Buying A House: C or D?

99 grand! In our preferred neighbourhood in Toronto, houses begin around $400K. So.. it's gonna be a little while more.

Weird seeing decent houses like that one we could afford. Here it's just a unattainable dream

we four brothers messily kind of own the house i'm currently in, bought for 205k in 2005 current value prob 110k maybe, mortgage 170k lol

Scott what's Greenfield like? How far is it to Northampton? Nearest city would be . . . Springfield?

Basically wondering how in the middle of nowhere it is or isn't. 99,000 is just . . . unbelievable.

selling our house and buying a new one has been the most unpleasant, arduous, and stressful event of my life. it's really killing me. i think i'm almost done with process, but if our inspections don't go through it'll be just the latest bite of gigantic shit sandwich.

feel like if my family can survive this intact we've really accomplished something.

I hear this, although we've put it all on hold for a few months. Its just a neverending nightmare it seems. I'm sure it'll be great when all is said and done and we're in a new house that we love (no matter how much of a hit we have to take at this point), but going through it is a level of hell.

How about a two-story, 70-year-old house with 3,480-SF? The price is so low, we can't reveal it here. Just put in your cart for checkout.

i have to add, jjjusten upthread is right. i'm v. fortunate, i'll have a home pretty much no matter what, so if you see me with my by-now customary distraugt face, slap it.

"Scott what's Greenfield like? How far is it to Northampton? Nearest city would be . . . Springfield?"

greenfield is considered kinda the bad boy of the valley around here if you live in northampton or amherst. but they are snooty like that. 25 minutes to northampton and amherst. 25 minutes to brattleboro, vermont. close to new hampshire. an hour+ from hartford. two hours+ from boston. not far from providence. when the train station is finished in greenfield you will be able to take a train direct to nyc. excited about that.

i mean, it has its problems. its had its dog days. but we love it here. and we love the proximity to other places. a couple of hours to my brother in hudson. 3 hours or so to my parents outside saratoga. we love turners falls the town right next door. lots of great people. lots of great music. lots of great book stores and cool places to go. lots of forests and trails and mountains and lakes and rivers nearby. its a lot cheaper here than in northampton obviously. we bought an awesome huge house that has four bedrooms and a massive attic and basement that is in amazing condition for 142k.

oh and the house on our block that is 99 grand is probably so cheap because its being sold by the family of a very old couple that lived there (and who both passed away in the last couple of years) and i think they just want to sell it and be done with it. they don't want to mess around.

And it's close to downtown, PP! Must have a high walk score.

x-post

and, yeah, springfield is about an hour away. i can't say i spend a lot of time in springfield. unless its to stop at white hut on my to/from somewhere else.

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/ae866fce-ad7d-4d67-9d5a-d18500db15c6.jpg

oooh what's white hut!? I like the look of it.

wow, erica, that house is swanky! beautiful spot there.

http://www.whitehut.com/

"relish the experience"

i really should investigate springfield more. but there are no record stores there! so that makes it hard to entice me. i think they have a few latin/rap cd stores and that's about it.

Which, my parents'? Yeah, it's so nice. We moved into it when I was about 6 and they did so much to it over the years/put a lot of work into it. The backyard is like a tiny personal forest! It's also right by the water too.

I just feel so bad for them with all that's happened now. I mean they're retired and really can't afford to pay two mortgages, two property taxes etc. I pretty sure that if they don't sell it by the spring they're going to have to drop the price DRASTICALLY. It's really stressing my dad out. He's on the phone to the realtor every day asking for updates. :/

WHITE HUT LOOKS AWESOME. :)

Sorry about your folks. I was happy to sell my house in NJ, i just lost quite a bit of money on it. No big deal, because i still walked away with cash after paying off my mortgage. But it was a long, slow frustrating process.

I'm moving to Atlanta from New Jersey. The house i was going to buy failed inspection miserably so I killed the deal. Still, housing prices are much lower than where im coming from, so that's a good thing. Very much looking forward to moving south.

yeah that sucks. we kinda/sorta went through something like that last year. long arduous story and i won't go into it. and the process of buying the house we bought this year kinda made me want to jump out a window, but i lived and we love it, so all is well.

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x-post - Good luck Bill Magill!

Yeah - I just hope it sells sooner rather than later. Also, I'm glad you guys found someplace you love!

I've actually never been to your part of Western MA which is why I was asking. I need to change that someday. We used to stop in Springfield on the way back from Vermont when I was younger because there is was a German restaurant there and my dad knew the owner, Ruprecht. Other than that I've only been there for work a couple times. It's a pretty depressed town one where most storefronts are empty but you get glimpses of what it might have been like at one time when things were better.

x-post - Good luck Bill Magill!

^thank you!

lol this is totally that German place in Springfield: http://www.studentprince.com/

i do want to go to the german place. i've heard good things about it!

this is our spot. gonna stay here forever.

http://images.neighborcity.com/source_3/massachusetts/greenfield/d8158f81b395cfa4dc9453cce031dcc4_0.jpg

Oh, I love it. PORCH!!

lotsa great porches in greenfield. so many of the houses in town are 50+ or 100+ years old.

i never want to buy a house, and this thread is not making me change my mind

its kind of a nightmare.

that house looks great! i want to buy one so bad. so many things i hate about renting. i don't think anyone's going to accept a 3% down payment though, but that's about all the money i've saved so far!

i never want to buy a house, and this thread is not making me change my mind

house next to ours is for sale. come share a driveway with us!

http://www.trulia.com/property/3080203081-71-73-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301?ecampaign=con_day_propertysearchforsale_bk&eurl=www.trulia.com%2Fproperty%2F3080203081-71-73-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

2 family house. have someone pay your mortgage for you! the garage is as big as a house. you could make it into another house.

I inherited a house. It needs a lot of work but I love it too much. Old houses are great.

A 6-bed house for $189,900?! Is that common where you are?

we're looking right now, and if only we were happy to live far far far from a BART station, we could live in a semi-mansion for under 300k.

putting in an offer today

could be a home pwner by may wtf why would the govt allow this

that house looks great! i want to buy one so bad. so many things i hate about renting. i don't think anyone's going to accept a 3% down payment though, but that's about all the money i've saved so far!

― tunnel joe (harbl), Monday, November 14, 2011 5:00 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw we are doing this, it's an FHA loan

My lease is up at the end of July and I've been half-looking for new apartments. For funsies, I looked today at some foreclosures and REO's online and couldn't believe how cheap they were going for. If I could get a loan, my mortgage + condo fee on some of these places would still be less than $600/mo.

I basically have zero credit, though. I don't even have a numeric score.

Wasn't even considering buying anything, tbh. But now I've been looking online at condos/lofts I've seen around town (in reasonably nice/cool areas) and gritting my teeth when I find out how cheaply I could get one.

i think i want to look at some houses now. irl, not just on the internet. there are 2 i have in mind but i've never done this before! i know the selling agents are happy to show them to people but i don't know what questions to ask, warning signs, etc. m bison tell me!

I'm not m bison but I don't think you have to have any questions in mind--just go out there and LOOK. Look at stuff in your price range/desired neighborhood(s) even you're not even interested in the property from the listing; pretty soon (~15 properties) you'll start to get a sense of how things *should* be priced.

Honestly, just get out there and look. You'll probably see tons of crap you hate, but that will still be time well spent in terms of getting to know the local market well. And if there is something you love, you don't have to do anything about it by yourself. If that happens, get yourself an agent (good advice is to interview ~3 and pick the one you like best). Do NOT tell the selling agent you are interested in the place and can he/she recommend an agent! That is how real estate shenanigans ensue.

how much do you have to pay your own agent?

Nothing, as a buyer! The buyer's agent gets the % cut designated by the seller. But you want to have an agent that is disassociate from the seller's agent so they are less likely to get into cahoots to jack the price and therefore maximize their payout.

% of the selling price, I mean.

Actually there are some benefits to going in without your own agent, and you being lawyerly is an advantage, but I'm not sure I would recommend that for first-time homebuying. Long story short on my second house purchase: husband and I did not use an agent, but instead paid a flat fee to a real estate lawyer to represent us in the contract negotiations and to handle closing shit. This saved us a shitton of cash in the long run, but by that point we had both done enough real estate transactions to make us feel reasonably comfortable navigating the deal more or less on our own.

yeah i won't do it without, i have no idea about real estate law. maybe i will start doing this next weekend. i drove by a place i think i would like today and the kitchen is not tiny and it has enough room in back for a small garden omg!! also a back overhanging porch i can hang windchimes on. those are the big 3.

Definitely visit stuff you like online, but go see stuff you don't like, too! That's an advantage of having an agent--you don't have to depend on open houses, you just say "hey dude/tte, I have two hours on Saturday, let's go see everything in the XXXK range in Hampden" or whatever areas you are thinking about. Not a bad idea to go see what the same $$$ buys you in "up" or "down" neighborhoods, too.

IMO the key to being happy with your real estate purchase is to know you paid the *right* price. If something you love is going to cost more that its real life value (to the market, not you), it is easier to walk away if you just get into the mindset of "I will not pay too much, no matter how much I like it."

lol how did you know this place was in hampden

Anyone here have experience of trying to buy you a property you are renting? Not as in rent-to-buy but as in, ok we like this place, how much do you (LANDLORD) want for it and are you interested in selling?

No, but we did put an offer in for the apartment below ours (before we saw ours, which is way better anyway) and it turned out the seller was selling it to his tenant who was currently living there, but wanted to get an idea of an asking price by putting it on the market. It was a bit of a half-arsed offer so I hope we did him a favour.