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Cash back might not be legal if it amounts to you and the seller reporting a higher price of the house to (for example) your lender and then exchanging cash to actually have the house price be lower. You can get relief in the form of the seller covering closing costs and repairs though. But your realtor also just wants the sale to close so he gets his comission. Your inspector is better qualified than your realtor to say if the furnace is done... but a furnace specialist might be in order too. If it is not actually broken then I would expect the sellers to push back on that one.
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Sep 22, 2014 19:43
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Mary loving Poppins posted:I just got off the phone with my realtor and he didn't seem to think we could legally ask for any more cash back. He also said he "absolutely disagreed" with the inspector that the boiler would only last 20 years. (It's 30 years old, last service tag reads 20 years ago.) He said he used to install that kind himself years ago and they "last forever." And he said that regardless, there's a home warranty. To me, that immediately raises red flags on all parties, so I asked to see the details of the warranty (to make sure it would pay full replacement with minimal deductible) and said that part of any counter will be asking a heating contractor to come in and verify that the boiler is in good working condition. What the gently caress. Get a new realtor. Your contract was dependent on the home inspection. The home inspection came with with $20,000 worth of poo poo from the sounds of it. You're absolutely able to ask for that money back, that money off the cost of the house, or just walk away and be out the money for the inspection.
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Sep 22, 2014 19:48
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I'm just thinking, even theoretically, is there any compensation scheme for realtors that would result in their interests being entirely aligned with a home buyer or seller? Sure, there's an argument for needing to build a reputation and getting negative reviews, but past that, there doesn't seem to be anything to get them to really fight for you - they just want to get their commission and move on.
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Sep 22, 2014 19:55
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baquerd posted:I'm just thinking, even theoretically, is there any compensation scheme for realtors that would result in their interests being entirely aligned with a home buyer or seller? Sure, there's an argument for needing to build a reputation and getting negative reviews, but past that, there doesn't seem to be anything to get them to really fight for you - they just want to get their commission and move on. Yes, fee-based. E.g., you agree up front to a fixed amount of money you'll pay them, irrespective of the price of the home. This is a change that needs to happen and probably won't, in part because most home buyers only ever buy a home maybe once or twice in their lives, and in part because the realtor's associations are fairly powerful. A fee-based compensation still would have realtors wanting to close quickly so they can get their fee and move on to the next client, but at least they wouldn't have a direct financial interest in their clients paying too much for a house.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:01
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Leperflesh posted:A fee-based compensation still would have realtors wanting to close quickly so they can get their fee and move on to the next client, but at least they wouldn't have a direct financial interest in their clients paying too much for a house. Yeah, that's the issue I have as well. Also, buyer's agents would have a really hard time of it.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:12
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Leperflesh posted:Cash back might not be legal if it amounts to you and the seller reporting a higher price of the house to (for example) your lender and then exchanging cash to actually have the house price be lower. Seconding this. We got the seller to agree to a $15K repair credit towards the house we bought a few months ago, but our lender was very adamant that getting cash back at closing was not an option since they'd effectively be giving us a loan for more than the house is actually worth. They said that the easiest method of collecting repair credit was having the seller cover closing costs, but once your credit amount exceeds your closing costs, like it did for us and I'm assuming it would for MFP, that leaves you with taking the credit off of the sale price of the house as the only option. That will lower your down payment a little bit, and your total loan/interest amount obviously, but then you still need to come up with the cash for the repairs out of pocket. We didn't have any problem shelling out another $15K to replace our roof and do other needed repairs after we bought our house, but if you're in a position where you can't do that, you may want to assess whether this is really the right house for you or not.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:37
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baquerd posted:I'm just thinking, even theoretically, is there any compensation scheme for realtors that would result in their interests being entirely aligned with a home buyer or seller? Sure, there's an argument for needing to build a reputation and getting negative reviews, but past that, there doesn't seem to be anything to get them to really fight for you - they just want to get their commission and move on. Redfin pays their agents a salary, and asks all clients to review their agent. If customers are satisfied, agents get a bonus; unhelpful or pushy agents eventually are let go. This doesn't eliminate the conflict of interest, but it seems to mitigate it.
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Sep 22, 2014 20:52
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Am I the only person that had a friend who was a realtor? I guess I know a lot of people for various reasons but I actually had 2 friends to choose from.
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Sep 22, 2014 23:17
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I do too. After working on their commuters and rebuilding their domain I got to hear them talk. I won't use a realtor ever again even though my two best friends from first grade are the realtors.
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Sep 23, 2014 00:10
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I don't have any realtor friends, but I do have an uncle who is an architect and has done some appraisal/home inspection work in the past. He also lives an easy drive away and has been amazingly helpful with looking over the house I'm mulling over buying. The place is in one of my favorite neighborhoods, close to work and downtown, but still established enough to have large trees and a couple of very nice parks. The house is located on a wooded double lot and seems to be in very good shape mechanically, including a major renovation in 2006 that brought everything up to modern codes and added a new metal roof. The catch is that the previous owner considered herself to be an interior designer/artist and remodeled the inside of this nice traditional home with a lot of "avant-garde" bullshit. There are some odd free-standing wall segments that don't seem to have any functional purpose, the master bathroom is fitted out in an "industrial" style that includes bare concrete cinderblock and sheet metal accents with industrial safety lights, I *think* the idea in the kitchen is that you're supposed to put your food and dishes in some wicker baskets and then hang them on the wall but who knows, and the garage is painted neon green. Anyway, Architect Uncle took a look at it and assured me that most of the ugly parts could be solved with paint and/or some light demo work and the essentials of the place are in good shape. I'm thinking about making an offer 15-20% below their asking price since it's been sitting on the market for a few months in an otherwise desirable area, and if they accept I'll move in with a sledgehammer in tow and try to de-uglify it over the next few years.
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Sep 23, 2014 00:42
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PDP-1 posted:I'll move in with a sledgehammer in tow and try to de-uglify it over the next few years. My wife tried the same thing when she married me and it didn't really work out all that great for her.
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Sep 23, 2014 00:57
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Leperflesh posted:Yes, fee-based. E.g., you agree up front to a fixed amount of money you'll pay them, irrespective of the price of the home. This is a change that needs to happen and probably won't, in part because most home buyers only ever buy a home maybe once or twice in their lives, and in part because the realtor's associations are fairly powerful.
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Sep 23, 2014 01:09
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adorai posted:It also won't work. A million dollar home is going to take longer to sell, and probably deserves a higher compensation for the sellers agent. Likely, the buyers will be pickier as well. The fee should be negotiable and someone buying a million dollar home can be expected to pay a higher fee. And this is specifically about buyers' agents. The seller's agent's interest in getting maximum price for the home is aligned with the seller's identical interest. It is the buyer's agent's interest in the sale price being higher that is in conflict with the buyer.
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Sep 23, 2014 01:25
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shortspecialbus posted:Am I the only person that had a friend who was a realtor? I guess I know a lot of people for various reasons but I actually had 2 friends to choose from. It's really easy to get licensed, but basically you can't just get a license, you also have to join the cartel by associating yourself with a broker and giving them a kickback, as well as paying protection money to them.
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Sep 23, 2014 02:46
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Real estate is such a scummy racket that needs to get cleaned up and modernized. I like that Redfin is trying to change things up, but it's amazing how little technology has shaken up the business. It's just ridiculous to me that realtors take as huge of a commission as they do, especially in a high cost of living area where the average transaction price is 500k+. The lack of transparency, protected flow of listing information, and misaligned incentives is so ripe for transformation but the industry of course resists it and fights it tooth and nail.
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Sep 23, 2014 03:06
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Leperflesh posted:The seller's agent's interest in getting maximum price for the home is aligned with the seller's identical interest. Not really. The seller's agent's interest is in selling as many houses as possible in as short a time as possible in order to maximize their revenue. A result of this is that selling agents take longer to sell their own homes, and receive more money for their own homes. This means that they need to get your house on the market and sold in a very short time, even if that means selling it for slightly less than what it's worth. People who use real estate agents to sell their home don't receive a better price, but they do get a faster sale.
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Sep 23, 2014 05:42
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Guinness posted:Real estate is such a scummy racket that needs to get cleaned up and modernized. I like that Redfin is trying to change things up, but it's amazing how little technology has shaken up the business. More companies and investors are throwing their hats in the ring. A local real estate blog, Seattle Bubble, profiled a few local alt-brokerages: http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2014/04/28/alternative-brokerages-flourishing-around-seattle/ And that's not even listing the other startups in NYC, Chicago, Toronto, SF.... bartkusa fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 05:53
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bartkusa posted:More companies and investors are throwing their hats in the ring. Look at you waving your "living in a relatively consumer friendly paradise" privilege around. In the far-flung future, I envision a world where real estate sells on a eBay-like platform for <1% commission off the sale price for sellers and free for buyers, while hooking both parties up with links to publicly reviewed, 3rd party, and qualified lenders and lawyers among other parties. Tours of houses can be performed by anyone using an escrow-like bond insuring against damage to the house, while real-time webcam drones (without audio) follow the prospective buyers around. Real estate agents will be thought of as about as modern and useful as book stores.
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Sep 23, 2014 06:16
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In the far-flung future of America, on the other hand, all residential real estate will be owned by corporations. Real estate agents will become obsolete, supplanted entirely by corporate lawyers. Individual citizens will use an ebay-like interface to sell their bodies and organs in order to afford to pay off the corporate enforcers who are going to break their legs when they come around on the 1st if they don't get their back rent paid up in time.
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Sep 23, 2014 07:15
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Leperflesh posted:In the far-flung future of America, on the other hand, all residential real estate will be owned by corporations. Real estate agents will become obsolete, supplanted entirely by corporate lawyers. Individual citizens will use an ebay-like interface to sell their bodies and organs in order to afford to pay off the corporate enforcers who are going to break their legs when they come around on the 1st if they don't get their back rent paid up in time. Bullshit. Those legs are mortgaged properties of another corporation who will flip their poo poo if you break them.
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Sep 23, 2014 07:18
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baquerd posted:Bullshit. Those legs are mortgaged properties of another corporation who will flip their poo poo if you break them. You'll be forced to pay for an insurance policy which insures your own body parts against damage or loss. Of course, the policy pays out to the corporate owner (your private health insurance provider, thanks Obama) and not you. The insurer will sue you if you can't prove the damage was accidental, of course, and having your legs broken by your landlord is clear proof of personal culpability so, yeah.
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Sep 23, 2014 07:23
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Looking to close on a house Oct 17 with my wife and no joke this was house #47 or #48. I literally might have found the best real estate agent on the planet (friend of a friend). Underwriting went smoothly, took under a week, and appraisal just came back 8k over purchase price which is pretty cool. We have probably 3-4 weeks now to decide if we want to have closing sooner or just relax. At this stage this is our third house under contract. Previous ones have been dropped during inspection stage for items discovered. While stress levels have been high, previous house sold in June so we've been camped out in an apartment since then. Had wayyy more stress on the selling side, primarily since time on market in our old area was 300+ days while over here it is under 30 days for most places and 3-4 days for high demand spots.
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Sep 23, 2014 13:05
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PDP-1 posted:I'll move in with a sledgehammer in tow and try to de-uglify it over the next few years. I'm less than half way though the house and have barely touched the yard, but shipped out 11,000 pounds of garbage in my first month. Have fun!
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Sep 23, 2014 13:20
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My house just went up on MLS last night. Got my first showing this afternoon. Hopefully many more showings will follow. Edit: Literally just got a text for a 2nd showing this afternoon.
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Sep 23, 2014 14:50
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Antifreeze Head posted:I'm less than half way though the house and have barely touched the yard, but shipped out 11,000 pounds of garbage in my first month. Holy crap, I hope mine doesn't involve quite that much cleanup. Good luck with the rest of it! Anyway, this train is getting ready to leave the station. I took a few hours off work today to make calls and get some estimates and set up a meeting with a real estate lawyer to help draft an offer. The only unusual thing that has popped up is that the home is included in an Historical Neighborhood Preservation District so I need to find out what that means, if anything. Given that the previous owner did some pretty extensive renovation and painted the garage lime green I'm guessing that it has no really strong enforcement policy behind it but better to find out now than later. I'm guessing there's at least a 50% chance the owner rejects my lowball offer but if they don't there's gonna be a lot of paperwork and check writing in my near future.
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Sep 23, 2014 22:21
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How do you pick a good inspector? I found an inspector highly reviewed online, but I think I got burned. For example, his equipment read 160ppm of carbon monoxide coming from the boiler to the flue, but the energy company came back the next day and read 20ppm. There was also damage from ice dams (there was a claim for it last winter), but he only recommended replacing the roof rather than making preventative changes to the insulation. (The roof may have in fact needed replacement, but when I talked to him about insulating the knee walls instead of the rafters he dismissed the idea because "closet space is at a premium in this neighborhood and I'd rather replace a roof a couple years earlier than lose heated closet space.")
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Sep 24, 2014 02:18
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Mary loving Poppins posted:How do you pick a good inspector? I found an inspector highly reviewed online, but I think I got burned. For example, his equipment read 160ppm of carbon monoxide coming from the boiler to the flue, but the energy company came back the next day and read 20ppm. There was also damage from ice dams (there was a claim for it last winter), but he only recommended replacing the roof rather than making preventative changes to the insulation. (The roof may have in fact needed replacement, but when I talked to him about insulating the knee walls instead of the rafters he dismissed the idea because "closet space is at a premium in this neighborhood and I'd rather replace a roof a couple years earlier than lose heated closet space.") Word of mouth and luck. I probably would never go with one a sellers agent or buyers agent recommended (just my personal take) but instead ask around people you know if they have bought recently and who they used.
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Sep 24, 2014 15:27
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More anecdote to throw on the "real-estate agents are shady as gently caress and the worst" pile, my parents were trying to sell their home by owner and have their own open house events every other weekend. My dad's signs on the neutral ground (median for you non southern people) mysteriously disappeared every weekend. I would blame this on grumpy neighborhood folks, but the local realtor agencies signs always seem to stick around...
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Sep 25, 2014 18:19
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The biggest part missing from the OP and this thread are how to "check out a house", how deep did you guys go? Ive visited of course, read some massive document that told me the house had one busted sprinkler and a cracked sidewalk, talked to neighbors a bit. I am pretty into this place but plan on also, seeing what its like during the day and on a friday night (noise and stuff), check out the nearby restaurants and such. Just wondering what else could be helpful here.
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Sep 26, 2014 13:56
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notlibber posted:The biggest part missing from the OP and this thread are how to "check out a house", how deep did you guys go? I posted some words a while back here, maybe they'd be helpful.
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Sep 26, 2014 15:53
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Thanks y'all. Running out of space in the OPs but I tucked the link to your post in at the bottom.
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Sep 26, 2014 18:11
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I think the most important thing is to look at a lot of different houses. Like anything else, practice improves skill, and you want to develop some skill in noticing flaws and defects in houses. It also helps you not fall in love with the first nice house you see, because you're more likely to recognize that every house has plusses and minuses. Shopping for a house should probably take at least a few months. For one of, if not the, largest purchases of your entire life, it's worth taking the time.
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Sep 26, 2014 19:36
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So I close a week from today. Here are the things I've identified that I need to do:quote:* Arrange for electricity at NewHouse (?) In particular, I'm looking for any things I've overlooked, and in particular any advice people can give about the last two I have identified (about taxes).
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Sep 26, 2014 20:22
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Is the water already turned on? Garbage service? You may get garbage/recycling cans delivered, or have to buy some, so you'll want that arranged by the time you move in. You might want to change the locks on all the exterior doors, depending on the previous ownership situation. A week after everything's been turned on and you've been doing regular use of the water/power/etc system, do a walkthrough yourself to re-inspect drains, pipes, the fuse box, etc. just to make sure that a long period of being turned off hasn't left you with any new issues. For example a week after we moved into my house we discovered a pipe under the house that was badly routed (so that it could rub against the cast iron sewer line as it contracted/expanded) had sprung a pinhole leak. If we hadn't happened to look under there at that time, it might have leaked under there for months.
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Sep 26, 2014 20:33
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Water service is currently on. Sellers occupied the house until last week, so there won't have been much time without water actively flowing through pipes. Garbage is managed by the city, cans are provided and stay with the house. Lock change is planned for after closing.
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Sep 26, 2014 22:01
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Leperflesh posted:I think the most important thing is to look at a lot of different houses. Like anything else, practice improves skill, and you want to develop some skill in noticing flaws and defects in houses. It also helps you not fall in love with the first nice house you see, because you're more likely to recognize that every house has plusses and minuses. I sometimes feel stupid that we only toured the inside of a single house and basically left the offer on the table on the way out the door, but with the location we were looking in, we had so few options that had all the features we wanted (basically this house and only this house) that were in our price range and in vaguely the same area, because we wanted to live in the country about halfway between our two jobs which are an hour and a half apart, give or take. While we had a fairly long "band" of area that would have been valid, there's just not that many houses that met our criteria. Every single inspection came back as "Holy poo poo you got a great house here" so it was reassuring, and the only real worry we had was about the radon, so I think we did alright. Our situation is definitely unique though.
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Sep 26, 2014 22:05
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I need to figure out who I make my first payment to. I haven't gotten a bill but I know that my mortgage has already been bought by someone else. Do I pay the original guys or the new guys? Guess I should probably call someone.
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Sep 26, 2014 22:07
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You should receive a packet in the next few business days regarding the selling of your mortgage and who to make payments to. If you can't wait, I would say to make your payment to your original mortgage company. Even if it's the wrong company, they will know to forward it to the right company. It could take a week or more for that to happen though. Even if it does take several weeks, the payment will still have the effective date of when it was originally received by your original company. So if it was received by the original company on October 1st but it takes them to November 1st to pass the payment on to the new company, when it's finally processed it will reverse and update all the accounting entries as if it was received by the new company on October 1st. To cover your own rear end, make a copy of the check front AND back after completely filling it out and send it certified mail so that the company has to sign for it to ensure receipt. It will cost a few bucks but if something goes wrong it will save you hundreds (or more) and a lot of time. After you receive the new information on who to make your payments to officially, just make the payments as normal and you should be fine. To give you an idea of my background, I worked at a leading mortgage servicer for years and almost a year of that was in collections. If you have to call them up and say you sent the payment but don't have any proof then they are just going to assume you're another rear end in a top hat trying to stall foreclosure and/or get a free payment made. That doesn't happen by the way. You'll also get several calls per day every day while you wait for each side to get their poo poo together, which in a worst case scenario, I've seen take months. edit: and calling your original company to verify what I just told you is also a good idea. SpartanIvy fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Sep 26, 2014 |
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Sep 26, 2014 22:49
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fknlo posted:I need to figure out who I make my first payment to. I haven't gotten a bill but I know that my mortgage has already been bought by someone else. Do I pay the original guys or the new guys? Guess I should probably call someone.
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Sep 26, 2014 22:49
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Welp hit 8K, nearly half way there to putting 20% down on a house, when I hit 26 in 21 months. Looking at a 2 story ~1500 square foot house with .3-.25 acres, they seem to run 100-120 around the lower SW corner of NC. Questions are? What are the pro's/cons of a 2 story? How do you build up credit faster? Seriously, buying a BMW with my dad as a co-signer was hard enough; I'd rather avoid any co-signing or third party interaction. What is your average travel time to work one way? When buying a first house what do you look more into? Does carrying over apartment insurance company provide discounts on home owners insurance?
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Sep 27, 2014 01:19
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