[thegeriatric]

Originally Posted by alcimedes My only advice would be to keep in mind that when you're buying a house what you're really buying is the neighborhood. You can make a lot of changes to a house. Can't do shit about the neighbors.

Uk estate agents have a saying. " there are 3 important things when buying a property. Location, Location, Location"

Best of luck.

[turtle]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu Oh I'm going to get an inspection if the offer is accepted and the sale will be contingent on the inspection. I'm just curious as to how much trust you can put into the Sellers Declaration before the actual inspection.

Personally I used those as points to key into looking at during my walk throughs. I also made sure that I looked over other parts too. Basically you have to decide if you have faith in their word. Sure you could sue later, but it would really have to be worth it.

[jdcfsu]

The house I was targeting went under contract so it's back to the preverbal drawing board that comes in the form of Realtor.com, Zillow, and my realtors MLS emails. The fact that I'm not really disappointed tells me I shouldn't have gone for that house in the first place. It's a point to learn from.

[Partial]

I wouldn't get a house yet unless your heart is set on it. Housing is picking up slightly because of 8k tax credit the past few months but are likely going to drop even lower (in my opinion, anyway) over the next few months.

My advice would be to buy a piece of house that you can pay off fully in 5 years. If you need a bigger house, then sell it after it's paid off and use 100% of the proceeds as a down payment and pay off the next one in five years. I'm of the belief as the baby boomers inch closer to retirement many, many markets are going to be very volatile. I'm considering putting 10k into gold right now.

[jdcfsu]

I currently have a realtor but do I need a lawyer too? I ask because I was watching one of those first time home buyer shows on HGTV and the realtor mentioned a stipulation of the lawyer. What do you homeowners suggest?

[turtle]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu I currently have a realtor but do I need a lawyer too? I ask because I was watching one of those first time home buyer shows on HGTV and the realtor mentioned a stipulation of the lawyer. What do you homeowners suggest?

Don't get a lawyer because the price is way to high for normal real estate buying. Get a good title company though who knows what's going on and willing to put time in. My lawyer recommended me one because it cost me $487.50 for 1.5 hours of his time going through the docs over the phone. For everything the title company cost us about $1500. This included the survey of the property.

[jdcfsu]

Hum, you bring up another question Turtle. Realistically, what do I need to look at paying prior to closing. There's the title company you mentioned, there's the inspector, and closing costs. Am I missing something? Or are the title company and the inspector connected?

[turtle]

Our home inspection was out of pocket. The survey was with the title company and the wood consuming insect report was on the seller. The title company cleared the title and verified the sale was good to go.

As for what you'll need to bring tothe table, that's up to the deal you make with the seller. We got the seller to give $10k in closing cost assistance. This meant it cost us a total of ~$2000 out of pocket. If my points were lower it wouldn't have cost us anything to move in.

[Kickaha]

Timely thread - we just had an offer accepted, starting the closing process ourselves.

[jdcfsu]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Timely thread - we just had an offer accepted, starting the closing process ourselves.

Congratulations! I hope to be in your position very soon.

[BuonRotto]

Ah, money pits.

[Yontsey]

Speaking of title companies, like turtle mentioned, get a good one. I signed papers on a foreclosure last year on June 6th that had a lien on it and it went on til November when we fired them because they weren't getting any results. We switched to Chicago Title Service and they had everything done in less then a month. Highly recommend them and they have a great reputation.

That being said, when you start to work on your house and remodel it if you do and all that jazz, whatever your budget is, figure it to be 50-100% more then what you anticipate, haha. I quickly learned that.

You're right there. I've owned a house for 11 years now and every year there is considerable financial outlay for some kind of repairs/maintenance. You never really get a break from it. That, combined with a garden makes for a lot of additional work on top of your standard employment. The only thing good about it is that it's still better than apartment living. You can't depend on the home inspector to give you enough info about a home before you purchase it either. Mine spoke in generalities without getting to the nitty-gritty of what eventual costs of repair would likely be. For example, telling us that the home "may need to have the drainage improved in the future". Some problems can cost thousands to fix, so beware!

Originally Posted by BuonRotto Ah, money pits.

a good do-it-yourself spray foam insulation.

[jdcfsu]

So does anyone know anything about short sales? I'm still waiting for the bank negotiator to contact me. Has anyone been here? Is there anything I can do to speed the process up?

[Yontsey]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu So does anyone know anything about short sales? I'm still waiting for the bank negotiator to contact me. Has anyone been here? Is there anything I can do to speed the process up?

Unfortunately, the only thing I've ever been told about short sales is to stay away from them. My lawyer and my real estate agent both said they didn't want to get involved with them because there are too many headaches and they're very unreliable. I wish you the best of luck though.

[jdcfsu]

So after some prying with the listing agent I have a counter offer from the bank and have accepted it. I can close by August 9th as long as everything pans out properly!

My question now is regarding the home inspection, which I'm hoping can be tomorrow or the next day. Other than what they do normally, is there anything I should specifically ask or have them look for?

[kieran]

Congrats man. Seems like a long time, but glad everything is working out for you.

For my inspection, I just asked them to make sure every outlet/switch/faucet/ lever/toilet, etc... worked. Nothing major. The big stuff is obvious, but sometimes you forget about switches and stuff.

Good luck.

[jdcfsu]

Inspection is tomorrow so I hope that all goes well.

Here's another question though. My lender told me that I can buy a half a point for about $220 and save $6 a month off the payments. Is that worth it? By my math if I say in the house 3+ years then it's a good deal, but it's just all new to me.

[jdcfsu]

Inspection went very well. Roof is about five years old and everything else looks really good!

Now there is the issue of insurance and finalizing my loan/passing FHA approval. The bank (seller) will be ready to close on Aug 9 but my lender said a more realistic timeframe, given FHA, is end of Aug. So I'm almost there.

[jdcfsu]

Here's a long bump for those interested:

It's hard to believe the inspection was back in mid July and I thought that closing could happen sometime mid-August. So much has happened since then.

The appraisal came back $25k less than contract so some renegotiating needed to happen. Once that all settled out (seemingly six weeks later) I'm steeling the house at a price that I couldn't even imagine when I started the process. The good news is the bank and the short sale department have finally completed all their crap and I have a closing date set for Friday.

If anyone is reading this thread thinking about buying a short sale, be prepared to wait FOREVER and deal with not knowing anything throughout the entire process.

Oh, and have really amazing friends that will house you when your other place' lease runs out in the middle of the process.

[BuonRotto]

Glad it's working out. Even here where housing prices aren't down per se, nothing is moving. There is no point of lowering prices if no ones even looking to buy. Even short sales aren't getting attention.

[jessetrent]

Contact Gary Parker. He helped me alot with my house. You can also contact him by going and filling a simple form: garybuyshouses.com for more information.

—

This is clearly an advert and you are clearly a spammer. Go away!

~ Kscherer

[psmith2.0]

Swing away, Ken. With extreme prejudice. This one ain’t like the other day.

[turtle]

I find it amazing that this actually got a post with a link that is mildly relevant to the thread. I mean, it is spam but at least it connects some how. Still, spam is spam and reviving an almost ten year old thread seems so wrong.

[psmith2.0]

Yeah, sometimes it's hard to tell. Perhaps I'm wrong on this one, who knows. But my natural gut instinct, seeing a decade-old resurrected thread from a brand new member doing little more than posting a link, is to assume it's you-know-what. That is the established M.O. of the canned lunch meat crowd, correct?

My apologies to Mr./Mrs. Trent if I'm wrong...I'd sure hate to be the reason some well-intentioned soul erroneously winds up with a red name (and a dent from a freshly-swung ban-hammer).

[kscherer]

Yeah, wishful thinking there, Paul.

Linking to a place trying to "buy your house"? That's not the "Trents" looking for a home, that's the "Trents" trying to drive our members to a likely scam site to suck money from their pockets.

Nope!

FYI: We haven't had a new, functioning member join the site in years. Thus, I'm skeptical of any and all new "members" who lead off with a link.

[psmith2.0]

I was wondering about that the other day, how long it's been since a new, non-spamming person has registered here (and actively participated/contributed without one bit of link-laying or other questionable activity). Years, you say? Dang...I didn't realize that.

I guess the lack of genuine excitement/thrills from the mothership, combined with the explosion in social media (other ways for folks to connect/jibber-jabber) both factor into that? It ain't 2000-2008 anymore, after all, and the Turtlenecked One has now been gone for well over eight years...

Things just ain't what they once was, huh? Life moves on, cruelly and coldly at times...sometimes the good ol' days were exactly just that.

[kscherer]

It has been over 5 years since Bruce "rejoined" as Dr. Bobsky. Since then, there has been exactly 1 new member with more than 10 posts, and that member hasn't posted in over 4 years.

We have a thread discussing it over here.

[kieran]

This place has basically been the same group of people posting for the last 5-6 years, with sporadic posting from others who used to posted a lot more frequently, myself included.

It's still nice to have a place with a core group and familiar people talking about the same old stuff.

Really glad you've stuck around Scates. Now, let's get some of the other older members back posting again..

[kscherer]

Kickaha popped in a couple times the past few months, and then he crawled back into his hole. We need that dude from Caddyshack to roust him out!

But, yes, Kieran, you are otherwise correct. A small handful of us have nothing better to do.