Buying A House: C or D?

I wouldn't think so, no.

Oh wow, nice work!

dammit am i the last one in this thread who doesn't have a house now

but seriously, congrats marcos

Can you post the zillow link, or do you want to keep it private?

yay marcos!!! gorgeous house!

congrats dude, well done!

The double dormers and the double bays are SUBLIME!!

Actually looking at the roofline idk if it technically is a four-square since the roof doesn't slope on 4 sides that meet in the center top. But it's nice anyway. :)

lovely home there.

Looks awesome man. Nice little rock garden/waterfall back there.

yea! man this is why i love cleveland, you can buy a cool house for $100k-$300k, we've got universities and museums and a downtown, good park system, a happening food scene, three professional sports teams, one of the great lakes, we don't even make very much money but we can afford this place. you all need to move here

Can you post the zillow link, or do you want to keep it private?

― nickn, Wednesday, March 22, 2017 5:53 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

look at city of lakewood, ohio on redfin, you'll get photos

very nice indeed

Found it, nice.

the inspection went pretty well yesterday. seems like the biggest issues are on the exterior of the house - some rotting clapboards, trim, and porch flooring, peeling paint. one thing that scares me a little is that the front gutter is an original "box gutter" or built-in gutter" that is made of wood lined with metal, and the inspector said it wasn't in great shape and can be very pricey to repair. the attic needs insulation but that doesn't seem like a big deal. we're waiting on the final report but we will have some cash on hand to fix and paint the exterior.

sounds like nbd all told tbh

yea! im kind of excited to choose colors for the exterior if it needs to painted anyways

Moving across country this summer after 11 years, so in two weeks I will be flying sans wife and child to a place I haven't been since 1995 to buy a house in a three day period. I hope?

On the plus side we are in the process of selling our house to someone we know who asked about buying it as soon as they heard we were leaving, and where we're going isn't that big and we're targeting narrowly so it's not like there are 50 houses to look at.

where are you moving to?

Back to Michigan, to a town with a large State University in it. Wife was invited to apply for a job and was hired, wrangled one for me, and all of sudden we're leaving. We're both from Upper Michigan originally and will now be within a day's drive of 90% of our families instead of 2000 miles away; my sister and her kids live in a beachy resort town 3 hours away, etc.

But starting over in a new place with new jobs and no friends at this age is kind of terrifying.

enjoy the beer!

the appraisal came in at around $20k less than what we offered (and we offered asking price). it makes sense to us after reviewing the report. the market is pretty crazy in this neighborhood lately and lots of houses have been going $5k-$30k over asking price, and even at the higher amounts will often still appraise. but it's not hard to see how some prices are a little inflated. we are trying to figure out some options, we love the house but are not keen on paying $20k over the appraised value

Weird. I'm sorry.

I'm keeping an eye on a few neighbors' home sales right now. The property tax assessment statements just arrived and everyone's assessed home value went up quite a bit (mine went up around 9%) but I can contest it until the end of the month.

On the other hand, I'm still looking to do some home repairs and remodeling and I'd have more home collateral for a loan. Hmm.

the seller's agent is supposed to work that shit out with the appraiser beforehand to avoid surprises like that. appraisal under the asking price kills closings dead.

shit, YOUR agent (if you were working with one) is supposed to work with the seller's agent to make sure they worked it out with the appraiser beforehand. what the hell, everybody!

anyway that kinda sucks I'm sorry marcos! fire everyone involved.

What do you all think about the presence of lead in old houses?

My wife and I are only really interested in pre-WWII designs, but I was surprised to learn recently that nobody seems to think abatement actually works very well, and it should just be considered a given that if you buy an old house you'll have some degree of exposure.

Our current rental is an old house, and has lots of lead, and while the landlord is going to abate, I guess knowing what I know now, I'm not expecting much to come of it.

I don't have kid yet, thank god, but my dog is an idiot and now I know why :)

i'd guess that 80-90% of the homes in our zip code are pre-WWII and we have little kids so it's definitely something we've looked into. you might have some exposure in an old house but if it is well-maintained you should be okay. there are ways of reducing the risk significantly. make sure there is no peeling paint. windows, porches, and doorways are the main culprits afaik. put down new mulch around the perimeter of the house, and take off your shoes when you come inside. mop regularly, wipe down services regularly.

we are renting in a place right now that was built in 1908 and has major peeling paint on various parts of the original windows, but only in between the exterior and the interior, e.g. the sills in between the storm windows and the regular windows, not the interior sills though. we just don't open our windows, which sucks but it's not worth the risk. if we owned this place we'd either have the windows professionally restored and re-stained or just replaced. the place we are trying to buy has newer windows, which helps w/ the lead stuff even if they are not historic or original.

if you do any work you should find a lead-certified contractor so they don't do it stupidly and make the situation worse by getting lead dust everywhere.

Flying across the country today to try and find a house in two days. I sent the realtor that we're working with a list of a dozen houses and he wrote back that six of them have been sold already. So whatever he has access to apparently beats zillow in timeliness and accuracy.

anyway that kinda sucks I'm sorry marcos! fire everyone involved.

― The Jams Manager (1992, Brickster) (El Tomboto), Wednesday, April 12, 2017 12:31 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea it's a bummer. paying the difference seems like a horrible option, so does taking on private mortgage insurance because the loan-to-value is now different, fuck both of those options really. we'll see what happens. we are able to walk away if we want to or negotiate with the seller to come down closer to the appraised value.

Realtors sometimes have inside info or secret leads, or so I've heard. Mine didn't.

zillow ime is not up to date at all, it can be weeks before a house that is under contract shows up as such in zillow. redfin is far superior and is as up to date as the MLS

Zillow is garbage. For a number of reasons, but mainly because it keeps appraising my house at about half of what I bought it for (and under half of what I could probably sell it for today). Redfin ain't tryin' to fuck me like that.

i'd highly recommend downloading the redfin app and specify the criteria you want (for us i just have them send me all single-family houses in my zip code) and if you want you get notifications when new listings show up, when they go under contract, when they sell. it has been extremely useful not just for hearing about new listings but also for getting a sense of what the market is

the only thing zillow is better than redfin at ime is getting the for-sale-by-owner houses

I'm trying to figure out why my next door neighbor has their house listed so insanely below both the county assessor value (which is probably too high) and other estimates. Short sale? I'd ask them, but "hey, are you broke and bailing out of your home?" isn't exactly casual conversation

xp as far as I've seen, zillow has more coverage than redfin at this point. No redfin in my area.

oh that is true, redfin doesnt serve every location

Yeah no Redfin coverage in my future town. Zillow and realtor.com and the local realtor sites all seem to show the same availability for me so at least they're all wrong.

I'm trying to figure out why my next door neighbor has their house listed so insanely below both the county assessor value (which is probably too high) and other estimates. Short sale? I'd ask them, but "hey, are you broke and bailing out of your home?" isn't exactly casual conversation

― a landlocked exclave (mh 😏)

Is real estate in your area hot right now? Maybe he wants a bidding war that'll end up with people going over market.

uhh yeah you don't price a house recently appraised at $160k at $110k to trigger a bidding war

That definitely sounds like a short sale situation.

You do (sometimes) in California.

My house is 1939/40. There is probably some lead in it, but if so it's way down under 15 layers of other paint.

The consensus among most homeowners hereabouts is that it would be more dangerous to strip everything off for abatement - and risk stirring old shit up - than to leave it be. Unless you're doing pretty serious renovation anyway.

So long as the children don't regularly gnaw on the windowsills, it's probably fine. There's like 20 other, easier ways for a house to kill you.

so we were able to work a deal w/ the sellers. they came down quite a lot, not quite to the appraisal price, but after a few rounds of negotiation we arrived at a number we were comfortable with. i think they felt they got a bum deal by a conservative appraiser, i don't agree, but whatever. we're happy w/ how it worked out.

weird, are houses not selling? sounds like a situation where I'd be tempted to bounce the deal and reappraise, but I'm glad it worked out for you