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*update at end of page 2. Tell me about your home buying experiences over the years (long post) Login/Join 
Eschew Obfuscation
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We've purchased five homes over the years. The first four were routine, the last one was a bizarre adventure.

We had a four bedroom house, but all our kids had grown up and the wife and I were empty nesters. We liked the area we lived in and so connected with a realtor to find a smaller house for us in the same area.

After seeing but rejecting a lot of places, our realtor called me the day this house came on the market because she knew it met all our requirements. She was right. We saw the house that afternoon, submitted our offer that evening, and had a deal the next day.

Then the sellers tried to back out of the deal.

We had moved on the house quickly because it was just what we were looking for, and because we'd already sold our current house and needed to either buy or find somewhere to rent. The sellers got it into their heads that we pounced because they had under-priced their house. So, they played all kinds of games to try and get out of the deal.

They rejected the inspection report and refused to fix any of the issues it disclosed. So, we waived the inspection report and agreed to take the house "as is".

Then they said they needed more time to get out, and insisted on taking 60 days instead of 30. They figured we'd balk, but we agreed and arranged to live with the wife's folks for two months.

Since that didn't work, they said they needed even more time to get out, and demanded another 30 days. We agreed to that as well. (Luckily, my wife's parents are wonderful people.)

Then they said we had to waive the mortgage contingency because they had "concerns" that we'd be able to get a mortgage. So, we agreed to waive the contingency.

Then they turned around and argued that they should be able to terminate the contract because there was no mortgage contingency and we might not be able to afford the house if the sale of our current house fell through. Before I could respond to that BS, our mortgage broker sent a letter saying he'd known us for over 20 years, that our credit was excellent and our payment history impeccable. He closed by saying that he could still get us a mortgage even if I was to lose my job.

I can't remember what other stunts they tried, but after four months we finally got the closing scheduled. We did the walk through the day before the closing and found that the garage door opener was broken. The sellers said "too bad", mistakenly figuring we would not object. They were wrong.

My wife called our lawyer and said that the sellers had 24 hours to fix the opener or we would cancel the closing. By this time, the sellers had moved out of state and were no doubt waiting for the proceeds from the sale. The sellers had to scramble to find someone to repair the opener (and no doubt had to pay a hefty premium for a rush job), but got it done, reinspected and the closing was on.

The sellers were not at the closing (obviously), but I had a nice chat with their realtor who confirmed that they really were a couple of assholes. At the closing, my lawyer observed that 'your wife is pretty patient, but look out when she gets pissed!' Big Grin


_____________________________________________________________________
“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again." - Will Durant
 
Posts: 6370 | Location: Chicago, IL | Registered: December 17, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Caribou gorn
Picture of YellowJacket
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Wife and I have been married 12 years and we are in our 3rd home.

First one was in 2009 so prices were still down. It did not appraise for what we agreed to so we got a big discount. Hard to even imagine that happening now but 2009 was sucky for selling and a great time to buy your first. We actually went to a "first time home buyer" workshop with a local realty group and got a lot of good pointers and met the agent that we've used every time. 1860 SF, 3/2 with a small but flat yard. Perfect first house. Made about $30k on it when we sold in 2015. Zillow says it is worth about $150k more now.

Next house was only about 2 miles away. 4/3 on over 1.5 acres. Lovely spot that a couple had flipped and then it sat on the market for a long time. Not really sure why, actually. We did a lot of landscape improvements but the interior of the house were done very well. I think we got it about $65k under their original asking price. Then we moved to go to a different school district as our oldest hit kindergarten. Selling this house was the most trying by far. We had 5 offers in 24 hours and a contract and backup within 48. However, Atlanta was in the midst of getting 2' of rain in January and February 2020 and basements everywhere in the city were flooding, including ours. We were doing a ton of work on the foundations and in the basement the entire due diligence time. The buyers were aware the entire time and did not back out because everybody understood the unprecedented amount of rain we were getting. It wouldn't stop raining long enough for our crews to compact the soils. It was extremely stressful. We had the basement carpet cleaned and restretched 3 times that month, I believe. Regardless, we closed on time and were scheduled to rent the house back for a month. But after we closed on our new house, and with another 3 days straight of rain moving in, we decided to go ahead and move out and turn the house over so it was no longer our problem, basically wasting $2500 rent for the month. That made for a rushed move which turned out to be brutal, but it was the right call. Ultimately, we lived there 5 years and made $100k. Zillow now says it's worth $125k more than we sold it for last February.

Current house is 6 miles from that one and was also flipped, this time by a larger group that does it a lot and tends to make more money doing it. It's a more traditional house but it has many of the same things we loved AND it is in the about as good a school district as you could ask for. Lovely neighborhood with plenty of people our age and with kids the same age. We are refinancing 15 months in and the appraisal came back $135k more than last March.

All in all, we have had been very blessed in our purchases and timing. I'm an architect and my wife is in commercial real estate and I feel like we do a lot of homework, see a lot of houses, and have made wise decisions. We have never had crazy drama except for this last one where the basement was having water intrusion issues. We have a lot of fun doing it, actually, and if it weren't for physically moving, we'd probably do it even more. We are actually considering flipping one in the future if the capital is there.



I'm gonna vote for the funniest frog with the loudest croak on the highest log.
 
Posts: 10472 | Location: Marietta, GA | Registered: February 10, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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My now wife and I bought a condo in the Pleasanton CA in 2002 before we got married. Paid 234k and put 10% down. Listed in fall of 2007 and finally closed in April 2008 for 305k I believe. Took that money and bought house in next town over Livermore CA paid 445k and put 5% down on a 1970 era 3/1.5 on a 7k sq ft lot. This was when the market was terrible and she was 9 months pregnant and I needed to max my cash position. Fast forward to last month Sold that house for 995k and bought a house in the Pensacola suburbs. Paid 578k for 3100 feet 4 beds4 full baths and 2.5 acres a pool and No HOA. They were asking 600 Built in 2006. During escrow they did about 5k repairs at our request including windows gutters exterior trim and replaced both hot water heaters.

I’m now sitting on a BIG pile of cash proceeds from my sale and I’d like to buy a rental or even my next home for when I’m too old to want to deal with this size land and kids are gone and rent it for next 20 years. And move into it paid off. bBut I have to believe something will shake loose soon regarding prices soon and I can pick one up at less than current prices.

Truth about roofs in FL. wife’s aunt is managing agent of a big insurance brokerage locally and they couldn’t write a policy due to a “30 year” roof being only 15 years old. Ended up with USAA but my premium is 3x what I paid for a 50 year old house in CA worth 2x.

Long story short I have been lucky to get in with low leverage and a rising market.

Now, you want to talk about the cartel that is real estate agents ? FML. In the Bay Area at least a house sells itself in a few days if priced right and not falling down. And sometimes even if it falling down. You literally pay through the ass to get on MLS and have a non lawyer fill out some forms. And then try to do sale by owner and the other members of the cartel will collude and won’t show it to buyers. And in this day and age buyers are almost all very tech savvy and finding their own houses. We found this house ourselves and only used the agent to write the offer. I’m in the lending biz and deal with agents every day. Most of them disappear as soon as the contract is ratified. The industry needs to go to a flat fee or hourly rate based form of compensation. I paid just under 50k commission to sell my house. Why should the realtors get 10% of my gain ? Was it 2x the work to sell my house when the market said it was worth 1mm vs only 450k. No. Ugh. Just grinds my gears. and don’t fool yourself saying buyer doesn’t pay since seller pays the buyers agent. The buyer paid 2x. In the form of a higher purchase price because seller has to pay out the ass as well when he sells. If I was paying a strait 5k to each realtor for maybe 2 dozen hours work I would have taken a lower sales price. Know what that 50k could do for my kids’ college funds over next -/2 decade ? Just criminal. Even worse is the east coast where they use lawyers to actually write the contract. Agent makes 2,3% and the lawyer gets what $1500 to actually do the legal work ?
 
Posts: 4736 | Location: Florida Panhandle  | Registered: November 23, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
A teetotaling
beer aficionado
Picture of NavyGuy
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We've had 6 houses in our 35 year marriage. In every single instance, save the last one we now live in, once we where in our "dream house" for 6 months or so we wished we would have stretched a bit and gone for a bigger/nicer/better area house. Once you're in, there's not much incremental upgrading you can do. But on the other hand, you don't want to be strapped with more cash outlay than you can comfortably afford. It's a fine line.



Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.

-D.H. Lawrence
 
Posts: 11524 | Location: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: February 07, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
My other Sig
is a Steyr.
Picture of .38supersig
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My next house will be a funeral home.




 
Posts: 9112 | Location: Somewhere looking for ammo that nobody has at a place I haven't been to for a pistol I couldn't live without... | Registered: December 02, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Page late and a dollar short
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Real estate professional is an oxymoron in many cases.


-------------------------------------——————
————————--Ignorance is a powerful tool if applied at the right time, even, usually, surpassing knowledge(E.J.Potter, A.K.A. The Michigan Madman)
 
Posts: 8066 | Location: Livingston County Michigan USA | Registered: August 11, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Hop head
Picture of lyman
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wife and I built when we were married, had a friend of my Father that took care of us on the build,

17yrs later we build another home,

while selling the first, we had a termite / mold / etc inspection to see if we needed to do anything,

housing marked was starting to jump, we sold the house in a day, at asking, pending an inspection,

inspector found a few joists that were basically rotted due to mold, you could drive a screwdriver thru them without much effort,


so they got fixed by a contractor of my choosing, paid for by the termite/mold/whatever inspector, (he was not happy, but we were more not happy,,,)


about that time the air handler started squealing, so a localc company came by to look it over, and did a quick fix for us,

the realtor recommended a hole house warranty, not paid by us, to the new buyer,


with the new house we built, I got to know the foreman well so a lot of little stuff got done,
as well as being close to my father and brothers place, so they would stop by and check on stuff as well,

still living in that house, we got lucky and bought before prices went too stupid in that bubble



https://www.chesterfieldarmament.com/

 
Posts: 10409 | Location: Beach VA,not VA Beach | Registered: July 17, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I agree with NavyGuy. Whenever I went “cheap” buying a house I had regrets. When I bumped the budget number up and overextended (not really but I’m a cheapskate) I have been much happier.
 
Posts: 7344 | Location: Florida | Registered: June 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Get my pies
outta the oven!

Picture of PASig
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Already seeing inventory starting to increase greatly around here as everyone tries to get in on the seller’s market and things are starting to slow down.

Just wait until the eviction moratorium ends and all these people who haven’t been paying rent for 16+ months are finally thrown out…


 
Posts: 33601 | Location: Pennsylvania | Registered: November 12, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I hate to keep disagreeing with you but you won’t see the market correction until interest rates increase. Lent money is just too low at this point to see the crash you seem to be hoping for.

This correction (not crash) will be led quite noticeably by interest rate hikes. That will be the driver. More inventory will slow sales and limit the rise but you are under the impression incorrectly that when the federal moratorium ends literally millions of houses will instantly appear on the market. That just isn’t how it works.

In many states the lifting will now allow the normal process to begin. This process in many states can take quite awhile to actually evict.

None of which changes the basic economic driver that is historically low mortgage rates. When the rates get to 5% the boom is over.
 
Posts: 7344 | Location: Florida | Registered: June 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of LimaCharlie
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We are in our eighth purchased home in four different cities in three different states.


U.S. Army, Retired
 
Posts: 3725 | Location: Northwest Oregon | Registered: June 12, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I Am The Walrus
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Update: home appraised for $30k less than sale price.

Now we have no home and will be forced to rent for a year (again). I was really hoping for that home. Had a pool, lanai around the pool and screened garage door. Decent size home around 1,900 square feet.

Market is absolutely insane right now.


_____________

 
Posts: 13047 | Registered: March 12, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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We just closed on another home on Tuesday.

Fortunately I have some experience in the housing market and was able to find a 2 year old home in the subdivision we wanted that is about 100 yards from our son and DIL. Working with a realtor who knew we were not going to play the bidding war game she found this house that was going to go on the market and we got in and made a solid cash offer. No home inspection (did it myself when we did the walkthrough), cash closing and no other contingencies.

Our DIL ask us to help her with our gorgeous new grand daughter while our son deploys in November and we are more than excited to help her.

45 days from start to finish. Bada bing, bada boom in a beautiful gated community in Pinehurst NC.


------------------
Eddie

Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina
 
Posts: 6309 | Location: In transit | Registered: February 19, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Man of few words

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quote:
Originally posted by Edmond:
Update: home appraised for $30k less than sale price.

Now we have no home and will be forced to rent for a year (again). I was really hoping for that home. Had a pool, lanai around the pool and screened garage door. Decent size home around 1,900 square feet.

Market is absolutely insane right now.


Sorry about your appraisal Edmond. I had the exact thing happen in March of 2020; except my potential house appraised for $7K less than the sale price.

I could have put $7K up in cash but the seller was a jerk and wouldn't come down on the price nor make any repairs that were found. With a VA loan I couldn't make the repairs myself so the deal fell through(after a lot of soul searching and sleepness nights because I had found the house of my dreams.)

Ultimately it worked out for me in the end. I had to sign a new 1 year lease in May, 2020 but kept looking and found my house 5 months later. I got a brand new house, just over 2% interest and $0 down (VA loan.) I ended up breaking my lease 6 months early and the landlord of my previous house was good to me. He could have took me to court and won a judgement of the remainder of the lease, but worked with me as he is a good dude. Ultimately I only had to pay for 2 months rent, utilities and gas on the rental house (while already having moved into my new house) and help the landlord find a new tenant by showing the rental house to what seemed like 20 different couples (he goes back and forth from FL and was out out town during this time) (so I could get out of my lease.)) The new tenant moved in on Feb 1, 21, 4 months before my lease expired, saving me 4 months of rent and utilities.

I will say a prayer for you Edmond. I truly believe something will shake out for you when you least expect it. Try and keep your head up and keep the faith.
 
Posts: 7859 | Location: NE Ohio | Registered: July 03, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I might be missing something Edmund but no house is going to appraise at selling prices right now for the most part. Buyers aren’t going to come down either for the most part. Appraisals don’t follow the wild market swings in a timely manner. In an up market like we are experiencing, rarely would a house appraise at the selling point if ever. That’s where having cash to cover the “difference” means something. If you can’t cover that gap the lenders won’t lend you the money to do so. You pay the extra 30k and buy the house. If you did your homework and that house in that neighborhood was going for that price then unless you just changed your mind on the house, the appraisal is kind of a moot point. Case in point: I just bought a house in Florida. I’m putting down 55% in cash. I have the option to not even get an appraisal. I chose not to because it won’t appraise at the price I’m giving, it will be meaningless basically immediately, and my research showed that’s what that amount of house in that area would cost. So I bought it. Saved the 525 in useless appraisal costs.

Maybe I am missing your point or you can’t cover the 30k, none of my business either way.
 
Posts: 7344 | Location: Florida | Registered: June 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Man of few words

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quote:
Originally posted by pedropcola:
I might be missing something Edmund but no house is going to appraise at selling prices right now for the most part. Buyers aren’t going to come down either for the most part. Appraisals don’t follow the wild market swings in a timely manner. In an up market like we are experiencing, rarely would a house appraise at the selling point if ever. That’s where having cash to cover the “difference” means something. If you can’t cover that gap the lenders won’t lend you the money to do so. You pay the extra 30k and buy the house. If you did your homework and that house in that neighborhood was going for that price then unless you just changed your mind on the house, the appraisal is kind of a moot point. Case in point: I just bought a house in Florida. I’m putting down 55% in cash. I have the option to not even get an appraisal. I chose not to because it won’t appraise at the price I’m giving, it will be meaningless basically immediately, and my research showed that’s what that amount of house in that area would cost. So I bought it. Saved the 525 in useless appraisal costs.

Maybe I am missing your point or you can’t cover the 30k, none of my business either way.


Edmond is an active duty Army service member, so my assumption is he will use a VA loan. For a VA loan you have to have an appraisal.
 
Posts: 7859 | Location: NE Ohio | Registered: July 03, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I’ve done a VA loan myself. I still think if you want the house you just have to pony up the difference. Right now appraisals don’t mean much. Which might, might, be a decent reason to keep your powder dry.

My point wasn’t he doesn’t need an appraisal. My point was, if it’s a good house and that price is what they are going for then come up with the difference because it will be hard to find an appraisal matching selling price in this market.
 
Posts: 7344 | Location: Florida | Registered: June 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
A teetotaling
beer aficionado
Picture of NavyGuy
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Sucks having your dream house evaluate for less than you thought it was worth. I guess you could still buy with with covering the difference with additional cash up front. I'd never do that. I'd go back to the sellers (through your agent) and present this and ask for a price reduction. If they won't budge walk away.



Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.

-D.H. Lawrence
 
Posts: 11524 | Location: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: February 07, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I understand what you are saying but that is a strategy in normal market conditions. In today’s market if you ask the buyer to drop it back to appraised price they would laugh at you. Appraisals won’t match selling price in a market that we currently reside in. If you can’t or won’t pay more than an appraised price there is nothing wrong with that, but you won’t be buying in todays market. I had multiple offers on my house and not one of them was at appraised price. I would have laughed at anyone asking for a reduction in price. I would have just went to the next offer. That’s the reality, like it or not, of today’s market. You can sit and wait it out but realize that their are potential downsides to that as well. A mere 2% increase in lending rates takes a huge bite out of buying power.

I hear you guys who won’t pay above appraisal, my dad would have sat out this market, but you won’t ever get a house that way. If I was still active duty, sitting it out means renting for the next set of orders. That’s the trade off. Quibbling over 30k in this market is , in reality, just slightly more than 100 bucks a month and the reality that nobody is going to cut the price for you. It’s a harsh market for the buyer.
 
Posts: 7344 | Location: Florida | Registered: June 18, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Wait, what?
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We are on our 3rd house in 21 years, and been here for 15. Our second was in Asheville NC on a nice 3 bedroom overlooking the Blue Ridge Parkway. We bought it at $203,500 after whittling it down from $248,000 to $212,000, and were given an extra $8500 off for a shower replacement and a well being on the HOA right of way (it was grandfathered by the association, so free money). We sank $25k into it in improvements and sold it 3 1/2 years later for $348,000. The $125,000 profit is the only reason we’re in the sweet house we are in now.




“Remember to get vaccinated or a vaccinated person might get sick from a virus they got vaccinated against because you’re not vaccinated.” - author unknown
 
Posts: 15501 | Location: Martinsburg WV | Registered: April 02, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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