Buying A House: C or D?

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)

got a hot one for you guys. pretty as a picture. western mass awaits you...

http://www.trulia.com/property/3096729051-73-Beacon-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

sweet cobblestone wall!

fucking damnit man, all that can be yours for $169,000? Why do I live in New York again?

Wow, awesome house!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so, uh, our offer was accepted.

But now I have a question that I should have asked before: the people don't have an apartment yet. What do we do to protect ourselves? Like what if they take forever to find a place?

Your possession date depends on them finding an apartment? Usually it's the other way around.

Nothing depends on anything yet, we don't have a contract put together yet. So I guess we just get a firm possession date and other than that it's their problem?

Yeah, you agree on a possession date and put that in the contract. You can negotiate for the timing that's best for you. Most sellers want the possession date moved up to limit their mortgage (interest) payments and taxes on a house they're walking away from anyway. They'll be highly motivated to find a new place -- it's on them to be out of the place by the date you've agreed to.

Since your contract isn't put together yet, I'd strongly suggest you attach a house inspection as a condition of closing, with an option to withdraw or amend your offer based on the results. Long time on the market with recently reduced price might mean a previous sale has fallen through for some good reason. If your inspector finds something significant you'll be able to take that into account in negotiating a fair price.

walking through with my own hired inspector was the moment where i was sure "yeah i should buy this" also it's fun to do

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

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:38 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I also find that hard to believe

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:44 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Saturday, June 15, 2013 9:45 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i kinda believe it. my gf and i have been thinking about buying a house in the next year or two and she's been asking coworkers and friends who own houses in the area for advice. by their account many of their mortgages are comparable to what we're throwing at rent every month and in just as many cases quite a bit cheaper. kinda feel like i'm on the wrong end of a con at the moment.

Since your contract isn't put together yet, I'd strongly suggest you attach a house inspection as a condition of closing, with an option to withdraw or amend your offer based on the results. Long time on the market with recently reduced price might mean a previous sale has fallen through for some good reason. If your inspector finds something significant you'll be able to take that into account in negotiating a fair price.

― Plasmon, Monday, June 17, 2013 12:09 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That makes sense. I spoke to our attorney this morning and he seems very sharp and thorough, and he said we might do an engineer's report condition but since it's a co-op apartment most major issues are going to be the building and not the seller. We're also actually renting right now and on the verge of having to renew our lease, and we might actually not mind a longer wait period as long as our mortgage rate is locked in, because our rent (on a 1BR) is less than our mortgage (on a 2BR) will be, and we'd save some money in the meantime to put toward furnishing and renovation.

i kinda believe it. my gf and i have been thinking about buying a house in the next year or two and she's been asking coworkers and friends who own houses in the area for advice. by their account many of their mortgages are comparable to what we're throwing at rent every month and in just as many cases quite a bit cheaper. kinda feel like i'm on the wrong end of a con at the moment.

― arby's, Monday, June 17, 2013 10:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You really shouldn't compare your rent to their mortgage payment as a sole benchmark. (1) They all had to make down payments. (2) They all pay taxes and maintenance costs on top of their mortgage. (3) there are other factors in both directions -- buying a home builds equity, but the benefit becomes greater when you stay longer. There's also the mortgage interest tax break. There's also the headaches and lack of flexibility that come from owning vs. renting.

The NYTimes rent vs. buy calculator is pretty good if you can manage to put in accurate numbers and not get ridiculous with your price appreciation assumptions.

Owning a house is awesome until you spend the monetary equivalent of two nice European vacations on a new roof. Which looks exactly the previous roof that still worked just fine other than the fact that it was old and could have stopped working at any time.