Buying A House: C or D?

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

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

I'd only looked around with my agent for four weeks before coming across the house I bought. I drove over to look at it myself on a Saturday, toured it with my agent the following Monday, called her told her to make an offer Monday afternoon, and had the offer accepted on a Tuesday morning.

If you find the house you like and can make it work financially, ain't no good reason to freak out. For real.

only... for four weeks?

Well, in that time, we only went out about once a week. I looked at maybe 8 houses before I found the one I bought (and I found it myself online).

yea we are planning on making trips to cleveland once a week over the next few weeks until we find the right house

helps that we can look online to decide whether or not it's worth it to drive out there on a given weekend

that's fair

I looked at... a lot of houses, but in a short timeframe

Between Marcos sharing all these Cleveland house links and the woman I heard on public radio this afternoon talking about Cleveland (in the greater scope of the GOP convention, she was brought into speak on Cleveland itself) I kinda just want to pick up and move there.

I can't.

But I want to.

I love these Cleveland houses, and for prices I thought didn't exist in the East.

I know there's an obvious zinger, but I do keep asking What's the catch? on some of these.

tbf i think there are going to be devastating riots at the RNC

i am seriously worried

I love having stairs. I love watching my son ride down the banister each morning. Hey, I do even love looking down over the balcony at my kids as they argue in front of Minecraft, not knowing I'm watching them.

I say this because around here, two-story buildings are uncommon. And forget about having a basement.

yea stairs are great, after living in apartments for 10 years it will be nice to have them, put the kids to bed and hang out downstairs. and some of these houses have a main living room staircase and another from the kitchen, it is kind of neat

not sure about arkansas, but there are definitely parts to the southeast where a basement would be a fundamentally bad idea

That's why we don't have 'em.

At least we can bury our dead in the ground, unlike those goofuses south of us.

you've got the worst of both worlds: no basements, moderate number of tornados

which, after some research, it turns out florida has the most tornadoes per state. what a hellhole.