Buying A House: C or D?

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.

i hope so too

doing this now too, & selling one also, & uggggggh

imo find an agent you trust, someone who will tell it like it is about a place but will respect what you want and not try to push you in the direction of some you're not wild about buying
seller will pay them their commission
we ended up pulling our offer bc the house we liked had HELLA problems and needed many significant repairs to be safe, so we are back in the hunt *shrugs*

We put in an offer on a house last week which apparently received 19(!) offers. The counter was $125K OVER asking and it will probably go for even more! It's more a lack of supply, but I'm thinking we've just passed the bottom of the market (in the hotter US markets at least).

It sounds like you're going to be stuck with a low-interest rate but enormous dollar-amount mortgage, mr. chow. I hope it works out for you.

There's no lack of supply in some of the once-hottest markets here in Oregon. For example, Bend, OR was growing at about a 22% annual rate in the decade before the bubble burst and was among the top 20 growth areas in the US, iirc. Its housing market is still in the toilet. Foreclosures by the bushel basketful.

(rings dinner bell) Come and get it!

Oh we walked away from that one!

Here's a good article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577366294046658820.html

certain in-city neighborhoods of seattle have been starting to see the same thing in the past few months: multiple offers, bids over asking, all-cash offers. but still very localized and dependant on location and lack of new supply.

I'm in LA.

Also Aimless, I don't mind a big mortgage especially at an historically low rate (great inflation protection too) - the problem is if the appraisal is for the original amount. Then you've got to pay the down payment and the difference if there are strong multiple offers.

NYC has had kind of a perfect storm lately of (1) low interest rates (2) a back-up of condo projects that were approved or started pre-bust and are coming back to market (3) TAX ABATEMENTS on these projects that don't really make sense (the abatements were later phased out) but that make the condos more buyable, and (4) super high rents. So yeah, defnitely have noticed an uptick in buying. I don't think it will last that long.

we put my house on the market recently, under contract after just more than a week of being listed. got a second, back-up offer a few days after we took the first offer. so I dunno, I'm ok with the market right now! also have a new house under contract, & b/c of the silly low interest rates right now my mortgage payments will barely budge despite buying a lot more house than we're selling. yay economy?

Nice!

One caveat to historical low rates, though, is that eventual higher rates will eat into your eventual resale value, as the next buyer will have higher monthly costs per dollar of house, if that makes sense. But as long as your not buying "because prices will go up," it's not a concern.

nah, we're buying because we're moving & need some place to live, & we wanted more house b/c we have three kids & have been in a smallish house for several years now.

Sweet. I am envious.

well it's the Midwest, so maybe don't get too envious! fine with me though

I am envious of homebuying being within reach and kind of sick of the northeast, or at least NYC

bought a house y'all. it's pretty rad.

Our purchaser isn't ready to exchange and won't be for a couple of weeks or more, so our purchase in turn has fallen through, as our vendor can't wait.

that's rotten, I'm sorry to hear that

Oh shit, really sorry. We've put our place on the market and have a place we want to buy, but things are incredibly slow at the moment. Should pick up a bit after this week I think. I've only ever been a first-time buyer before, chains seem like they have no hope of ever actually working :(