Buying A House: C or D?

yeah I know. no, berkeley. it's a school thing. I know schools (elementary) in el cerrito are ok but we aren't ready to compromise on that yet. we'd rather just rent for another year until something happens and we can buy something in town (I've lived here for 20 years already)

we were thinking about homeowning last year after we came into a large sum of $$ but my FIL talked us out of it. kinda relieved in a lot of ways: i love the ~idea~ of owning my own place and not having a landlord to answer to but buying a house here seems like a mountain of shit to climb and conquer. we ended up just sinking the money into investments, so hopefully that pays.

the way i look at it, rent vs owning, is that if you get a cheap house and the sellers' market starts doing really well, it doesn't matter how much your house is worth, bc you're still also a buyer, so you're gonna pay the same exorbitant price for the next place, even if you're selling your current place at a huge profit. unless you're willing to massively downgrade.

yeah that is true. I am planning (in my mind) to stay, for quite a while, and then move to argentina where my wife's extended family is, or something, honestly.

we just bought a house in Seattle. dealing with the mortgage broker was a struggle. they are incredibly paranoid about everything. i feel like they've placed the burden on the consumer when it was really the financial institutions that were mostly responsible. anyway, we found a great house at a good price in a great neighborhood. not a full on 'fixer' but definitely on the low end for this area. our agent was really great and other than the mortgage broker, it was a pretty fun experience. we've been in the house two weeks now and i finally found my razor. i still don't have my records unpacked and stereo hooked up but my clothes are in drawers and i can make coffee in the morning. yay!

Oh shit I made an offer on a house

― akm, Sunday, April 3, 2011 3:21 PM (4 months ago)

well that only took 4 fucking months. finally closed. What a giant nightmare this has been.

i'm just this minute dealing with paperwork that will probably eventually end with ours going into repossession.

but good luck!

congrats akm. where in berkeley did you end up?

south berkeley, right by near san pablo park. nice area (now, apparently used to be nothing but drug dealers). nice neighbors, decent price on a 3 bedroom with a tiny yard. needs a bunch of substructural work that I luckily got most of the money to cover. this was an REO, which we thought would have gone quickly. But, it was an asset that was jointly owned by several banks. Ocwen was also involved though they weren't the name of the bank that held the deed. Ocwen (based in florida, FTC investigations up the wazoo) has all of their actual employees that aren't sockpuppets in Bangalore. All paperwork routed through india, all communication came via emails from India, often in barely-coherent english. A counteroffer we sent out caused a 1.5 month delay of confusion. Ocwen also controls the title company that held title to the house; title company was in California, but never answered their phone; sent incorrect documents for notarization; basically entire process was about as awful a clusterfuck as I can imagine. On the plus side, I have stayed on top of all other homes for sale in town and we would not have gotten a better deal.

I am never owning a home

unless I move to a better country

http://thumbs.trulia.com/pictures/thumbs_3/ps.29/d/6/c/1/picture-uh=59a38deb64392015c3ff28261dead68-ps=d6c13f16116bd402d80fc82174ca763.jpg

that is gorgeous. it would cost 1.5 million here. we really should move one day.

i'm just this minute dealing with paperwork that will probably eventually end with ours going into repossession.

WAH? :-(

I still wonder if I should buy one to rent out. My pension is gonna be crazy low so I need something else. :-(

Buying a house/flat is kinda fun...It gets better when you get to the buying furniture, decorating, planting a garden phase!!

but it gets worse when your garage door breaks and you try to Tim Taylor the thing only to destroy your hand on a gigantic spring

Yeah, the first few months are great until you sign the paperwork to start construction on a new garage, but then the air conditioning dies when its 98 degrees outside and your furnace is 39 years old and you end up replacing those too. Then a month later you learn that the plumber that installed your water heater two years before you even bought the house used incompatible piping material without proper seals and now the reaction between the two metals has eaten a quarter sized hole out of the top of your water heater and is leaking all over the utility room. Then, literally the next day, the rubber hose is your kitchen faucet breaks and shoots water all over your kitchen.

my current worry is that my savings will soon be redenominated in Euros Nacionales (as opposed to the Convertible Euros they will have in Germany) and will hence be completely worthless. This makes me think that running out and buynig anything houselike with them might be a good idea.

Yeah, that all suck, sorry dudes :(

Just hoping the boiler lasts another winter...

I would think housing prices in America at least should continue to drop over the next year or two. Still hearing tons of stories about people who bought their houses for $375k and wound up selling them for less than 150. I'm not really sure if it'll ever rebound (which is good news if you're in your early 20's)

Yeah, we are currently trying to sell our house so we can take advantage of the lower prices to upgrade in size now that we have a baby on the way. We, stupidly in retrospect, bought our house in November of 2007 right before the world went to shit. We put about $75,000 worth of work into the house so far and, as of right now, are asking 73% of what we originally paid for it.

Buying the house was one of the worst decisions we've ever made, we regret it daily.

I still wonder if I should buy one to rent out. My pension is gonna be crazy low so I need something else. :-(

yeah but with stocks and shares really cheap now (and getting cheaper), your pension fund can buy up loads of them, so that by the time you have retired they will have appreciated so much in value that you will be rich rich rich!

That's what I am hoping.

the main thing is, we're all happy

Just got qualified today. So it begins..

gotta get rid of some of my records before we move. take them to the store. oy...

Fucking hell. The house we've had our eye on for the last five months closed today, and for a price about $40,000 lower than what we were all set to offer just before our potential buyer pulled out.

I cannot stress enough how goddamn fucking painful it is to try to sell a house. Not a week goes by where I don't either feel like screaming or crying. I'm ready to just give up and accept that fact that we will never ever be able to move out of our house.

I mean, seriously, unless you are planning to never, ever for any reason have to sell your house, do yourself and don't buy one in the first place. Trying to sell a house is a special kind of hell that will literally destroy your house and make you miserable for a large portion of your waking hours.

"literally destroy your life" I meant

See? I'm so angry I can't even type properly.

it seems more poetic and mysterious the first way

sounds more like vinnie jones tbh

sorry for your stresses tho jon

Just, ugh, so fucking hard. I've never been so stressed out about something in my life.

this might have popped up on the graphspergers thread

http://insights.truliablog.com/vis/rent-vs-buy-q3/

you know jon, you might not want to hear this, but it sounds like you should find a middle ground between as of right now, are asking 73% of what we originally paid for it and accept that fact that we will never ever be able to move out of our house? can you stick it out for ten years?

The short answer is no, we really can't. Honestly we're not too concerned about the losing money on the house part, thats just how the market is right now. We're hoping to make up for it on the other end by getting more than we'd have been able to afford at 2006-7 prices. The bigger issue is that, while it was a great starter house, its revealing itself to be way too small for children. Our first is on the way in less than a month and we've made sacrifices to make it work for him (moved out all of my music collection, got rid of my wife's work from home office, etc) and it's fine. But we're hoping to have another at some point and there's just not room for it. We've looked into adding on, but its just not feasible given our lot restrictions.

Really what makes it so hard is that we've been busting our asses to save and get ourselves in a position where we can afford the new house financially. And we're set there, we've got a down payment covered, we've got closing covered, we've been pre-approved for much higher than we'd ever want to spend, etc etc. We just need a goddamn buyer now.

have you thought about contacting one of those "we buy any house" brokers, if you are that desperate?

why **right now**? during the worst market since ... ?

to me - a complete stranger who is probably being way too free with his opinion - it sounds a bit like "i bought some stock, it lost roughly 50% of its value in the worst recession since the 70s, the entire economy is in a tailspin at least through next summer, but i need to sell NOW"

the whole "houses are solid investments" line of thinking was not built around the thinking that you could flip houses like used cars every couple of years ... you're buying dear and selling super-cheap and as an unbiased observer i don't exactly see what the rush is.

i mean i know there are crackhouses on your block. i don't have that problem but there are definitely crackhouses in a five-block radius of here (as well as historic million dollar bungalows) and we have 11 pm - 1 am police chopper w/ spotlight over the house at least once a week. haven't ever heard gunshots, thank god, but i find the occasional beer bottle on the lawn. my neighbors have a three year-old, they seem to be coping okay.

when he had me my dad gave up ham radio *and* model airplanes!

I totally get what you are saying, our timing could not be worse really, its just frustrating because my wife is really wanting to "nest" with the baby coming and she is anxious about space concerns.

How much space does a baby take up?

Anyway, I was trying to vent yesterday. Its not the end of the world, we can make do with what we've got now and it'll work out eventually. Just stressful.

The baby, not much at all. All this shit you need for one, lots.

you are making sacrifices for the future, god bless

at various points in history people the managed to raise children in not enormous houses

jon are you feeling what your wife is feeling, again/still? Like, your frantic need to sell NOW is still being driven by your desire to provide for her? I am way, WAY sympathetic to the nesting urge and I do try to listen to those things in my life, at least, but maybe you guys could focus on making certain rooms or corners of rooms nicer, that you already have? Like a nursing corner with a screen and a low table for her tea and book and a window to look out of, or something, whatever would be meaningful and comforting to her?

caves are kinda roomy

the = have xp to moimeme

Oh yeah, thats a big part of my feelings right now, that I'm not properly "providing" for them. Which is total bullshit, esp because my wife makes more than I do, but the ingrained part of my brain tells me I need to provide better. Anyway, we are making do and settling in the best we can. We're both thrilled with how the nursery turned out and really excited. I mean, its fine, we'll survive.

And, no, we aren't looking for an "enormous" house, fyi. Our house right now is 890 sf, so its not exactly trying to buy a mcmansion to want something with a tiny bit more flexibility.

890 sf is rough

There's so much STUFF sold to us for babies and I haven't had a babby of my own but I have a feeling about 2/3rds of it is bunk and mostly a bulwark against feeling unprepared (which you're going to feel like anyway because you ARE, pretty sure it's impossible to be prepared for babby, in truth). The kid's gonna sleep with you or in your room for a while, and then no one is going to be sleeping at all for a while, and then when they start sleeping again, you won't care which room it's in compared to the minor miracle of sleep happening, and then you're at like 1 year-ish, and that's 13 months from now.

but still, 890 sf is 2 10x10 bedrooms, kitchen, living and bath? should be do-able?

the dude who built the 2-br 1100 sf house i am in right now raised three kids in it until the oldest was about to go to middle school. at that point he could afford to move out somewhere a bit less urban. bunk beds!

Yeah, its totally doable. I was just trying to vent yesterday about how stressful selling a house is, particularly when you are in full-on "nesting" mode (part of why I wanted to wait another year before putting it on the market, but I was outvoted there). Anyway, its fine, we'll be fine. I kind of feel like you guys might be reading more into this than I intended.