Buying A House: C or D?

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.

congrats! here's hoping your agent doesn't run away with your deed

ok i'm gonna start working on this for real

Keep going back and forth about it. Inventory seems tight, I hate bidding war situations. May just want to save some more money, wait a few years, buy something better.

it's starting to look a lot more difficult here than last year when i was just kind of thinking about it. they even did a thing on npr about houses in baltimore being listed for 2 days. hopefully not so much in neighborhoods i'm looking at.

guy i know in chicopee just sold his house in 23 hours! they have to be out in 2 weeks. a couple of years ago it would have taken him...uh...a couple of years to sell his house.

buy now or be priced out forever!

The downside is...Chicopee. I mean, it's nice proximity-wise, but there's not a lot going on in the town itself. Wait, except for the Hu-Ke-Lau. OK, that probably makes it worth it.

xp

come on, what more could you ask for?? its even blessed by jeebus!

http://www.trulia.com/property/1044612503-165-Main-St-Charlemont-MA-01339#photo-1

not far from me. right up the road as the crow flies. charlemont is so pretty. can't believe nobody has bought it yet.

I wonder what denomination it was.

Basically, fuck a building society. Failing to send out docs, failing to action the ones they have, falling to meet their internal timelines... To cut a long story short, they have only sent their surveyor out today. We're going to have no option but to move out to hold on to our seller while the ogre end gets worked out. Hopefully it'll only be a week or so.

Contracts exchanged, out in two weeks. Have offered completion dates on our purchase without being able to exchange yet and two enquiries still outstanding. AAAARGH.

Good luck, hope it's all downhill from here. You're purchasing the one you were after originally?

Not originally originally, but the first one I mentioned on here, yes.

Well, we moved out last Friday and have finally exchanged on our purchase to complete next Tuesday. Nearly, NEARLY over.

I'll post more details once I can look back and laugh about it, but NEVER go to Barclays/Woolwich for a mortgage.

Good to hear! Are you renting in the meantime?
my quality of life is so much better now i'm on a main bus route, thanks to moving.

Because it was for such a short time we've just used cheap hotels. Having to do it for another weekend is a pain, but I'll get over it.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02576/Over-valued_and_un_2576718b.jpg

what is that from and what is it based on? I just read that the price-to-income ratio in the US has gone up massively in the past year or two.

i saw it here, but it's originally from the economist

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/houseprices/10088467/OECD-British-house-prices-are-31-too-high.html

sorry, no, it's originally from the OECD, but there was this in the economist a couple of weeks ago

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21578043-our-latest-round-up-house-prices-reveals-some-sharp-contrasts-boom-and-gloom

that graph is what i'm going to show to my mum every time she tells me i "need" to get on the "ladder"

i think i found a house i want to make an offer on. feels weird, i'm not sure i can do it.

Made an offer on another co-op. Think we may have found a diamond in the rough -- place was on the market 220 days and just reduced, and I think the real problem was that the owners had so much clutter and crap in there and a lot of ugly furniture and blinds and such that it didn't show well. But great light, trees right outside the windows, good layout, nice kitchen, etc.

Is that chart saying that US houses are UNDERPRICED? Seems hard to believe.

yeah I also find that hard to believe

If it's relative to rent, it might just be that rent is unusually high right now (which it is)