Buying A House: C or D?

I got preapproved for twice what I was even asking for, but the preapproval letter they provided me/my agent was only for the amount I had asked for. When I asked why it was no higher than that, she told me "oh, dear, you were actually approved for XXXXXX, but there's no reason to go broadcasting that all over the place when all the seller really needs to see is YYYYYY." lol

Waiting to hear from my brother if he wants to sell his old house - paid $75k at the height of the boom @ 7% (owner finance), owes $60k, needs one pier raised and stabilized and the AC is on its way out. It's a Craftsman-style bungalow, so if he'll sell it to me for what he owes I'd go for it and spend the next two years redoing it top to bottom - needs storm windows or new windows for efficiency, new siding, probably needs some electrical work, I'd foam insulate below the subfloor and behind the new siding.

The biggest downside is only being one bathroom - if I redo the bathroom I'd have to shower outside or something for a couple of weeks.

If you could get it for what he owes, it sounds cool. The problem you'd run into is needing to take out a home improvement second mortgage when you don't really have any equity yet. You could look at an FHA 203(k) loan instead of just a traditional loan, but that would mean all the repairs you tell them you need to make have to be made within 12 months and they put you on a schedule and disperse money a little at a time when you're ready to initiate each project.

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/housing/sfh/203k

Also, you have to carry mortgage insurance on an FHA loan forever now (it used to be only until you had a certain percentage of your principal paid down).

you can refi once you hit a certain point and still get away from PMI, though

major homeowner skills attained as I successfully completed an upgrade of my gas plumbing this past weekend. Let me tell you that was some scary shit.

did you do it yourself? I have put in gas lines, but only on other people's houses as part of a job. not to be taken lightly.

dish soap works great as a leak detector, just coat the junctions with it and watch for bubbles.

Yeah I did it myself. It's all to relocate supply lines so I can have a stackable washer/dryer. The previous owners had a maze of water & gas pipes protruding into the (very small) laundry room. Now that I've redone everything it's neatly hidden inside the walls. But what it meant was completely redoing the water (which was some very rusty galvanized, now copper) and adding new gas. After I ran the new gas lines, I did a sealed pressure test, then cut into the old, joined them together, and did a soap bubble test over the whole thing. No leaks, but I haven't slept especially well since I completed it.

If I could afford it even a little I would have hired a plumber, because it certainly was not fun.

congratulations sv btw

Thanks!

Still going through the process as the vendor's solicitor has dropped off the map but hope to have it wrapped up in a few weeks.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3137-Major-St-Fort-Worth-TX-76112/29011927_zpid/

Even if I took out a zero down mortgage, this would be $125 less than my rent. The problem is that it's close-but-not-close to everything in my life.

How "not close" is it? Because it looks like they did a really good/tasteful job updating it. I see a ton of potential with that yard, too.

It is true, though, that your life will change when you move even a little bit "out of the way." The house I bought is about 7 miles south of Atlanta proper. It would be a quick drive into the city for leisure purposes, but the only reason I ever go through there is to get to and from work (I hardly ever went when I was out of work last year and the same will probably be true when I begin telecommuting soon). Seven miles is nothing, but in some ways it's quite a gulf.

Close as in 15-20 to grocery stores/hipster area of FW, etc., 20 minutes to either of my stores, but absolutely nothing inside that 15-20 minute radius and nothing in waking distance.

If it were located 15 minutes west it would be a $250k house.

like this: http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Fairmount-Fort-Worth-TX/28979345_zpid/233172_rid/110000-500000_price/401-1823_mp/32.728248,-97.331846,32.717444,-97.342296_rect/16_zm/0_mmm/

welp
http://listings.realtracs.com/Reports/EmailPublicReports.aspx?EmailID=72497034&reportid=3

absolutely nothing inside that 15-20 minute radius and nothing in waking distance

Whew, that's rough. I at least have a couple neighborhood-sized grocery stores within walking distance of my house, and a little "downtown" area with a couple restaurants and a bar, but better grocery/shopping/etc is all a 15-20 minute drive away so I feel you on that. What I've ended up doing is getting my big grocery trips done on the way home from work (since there's a lot of shopping by my office). And tbh, I've always been kind of a homebody, so not being around the vibrant part of the city doesn't really affect my day to day life that much. It's just a little more effort when actually DO decide I want to get back out in the world.

ulysses! I used to live not too far from there when I lived in Nashville! I was in some apartments on Bell Road, but I had to drive through that area every day because my job was in Mt. Juliet. iirc that area isn't bad at all.

Yeah, I've been looking for a place out there for almost a full year as an investment. I was brought up in that part of the state and my agent is a long time friend. I've got the 20% in a bank doing basically nothing and my credit's good so it seems the smart way to go. Nashville rents are such that the monthly return on that should be 14% a year and I plan to try to pay down the principal with that once I've set aside some cash for unforeseen repairs. Given the way the market is, I don't think an increase on sales prices in that area between 10% to 20% in five years is unreasonable. The hope is to keep it occupied by a family for the next half decade plus, then cash out the equity to the tune of 60k and maybe have enough money to hopefully buy a place _I_ can live in... there's no way i could begin to afford even a 1 bedroom apartment in my neighborhood as it stands right now. Or maybe a great wave will wash us all away before. it is a mystery.

7 miles in ATL can be a bitch. what area are you in Dr. Fever? i'm probably moving there from nashville this summer and have been scoping neighborhoods.

I'm right where East Point and College Park meet, not too far north of the airport. If you want to live in this area of the city, just do some research and driving around. Some neighborhoods aren't so great, but some are perfectly fine and it's still the cheapest quadrant of the city to buy in.

gothca. trying to stay somewhat within walking distance to my girlfriend's place (south-midtown/ Old Fourth Ward area) and not having a whole lot of luck, certainly not in my preferred price range.

That's where I lived when I first moved to Atlanta in 2011 and I don't think there's a single rental in that area left that I could afford now (especially since my new job pays less than the one I used to have). Good luck!

fork the fledgling land baron :/

I gotta plan for something dawg, might as well be the future

Flashback in Chicago. I would have thought places this size (irrespective of decor) would go for more than this, or is this just a come-on, bidding war starting price?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3418264/Chicago-condo-untouched-1970s-hits-market-just-158-000.html

can someone explain how picture 6 is a reflection in that mirror

oh wait i finally got it

I would quite happily pay extra for the decor / furnishing. It's wonderful.

Would be too far of a commute for me.

Much like the Moorish house in LA that Joanna Newsom and Andy Samberg bought, I love it but it would drive me batty after living there a while. I'd be duty-bound to keep that living room couch, though.

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=478

i closed on monday. owners left tuesday. new tenants move in tomorrow.
i just bought a house with money i never held in my hands, transferred electronically to people i never met to buy a property i've never walked inside of to rent to other people i never met.
the whole experience is surreal. the place is three times the size of my actual home. i own a two car garage and i don't own a car. i have a huge den and it's painted in the Nashville Predators' colors. i have a deck!

here's an odd element: as it happens, the combined mortgage plus the entirety of the lease in my current apartment was too high to allow for the loan to go through by about 1.2% over the limit. So in order for me to buy the home, I had to find tenants and rent the space BEFORE I BOUGHT IT. Which we actually did fairly easily, with the cooperation of the previous owners (who were still living there!) and the full awareness and agreement of the tenants that the lease would void if the buy fell through. As it happens it didn't. Nashville rents are insane and there's just nowhere to go apparently; we were able to show the place five times in two days and the third couple took it at market rate on the spot.

my mortgage (insurance, tax, fees included) is considerably less than half my rent. trump is the republican frontrunner. GOLDEN STATE ALMOST LOST AT HOME.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v07CIhRbmTM

I'm interested how this works, do you have a local property manager type person? How'd you end up setting up all this stuff?

as it happens i had several things going in my favor that were more or less necessary: i spent two years working in a real estate office in nyc that switched to mortgage refinancing in 2001 (guess why), so i have a reasonable understanding of how several elements of the process work and how i'd have to justify my income/what I'd need to pay/ratios/etc; i grew up in tennessee so i have a clear idea of the market's growth/where the extended "suburb of nashville" demarcations end/what kind of padding i would need in case of a financial downturn; a family friend since birth is a realtor/property manager in the area and she was able to counsel me on expectation, ranges and keep me in mind for a year's worth of looking, then provide sound advice on how to move forward when we finally found a place that took the offer (and manage the property afterward for a ridiculously low price... i think $50 a month?); my mother still lives in the nearby area so she was able to take on power of attorney to settle everything at the signing; we found a good local small town bank/title/loan officer to handle all the business promptly and professionally. And, of course, I saved up the initial down payment over a ten year period!

this is what life is all about

god, i hope not

Wauw. Is this a pure investment, or are you like planning to move there or put your parents in it or something?

None of my business, just trying to figure out why someone who doesn't want to live in a house would want to buy one.

Me, I wouldn't have gone through any of the BS I went through to buy a house, were it not a place I intended to sleep in and keep guitars and beer in.

it's pure investment. the housing market in and around nashville is nuts; lots demand and finite supply. i had just been sitting on the money in the bank as i have little to no interest in investing in the stock market and with interest rates being what they are, I think i made $3 in interest last year. the return on this house figured up to 14% yearly. The house in question has a three year old roof, same for HVAC system, new kitchen, assessment suggested it was in excellent shape. If rental rates don't decline and if i don't have a major gap in tenancy, I'll make back my investment in less than seven years. And if they DO decline, I still have sufficient padding where I'm unlikely to need to pay more to cover the mortgage than what a renter would provide.

Again, i haven't physically been in the building yet; i'm putting a lot of trust in the people who are assessing the risk... but that's my mother and her best friend for the past forty years, who has worked in the housing market in that area for longer than that. I feel safe and I made sure to leave enough liquidity where I can cope in case of an immediate emergency.... that was part of the planning, to make sure not to start looking until i hit the arbitrary number that i could handle. Realistically, i coulda bought this place three years ago but i didn't want to zero out my checking. strangely enough, buying a house was amongst the least stressful elements of my life for the past two months!

Anyways, i don't plan to move in or put my parents in it. I'm hoping that around ten years from now it'll provide enough equity where I can sell it and make enough money to buy the home that i DO want to move into. I just plain don't have enough money to consider buying in the NYC area right now unless i'd like to become a fixer upper feller and it ain't me.

Coolio. Best of luck to you.

Thanks! I'm not crazy enough to pretend there's not SOME risk and who knows what the next decade in america will look like. But you gotta do something!

sounds like a clever plan.

on a side topic, and i don't mean this about hearing that kind of actual action, i am really tiring of every conversation or dinner party etc ending with a discussion of london property. i know it's a serious issue but it's starting to feel like discussing the weather, and there's no point to it or nothing achieved. it's depressing.

one last note: the bank has to run their own assessment of the property to determine if it's a good idea for them to loan you the money and that assessment sets the starting price for resale from the moment I buy. The bank's assessment came back 8k higher than what i'm paying. So I kinda just built 8k in equity this week! it's all magic with numbers until i decide to sell but it was a good sign.

14% sounds unrealistically high from what I know, but even if you do half that it's pretty good. Or maybe you really lucked out, IDK.

it IS a high return but market rental rate (as of today, who knows about tomorrow but rents have steadily increased in the area for 5+ years) is 150% of the cost of the mortgage! That kind of return is why i had been sniffing around looking for a house for over a year. I got outbid on other properties multiple times by people offering all cash up front and upwards of 10k over asking price! It certainly seems like there's a bubble going on there but my hope is that it'll maintain another decade. Given the influx of new businesses and population leap, anything within an hour's commute of downtown is ridiculously desirable.

I'm starting to wonder if I missed the boat on refi after having been in my house for 5 years. Anybody out there done one recently?