Buying A House: C or D?

FFS. Withdrawn his offer after some personal issues with his partner that he wouldn't discuss with the agent.

Agggh.. Sorry to hear. Cannot believe how long this process is taking. Covering solicitor p much flapped for two weeks and stressed us out immensely. Proper woman came back and sorted a bunch of shit out in a single day.

You'd think it would be easy to transfer shitloads of money, wouldn't you?

check this baby out. 135K. killer barn too. you know you want to move to greenfield now.

http://www.newenglandmoves.com/property/details/557406/MLS-71465706/143-Wells-Street-Greenfield-MA-01301.aspx

The cheap real estate in W.MA kind of boggles my mind.

Well, that's it, I capitulated and am selling. It was nice having a house but it's clear I'm not up to snuff, just as well.

I have to be more competitive in life and more responsible and that means selling. I can't wait until the market turns around, I have to make some more responsible career and financial moves and move on in life.

I'm going back to renting, it's the more responsible thing for me at this time.

Good luck.

Our first viewing of the year is in 5 minutes. Hopefully this is going to work out, I'm getting sick of it.

Good luck. Our sale is being dragged out, with days I feel like i'm taking crazy pills and nights where I can't sleep. It's making us both really exhausted on top of a bunch of other shit.

We have two different people coming back for second viewings this week. Hopefully that means this is all coming to an end.

I have been a nervous wreck this weekend, don't want to discuss on public board but things could've gone horribly wrong. Think we are about there, over four months later and obscene amounts of money lighter. Can tell you which solicitors to avoid, if you like :)

I never updated the thread! But I am stupidly happy in my new house. We have a surprise pond with frogs and our own front door and a nice GREEN room and the location is proving to be even better than I imagined - we're in 10 minutes' walk of pretty much everything. The previous owner has done tons of useful stuff that we didn't really notice before (like putting in lights in cupboards that turn on when you open the door, lots of network sockets everywhere, a water filter) which is a great surprise.
Really need to make a complaint about the way the solicitors treated our case but I also don't want to sit down and drag up a load of hassle again. THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT.
How's it going Aldo?

Still here.

We had a guy who insisted on a survey into the damp in the cellar (which was exactly the sort of non-event with minimal cost to fix that we suspected) who's completely gone to ground - had the flu and was out of circulation for over a week, and isn't returning calls this week.

The vicar that came back for a second viewing got convinced by her daughters (who came for the second viewing) that what she really wants is a new build on a housing estate 6 miles outside of her parish rather than a Victorian house in it.

The guy that was supposed to be coming for a second viewing the same week as the vicar didn't manage to do so until last weekend. Apparently he got quite involved in buying somewhere else in the interim, but the chain was too difficult for him so he pulled out, but ours is a really simple one. He's now talking to a friend who's an architect (who supposedly viewed in his own right some time ago, back before we changed agents) about what can be done with the basement but we are "top of his options", whatever that means.

New viewings today and Saturday on the calendar.

Something has to happen soon. We're holding off a price drop until mid-March, although we've got a red dot on RightMove that says 'Open to offers' which seems to have sustained footfall. The agent has shown us their metrics and we're consistently out-performing other houses in their office in terms of interest and viewings so he just thinks we need to wait for Mr Right.

We had a lot of viewings before we got a bite, which kind of baffled the agents. Good luck though.
Anyway I have just seen a place on rightmove that is nearly as good as ours (the living room and bedroom look identical, down to the paint colours and cornicing) but for about 25% less. Would've likely bought it if we'd seen it first! Grr.. ours needs less work, I suppose.

I was going to bump this. We had the guy round for a THIRD viewing on Saturday, this time with the aforementioned friend. She's given him a shitload of ideas about what he wants to do, and he's knocking money off for every new idea - which has taken him down to a number which is, frankly, insulting. Part of me thinks it could just be a cack-handed attempt to find out what our bottom line is, part of me just wants to tell him to fuck off.

nice one near us. come to god's country!

http://www.trulia.com/property/1055922337-39-Riddell-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

couple more nice ones:

http://www.trulia.com/property/1040601802-31-West-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

http://www.trulia.com/property/3109914305-3-Grove-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

i don't know if the chickens come with that last one...

those prices!

my 2 bed flat in London costs nearly double all those gigantic 4 bed houses

western MA real estate will make you cry if you don't live in western MA

Holy crap at those prices. I've found I really, really hate anyone asking how much I've paid for my house, because I know it is probably a bit more than people would expect to want to pay, and I have tons of friends desperately saving for their first place. Is it rude to say you don't want to tell them?

considering pulling the trigger on a queens coop. gonna make an offer and see how it do.

in forest hillz?

Is it rude to say you don't want to tell them?

Not as far as I'm concerned. And after Scott's links there's no way I'm saying what our sale price is or what we're prepared to pay for the house we want.

ha! well, it ain't city living around here. so many nice old houses though. you gotta like old houses. if you have a little more cash to burn you can get yourself some sweet 4000 sf beauties:

http://www.trulia.com/property/3070589141-19-Highland-Ave-Greenfield-MA-01301

I bid 50k over asking price for a house last week and it went for 85k over. The Bay area is rough.

in forest hillz?

― iatee, Tuesday, February 26, 2013 3:39 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, saw a place that has most of what we want, feel like there's no other neighborhood where we're going to get what we want in our price range zoned for a good public school

xp polyphonic, what parts are you looking at? we started looking a couple years ago now, first in el cerrito... too pricey, so then the annex... that's skyrocketed, so now we're looking at north&east richmond :/ there are a lot of really nice small areas in richmond, not even including the hills, but they're surrounded by super sketchy areas which is tough if you don't drive.

http://thumbs.trulia-cdn.com/pictures/thumbs_4/ps.49/7/2/6/0/picture-uh=38f14459bea7f705a3c391e2d2fdf0-ps=7260421eef2f9cad3125e2f89a60b8.jpg

trying to parse this room

what parts are you looking at?

My range is El Cerrito to Eastmont Hills, nothing west of Foothill.

ugh, apt we want supposedly has three offers, although none at the listing price (all the broker will tell us). Hard not to offer more than you originally wanted to offer under that circumstance, even knowing they could all be low offers.

trying to parse this room

everything about that room SCREAMS "New England" to me, I assume it's from one of Scott's listings?

Well, we made an offer on the place that has three offers. We'll see. I don't intend to get pushed into a bidding war, and will probably say no thanks to anything over the listing price. Number of listings in my area is a little low right now other than overpriced/unsellable stuff that has been on the market forever, so I think that accounts for the multiple offers.

FWIW I offered only a few percent below the list (which seemed high) but asked for seller to pay all closing costs. Hoping to substantially out-offer the others on the first shot. We're also not using a broker, which ideally means they get to keep more of the price we pay.

Apartment is good space-wise, layout is reasonable, renovations are basically perfect (new everything, we like the style, nothing needs to be done), good light, etc. Building is nice, very affordable, good school zone, close to train. Neighborhood actually seems like something of a steal right now compared to "hot" areas of Brooklyn and Queens, probably because it's mostly middle class Chinese, Russian, Israeli middle class people who don't care so much about having a farm-to-table restaurant or an art gallery scene.

What do you mean by 'we're not using a broker'? They put the house on the market without a real estate agent?
Good luck, anyhow, sounds good. If you're genuine and non-flaky you prob stand a good chance tbh

I mean no buyer's broker, seller's only.

Buyer's broker is an alien concept to me!

Two agents talking to each other this morning. No fingers left to cross.

Agents were the ones who actually got shit done ime...

Still talking. JUST AGREE YOU CNUTS.

Agents were the ones who actually got shit done ime...

― kinder, Thursday, March 7, 2013 8:19 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure I follow. In New York, the agent who works for the person selling the place is called a seller's agent or listing agent. That person works for the seller and not you, and therefore is acting in the seller's best interests and not yours. If you have your own broker/agent, that's a buyer's broker/agent.

btw didn't get the apt. Already starting to feel like the market in my neighborhood is getting artificially hot, or at least sellers are getting crazy ideas -- I keep seeing list prices that are like 50% over the sale price seven years ago. There's no justification for that. Haven't seen any evidence that those sellers are actually getting what they're asking though, so \o/

We only have selling agents here, but because of chains the agent selling the property you want to buy often deals with the agent selling your property.

I was a seller in the above btw. I mean the house w were buying had a seller's agent too but we had zero hassle with buying

buyers agent saved us from shitloads of pitfalls, i would never buy a house without one.

FWIW, there seems to be kind of a rental investment property craze going on, so don't get carried away trying to buy a place. Foreign groups, big investment firms, etc. are swooping in and buying up huge numbers of properties.

Man, real estate in this city. At first I thought FH was full of deals -- huge apartments for much lower prices, but now I'm seeing the condition of a lot of these places in pre-war apartments. It's not so much that I have high standards as the question of whether I want to bother to buy something that will ultimately need a good amount of work or might even be hard to resell. Meanwhile, gentrified brooklyn pushes ever southward and eastward, and the areas we could afford are mostly a pretty long commute.

Accepted an offer and had ours accepted. Letters of introduction going out on our sale today and our purchase tomorrow.

I feel like I can begin to feel confident things are going to go well, not least because everybody is looking for a quick (4-6 weeks) exchange but I'm not counting any chickens.

Congrats Aldo, hopefully the pain you've had so far is the sum total of pain the process and it runs nice and easy from here.

Of course, as luck would have it we're on holiday during the process. Which probably means we'll need to give power of attorney to the agent.