Buying A House: C or D?

Yeah we're in the same boat renting a much bigger place than we would otherwise afford from good friends. Tho we turn a blind eye to the odd maintenance issue and I get to deal with sewerage backups. It's a full life

anyway i want to see this place http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/12717-Arliss-Dr-Lakewood-OH-44107/33495422_zpid/
this place too, i would rip up that carpeting obv http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1203-Lakeland-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33490466_zpid/

only bummer about a lot of these lakewood homes is that eat-in kitchens can be hard to find

so much stuff to deal with when you own a house. maintenance, catastrophes, neighbors and their weird choices, landscaping.

I finally stopped being lazy and bought a weed trimmer. If you want an excuse to buy a sweet-ass weed trimmer, owning a house is a good reason. Or being a professional lawn maintenance person.

Not wanting to deal with vegetation of any kind is enough of a reason for me to never want to own a detached home.

Our loan officer was like awful at communication but marvelous at being able to wrangle stuff around to make it work. I had a job starting in the fall with a signed contract but the bank didn't want to factor that in at all. We also had a renter for our old house lined up, with a signed lease that covered our existing mortgage payments but that didn't factor in either. But somehow he was able to get us a SECOND mortgage based on my wife's job while I was technically unemployed, in 2014 after the lending got a lot stricter. I have no idea how he was able to do this.

But man was he awful to talk to and shitty at explaining things.

The sinking feeling that maybe you blew it / are blowing it because you haven't bought a house, when you don't really want to own a house and you like your landlord and the place you rent, C or D?

I can't complain bcz I own a flat, but I bought a flat instead of a house and since then house prices here have almost doubled while flat prices went up by like 10%, and sometimes I wonder if I priced myself out of ever owning a house

I really like my flat and like living here, and the only house I saw in my price range was tiny and needed a lot of work and was far from the shops and just didn't feel like it could be home, but damn, that house is now way out of my price league. trying to remind myself that it doesn't matter if I didn't play things right from the investment point of view bcz from the "having a nice 6 years" point of view I did just fine

Really undervalued POV imo but I suppose you don't sell many supplements in the Sunday times based on the burgeoning "you're probably ok, actually" demographics

we definitely need more publications selling affirmations

This is a trophy property with unsurpassed beauty and potential

(in case you were wondering what the fuck that is)

both Jason types, family man Jason and slightly more dangerous Jason, are here to assist you

I have no idea how he was able to do this.

But man was he awful to talk to and shitty at explaining things.

― joygoat, Tuesday, May 3, 2016 6:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tbh he probably just "explained" things to people until they said yes to make him go away.

which explains pretty well what a loan officer does

weirdly, the day after I posted that, our landlord told us that he's probably going to sell the place in the next year or so and he'd like to sell it to us.

Buying the house you already live in from your landlord, when it's in exactly the location you want but is sort of run-down in a way that doesn't bother you as a renter but sort of does as a prospective owner, C or D?

ask the Barnet Ape

Buying it from your landlord is almost certainly going to be cheaper and easier than any other option, and you can funnel that money into improving the rundown elements. Do all the same due diligence you'd otherwise do, but I'd say go for it.

also, get estimates for fixing the rundown stuff, and have that taken off the selling price

anyone have tips on selling your rental property to a tenant? a coworker is trying to do that and since he won't need all the realtor junk he's trying to find a lawyer-type person to just do the paperwork and due dilligence

Like if it's damp or major structural shit then I'd probably think again unless you can buy it at a considerable discount.

eephus!, there's also a type of FHA loan you can get that includes money for repairs/remodeling that you could look into instead of turning around and immediately taking out a second mortgage. I never looked too far into that option when I was shopping, but my agent said it comes with the stipulation that all the repairs/remodeling projects have to be done within 12 months of closing and they only hand the money out to at project-specific intervals (so you don't have a huge wad of cash to blow all at once).

my landlord decided to sell recently - i seriously considered trying to buy the place but in the end i decided i didn't want to just reactively do so - i've been saving a lot but i'm still not really there.

just moved into a new place in clapton. overall i kind of feel like owning a place brings a burden of stress and adulthood - i'm more inclined to just keep saving money and enjoying the security that brings, then buy when i feel the need. though more and more i think if i do buy i'd do so in ireland, if the work i do becomes a thing back there, which it probably will eventually. in london it seems like you'd be paying a huge amount of money to still be sharing a flat, and it might not even be nice. in dublin for half the price i could live on my own somewhere p nice and central.

never really considered leaving london, and i guess i amn't at this point, but when it comes to property or ever owning a place, i do consider it.

xpost

there's also a type of FHA loan you can get that includes money for repairs/remodeling that you could look into instead of turning around and immediately taking out a second mortgage.

Just so you understand my level of ignorance about this, I only vaguely know what a second mortgage is and I don't at all know why I would be thinking about taking one out.

"Run-down" doesn't mean "not up to code," by the way. Structurally the house seems fine and we've lived there five years. A couple of times in those five years some water came in the basement during a particularly bad rainstorm. Other than that, no real problems. Obviously we would have it inspected if we were considering buying it though. The work I would be talking about would be more on the level of "there's no space in the kitchen and it would be cool to reconfigure things so that there was more space and a nicer stove," stuff at that level.

Some people like to fix houses up as they want them right when they move in, rather than waiting to accumulate more money for upgrades. A second mortgage is another loan on the house, usually in the the low tens of thousands for such activities. The lender has second priority for being paid back in the case of you defaulting (first mortgage gets all the money from any sale up to the loan amount), and the holder of the 2nd gets any above that, up to that loan amount. Riskier then for the 2nd mortgage holder, so the rates are higher.

It wasn't until I got a second mortgage that I realized it was basically just a regular loan, with your home used as collateral. It isn't really like your other mortgage that has insurance and taxes added to it and can be horse-traded to other mortgage companies.

Several people I know have bought their place from their landlord (having previously rented it) and it seems to have gone ok for them. I mean, I guess you know the flaws/good points of the place well enough so you can negotiate a reasonable price?

i want this place http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1438-Lauderdale-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33497500_zpid/

that is one street over from my gf.

:-0

oh rad!

guess what is down the street ;)

https://twitter.com/clevelandvape

lol #vapelife

1.0 bathrooms! What an odd coincidence, such a round number (?)

marcos getting a little too close to brownie's territory for comfort

it is weird, all those homes in that neighborhood have bathrooms in the basement, but those aren't typically counted in the number

http://www.criminaldefenselawyersma.com/images/pages/Restraining_Order.jpg

probably nonconforming basement rooms. in my area, at least, basement rooms can't be counted as bedrooms unless you have the proper egress window, which would take a bunch of money to retrofit into a home. stands to reason "official" bathrooms probably require some sort of code approval or at least permit documentation or they're off the grid as far as the building authority goes

typical to see realtors advertising "nonconforming" rooms but that gets cracked down on sometimes

it's also why a bunch of houses in areas that have basements in new homes tend to have a walk-out basement that they dress up with a patio/sliding door

Fuck a basement

For real tho

I have a pretty nice basement, could easily do something with half of it, but I just have some shelves storing things. It's a great place to tuck away your furnace/water heater/washer & dryer imo

Yeah if you've got enough space that you're not tempted to try and make them liveable then I can see the good qualities

It's a lot easier to have a loud rock band rehearse in a basement (two or three sides of the room being already soundproofed by, you know, dirt).

Garages, in contrast, are sonically very leaky venues (leakage both out and in).

(just now realizing how much being a drummer influences my homebuying decisions)

homebuying decisions based on personal needs and interests are far better than the people who buy for property value and "resellability" imo

Word.

Speaking just for me and my situation (the situations of others may differ), the lot is worth like 10 times what the house is worth. Had we not bought our house, it would have been an all-cash sale to a builder/developer who intended to tear down the creaky old house and build a new one. That was 10 years ago, so it's even truer now. If we should sell, it would likely be the same sort of deal. So there's really no incentive to make changes based on potential resale (or refrain from making changes that we want to).

Hence the bondage dungeon

so you wear bondage gear for drum practice, huh

i've never lived in a house w/ a nice basement or a neighborhood in which houses have nice basements so i've never really viewed them as anything more than a place for a furnace/boiler, hot water tank, and a washer & dryer

whenever i see a finished basement it still does not look appealing

tracer otm

that said a spare bathroom in the basement is nice

ok i am FREAKED the fuck out right now that we are actually going to buy a house soon

i wish the market wasn't so crazy, the way it is right now is that you pretty much have to decide that day if you want the house, no second or third visits really

good luck to you and yours, marcos

thanks puffin