Buying A House: C or D?

estate agent also runs a solicitor service, and they say the seller is using them. they say it would be "brilliant" if we also used them. it sounds tempting, i.e. could make everything quicker and go more smoothly but what if they're all somehow in cahoots to screw us?

estate agent is being incredibly emollient, i.e. "you all seem like such a nice family" etc etc. which of course makes me think they're totally trying to screw us. am i through the looking glass? maybe a spade is a spade?

That would depend on the agency. Is it a small local one, or part of a better-known chain?

congratulations

they're pretty local - http://www.tjballpropertyservices.co.uk/

thanks nakh

being incredibly superstitious about this, though, people talk about this shit taking months

i also obv feel incredibly lucky to be able to afford the deposit on a place in this most expensive city, at perhaps the apex of its expensiveness

When I was in your position the estate agents gave me a list of their recommended solicitors that I could ring round and check for prices and so on - they didn't try to push me towards one or another. I added a few local ones onto my list because that seemed honourable.

I wound up picking the one with the best balance of responsive / cheap and then it turned out that the seller (who I later discovered used to work for the estate agent) had chosen the same one.

I asked for reassurances that there would be a team working for me with the necessary separation from the team working for the seller, which I duly received to my satisfaction (goodness knows what "my satisfaction" consisted of back then; I think they just reassured me and it seemed OK, Chinese walls in place etc, and I think I got this in writing).

Once that was the case I was super-happy with the service, and was happy never to hear the phrase "we're waiting for a response from the buyer's solicitor", which I'd heard a lot about.

That's my story.

More a house-owning than house-buying question but ... how much would you need to set aside to replace a small-ish bathroom? (ie. replace bath/sink/toilet/tiles - and get someone to do this)

hugely dependent on how fancy you want the fixtures to be, and even more so on how fancy your tile gets.

we spent $2k on ours, but thats def on the cheap side, done by a close acquaintance and with me doing all the purchasing and design myself (pro tip - shop for your own tile, markup via contractor on that shit can be HUGE).

Tim, I was trying to remember where I heard the story of buyer and seller using same solicitor and it was here! We are going ahead selling part of our land and both have been recommended the same solicitor but seems like there'd be a big conflict of interest so we won't (this is typical, I just was interested about how yours got around it?)

Like I say, they had separate teams working for each party. I think I was relaxed that the sale was relatively simple and they would be concerned enough about their rep (and malpractice!) that they wouldn't mess me about. Probably naïve but it worked for me.

Remodeling costs are also hugely dependent on location -- you can wind up paying like 50-100% more in major cities.

yeah, i was gonna say you could spend 2k in nyc on a sink alone

I don't remember what it priced out to when I looked into a bathroom remodel but it was WAYYY more than 2k. And being in Queens still seems to get you a discount compared to Manhattan/Brownstone Brooklyn.

Yeah I know plenty of people that threw down a lot more, and I get that location is a factor (although I live in Mpls/STpl, so it's not like there's starving contractors fighting to work for free here). Replaced the sink, toilet, added a shower, retiled the floor, added wall tile including glass tile accents etc. but yeah, #1 savings technique other than knowing a dude was doing all the material legwork myself - paying a contractor hourly to go hunt down and math out tile, pick up your sink and toilet etc is a fools game. Only really opulent thing we did was tile related, fixtures are decent but not crazy $$$. $1200 for materials, $800 labor iirc.

Also pro tip - when buying fixtures, use magic phrase "this is not a house flip, this is for me" and peeps at your local hardware store will steer you away from the shittily built cosmetic faux fancy stuff and into well built decent looking stuff for the same price.

I want to say we paid maybe $4k all told for a full remodel of our bathroom, everything stripped to the studs and replaced except for the old tub, including all new drains and supply lines. We bought the materials ourselves and used a single guy contractor who hired out a buddy once in a while for drywalling and such. It took the guy way longer to do the subway tile in the shower than he had expected so we probably got a deal on labor.

It was a really serious amount of plumbing work though, there were maybe four plumbers at our house for like 8 full hours one day

Full-on structural survey - classic or dud? I hear a lot of different things. Some people are very pro, some people say hey, they're still just eyeballing everything and it's a waste of money.

What say you?

Not sure I see the point, unless you have to get one cos something's obviously wrong. They'll just tell you a load of stuff that might need fixing at some unspecified point in the future.

Is there a particular reason why it's been suggested you get one?

Not really. I sort of suspect that the structural engineer my mortgage advisor is recommending is a mate of his. And that a chunk of that £1K+ will kick back to him. Maybe that's cynical.

I sort of want to get one just so that I know The Deal with my house. Like if you buy a used car, you find out its little particularities.

"More a house-owning than house-buying question but ... how much would you need to set aside to replace a small-ish bathroom? (ie. replace bath/sink/toilet/tiles - and get someone to do this)"

This is widely variant depending on where you live, but even a 5x8 bathroom in the Bay Area will run you at least $20k.

And $2k has to mean you are basically doing everything yourself. Because just materials for tile/fixtures/toilet/vanity/tub are going to run you nearly that.

estate agent also runs a solicitor service, and they say the seller is using them. they say it would be "brilliant" if we also used them. it sounds tempting, i.e. could make everything quicker and go more smoothly but what if they're all somehow in cahoots to screw us?

I would assume they're all in cahoots to screw you (or at least, they'll put their own interests first rather than act in yours).

I sort of suspect that the structural engineer my mortgage advisor is recommending is a mate of his. And that a chunk of that £1K+ will kick back to him. Maybe that's cynical.

I don't think that's especially cynical and I wouldn't bother getting a full structural survey unless you've got a specific thing that you're very concerned about. Even the Homebuyer's Report will probably make it sound like the place is going to fall down, but a lot of it is just arse-covering on the part of the surveyor.

Tracer, not sure where you are buying and the age of the property but my parents skimped on a structural survey once and ended up having to have a large section of wall replaced when I was growing up. At least that's how I recall it.

I'd shop around as well although I imagine there aren't many starving chartered surveyors in london right now.

Why on earth do seemingly every British estate agent hold 'open days' to view a property... for which you need an appointment? In what way is this any different from booking a normal appt? An open day is supposed to be for any nosey person who wants to snoop around, surely

Open days normally at the request of the seller - means they only really have to clean and tidy the once, and can do all the crap tricks that Sarah Beeny and Kirsty have taught them, like baking biscuits.

Also it brings in a sense of urgency, most open days won't go without an offer; the estate agent will normally ladle on to people viewing that either there's a full day day of viewing to come, or that someone earlier that day will be putting in a bid later.

What our agent said to us when we sold is that it's rare if someone actually gets around to putting in an offer that the two parties won't agree a figure in the end (even though it did happen with a place we put an offer in on). The key to the open day, then, is to get someone panicked enough to think they like the house enough to make sure they don't miss out and they sell it to themselves.

If you're trying to buy a flat or house in London, open days are now apparently the thing. Friend trying to buy went to about four of them and cash buyers 'won' each flat, offering well over the asking price. I wonder if they then 'gazunder' if the survey shows even one little wrong thing.

In SF if you are paying that kind of money in cash you are basically forgoing almost any contingency.

Alright, I might be doing this now.

Talk me out of it.

where?

If you locate a house you like, in the right place, and you can afford it without self-inflicting financial pain then I won't talk you out of it. Best advice I can give is buy less house than the realtors tell you that you can afford.

I am in Western Mass, so I am looking at houses like all the crazy cheap big houses scott was posting above. I want to find somewhere by early summer, which might be a little ambitious, I don't know. I also know nothing about this stuff as I never imagined I'd be able to afford a house. Any books or websites I should look at?

Scott is also looking for houses for me as he's obviously good at this stuff.

1. get realtor

So on Zillow, there's this "Zestimate" thing alongside the actual price. What's that about? Seems like around here things probably go for close the valuation.

Not actually considering this place, but I was tempted!

http://westernmass.craigslist.org/reb/4370075341.html

What are things to say to a realtor when first contacting them? We were recommended a realtor by some friends who bought in the area.

2. When budgeting, remember that if your downpayment is not in excess of 20%, you'll have to carry PMI (private mortgage insurance) on top of your homeowners' insurance.

hi, my name's adam

my PMI is only $45/month. no way i could have afforded 20% down for many years!

Oh that's really not bad at all.

if you get an FHA loan it's much more, like $200 or something

Where you want to buy. What you want to buy (size, condition, any other requirements). How much you want to pay. How much you can put for downpayment. Since you are the buyer you don't have to worry about their commission (at least in CA that's paid by the seller as is transfer tax) but you should get a sense of the fees that you as the buyer will responsible for. Realtor will probably ask you all these questions though.

Definitely if you can put 20%+ down and avoid PMI.

OK, avoid FHA and maybe PMI. got it

Don't avoid FHA necessarily. If there are downpayment assistance programs in your area, you might be able to hit the 20% mark and still avoid the PMI.

I know you're in Western Mass, so I haven't looked to see if you have any programs like that. Here in Atlanta, some assistance programs will give you a soft second mortgage of up to $15k that will be forgiven 20% for each year you stay in the house until it's all forgiven at the end of five years. aka neighborhood stability grants

Yeah I wouldn't avoid anything necessarily (well except for variable rate mortgages).