Buying A House: C or D?

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.

Reroofing is hell. I was never more grateful to whatever god there is than when a storm dropped an 80-foot oak on our house, just hard enough to need reroofing but not hard enough to total the house or damage the AC ductwork.

This is the crazy redesigned bachelor pad that we ALMOST talked ourselves into buying:

http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/79/bigphoto/350/2590350_0.jpg
http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/79/bigphoto/350/2590350_2_0.jpg
http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/79/bigphoto/350/2590350_4_0.jpg

Awesome apartment. But it's on the ground floor with the windows not set back much from the sidewalk, the space was less practical for having a toddler (let alone if we ever have two), and the price was a bit high. We sucked it up and bought something more practical, but still nice. Great light, trees right outside the windows.

Wow, that ceiling light thing is wild.

Having the space be toddler friendly is a very good idea.

Our little bungalow started to feel crowded this year with the kids growing up and taking up more space. Thinking of moving somewhere bigger, get a couple of extra rooms (computer/office out of the living room please) and an attached garage (no need to scrape off the windshield on winter mornings), have a deck with a kitchen window overlooking. Looking at having it built custom in a new neighbourhood with a view of a prairie lake/wetlands and access to trails/parks from our back yard. Small city, so moving to the edge of town would only add 5-7 min driving time to most places. I could still walk to clinic but it'd take 40 min instead of 25.

yeah the designer (who lived there previously and had renovated it himself) built this custom "sculptural" kidney-shaped table to "echo" the light thing. I didn't really like it, but I did like the apartment. Except that it was open plan, and he had put in all these custom closets and cabinets that took up a lot of floor space so that if we closed off what had once been the rooms, the smaller room wouldn't have much floor. And the ground floor thing was an issue.

It had built in speakers throughout the house. It was pretty wild. I know this might sound weird, but another thing that got to me about it was "This might be the nicest place we'll ever live." Like, when we eventually "upgrade" to a house, we probably won't be able to afford the luxury kitchen, bathrooms, etc. that he had in there.

throughout the apt I mean

Open concept is nice as long as you've also got somewhere to stash sleeping kid(s) and their endless toys. We're looking for a 2 storey so there'll be better sound insulation -- right now there's nothing separating their beds from the living room (they want the BR door open so it's not dark), so I can't even listen to music off headphones after they go down.

One of the house builders we met offers built in speakers throughout the house controlled by an iPad so you can play different tracks in different rooms, adjust the volume all from one control, etc. also integrates lighting and thermostat zones. Imagine that would drive me crazy. I'd rather have one set of good speakers set up proprly than a dozen mediocre ones. Having constant overhead music is also weird (we walked around their show home), feels like you're in a grocery store.

We have a sonos system (got the parts bit by bit from Ebay) so w have a speaker and controller on each floor linked to the same system. You can play the same thing around the house, or different in different rooms, or add my husband discovered to his glee, subject your wife to whatever awful music you please while she's slaving over a hot stove...

Ooh boy, the lot we want to build on (for sale from the city land office) got a secondary hold placed on it by another interested party. We have until tomorrow to decide whether to buy the lot (through our builder) or give it up.

i'm going to see this very small house again on saturday and probably make an offer after that if no one else does

interest rates going nuts all of a sudden, fuck this is stressful

i KNOW. i should have done this in january, i didn't think this would happen. have a contract now btw.

!

Yeah we have a contract (not signed) as well and we are very close to signing. I had assumed rates might go up, but I was thinking like 4.1, 4.2, now they're 4.5 or something? Makes me wish I offered a little less. Probably will still go through with it but the extra monthly money sucks.

smdh

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100845777

welp, got approved by co-op board, locked in a mortgage rate, just waiting to see when sellers want to close.

well fuck me, I'm an apartment owner now. Just went over to see the place empty. I need a drink now.

Congrats (I think)

The walls and floors are pretty bad. I knew this going in but it just looked worse than I remembered. We're getting the whole place professionally repainted so I guess they'll deal with the grime and visible settling cracks and whatnot. Similarly, the horrible, filthy carpet they have is coming out, and we're refinishing the worst of the floors. Hideous vertical blinds will have to be replaced as well. These people were a little neglectful. Somehow, miraculously, it has a nice renovated kitchen.

The layout still seems good overall but it's smaller and a little less open than I remember. Our place right now has a really great open layout and I'll miss that a little. Won't miss living in a one bedroom though.

Things always seem smaller without furniture in it. Also one thing I learned is to always request in the contract that the seller remove anything you don't want to deal with (carpet, blinds).

after we closed on our place, i remeber suddenly noticing all the cracks and peeling paint, etc. different eyes once it is yours.

Empty is the best time! You can really get down to fixing things up when they're empty. And cleaning! SO much easier.

after we closed on our place, i remeber suddenly noticing all the cracks and peeling paint, etc. different eyes once it is yours.

Things always seem smaller without furniture in it.

This is oddly true. Our current rental looked way smaller to me when we first saw it (empty) than it does with our stuff in it.

Yeah walking into "our" house for the first time was a crazy experience of seeing all the awful, horrible things that were terribly wrong and realizing we'd made the worst mistake in our lives (still there six years later, nothing has gone wrong).

Congrats though, and it's still fascinating to me as a lifelong small/medium sized town person to think about buying an apartment. Everyone I know who lives in big cities rents and I have no idea how such a thing works.

the empty rooms looking smaller thing is true

why would that be the case?

paint and cracks are nbd as long as the structure behind is okay. cosmetic problems are fun to fix. i've almost totally forgetten the huge black smear across one wall that we painted over once we were finally in

Is it true that buying an apartment at 1.5x your current salary is a good guideline?
It seems that a mortgage payment on an apartment would be about the same
As the rent I'm paying now, but co-op fees add around $500-800 on top of that,
Which would be a stretch.

Rooms look smaller because it is hard to determine scale without furniture in it. My broker told me they always want furniture in rooms for pics (unless it is terrible furniture).

VP, I think coop boards want your monthly payments to be under 25-35% of your total monthly gross income.

Whether it's a good guideline depends on a lot of things. For one thing, the mortgage "guidelines" probably don't have co-ops in mind, where you pay high maintenance fees (although on the other hand, those fees generally include your real estate taxes and the maintenance of the building, whereas in a house, you pay your own taxes and maintain the house yourself). But you also have to consider your whole financial picture in terms of debt, monthly expenses, stability of your job, how long you plan to stay in one place, etc. I don't really believe in going solely by the "guidelines" when you can do a more detailed budget and really figure out what you can afford.

I don't have much debt but I have a relatively small salary; what's a public servant to do? So, even if a bank approves you for a certain
Monthly payment, the coop people could decide you can't cut it?

Oh I think I misunderstood what you were asking. But yeah, that could happen. We had friends who got rejected for a co-op because the guy had had a few different jobs in the last two years, so their income didn't look stable even though they could currently afford it. They also care how much you have in the bank. But if you have a stable job, some savings, and can afford the payments (mortgage and maintenance) on your salary you should be good.

love my house in glendale
great investment

starter church near me! start that uh...churchy thing you wanted to do...

http://www.newenglandmoves.com/property/details/682371/MLS-71536350/7-Church-St-Montague-Turners-Falls-MA-01349.aspx

Took down all the hideous vertical blinds and got rid of the bulky left behind furniture tonight. Really started to get a feel of how nice the apartment could actually look fixed up, just like I thought I could sense when we saw the place and it was filthy and full of clutter. It's a nice feeling. Psyched to see it painted and with the floors refinished.

Planning to buy in 2014 (have decided I like this city and job enough to put down roots), but the process still seems overwhelming to me. I can get through this, though, because if my doofus brother can buy a house then I should be able to do it standing on my head.

research agents and find one you really like and it all gets do-able from there

Just signed the offer to lease my new clinic space. 2 weeks to plan the design and get construction drawings done.