Home buying thread

lol, jesus titty fuck, it"s still $250k+ for a decent bungalow in Edmonton. And that"s for one that"s 40-60 years old with not much work in an established, older neighbourhood or for a carbon copy chicken coup out in the boondocks. Even single bedroom condos are still $150k+ for something decent. And that"s after the market corrected 10% from the peak.

It"s unreal how much the market imploded in some parts of the US.

TheCutlery said:

Yeah, prices still coming down very, very slowly here. They"re obviously down, but it"s a catch 22 of people who need to sell who can"t take what the house is really worth because they owe more than that on the mortgage. Right now, really the only people who can buy a house are the people who don"t own one currently, because there"s just no fucking way you"re getting rid of your house right now if you buy a new one. It"ll be a long time yet I think before the market clears out enough for the current home owners to be able to jump back in the game and play too, and that means that prices are likely to drop further where I am right now until there"s some breathing room and we"re back to a balanced market.

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well, the house is "really worth" only what someone is willing to pay for it. and if they owe more mortgage on it than what people are willing to pay, its really worth less than zero.

if those people have the cash for a downpayment, they can always buy the new house and rent out the old one. rentals in some areas can come very close to covering the mortgage and costs. if it doesnt, sometimes you can refinance to lower the cost to bring the cash flow not so negative.

Cad said:

Here"s a decent kitchen for reference.

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If my grading scale for home kitchens was Low-end, decent, high-end and outrageous then that kitchen would be high end. Would you still call that kitchen only decent?

I.E. Low end kitchen would be like your basic apartment.
Decent kitchen would be your standard kitchen home and most stock built home kitchens.
High end kitchen would be marble counter-tops, all stainless steel appliances, two+ stoves, dishwashers, sinks, etc. Most high end stock built home kitchens and so on.
Outrageous would be all of the above plus heated floors, engraved walls, custom paint jobs, walk in wine cabinets etc.

just my opinion

If that"s your ideal decent kitchen then what"s high end? outrageous?

So, here I am at 25, married a year, and realizing that my money is disappearing the form of rent each month. I"m debt free, with each of us owning our cars, but not really in much of a position for a down payment yet. Both my wife and are kinda hoodlums, not planning on having kids for a bit, and wouldn"t mind living somewhere that doesn"t look terrifically pretty.

We"d like to start building equity instead of hooking up my brainless landlord with monies each month (one month our rent check died in the mail because the stamp got stuck to something else we were sending, so there was no stamp on it. We didn"t get it back for 3 weeks, and our landlord never noticed, but got confused when we sent him double rent the next month...)

How soon should we start looking? What resources can we use to find foreclosures, etc? What credits are available for us? We have dual income, with mine being around 40k, hers being around 20k (wiki says the median household income for here is 35k), and that counts me being a student. How expensive of a place should we aim for? We don"t really care about the whole "i"m a land owner" warmfuzzies, but we just want to be smarter with our money.

Additionally, we"re planning on moving out of the country in the future... Hopefully 8 or so years from now. She"s graduated with an international relations degree, I"m working on my masters for it, so that we can work in humanitarian aid overseas... In the meantime, we"d love it if the money we"re paying each month is something thats worth 1/2 a house"s worth in 8 years, instead of 10k/year just disappearing.

8 years is not a bad timeframe to have a house before selling it but you should probably get into one sooner rather then later. If your going to be in a house under 5 years itmaynot be worth it and it may take you 6 months to sell the one you have.

with a combined income of 75k you could easily get something up to 200k, however, there is absolutely no reason to do so and I wouldn"t recommend it. I would suggest aiming about 100-150k which should cost you between $900-$1500 a month in rent. (Depends on interest rates etc.) It greatly depends on your area but 100-150K home around here($1,200 monthly payments) gets youthis

2444 Sq. Ft. 2 Stories
4 Bedrooms
2 Full / 1 Half Bath
1 Living Area
1 Dining Area
2 Car Garages

Now that is a built home and not an existing or foreclosed one which you might find a better deal on. I"m just sticking to the knowledge I can give you with absolute confidence having done it within the past 3 years.

If this is your first time buying a home you can get FHA and not have to put more then a few hundred dollars down as a downpayment. Naturally the more you can save the better but just talk to a mortgage company about FHA and they will tell you. Also this is a pretty nice looking neighberhood to live in..

So move somewhere cheaper.

ToeMissile said:

My sisters just bought a house (1700sqft, 4bd, 2.5ba, all appliances except a fridge)about 40 min outside of Phoenixand their mortgage is less than what they were paying for a 2/1 apt. Cost them $85k

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Yup. That"s why.

Eomer said:

lol, jesus titty fuck, it"s still $250k+ for a decent bungalow in Edmonton. And that"s for one that"s 40-60 years old with not much work in an established, older neighbourhood or for a carbon copy chicken coup out in the boondocks. Even single bedroom condos are still $150k+ for something decent. And that"s after the market corrected 10% from the peak.

It"s unreal how much the market imploded in some parts of the US.

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And to link this thread to the other one, if Edmonton is like Calgary such a place would cost ~1200$ per month to rent giving you a rent:buy ratio of 200+ indicating that properties are overvalued.

You gotta build for cheap, then sell after 2 years of living there and take the profit. Roll that profit into your next house you build, and do it again. Do this 4-5 times over a 10 year period, and eventually you can build your house for cash.

My cousin has done this, and right now as it stands, his next house should be nearly mortgage free.

Zeste said:

You gotta build for cheap, then sell after 2 years of living there and take the profit. Roll that profit into your next house you build, and do it again. Do this 4-5 times over a 10 year period, and eventually you can build your house for cash.

My cousin has done this, and right now as it stands, his next house should be nearly mortgage free.

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Build new houses for cheap, and sell for profit?

Please, expand on this process.

Unless he is building the house himself literally or getting materials at cost, I call BS.

But if Zeste can map it out and prove it I"ll eat my hat.

Picasso said:

Build new houses for cheap, and sell for profit?

Please, expand on this process.

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It"s not really a process.

Both sides of my/our family are builders and developers. Very, very successful builders and developers for probably 40-50 years? Mine and my cousins grandpa started building in Hollywood in the 50-60"s and retired here in Utah in like the 70"s at 40 something years old.

This cousin of mine, is the son of my aunt who runs my dads trust and estate. Her and my uncle live on a 500 acre ranch and my uncle flies his helicopter to and from the ranch and the city.

To say that my family, and my cousin, have an intimate, expert, and shrewd knowledge of building and real estate is an understatement. I doubt anyone else could have done what he did, I know I sure as hell didn"t. And right now, you"re not going to be able to. But he"s 29 and on his 5th home he"s built. The market is upside down, and it could be a few more years before people are buying homes again, but at this time, he"s already purchased the land he plans to build his 6th and final home on, and before the collapse of 2009, had I think 400-500 in equity in his current house. The knowledge wasn"t passed down to me by my dad, obviously, but in a nutshell (what they"ve told me) is that they build very smart homes in smart areas, wait 2 years to sell (to avoid capital gains tax) and then roll that money into a similar home.

Clearly, its a .01% of the population situation. But my aunt and uncle, they are the absolute (rich as fuck) poster children for the SMART way to run your money and developments over the last 10 years, and out of a dying city of former builders and developers, they are still far, far into the black and doing very very well.


It"s probably way too late for anyone to ever be able to do it like that for the next 10-15 years, but my cousin and his parents did everything totally RIGHT during the boom, and now the bust. Never got greedy, reinvested EVERY cent back into their companies with the crazy "early 2000"s profit" everyone was making, and now in 2009 when everyone is losing their developments and have huge multimillion dollar loans they can"t pay back on huge tracts of land, they have hundreds and hundreds of acres basically paid for and are the only game left in town.



And to sorta go back to my livejournal thread about my credit card debt: this is why my aunt won"t bail me out or loan me money to consolidate my debt. She"s too smart with her, and my, money, to just let me dig a hole deeper.