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Peanut and the Gang posted:Google says you shouldn't make big purchases right before the closing date. From what I understand, that's because you get new debt from it and they check your credit report again on closing day. What if you take the money straight out of your account via a debit card payment or whatever? That wouldn't incur any new debt since you're paying it all upfront. Would doing that cause any problems with the rear end in a top hat mortgage people? They will ask you to document any transactions larger than some dollar value in our out if your accounts. Of course, the way around that is to fund your transaction from some account and don't disclose your others that you may have more than necessary to prove funds to closing.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:19
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Tojai posted:That was the advice of our agent. It may be a regional thing here; when we bought our other house we were advised to request a professional cleaning, and the buyer for the house we sold asked the same thing as well. Anyway the house was really dirty, and we wanted it clean when we moved in, and didn't want to have to deal with cleaning up another person's mess. After seeing some of the photos in this thread maybe we were overreacting, but we wanted didn't want to deal with crayon drawings on the walls, caked on food in the microwave and oven, toothpaste and soap smeared all over the bathroom, dustbunnies everywhere, stuff like that. Of course you want to cleaned, but the better way to do that than rely on a seller who has no motivation to please you is to document what a mess everything is with photos during the inspection and then ask for $600 or whatever the necessary cost to clean up the place professionally. Same goes for significant repairs etc. It's better to fix problems with money rather than cross your interests with the seller's pocketbook and risk the seller doing a cheap or shoddy job that you'll have to deal with.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:23
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:Of course you want to cleaned, but the better way to do that than rely on a seller who has no motivation to please you is to document what a mess everything is with photos during the inspection and then ask for $600 or whatever the necessary cost to clean up the place professionally. Same goes for significant repairs etc. It's better to fix problems with money rather than cross your interests with the seller's pocketbook and risk the seller doing a cheap or shoddy job that you'll have to deal with. Oh I see what you're saying. Looking back that probably would've been easier, and I definitely agree about asking for allowances for significant repairs. I didn't worry about cleaning so much because there's not really much risk there.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:36
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:They will ask you to document any transactions larger than some dollar value in our out if your accounts. This can't be stressed enough. at least 3 months before you're ready to apply for a loan transfer the amount you think you'll need all told for down payment, transaction costs, escrow, etc into an account on it's own. 3 months seems to be as far as underwriters look back. This way you can do whatever the gently caress you want without having to explain everything over $100 or whatever arbitrary amount they decide to look at. Saves you some pain. I always try to show bare minimum funds.
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Jan 13, 2015 01:38
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Peanut and the Gang posted:Google says you shouldn't make big purchases right before the closing date. From what I understand, that's because you get new debt from it and they check your credit report again on closing day. What if you take the money straight out of your account via a debit card payment or whatever? That wouldn't incur any new debt since you're paying it all upfront. Would doing that cause any problems with the rear end in a top hat mortgage people? I think this is mostly important with regards to purchases on credit cards, as that decreases the amount of free credit you have available. Also don't make requests for more credit with anyone. For instance, if you were to sign up for a Home Depot credit card for that sweet 10% discount on your first purchase, and then the bank were to check your credit and find not only a new line of credit (which means a recent pull), but one that's maxed out (since you want to get the most out of that first purchase discount), you might find yourself with a worse rate on your pending home loan that dwarfs the savings on that Home Depot card. That would be a bad thing and I would never do it again.
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Jan 13, 2015 13:50
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Tricky Ed posted:I think this is mostly important with regards to purchases on credit cards, as that decreases the amount of free credit you have available. Also don't make requests for more credit with anyone. My lender said it pertained to any transaction outside of normal activity, credit or otherwise. If there was a large deposit they would want to make sure you weren't getting credit/loan from somewhere else. If there is a large cash expenditure, your available cash may change how their perceive you as a risk. Generally, there are a small number of things that they would be bothered by but they want to at least know about everything. I guess there are people always trying to trick lenders one way or another and they decided it's better not to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
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Jan 13, 2015 18:40
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Tricky Ed posted:I think this is mostly important with regards to purchases on credit cards, as that decreases the amount of free credit you have available. Also don't make requests for more credit with anyone. Don't open a credit card right before your home loan closes. Do it the day after or whatever. Also just pay it off immediately and next month your utilization will be down to 0%
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Jan 13, 2015 20:16
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Settle in goons, for I am about to regale you with a tale of ball-shrinking proportions, guaranteed to castrate (via implosion) any of you still sporting House Buying Balls after perusing the rest of this thread. Ok maybe its not that bad, but it should give you a good idea of the amount of poo poo that can happen upon buying yourself a house. August 2014 – Wife and I had been looking at houses seriously for about a year and a half. Realtor had probably taken us through somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 walkthroughs at that point. We had come to the conclusion that we could either buy a nice new house at the top of our price range (275) in a not-so-good spot, or we could spend the same money on an older house in a better location. That’s when we went to view this 1987 slab construction, 3 floor, 1675 sqft, 4 bdrm, 3.5 bathroom house replete with lap cedar siding. The yard was a mess (vines in the yard and overtaking 3 huge water oaks), the carpets were old and gross, but the house had great privacy with the old tree coverage and was in an X flood zone (rare) in a great location. To top it all off, it was being short sold. It had last been bought at the top of the market for 325,000 and was now listed at 275. We made an offer of 239 in mid September and then proceeded to hear nothing from the bank until October 14th, at which time they informed us that 1. they were going to accept our offer 2. they wanted to close on October 30th This meant that we went from 0 to 100 quite abruptly. All of a sudden, we had to get all of our inspections done basically within 1 week. Before we could have our main inspection, we had to turn on the water and power. The former owner had died, and his family never bothered to pay any of his bills, so turning on the water involved paying $400 in back pay before we could even have the house inspected to confirm that we definitely wanted to buy it. Then there was the $500 inspection, the $500 septic inspection, and the free Pest inspection. The septic and pest inspections turned out well and we learned that the septic drainage field had been replaced about a year prior. The biggest issues with the main inspection were a mystery leak in the kitchen ceiling from the roof above, polybutylene / Gray / Qest plumbing, and some issues with the weather stripping on the windows. The inspector gave us the run down about the polybutylene piping, how sometimes it isn’t an issue and sometimes it is a huge issue. He said that we had copper couplings, which gave us somewhat better odds since the polybutylene couplings were the biggest point of failure. At the same time, we have to rerun our loan application to lock in a rate. We were fortunate that we went in to do this on a day when the market took a significant dip and were able to get 3.875 fixed 30. Our realtor was somehow able to negotiate a 4k credit from the selling bank for us to deal with the roof issue and we decided to proceed with closing, which ended up happening on October 31st thanks to a herculean effort on the part of our lender to push everything through. At this point, we had given notice to move out of our apartment on December 1st, so we had one month to get our new house into move in ready condition, which basically entailed painting and putting down hardwoods on the main (2nd) floor of the house. Our thinking was to get the kitchen, living room, and 2 bedrooms on that floor functional, and then we could work on the downstairs bed and bath and the upstairs bed and bath on our own time. On the day of closing, my in-laws were in the house waiting for the greenlight to begin ripping up carpets. Both of our families live 6 hours away, but they came in for the weekend to help. All carpets were ripped up that first night and painting began the next day. The in-laws left leaving us with 2 weeks of going to work, and then painting until midnight and driving back to our condo to pass out. Throughout this time, we were slowly moving things out of our condo and into the house as we could. During this time, I also had a crew of guys redoing the roof and siding around the area where the leak was above the kitchen. There is a fiberglass deck that sits on top of the roof up there, and they resided and flashed that as well as the chimney. At the end of those two exhausting weeks, the in-laws returned with my brother (general contractor), and we were going to lay all of the hardwood flooring on the main level in 3 days. We did achieve this by working 3 16 hour days and pissing off all of our new neighbors in the process because we had two air compressors, a miter saw, and a table saw out on our deck going full bore until 3 AM Sunday morning. I felt like poo poo doing that, but we were in a bit of a do-or-die crunch because we had to move out of our condo completely the next weekend. So somehow everything had fallen into place and we were basically moving in on time after a crazy 2 months of non-stop action. It is the last Sunday of our move in weekend (November 30) and we are moving the last of our stuff into the house, when the wife finds a gushing lake of water outside of our house near the water shut off box for the house. Cue us running around the house in a panic, calling the town to figure out how to cut the water off. The town is closed on the weekend and there is no emergency help. Finally, I call my boss and he tells me there should be a water cut off near the street. In a typical yard, it was obvious, but our yard is full of knee high weeds and briars and poo poo, so I had to tromp around for a while and then I found it. I dig up the main water line and find a hole in the pipe smaller than a pencil eraser. Pipe is blue and after sending photos to inlaw and brother, they assume it is PEX. Watch a bunch of youtube videos and then head to Lowe's. Buy 1/2 inch pex, crimper, and fittings. Get back, it is too small. Go back to Lowes. Oh they close at 7 on Sundays. Go to Home Depot and buy 3/4 inch pex and fittings. Go back to the hole in the ground. 10:30 PM on the night we are supposed to move in in glamorous fashion, I'm sitting in a hole in the ground using WD-40 to jam a coupler into this pipe. Turns out, the pipe was some old "Blue Bird" polybutylene that was 5/8 inch. Finally get that coupler jammed in there, cut the water on, and there are no leaks. Victory! Go back to the water meter and notice that it is still spinning, albeit much slower. There is another leak in this pipe somewhere out in the jungle of our front yard. Call plumbers to get quotes for redoing the main line. Everyone freaks out when they see our clusterfuck of a yard. Cheapest quote was $1250, so we went with that since now we're overstaying our lease in our empty condo with a blow up mattress on the floor. A week or so later we have a new water main, and are moved in! 2 weeks later, we have some friends visiting and then the wife goes down to the bottom floor bedroom where the hot water heater and water lines first enter the house and notices that the entire ceiling is saturated and there is water dripping out. Apparently all of the nice new pressure we are getting from the new mainline is too much of a struggle or some poo poo. I cut open the ceiling (all the way to the wall, which I later learned you shouldn't do for ease of putting up new drywall) and find the leak. Two different sizes of poly joined together in an h shape. Fun. Back to Lowes, buying more poo poo, spend a couple hours fiddling with the pipes and get the new chunk spliced in just in time for bed. We take showers and then an hour later we are laying in bed and we hear "BOOOSH" in the walls somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd floors. We are running around the house screaming obscenities in our bathrooms looking for the leak. I run downstairs and cut the water off outside of the house. I discover a waterfall pouring out of the underside of our house where the plumbing comes out to an outdoor shower. Fortunately it seems that most of the water that time went straight down and out of the house. This is coming up on Christmas time, so we're trying to get quotes for a full repipe and showering at our friend's and boss's houses, carting jugs of water back so we can at least take dumps in our new palace. Many plumbers we talked to didn't have a big enough crew or time block until February. Finally got 4 quotes. 9500 for an out of state repipe with dry wall replacement, 8500 for a local with no dry wall, 5815 from another local plumber with a crew, and 5100 from a guy who was kind of doing jobs on the side while he worked for other plumbers. The Sunday before the repipe started was a hard, sideways rain, we saw one drop of water on the floor in the living room and check the ceiling. Wet. Go up to this fiberglass deck that sits on the roof above that area and start looking around. Finally lay down and look under the sliding glass door. Oh, there' s a half inch open gap between the end of the fiberglass and the door where it looks like caulk may have disintegrated away over time. Fine. I can caulk. Caulk all of that and some of the gaps where the roof guys had resided as a temporary fix. The 5815 quote was the only guy who seemed concerned about our immediate lack of water and fixed the issue, so we went with him. Repipe was completed last Friday. Yay! We can finally stop cutting our water off every time we go to sleep or leave the house and start focusing on improving the house again since we aren't in immediate danger of flooding everything! We resume work on improving the place, taking all of the formica kitchen cabinets off for painting. One week later (this week) we get another hard rain. I come home to a kitchen counter covered in water. At this point I'm so whelmed I just stick a trashcan under it and go sit on the couch to eat. 10 minutes later a drop of water hits me on the back of the neck. FUUUUUCK Now that deck is leaking directly under the rails on either side, which is where everyone says decks that sit on roofs leak because the pilings break the roof barrier. Now we don't know what to do about that. Do we try to get quotes from someone who really knows how to fix decks that sit on top of a roof, do we get someone to remove it and just put regular roof there, do we build some kind of roof over top of the deck to potentially keep the hard rains from invading the existing weaknesses? At this point, on top of the 49k we dropped on the downpayment, we have spent another 16k, some of which (floors, washer/dryer, water heater) was expected, and some of which (pipes, additional roof work on chimney) was not. We have an original-to-the-house '87 air handler and a mostly original roof (except for the one side we replaced). The repiping revealed that our cedar siding is failing and we have some mold growing on exterior bump outs on the house. So basically, we have the potential of being hit with a failed A/C combo, an almost full reroof job within the next 5 or so years (though it seems fine right now), and a not too distant residing or at least exterior painting on top of whatever we decide to do with this infernal deck. TLDR: Do never buy?
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Jan 14, 2015 17:32
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KnucklePuckMe posted:At this point, on top of the 49k we dropped on the downpayment, we have spent another 16k, some of which (floors, washer/dryer, water heater) was expected, and some of which (pipes, additional roof work on chimney) was not. We have an original-to-the-house '87 air handler and a mostly original roof (except for the one side we replaced). The repiping revealed that our cedar siding is failing and we have some mold growing on exterior bump outs on the house. So basically, we have the potential of being hit with a failed A/C combo, an almost full reroof job within the next 5 or so years (though it seems fine right now), and a not too distant residing or at least exterior painting on top of whatever we decide to do with this infernal deck. This situation really sucks. I'm sorry this is all happening to you. This should be a lesson for people that are basically draining all their cash for the down payment. Two of my coworkers just bought houses and while they were new construction, both of them pretty much had only a few grand left over after the purchase.
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Jan 14, 2015 18:19
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I would have walked at the first sign of polybutylene. My parents' house had to be entirely repiped when I was a kid to tear out that garbage, and I would never ever go near it again. Sorry you're having a terrible time. Do never buy
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Jan 14, 2015 18:41
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That is an extremely lovely experience and a good cautionary tale: be prepared for everything to be hosed shortly after you buy a place
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Jan 14, 2015 20:02
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So you had to spend 30k to fix the pipes the inspector told you were poo poo? I am confused.
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Jan 14, 2015 21:48
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Elephanthead posted:So you had to spend 30k to fix the pipes the inspector told you were poo poo? I am confused. Yeah, I don't understand either. If an inspector says "That could be a really really expensive for the following reasons:" and then you buy anyway it's your own fault. That's not a "do never buy" tale, that's an "I'm dumb" story.
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Jan 14, 2015 22:41
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I dunno, most inspections come back with a thing that could be major. I had never heard of polywhatsit until this thread, and if my inspector said "well it might be a major fix, but it might be okay" I don't know if I would have done anything different. My house had a weird foundation thing that would have cost a bunch to do an actual deep inspection, but we said gently caress it and it ended up fine* *and by fine I mean the roof leaked and we had to replace that instead, do never buy.
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Jan 14, 2015 23:08
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KnucklePuckMe posted:One week later (this week) we get another hard rain. I come home to a kitchen counter covered in water. At this point I'm so whelmed I just stick a trashcan under it and go sit on the couch to eat. 10 minutes later a drop of water hits me on the back of the neck. FUUUUUCK Now that deck is leaking directly under the rails on either side, which is where everyone says decks that sit on roofs leak because the pilings break the roof barrier. My parents had a house with a deck over a flat roof for 12 years. The entire deck and roof were replaced four separate times and the roof still leaked. I don't know that there isn't a solution for certain, but my parents spent more than you have to try to resolve the issue before giving up. I say rip out the deck and be done unless you can find a way to support it without piercing the roof below in any location.
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Jan 15, 2015 07:12
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Tricky Ed posted:My parents had a house with a deck over a flat roof for 12 years. The entire deck and roof were replaced four separate times and the roof still leaked. I don't know that there isn't a solution for certain, but my parents spent more than you have to try to resolve the issue before giving up. I say rip out the deck and be done unless you can find a way to support it without piercing the roof below in any location. Yeah that kind of scenario is what I'm afraid of. Every contractor is probably going to puff up their chest and act like they can fix it with some strategy that they've concocted, but a year later when it starts leaking again, I'm guessing they won't be taking my calls. Of course tearing the deck out will probably be a major job as well, since then we'd have to take out the sliding glass door and replace it with a wall on top of the roofing. Assuming that having a sliding glass door opening directly onto a roof violates a code or two. Elephanthead posted:So you had to spend 30k to fix the pipes the inspector told you were poo poo? I am confused. We spent $7065 so far to repipe the inside and the outside of the house. I say "so far" because we still have holes in the drywall to replace, though I'm going to try to DIY that before we start throwing out more money. I really hate mudding drywall, but we have knockdown texture in this house, which apparently makes it easier to hide poo poo work (mine). The inspector explained to us that the pipes can go bad, but they don't always. He also explained to us that almost all of the houses of that age in our area have those pipes. He said the biggest point of failure was the plastic joints, which in our case were all copper because they had figured out the joints were bad at the point this house was piped. We got the same story from our realtor (which obviously may be a little biased after a year of searching and a couple other people). I then read everything I could on the internet about the stuff, and we basically knew that it wasn't going to be an "if", but a "when" for replacing them when we bought the house. Unfortunately, the "when" was immediately, but of course it it would be! And yes, there was probably a tinge of desperation / dumb optimism involved in finally finding a house after searching for so long - hopefully other goons can make better choices! At least know that if you're buying a house with the gray pipe, you will need to have money on hand for a full repipe or forever live in fear. We spent another 7k on hardwoods and appliances and then the other 2k was pretty much random poo poo at Lowes. Our stack of Lowes receipts at this point is a joke. The good news is we've got about $1000 worth of rewards stacked up on a bunch of credit cards now. yay? Fortunately, since we spent significantly less up front than we could have, we still have some money to fall back on for additional repairs. We have another 10k in savings and 18ish in stocks, which should be close to enough to get us through at least through 2 of the 3 larger things that could still blow up (roof, siding, A/C). I'm at the point now where I'm watching to pull the money out of stocks the next decent opportunity I get, just so we don't get caught with our pants down when the roof implodes. KnucklePuckMe fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Jan 15, 2015 |
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Jan 15, 2015 17:13
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KnucklePuckMe posted:Now we don't know what to do about that. Do we try to get quotes from someone who really knows how to fix decks that sit on top of a roof, do we get someone to remove it and just put regular roof there, do we build some kind of roof over top of the deck to potentially keep the hard rains from invading the existing weaknesses? Ask this over in the DIY & Hobbies subforum, there are some people there who are quite knowledgeable about construction.
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Jan 15, 2015 17:41
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A little more on the rewards cards topic. If you have a good credit rating and are good about not carrying any balance on your credit cards, you should consider stockpiling some big juicy rewards cards RIGHT AFTER your loan is FULLY FUNDED. DO NOT gently caress with your credit before your loan is fully closed. There are tons of websites that discuss this such as millionmilesecrets and nerd wallet. There’s probably a thread on here somewhere as well…I know there is a subreddit dedicated to credit card churning (cycling through a bunch of cards every quarter for the rewards). I’m not really into doing all the churning tricks of manufacturing spend on cards to keep churning throughout the year, but it seems that when you buy a house, spending money comes easily enough. You are probably going to be spending a poo poo ton of money on redecorating, plungers, pipe snakes, and what have you, so why not maximize the value of your dollar at the same time? The basic idea is that you get rewards cards with big sign up / spend bonuses like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Southwest (quality of sign up offers vary throughout the year), and AMEX SPG cards, spend the requisite 3k and 5k to get the big rewards 35-50k in points, cash in your rewards, and then close the cards after 7 months before the first annual fee comes into play. The initial rewards on some of these cards come out to be around $400 in gift cards, which is an inefficient but hassle-free use of your points. More efficient use of your points can be worth $600-$800ish in flights and hotels, depending on how you work it and value your own time. However, if you are going to carry a balance on any of these cards, don’t bother. People who carry a balance are the reason that the companies make these offers, because the interest rates are poo poo. I applied for 3 cards right after confirming with my loan officer that the loan was solid and have already hit the rewards levels on all of them. My credit score fell a couple of points, but over the long term it should make that back and then some because now I have all of this additional credit which makes my normal spending look minuscule when the banks look at credit utilization. You’ll also lose a couple points when closing accounts. I would only close accounts that have annual fees. Keep the rest open and inactive to build history, etc.
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Jan 15, 2015 17:54
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If you qualify for an affordable housing program in an expensive city, are those worth the trouble of buying a house assuming you can get the full down payment assistance?
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Jan 17, 2015 02:26
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Chalets the Baka posted:If you qualify for an affordable housing program in an expensive city, are those worth the trouble of buying a house assuming you can get the full down payment assistance? It probably means you don't have enough cash saved and as such shouldn't be doing it. But more details would be needed for Internet strangers to give a reasonably conclusive answer.
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Jan 17, 2015 02:35
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Chalets the Baka posted:If you qualify for an affordable housing program in an expensive city, are those worth the trouble of buying a house assuming you can get the full down payment assistance? It depends upon the strings attached, often these programs involve some kind of land trust with liens on the property that will heavily restrict your ability to sell if and when you decide to move. If it's just free money then probably worthwhile to pursue assuming it makes sense for you otherwise to be buying a house.
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Jan 17, 2015 03:24
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For the Minnesota first time buyers program (at least a couple years ago) you basically got a 5% down payment given to you, with half of it forgiven after 6 years. Then the other half repaid upon resale of the property. In exchange, you ended up paying an extra half percent or so on your loan. Nothing stopping you from refinancing after 6 years (or whenever, but doing a refi before the 6 years means paying back the whole amount). You had to use a lender that was listed with the program, but luckily my bank had several mortgage people who were listed and very familiar with the ins and outs of it. Value aside, it got us into a very reasonably priced home with a monthly outlay (PITI plus all utilities) that's easily 20% less than comparable rents in the area. Not touching most of our cash reserves gives us a good buffer for repairs both at closing and during ownership, and I'll be removing the PMI in August because we'll be better than 78% LTV by that point. The few hundred for an appraisal will pay for itself in less than 6 months. Edit: as for all things, weigh your budget against the cost and expense of the home. Don't stretch your budget just because its a good deal comparatively. We knew what we'd spend to rent something we'd like, and set our total housing budget below that. Currently we're spending 30-33% of our income on all house-related expenses, and that includes an extra amount each month that stays in our joint checking to cover small repairs and expenses. PitViper fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 15:49
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Looked at a house yesterday that was a marvel of terrible construction mixed with hillbilly upkeep that led to a foreclosure and mold explosion. From the outside: Roof is a goner, water leaking in in multiple areas Composite wood siding is completely swelled everywhere around the house and rotting Rear deck was sinking into the ground and pulling away from the house. No joke one "wing" of it is a foot lower and tilted badly against the house. The railings were nailed into the siding at random to no avail. DIY massive egress window added to basement foundation wall (like looks like sawzall grade cuts to poured foundation) Crooked, leaking, and moss covered cinder block retaining wall built for said above window Foundation near front of house was mis-poured and instead of siding overlapping the foundation rim, the foundation sticks out 2-3" and the siding is tucked in. From the inside: 70's styling meets 1990s construction Trashed carpet, walls, everything that could be trashed Basement had the perimeter 1" of drywall cut from the floor up because of a flooding during a bank repo Mold, mold, MOLD loving mold everywhere in the basement (bank or agent is literally spray painting black moldy wood white between showings...) House is listed at a price indicating move-in ready prime conditions for this area which is about 350-400k. It probably needs somewhere in the range of 100-200k in repairs. Literally the land might be worth more than the land+house right now.
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Jan 17, 2015 20:48
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Spermy Smurf posted:Yeah, I don't understand either. It sounds like the inspector told them about it in a way that made it sound like a not-serious problem quote:The inspector gave us the run down about the polybutylene piping, how sometimes it isn’t an issue and sometimes it is a huge issue. He said that we had copper couplings, which gave us somewhat better odds since the polybutylene couplings were the biggest point of failure. If I heard "these pipes sometimes suck because the couplings break, but you don't have those couplings so you should be okay" then I'd figure it'd be safe to assume that the pipes wouldn't all start bursting over the next 30 days. That's just bad luck.
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Jan 17, 2015 20:51
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There is a real estate agent, somewhere right now, talking poo poo about this ridiculous client of theirs.
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Jan 17, 2015 21:05
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QuarkJets posted:It sounds like the inspector told them about it in a way that made it sound like a not-serious problem
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Jan 18, 2015 03:00
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dietcokefiend posted:Looked at a house yesterday that was a marvel of terrible construction mixed with hillbilly upkeep that led to a foreclosure and mold explosion. When do you close
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Jan 18, 2015 03:42
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SiGmA_X posted:The first page of Google results would inform you that you're rolling the dice big time and shouldn't buy a house with BP houses.
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Jan 18, 2015 04:30
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moana posted:He bought it for $35k under asking expecting to have to fix the problem eventually; also I'd assume most houses in that area and price range have the same issue. I'm scared shitless of septic tanks but I'm making my peace with the fact that my next house will have to have one. Really, uh, never buy unless you can afford having some big time bad luck problems. Don't worry about a septic. They're easy to take care of, as long as the leach field was constructed properly, and it was maintained.
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Jan 18, 2015 04:32
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uwaeve posted:When do you close  When the house burns down and a year or two later something else is built in the same price range.Got 4 showings set for tomorrow, got a couple of hopefuls.
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Jan 18, 2015 04:47
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SiGmA_X posted:Don't worry about a septic. They're easy to take care of, as long as the leach field was constructed properly, and it was maintained.
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Jan 18, 2015 04:51
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moana posted:No matter what, I'm posting the inspection reports in here for you to look at first! On the septic note, looking for something like "county name" + septic systems health department for your area. In this part of Ohio inspections by the state are something done for all properties with septic on a regular basis (as well as required some permit costs and other items you pay to cover this program). This is the stuff that will pass/fail a system and the county will force you to do repairs. http://www.hamiltoncountyhealth.org...ns/routine.html The part I like about this area is its all public and searchable by address. You can glean some information about the type of system as well as if it has always passed or failed recently. The other part that is valuable if you notice you are like the odd man out and all your neighbors are on public sewer. The significance of this is that some areas, including this part of Ohio have laws on the books forcing you to connect to public sewer if you are within a certain distance, regardless of the age of your system. There are some people who are hosed royally by this, say a serious problem causing you to replace the entire septic to modern standards and a couple years later paying 10-30k to connect to city sewer.
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Jan 18, 2015 05:15
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KnucklePuckMe posted:The Sunday before the repipe started was a hard, sideways rain, we saw one drop of water on the floor in the living room and check the ceiling. Wet. Go up to this fiberglass deck that sits on the roof above that area and start looking around. Finally lay down and look under the sliding glass door. Oh, there' s a half inch open gap between the end of the fiberglass and the door where it looks like caulk may have disintegrated away over time. Fine. I can caulk. Caulk all of that and some of the gaps where the roof guys had resided as a temporary fix.
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Jan 18, 2015 05:30
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Saw two houses today. One is a 15 year old house with some incredible settling issues. All around the exterior slabs for the front walk or areas near the foundation have dropped 3-4". Inside looks pretty interesting but more settling issues front to back. Wide flooring pulling away from walls with gaps up to an inch. Flashlight level check shows a pretty hilarious roll in some rooms to the outside where the visual indicators are showing settling. This part of town is really old and really flat, so I'm going to go out on a hunch and just say the builder did something wrong. Other place is a 50 year old home with some good bones and fantastic character. Needs maybe 30-50k in updating and maintenance items to bring it back to its former glory. Part I need to research is if its price range of 375k is "make it your own" price for the neighborhood or if its just priced really high right now and should be 325k to account for some work that needs to be done.
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Jan 18, 2015 22:35
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dietcokefiend posted:Saw two houses today. Well be sure to offer generously. You certainly would not want to terribly offend the seller you'll never meet with a low offer nor waste the agent's time changing numbers around on a standardized offer sheet
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Jan 19, 2015 00:02
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:Well be sure to offer generously. You certainly would not want to terribly offend the seller you'll never meet with a low offer nor waste the agent's time changing numbers around on a standardized offer sheet Not sure what you are getting at, I'm not a moron. I don't want to waste my time writing up an offer, shooting over an earnest money check, getting the wife hopes up, etc etc for something that might not work out. Unless things are either super good values or house of our dreams popping up this far into the game I'm not going to bother.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:09
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In the middle of an offer, happy to settle pre-inspection at the top end of comp range, but the seller seems to not understand this. With any luck, we'll reach a compromise both of us are not that happy with, but I worry about getting more concessions post-inspection after dropping the inspection and lawyer money.
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Jan 19, 2015 02:10
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Put an offer on a house, it got accepted. Now we just need to hope that our little starter sells by February 13th. Trying hard not to stress but I really hope everything works out. 
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Jan 19, 2015 03:16
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As posted a bit ago, the wife and I are finally getting a house. Put an offer on a one-story, three bedroom, 2 bath house and had it accepted within 24 hours of some minor negotiations (managed to get the sellers to pay 3% of the house value in our closing costs). Had the inspection done and everything seems to be in good shape with a few minor things we sent the seller to take a look at/give us information. This was easily the best $400 I ever spent. Now I just have to process the loan, get it appraised and close from the other side of the country. What could possibly go wrong? In all seriousness, this thread has been absolutely golden for this process. I actually felt somewhat knowledgeable in asking questions during the process and am already budgeting for stuff I know will go wrong. A serious thank you to everyone that paved the way with their blood, sweat and tears (and bank accounts). Now to prep for the water heater that's at the end of its expected lifespan, a new roof in 5 years and the endless fix ups, money sinks and headaches.
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Jan 19, 2015 05:10
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| # ? May 31, 2024 23:10 |
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Well, we put in an offer last night. We offered the asking price, but the house has been on the market one day and has had 5 showings. *crosses fingers* I would really love to be able to walk to work.  stroke your lucky fedora for me, goons.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:58
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