the seller countered our offer with $5,000 above asking, we had to accept. Still crossing fingers on this one...