Buying A House: C or D?

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 :(

How long did it take to find the one you were going to get? Is there any chance it won't fall through? Surely it's easier for them to wait a few weeks rather than find a buyer from scratch, or do they have a ready interested party?

The one we were meant to buy had been on the market for months before we put a bid in; they were about to take it off the market and let it out. They didn't want things to drag on past July as they've already moved across country into rented accommodation, and they're paying both mortgage and rent. They can't afford for it to roll on any longer.

There's a similar property, actually better decorated for us, close by that we're going to view tomorrow. Parents have said we can move in with them if we need to - sale of our flat is going to take a few more weeks due to nonsense with freehold and the treasury - so we're ready to put stuff in storage if needs be and do that.

We'll actually be better off financially, because we'll be able to get a better mortgage deal after September 3rd, so maybe it's for the best, but it's just incredibly frustrating.

Feeling a lot more C than D after refinancing (or at least setting the process into motion) earlier this week - five years into a 30 year /6.25% mortgage got turned into a 20 year at 3.375%, and costs us $100 less per month. Plus the bank dude estimated the price at $10K more than we paid for it and the lender didn't ask for an appraisal meaning we probably aren't totally fucked if we ever want to sell.

The things that excite me these days...

That house I mentioned above ended up going for $165K OVER and the accepted offer was ALL CASH. Apparently so was the backup!

The two bed flat above the place my parents rent, which is smaller than theirs and doesn't have a garden, has already had a number of offers meeting the £625,000 asking price and might well kick on beyond £650k. I'm losing the capacity to be astonished by this stuff.

Jesus, is that in London?
I found a £30 million apartment online in Kensington the other day. Thirty. Million. Pounds. THIRTY!!

Yeah, North London. Apparently all the bankers who are feeling the pinch after the financial crisis are buying £650k flats in places like Highbury rather than £1m flats in Kensington these days. This one has gone up in value by about £100k in the last three years.

Fucking hell.

Have had an offer accepted on a house two streets away from where we were buying, £2k cheaper and much nicer; all the things we'd have wanted to do to the other one (knock through livingroom and diningroom, put original fireplaces and stained glass back in) are already there. So things appear to be working out for the best.

Hurray!

Excellent! One thing that's been slightly annoying since we moved is seeing incrementally better houses in our area become available as the market drifts down into our price range - like if we'd waited a few months we could've got further from the main road, then a bigger garden, and now an extra bedroom. But then we'd never've got our flat away if we hadn't moved when we did, and we're years older now anyway, so put this down to an unexpected stroke of luck and forget about it imo.

Hope all goes smoothly, Sick!

Went to look at a house last night. Lovely garden and conservatory, unusual in our area/price range, but the inside rooms were tiny compared to our 2-bedroom flat. A bit disappointed by how few houses there seem to be in this town where the latter isn't true, though, even if I bump up the max price to something well out of our range.

I fear I'd have to type the best part of a million into rightmove to get somewhere with a main bedroom and living room noticeably bigger than those in our flat - which isn't even a particularly huge or expensive flat. (At least, it's a lot smaller than the one in another town the bf moved out of to join me in it.)

Our flat has a big living room/dining room/kitchen open plan area, because it's the top of a Georgian town house basically. Finding a Victorian terrace that could take our sofa (and hifi) has been a ball-ache. But methinks we've done it.

I'm sure I typed "I think" there. I'm not fucking Blackadder.

hope it all goes through sick.
the legal/paperwork side of house moving is just nasty.
the shit/hoops we had to jump through when we bought ireallylovemusic hq 13 years ago still sends shivers up my spine, hence why when a few weeks ago at a local 'do' i was asked by two seperate people if the place was on the market (small town rumours due to probate valuationsi suspect) i was quick to make them realise that i aint going through that stuff for a very long time. (hopefully !).
as i said, good luck sick, sounds like things are working out for you.

man this is a sweet deal in turners. right down the road from greenfield. i could walk there. anyway, one of the good things about buying a place around here. lots of 2-families for sale. rent out half and pay no mortgage.

http://www.trulia.com/property/3093363102-5-Chestnut-Ln-Turners-Falls-MA-01376

Oof, $165k for 6 bedrooms... or live here and pay at least $450k for 3

hang on scott

.. is that really $740 per month !?!!?

f&ck us brits get ripped off ..

i would seriously want to know how many mass murders/people under the stairs etc there are at that price ..

honestly there are all kinds of houses around here for that price. nice ones. i mean are house is really nice and we got a steal.

love owning a house, best move i ever made

― buzza, Monday, March 28, 2011 9:46 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink