Buying A House: C or D?

Renting a house the size of ours here would cost the same or more as our mortgage payment, and would probably be a horrifying shithole surrounded by hundreds of loud, drunken college students. Quiet, decent places are rare and expensive because most of the students are from the Seattle area so their parents see paying $500 a month for a room in a decrepit house as a relative bargain.

It just doesn't make sense to rent as a "professional" "adult" couple with a kid and a dog; the only couples I know who rent are one who can't sell their existing house in the town they moved from, and the other where they're sort of adult-children who are so opposed to doing anything at all related to home maintenance that I'd be surprised if they changed light bulbs on their own.

"adult-children who are so opposed to doing anything at all related to home maintenance that I'd be surprised if they changed light bulbs on their own"

I resemble this comment, another reason I regret the two stupid houses I bought while living in the usa. but yes, the first dumb usa college town I lived in was like this, and when we happily ditched that joint our house sold in under a week. as opposed to this second dumb usa college town where no one seems to want our 1990s era castle for less than $200k.

mh, may I suggest

http://atlantablackstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/questlove.jpg

they're sort of adult-children who are so opposed to doing anything at all related to home maintenance that I'd be surprised if they changed light bulbs on their own

Yep, this is me! But rather than describe myself as an adult child, I prefer to say I have reached the level of maturity where I just don't care if people judge me because there's a hole in my cabinet where a drawer should be; there are other things I care about more and I'm fine with it the way it is.

Yes, I'm gonna miss renting, but all things must pass.

and would probably be a horrifying shithole

Hey, apparently mh knows a guy who can happen you with that.

help you with that.

lol great video mh

kinda think the soundtrack should be "The Old Man Down the Road"

One of the major differences between renting and owning an apartment for us was that we used to be surrounded by single or childless twenty-somethings who just wanted to party and now we're surrounded by middle-aged and old people who think we're the loud ones.

My aversion to home maintenance actually has more to do with having an aversion to making H spend even more time alone with our kids after being home with them during the week. When they're older I may get into it more.

make sure you're not talking about preventative maintenance. gotta do that stuff.

There's actually not very much to do for me -- I live in a co-op, which means that the building/organization is responsible for most of the major things (structure, roof, windows, plumbing that goes beyond my apartment, etc.). All I really have to worry about is appliances and cosmetic stuff.

hmm yeah I guess just clean the drain under the bathroom sink, clean behind the fridge, do some mopping and call it a day

Ug mh is making me not want to buy a house but I have no choice. Emotionally it feels like a heavy burden.

i'm excited to buy a house but the major maintenance shit freaks me out especially since we're looking at pretty old homes

The home I bought was built in 1920, so it's fast approaching being 100 years old. One whole side of it is basically new, though, because a tree fell on it in 2011 and took out both bedrooms and the bathroom. Other parts of the house which weren't rebuilt/updated, though, have some minor foundation problems (floors sinking a little bit, baseboard pulling away from the wall) and I'm going to have to address that soon. As my dad said, this problem is only going to get worse, not better.

i finally responded to a text from the dude who put together the crew who built my garage saying, sure, I could use some quotes on new roof and siding

we'll see where this goes

Anybody have experience with those foundation jacks? I thought about just picking 2 or 3 up at Home Depot and seeing if this is a project I could attempt myself, but the instructional videos on youtube make it sound kinda hard.

I'll probably just end up going with a professional, but the "not knowing" about how much it might cost gives me chills.

how expensive do you think it's gonna be if you fuck up a project like that though? I mean I'm no expert but that does not sound like something I'd attempt myself.

get a few estimates, cross your fingers, say a little prayer xp

lol yes do not jack up the foundation of your own home

I should maybe restate that not everyone who doesn't want to do routine maintenance is an adult child; this particular guy is basically a 35 year old Gene Belcher who is passionately opposed to anything involving even the most routine building maintenance or repair. Part of owning a house is having to fix shit, pay someone else, or learn to live with it as it exists.

I'm terrified of catastrophic issues as well but part of buying was budgeting for some future horror involving a roof or foundation or plumbing.

And getting estimates is crazy and nerve wracking cause I never have any idea what something will cost and my guesses have been wrong by 90% in either direction.

My mother in laws ex boyfriend jacked up her camp in the woods and while it worked out in the end it basically took him an entire summer on his own.

my brother-in-law who owns a 100-old multi-family home w/ my sister told me this hierarchy

MAJOR: foundation, roof, any structural shit
NOT AS MAJOR: plumbing, electrical, heating
MINOR: cosmetic shit

very good homebuying guide there, too. ppl who literally can't imagine what a room would look like after a two hour painting job so they pass over a house

on a related note, my parents and uncle/aunt are fixing up my grandfather's house for sale. it's an excellent ranch home, so-so location, and has all the charm of having had a 90 year old man living there alone for the last 25 years. so all the floors and walls are getting redone and the bathroom gutted before they put it on the market.

So I have another naive question -- as I mentioned one option is perhaps for us to buy our place from our landlord. Can I get an inspection now? Or is that something you can somehow only do after you've made an offer on the house? I feel like if there are major structural problems, it more or less takes that out as an option, and we can focus on other houses.

I guess once again I'm mystified by the process. Let's say there are two places we like and I'm picking between. Are you supposed to just pick one with no knowledge of any major repairs that might be needed, make an offer, then if the inspection fails you start over from scratch? Why doesn't the seller have to do the inspection before they go on the market so you know what you're offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy?

ppl who literally can't imagine what a room would look like after a two hour painting job so they pass over a house

More like "ppl who correctly assess that they would mean to get around to painting the room for decades but would never actually do it"

Why doesn't the seller have to do the inspection before they go on the market so you know what you're offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy?

right

that would be amazing

eephus i'm w/ you this whole process is very overwhelming and we haven't even made any offers yet

very good homebuying guide there, too. ppl who literally can't imagine what a room would look like after a two hour painting job so they pass over a house

― μpright mammal (mh), Tuesday, 24 May 2016 15:48 (13 minutes ago) Permalink

P sure this is how we got a good deal on our place -- it was messy and cluttered and badly in need of painting and the carpet was gross, but there was really nothing wrong with it otherwise and it even had a nice kitchen. It had been on the market like 200 days with comparable places selling in a month or two. People really have a hard time seeing past that stuff. Actually tbh there is more stuff we still need to do like fix up the closets and maybe sand or replace some doors and fix some doorknobs, but it's all basically cosmetic and minor. The layout is great, the place is big, the light is decent, it has some nice design features, and, as I said, it's a co-op so there's really no major shit that we have to worry about except as shareholders in the co-op.

If you have physical access to the whole home, I don't think there's anything blocking you from having an inspector check it out.

While inspectors are licensed there's a wide variation in how thorough they are and what they identify as issues, and what counts as an issue when it comes to funding, etc. If I was selling a house, there's nothing to stop me from paying the cheapest inspector to take a quick look, say, "yup, fine for human habitation" and wandering off. HSA loans require more adherence to accessibility and building codes.

So yeah, it's kind of a trap, and the reason why you hear of jerks making wild claims post inspection -- maybe they wanted to back out for another reason and they just want to get out of the deal and maybe get their deposit money back.

As a buyer, if there really are two places at a time you'd put an offer on, then yeah, you're screwed because you might be going down the path with one while the other goes off the market.

my parents are notorious house renovators, to the point there is always at least one project in progress. when we moved in my teens, they bought the new house, had all the walls and floors stripped and painted/carpeted before we moved in. they later gutted the whole kitchen and replaced all the cabinets and appliances (with good reason, though -- the prior owner was a smoker and even refinishing the cabinets, which they did, didn't kill the smoke odor)

one of my peers recently did the same thing as far as renovations, so the impulse isn't dead

man alive otm, though. if you don't have to move immediately upon closing, by all means, get a project timeline set up and get a mortgage for the home cost + renovations

regarding the offer process, I still have occasional weird dreams where I somehow have two mortgages because something got screwed up and I ended up buying two houses

some sellers have inspections done and available to potential buyers. I think we did that for the lolkansass house? obv buyers are gonna have their own inspection to confirm "independently" the results but buyers can still get some idea from those. whether sellers do that depends on how hard they're trying to sell.

Yeah you want to hire an inspector who is looking out for your interests, not the interests of the homeowner. We've had one done on both houses we've bought and one was incredibly, meticulously picky about every little possible thing wrong - like a crack in piece of 50 year old siding, ridiculous things that don't matter at all. The other was thorough but didn't hassle small cosmetic stuff and concentrated on major structural things.

And as a seller you don't WANT a thorough inspection because it gives the buyer a lot of dumb things to quibble about or will uncover something dramatic you don't want to know about; ignorance (without being dishonest) is bliss.

yeah that part of selling is like negotiating with an editor on a piece you've submitted : ok, we'll respond to points 3, 5, and 11 in the inspection, per the request of the buyer, but not the others ; and then you see if the buyer accepts it. on the illllllannoy house we got like a 50 page inspection, with pictures of everything, and yeah it was just more to worry about, since most of it was little dumb stuff.

ugh the dumb stuff kills me

I had a couple railings secured (the front porch entry was wobbly, the basement stairs had no rail) and the fuse box had the wrong breakers on a couple things, like they'd wired the washer/dryer to a lower voltage one and the lights to a higher one, probably just a screw-up

people who are like "the smoke detectors should be more than six inches from the wall" and "the refrigerator has a dent in the door" kill me

So I have another naive question -- as I mentioned one option is perhaps for us to buy our place from our landlord. Can I get an inspection now?

We're in the UK so legal stuff is probably not the same, but we are in a similar situation and did exactly this. We had already made an offer but the surveyor didn't really care whether it had been accepted and I don't think we told the landlord until after the survey.

Having bought a house may turn out to be C but the buying stage is really annoying tbh

inventory is so low for us that we might end up renting for a while

my coworker had some post-agreement, pre-possession stuff to deal with when the current owners had the utilities turned off when they moved out, not waiting for them to be transferred on the handoff day

the refrigerator defrosted and leaked water all over the kitchen floor, necessitating repairs

also, the sump pump had no backup power and it was rainy

;_;

That's one thing my agent DID get me to get the seller to agree to in my offer. Very key!

more of a friendly reminder when documented! it's their responsibility until you take possession, being negligent like that is no better than kicking holes in the walls on the way out

question, may be stupid - what happens when a house is priced over what the appraisal price is? there's a property that looks awesome but i do feel like it's overpriced by at least $20k, can i bank on the appraisal revealing the true cost of the house down the road and avoid paying the full cost? how does that work?

are you talking about the local government's appraisal price for tax purposes, or an independent appraisal? the government appraisal is typically lower and while they update it according to an index of appreciation/depreciation for the area, much of the time they only update it when a property sells

my understanding is that it's rare for an appraisal (of the kind you get when you buy a place) to come in below the offer price, in normal market conditions. The price someone is willing to pay is taken as a strong indicator of the value, though not conclusive. If you think it's overpriced then just offer less.