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Tenacious J posted:I'm looking for a sanity check about a first time home purchase. Basically wondering if this sounds like a good purchase or if we should walk away. Do you have a monthly budget? Everything here sounds fine so long as you can afford the payments. No point in trying to time the housing market, what matters is that you like the house, can afford to live there, and have a seemingly firm understanding of any issues with it (none of what you described sounds disastrous)
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May 13, 2022 21:07
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Time in the market > timing the market in long-term investment, so why not the same here? 
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May 13, 2022 21:57
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Tenacious J posted:We have a 5-year fixed rate of 2.99 if we close soon. This is a red flag for me - are you saying this is an ARM that will adjust after the 5 year period expires? Not sure how different your mortgage financing is in Canada, but ARMs are how things went bad for a lot of people in the 2008 recession. If rates go down, great. If rates go up, you could be in deep poo poo. A 2.99 is great - I locked 4.25 with 20% down last week on a jumbo loan - and rates are going up for the short term, but if they stay high it could spell trouble.
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May 13, 2022 22:33
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Pollyanna posted:Time in the market > timing the market in long-term investment, so why not the same here? Do we have to get into the reasons why your primary residence is not a good investment (in terms of actual investing)? May as well link it here: https://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrible-investment/ Owning a home remains a lifestyle choice, not an investment. Even though people want to keep trying to treat it that way, especially whenever we have a run of home price increases and rent increases. But these things are all temporary AND tempered by downturns or nearly flat growth times that aren't beating you over the head in breathless headlines. From an investment standpoint, a primary home is at best a forced-savings vehicle. Many people do not need this to successfully save and invest, and their investments outperform homes over the long term. Motronic fucked around with this message at 22:37 on May 13, 2022 |
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May 13, 2022 22:33
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Heh, in the Denver market, I put 8 offers out in one day. Only one was accepted. If any others were accepted we'd have of course bailed due to a myriad of mechanism, although it's not like a seller is going to be short on offers anyway, so screw them.
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May 13, 2022 22:56
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Anza Borrego posted:This is a red flag for me - are you saying this is an ARM that will adjust after the 5 year period expires? Not sure how different your mortgage financing is in Canada, but ARMs are how things went bad for a lot of people in the 2008 recession. My understanding is that there aren’t really 30yr fixed mortgages in Canada. The standard is an ARM.
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May 13, 2022 23:22
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My parents' san francisco home is now under contract. They listed it well below market to attract bids, refused to accept bids until day 12, and then received... five bids, all over asking, but the highest being actually right about where they had expected the house to most likely sell at. In other words, a fair offer, not a wild one. All-cash, zero contingency, they countered for a wee bit more, and the buyer was happy to say yes. This is not what would have happened even 2 months ago. The house has defects, it needs a fair bit of work, but it's also an SF house facing a tree-lined boulevard in a desirable neighborhood with some nice features (high ceilings, parquet floor, bonus room, recently-remodeled bathroom, etc.) My stepdad is sad because he had dreams of clearing +$200k above "expected" via some wild buyer or a bidding war. He and his agent toyed with the idea of holding it off the market for another month and getting it repainted, clean up some defects, etc. before listing it, but in the end they got spooked by a maybe-softening market and moved forward now. I think that was likely the right decision, because while $100k in work might have made the house look more move-in ready and induced more bids, they might also have been selling into an even softer market at the high end. Buyers at $1.4M looking to have a huge mortgage are more heavily impacted by a 1% rise in interest rates, and flippers/investors may be a little spooked now, too. My stepdad's seeing 1% drops in listings in Colorado (that's where they're moving) in the last week, on houses that were only on the market for less than 2 weeks, so it looks like some hesitance or uncertainty there too. I wish he could just hold off and not buy immediately but he needs to get off my couch and my sister needs to not be hosting my mom for several more months, too (she's got severe parkinsons and is a heavy burden) so I think he's headed out to start shopping by next week.
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May 13, 2022 23:29
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Sundae posted:My understanding is that there aren’t really 30yr fixed mortgages in Canada. The standard is an ARM. This comes up every time someone posts from Canada.
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May 13, 2022 23:35
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Motronic posted:Do we have to get into the reasons why your primary residence is not a good investment (in terms of actual investing)? Yes, I know a house is better thought of as a purchase and lifestyle choice than an investment - I got that much from the Four Pillars.
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May 13, 2022 23:46
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Tenacious J posted:Canada House I'll go back to what ChrisGoGo said earlier - a first time home is a lifestyle choice, not an investment. If you've worked out your monthly budget and this is within your range, you like the house, then go for it?
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May 14, 2022 00:00
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Pollyanna posted:Speaking of, what’s your opinion on oil heat/tanks? I know relatively little about it aside from separate oil providers, shopping around, and it being older tech. I only have experience chucking money at Eversource and National Grid. Do you think it’s a high-priority removal+upgrade? they work fine but they're expensive, if yours is old it's worth looking at removing/replacing it - MA will actually pay you up to 15K to rip out your entire system and replace it with a heat pump or other efficient system - https://www.masssave.com/en/saving/residential-rebates/heat-pump - they'll also cut you a 0% interest loan to do it. MA has huge programs to upgrade houses right now, it's worth checking out but when I looked into it the consensus was those programs were not going anywhere and it was better to ride an existing system into its replacement cycle before putting in the new thing MA has a bunch of other cool poo poo too for fixing up old houses - https://www.masssave.com/en/saving/residential-rebates: - they'll pay $750 bucks to put in a heat pump water heater (we did this and it literally cut our power bill in half) - the usual pay you for smart thermostats, we have a bunch of free nests - free energy assessment where they will replace all your weather stripping, blow insulation in everywhere, seal your foundation - the PO did it before we moved in and the house is in great shape as a result - lots of other fringe stuff like paying you to take away your old fridge if it's too old the only thing that sucks is they used to heavily subsidize solar and cut 0% loans for that but the program is on hiatus, i am definitely jumping on it when it comes back in general MA is absolutely riddled with tons of subsidy/incentive programs and most of them aren't even means tested, worth checkin out as you get settled in
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May 14, 2022 01:27
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 Maybe I shouldn’t be discounting places with old lovely utilities after all.
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May 14, 2022 01:36
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Short sale fell through, back to square one. I'm not surprised and was prepared for this to happen but it doesn't make it any less disappointing.
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May 14, 2022 02:50
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got 'em. inspection period - '08 house so not expecting much. $10k seller paid concessions (they up'd the price $5k for this lol) comes with fridge/washer/dryer/etc. our #2 choice in locations - walkable to just about everything, 2 blocks from a huge park. 2100 sqft (larger than we generally were looking) & a nice front & back yard. checked ALL(!) of our house search needs & wants. I haven't seen it irl only our realtor & the mrs e: I feelin like I got pretty lucky here 1st_Panzer_Div. fucked around with this message at 05:26 on May 14, 2022 |
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May 14, 2022 02:54
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Wait so in the US you can lock in your interest rate for 20-30 years?
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May 14, 2022 04:35
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Chillyrabbit posted:Wait so in the US you can lock in your interest rate for 20-30 years? 15 or 30 year fixed rate mortgages are the norm here.
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May 14, 2022 04:39
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Saw a place today that was selling for 795k and it was pretty good but I felt it was overpriced, especially since the commute woulda been like 45 minutes. Honestly, I think I hosed myself over by finding an apartment with a 25~30 minute commute total. Everything else is going to be intolerable by comparison.
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May 14, 2022 04:50
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Chillyrabbit posted:Wait so in the US you can lock in your interest rate for 20-30 years? And if the rate lowers? You can refinance! Just gotta pay the new closing costs.
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May 14, 2022 04:55
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UK mortgages are fun since the longest fixed rate you can buy is 10 years then it becomes variable. You can refinance but that is dependent on the market not being poo poo. You could take a tracker or a capped rate which is basically variable or variable with a range. It is just very convoluted for no reason. So perfect for Britain.
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May 14, 2022 04:59
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Pollyanna posted:Saw a place today that was selling for 795k and it was pretty good but I felt it was overpriced, especially since the commute woulda been like 45 minutes. 45 minutes is a completely reasonable commute in Boston
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May 14, 2022 10:57
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If it's like DC, the difference between a 30 minute commute and a 45 minute commute is like 1 mile.
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May 14, 2022 13:24
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Boston commute is extra spicy as will the elevated road or bridge I am stuck in for an hour due to traffic finally collapse from lack of maintenance today?
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May 14, 2022 13:30
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4.875... I feel like I'm in lotto winning lucky levels here.
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May 14, 2022 15:09
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God I forgot how much extra costs come with house buying. Attorney fees, radon/termite/hvac/general inspections, survey (which we need to do for the abnormally shaped property line), closing costs. And on top of that we need a washer/dryer/fridge Ugh.
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May 14, 2022 16:11
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Anza Borrego posted:Apologies in advance for Appraisal came back $25k over sale price, hurdle cleared! We waived appraisal as part of our negotiations and having a gap would have pushed us uncomfortably low on our emergency fund/cash in hand, so this was an important milestone to clear. I’m a landscape architect with a bunch of architect friends and one recommended an extremely good, very affordable GC that does a lot of their high-end home work. Got some quotes from him and used that to request $11k of closing cost concessions from the seller - the bids we got are much lower than market costs and my awesome realtor wrote a great letter with the request for repairs, so fingers crossed. I’d be stoked to just get a few $K out of the process that would help offset some of the costs we are going to take on before we move in. Already dreaming with the wife about the next 10 years of improvements to the home - I’ve been waiting so long to get our own place and flex some design skills. Of course, some idiot on the finance or escrow side is probably waiting in the wings to just wreck my poo poo  There’s a changing cast of characters at our lender as mortgage layoffs proceed but things seem to be rolling forward with underwriting, maybe if I’m lucky everyone will be motivated to close before the scheduled Memorial Day weekend date…. LOL of course they won’t but I can dream
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May 14, 2022 17:25
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Johnny Truant posted:45 minutes is a completely reasonable commute in Boston it FUKKEN shouldn’t be
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May 14, 2022 17:34
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Found a cool basement.  
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May 14, 2022 17:48
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Pollyanna posted:it FUKKEN shouldn’t be My commute from Southern NH to Boston was 45 minutes… at 4am to beat traffic.
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May 14, 2022 18:05
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Pollyanna posted:Found a cool basement. lmao, is that just a huge chunk of granite they decided they didn't want to clear and just built around it instead?
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May 14, 2022 19:06
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I mean, the place is nice otherwise. I assume there’s some reason they couldn’t do any further work, possibly the same thing that prevents the basement from having a sane entrance. An inspector and engineer would have to take a look. Not gonna lie, I’d still genuinely consider the house if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s built on a steep hill and the backyard looks hard to maintain. Plus the difficult garage/parking situation and the hill thing. At least I’d get some exercise. I’d have to figure out what could be done about the basement to make it sane, if anything.
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May 14, 2022 19:22
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Pollyanna posted:I’d have to figure out what could be done about the basement to make it sane, if anything. That boulder is not coming out of that house hth
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May 14, 2022 19:34
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you're gonna have to cut it out piece by piece. if a motivated kidnapper can build a dungeon you can remove a rock
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May 14, 2022 19:35
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Oh no that bitch ain’t coming out whole. I’d have to pay someone to jackhammer it. No idea how much that would cost, but the noise would piss off the neighbors for sure. I also don’t know how much it would cost to fix the questionable basement entry. Imagine having a beer or two and tripping down this: I went all  when I opened the door and saw this.
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May 14, 2022 19:46
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Pollyanna posted:Oh no that bitch ain’t coming out whole. I’d have to pay someone to jackhammer it. No idea how much that would cost, but the noise would piss off the neighbors for sure. I believe that is what is referred to in the 'biz as "character"
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May 14, 2022 19:49
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The fix to bring to code those stair would be losing 10 square feet of floor on the main floor that is why they opted for death stairs. Get protected
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May 14, 2022 20:21
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Pollyanna posted:Found a cool basement. Hey, sometimes you pay a lot more money to have rocks intruding into your house like that.
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May 14, 2022 20:21
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What is it with New England and stairs with no rail? My old place was like that and just screams death trap.
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May 14, 2022 20:41
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BigPaddy posted:What is it with New England and stairs with no rail? My old place was like that and just screams death trap. It was like that in so many of the houses that we looked at in Seattle, too. It got to the point where we would exclaim somewhat sarcastically, "ooh a graspable rail!" when we saw one. I'm guessing it's because the stairs may have been installed as an afterthought and there's not much width for a proper rail?
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May 14, 2022 20:45
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My god: my zestimate went up this week...and then went down.
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May 14, 2022 21:11
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Residency Evil posted:My god: my zestimate went up this week...and then went down. Investors giveth and Investors taketh away.
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May 14, 2022 21:15
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