Buying A House: C or D?

just another excuse to only eat tacos

U understand me <3

Does house have air conditioning? No idea.

we pronounce first part like "michelin" and the last part like spanish "morena"

I only recently learned the correct pronunciation of Goleta

i would say with some confidence i am not seeing a dishwasher

I've always heard the first part as mitchel, like the name.

Yeah, that is correct. There's a -tch there.

But the "el" is more like that in "shell" i think

My my my my micheltorena

I bought our current house solo and my wife only saw realtor pictures and a facetime walkthrough before setting foot in the place. It was the third house we'd bought so we both felt pretty confident I wouldn't totally fuck it up but still.

There were two different houses that we thought from the listings we would offer above asking price and then on seeing them decided not to offer at all. Based on my experience I would not buy a house without setting foot in it, there were just too many things that I could only get a sense of from being in the space. I guess with a really trusted realtor who has your best interests at heart and knows your taste doing a walkthrough with you on facetime, that might change things a bit.

right now, there will be maybe one house per month that even interests you.

there's a $1.15M listing with a top down picture. the current residence is highlighted and has overlaid text saying "existing building (to be demolished)". then there's a yellow box that says "footprint of proposed duplex". if you look at the existing building, a corner of it is hanging off a seacliff.

FWIW I'm not crazy picky about details in a house. Either I can live with them or change them. Location is the biggie for me and in a hot hot hot housing market across the country, I don't really have the luxury of in-person visits at this point.

Yeah, I get it, and your circumstances are what they are. There are still different kinds of "details" though -- there's I don't like the color of the countertops and then there's "it reeks of mold down here" or "the house vibrates when I walk normally" or "I can hear the highway even though it looked far away enough on the map" or "something looks fishy about this renovation and I have a gut feeling it's concealing something"

IDK how inspection works in your market -- in NY you typically have an inspector before you sign the contract and you don't put down a deposit or sign anything binding until the contract, so that can give you some comfort in making an offer since you aren't really bound by it pre-contract.

quincie's potential spot may have some terrible duck noise or too many laughing children enjoying themselves before sunset. in california (and I think everywhere), you have a lengthy contingency period where you can back out after uncovering something awful without repercussion (outside of inspection fees and time). there's also no "down here" to get moldy in california.

a bank not letting you do too stupid shit with their money is an underrated part of needing a mortgage

Yeah I was totally shocked at how easy it is to get out of a contract in CA! Tons of protections for buyers. Not the case where we sold our house. We refused to look at offers that had any contingencies whatsoever.

Welp didn’t get that one, beaten by all cash offer over asking.

Yeesh. Sorry to hear it. You'll find another spot.

Supply is apparently low now, so it's a seller's market, despite the Covid/unemployment sitch.

It depends on the location. Chicago looks like a good deal rn.

i am tempted. But i am also too soft for chicago winter now.

Yeah I was totally shocked at how easy it is to get out of a contract in CA! Tons of protections for buyers. Not the case where we sold our house. We refused to look at offers that had any contingencies whatsoever.

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Friday, 16 October 2020 5:23 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha, in Australia if you are highest bidder at an auction, you bought it, no backsies.

That's a way more sensible system. The lack of transparency in the U.S. real estate sales is so bizarre to me. How can I beat a competing offer if I can't know what that offer is?

Also when the brokers can hypothetically lie. It does seem like there should be some kind of objective bid system even if a blind one.

OTOH the owner can accept or reject an offer for whatever reason. I have had sellers take lower offers over mine twice in my life.

True -- when a friend of mine bought his house, his wasn't the highest offer, but the owner sold to him because all the other prospective buyers wanted to demolish it or add another story, and it had been that owner's home for like 40 years or something

Sarahell OTM. There are various factors.

Man alive is right. Sure, the system isn't transparent. But it gives agency to people who want to steer their property to one buyer rather than another, for a variety of reasons. Now that I am a homeowner I... kinda think that might be good, not bad.

Of course this will seem bizarre to an Australian human, or to anyone whose only goal is maximizing profit. But. There are reasons why a seller would prefer one offer over another, irrespective of which offer was highest. And some of those reasons are okay! It may have to do with differing contingencies. Or it may have to do with emotional stuff.

For example. I bought an older house - pretty much as is - because I wanted an older house. And my intention was (and is) to love the house and live in it. Everyone else who submitted an offer was a developer offering cash. They all would have torn the house down and put a new McMansion in its place. Whether for aesthetic reasons or sentimental ones, the previous owners preferred to have the house go to a young family who intended to live in the house more or less as is.

Is that important? I don't know. But I kinda like that our system gives sellers that option.

To be clear, the reasons can't be stuff like "nO BlaCks! No gAys!"

But giving the right of approval/refusal to sellers is not inherently wrong. A strict "highest bidder gets it" system omits all other considerations.

Finally, the process allows for back-and-forth negotiation on contingencies: Buyer A will pay $X but only if you repair the roof. Buyer B will pay $Y and doesn't ask you to repair anything. So you (as seller) can decide based on how much you think repairing the roof will cost.

Some sellers will be like "gawd, I just want to get this over with" and go with the offer that doesn't require them to do anything. Other sellers will be like, "no thanks, I will hold out for a better offer." Our system allows that flexibility. Is that bad, or maybe a little bit good?

vendors in australia can choose who they sell to. its only auction sales (about 10% of all sales) that have rules requiring the highest offer be accepted. this prevents the bidding process from being corrupted.

the top offer dropped out on the old farmhouse. so we are the new #1. first offer dropped because $60k of foundation work recommended.

this is a raised foundation. posts are sitting on sandstone. Perimeter foundation walls are substandard.

seems like every house we look at has a crazy hidden bill attached.

and you can't really ignore recommended foundation repair when you're bringing two kids into the house in the land of earthquakes.

We are now eyeing a house that is 690 square feet. I mean we have lived for extended periods of time in 400 square feet and we do like each other a lot, but this may be even too small for small vintage house fans.

How's the lot size?

875 I think

oak park bath st

you really want to be close to the ice cream

and the pot store. dangerous combo.

ha true. place has the good old house style. I wish daily grind made better coffee. Handlebar is a short trip up. Location will probably be quieter than previous, but a tradeoff being a bit further away from downtown.

We’d reno kitchen immediately

yeah that's what we did with current place

Our place was a totally rehabbed former trap house, so while some elements and original details remain and are rather nice, others-- such as the wall-to-wall in most of the upstairs rooms-- are clearly covering up damaged wood they were too cheap to fix.

The people who bought the place a sheriff's auction, rehabbed, and flipped it were clearly not too happy we are gay, but we were clearly not too happy that they were both FBI agents, so whatever.

they have a show, "Love It or List It or Go to Jail for Planted Drugs"

Fall nesting is hitting me so hard I've watched about 100 tiny house videos on youtube in the last week and visions of wood stoves are dancing in my head. While at the same time living in my OWN tiny house, which is actually a spacious NYC apartment that's overly full of things I don't need.

Our place was a totally rehabbed former trap house, so while some elements and original details remain and are rather nice, others

elements and details of its past as a trap house??? Like, in order to preserve the original charm, we elected to keep the plywood over the windows rather than replace with double-paned glass?

While it would have been an improvement to life-safety and create a cleaner aesthetic, we chose to keep the half-dozen or so long-ass orange extension cords the previous occupants used in place of getting the electrical fixed? Idk, orange is a nice color! Especially in the kitchen, it does have associations with comfort food.