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shortspecialbus posted:Does anyone have any experience with LP during the switch? There's an item on the HUD Settlement Statement that I'm trying to figure out what the gently caress: The 500 gallon LP tank (allegedly) contains 50 gallons of propane, which belongs to the current owners, and is to be transferred to your ownership at a price of $2.59 a gallon.
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Jul 7, 2014 15:40
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Zhentar posted:The 500 gallon LP tank (allegedly) contains 50 gallons of propane, which belongs to the current owners, and is to be transferred to your ownership at a price of $2.59 a gallon. Oh. That makes sense. I'd feel somewhat stupid, except that there's been too much stuff going on for me to feel stupid anymore. Thanks!
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Jul 7, 2014 16:16
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Why are you paying more the market rate for propane? I would call bullshit on the title company and make them fix it, or tell the seller to take it with them.
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Jul 7, 2014 19:50
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Elephanthead posted:Why are you paying more the market rate for propane? I would call bullshit on the title company and make them fix it, or tell the seller to take it with them. I fully intend to do that today. I at least get what's going on with it though. I suspect that's the price that the sellers paid for it whenever they bought it, or else the title company is ripping me off.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:07
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Is it worth dicking around over $40? Is the extra $40 worth moving into a house with no propane and having to deal with that on top of everything else when you move in? I'd gladly pay $129.50 for propane versus only $90 from the coop (which would actually be 900 if they fill it up for you) just so I wouldn't have to worry about it.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:33
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Eight days from closing. Bought a bunch of painting supplies from Lowe's over the weekend, and am in the process of packing the remainder of my crap. I'm both excited for, and dreading, the final step of closing. I feel like I'm making the right decision on a good house with great bones in a nice location in a rapidly appreciating market, yet all the stuff I have to do now (and money I'm shelling out) before it's actually "mine", and what I will need to do afterwards, is causing me some anxiety. Ultimately I feel I'll eventually get comfortable with the day to day and ongoing maintenance parts of homeownership, but I still feel like there's so much poo poo I could be blindsided by it gives me some existential dread. I'm also not looking forward to painting almost the entire interior in the middle of July, but thems the breaks I guess. Better than after I have all my crap moved in. ex post facho fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 20:40
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I'd rather do it in July than the last week of December (when I actually did it), mostly after work during the week. It rained the whole week, the paint took forever to dry, and I was painting over dark blue so it took at least three coats for most rooms. We didn't have the gas heater working for the first few days, either. We also had to refinish the floors during that time, and the varethane didn't dry as well as it should have after the first coat, so the second coat wound up bubbly and sticky and a bit uneven and we had to do a third coat. Which still has some rough spots here and there where bubbles rose and popped and left little nurbles that you can't see, but you can feel with bare feet. Someday maybe I'll rent a floor polisher to fix that. If your house has A/C, painting the interior in July is gonna be just fine. The air from A/C is nice and dry, so the coats will dry quickly and you can do two or three coats in one day no problem.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:54
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FISHMANPET posted:Is it worth dicking around over $40? Is the extra $40 worth moving into a house with no propane and having to deal with that on top of everything else when you move in? I'd gladly pay $129.50 for propane versus only $90 from the coop (which would actually be 900 if they fill it up for you) just so I wouldn't have to worry about it. It's not worth dicking around over we've decided. It would have been an awesome sandwich though. We need to get the propane tank filled anyways, but with the co-op it's free to have it filled when you prepay and get on a route for free, which we'll do. It's not a bad deal actually, as far as propane co-ops go. But no, not worth the hassle. I'm just annoyed that this is the first place that charge is showing up at all in anything - I don't like surprises on this stuff. Anyways. Anyone have any recommendations for a lawn tractor that'll also do snow plowing or snow blowing? We have about an acre, few trees, and the driveway is probably a few hundred feet long. Also recommendations on dehumidifiers? The basement is fairly humid smelling and it's where we're planning on putting the home theater and stuff. It's not problematically damp (the inspector used a tool all over the place and it was fine) but I need at least 1-2 dehumidifiers. Call it 20'x70' or so.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:34
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Leperflesh posted:I'd rather do it in July than the last week of December (when I actually did it), mostly after work during the week. It rained the whole week, the paint took forever to dry, and I was painting over dark blue so it took at least three coats for most rooms. We didn't have the gas heater working for the first few days, either. No A/C (and I live in Colorado  ), but painting over yellow walls with a darker color so hopefully we won't have to do more than 2 coats.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:41
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shortspecialbus posted:Anyone have any recommendations for a lawn tractor that'll also do snow plowing or snow blowing? We have about an acre, few trees, and the driveway is probably a few hundred feet long. Also recommendations on dehumidifiers? The basement is fairly humid smelling and it's where we're planning on putting the home theater and stuff. It's not problematically damp (the inspector used a tool all over the place and it was fine) but I need at least 1-2 dehumidifiers. Call it 20'x70' or so. Try the AI tools thread.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:50
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FISHMANPET posted:Is the extra $40 worth moving into a house with no propane and having to deal with that on top of everything else when you move in? I'm pretty sure that was a joke, since it's not really feasible for owners to take the propane with them. But for the sake of throwing random pointless information out there, an empty propane tank would probably cost him more than $40 because the interruption of service would require a technician to perform a leak check of the whole system (by law in Wisconsin, at least). shortspecialbus posted:Also recommendations on dehumidifiers? The basement is fairly humid smelling and it's where we're planning on putting the home theater and stuff. It's not problematically damp (the inspector used a tool all over the place and it was fine) but I need at least 1-2 dehumidifiers. Call it 20'x70' or so. A heat pump water heater can give you some free dehumidification, and it'll heat your water for less than the propane will. Might be a bit noisy for a home theater area, but so will a regular dehumidifier.
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Jul 7, 2014 21:52
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I'm about to close on my house and one of the things that the seller has agreed to is to pay for one year of a home warranty (up to $600) through any company of my choosing. General consensus on the internet seems to be that almost all of these home warranty companies are awful. Does anyone have any recommendations on a warranty company that is less awful than others? Or should I just choose randomly since the seller is paying for it anyway and they're all equally terrible?
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Jul 7, 2014 22:20
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If it's free I don't think it really matters. You'll still have to pay a deductible any any claim, but I ended up using my warranty 4 times in the first month to fix what the bank failed to replace so it worked out well for me.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:38
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a shameful boehner posted:No A/C (and I live in Colorado Paint after 8PM or early in the morning, let it dry when it's hot. That's one nice thing about the climate here, even though it's hot in the day it cools off fast in the evening. Also high five, moved-into-a-yellow-wall-house buddy. Mine was yellow walls with green carpet and dark brown wood trim. Every wall, every room, exact same color. They even carpeted the bathroom.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:56
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Painting without natural light is a colossal pain. Sure, do it in the evening but keep a roller wet for touch-up in the morning (because you will absolutely need to touch up in the morning)
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Jul 7, 2014 23:56
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So I'm sick of renting, especially with pets (I have to move next month for the 3rd time in 4 years) and I'm considering maybe just buying a place this time. I have no idea where to start with this. Do I get an agent first? How do I choose a good agent? Do I talk to my bank? What's a good interest rate? Is there such a thing as a financial counselor? I've read the first couple pages of the thread, but how accurate is that info 5 years later, and how relevant is it to me? Relevant info: - single, 33, not planning on leaving the area - live in the SF Bay - $125k income - $96k in investment accounts, $5k in cash - no other debt - excellent credit - no bankruptcies or evictions or other shenanigans Is this even a thing I should be thinking about? Where do I start? Does anyone want to rent me an apartment?
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Jul 8, 2014 01:06
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I was just looking at that area with calculators, and as far as I can tell, it wouldn't make sense. This is my favorite calculator if you want to play around with it a bit: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html
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Jul 8, 2014 02:09
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Drink and Fight posted:- live in the SF Bay
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Jul 8, 2014 02:27
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Rurutia posted:I was just looking at that area with calculators, and as far as I can tell, it wouldn't make sense. This is my favorite calculator if you want to play around with it a bit: According to this I would need to be able to rent a place for $1400 or less, which is absolutely not happening. krysmopompas posted:I only really know Oakland. While you've got the income to buy a lot of what's out there, the lack of cash is going to price you out of most options since I imagine you're going to lose a fair bit of that to capital gains. I would prefer to be in Oakland, yes.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:15
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I don't know what it is about my location/situation, but the rent vs buy calculator makes me feel like I should have bought a long time ago. Even if I plug in that I'll only stay for two years the calculation works well in favor of buying.
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Jul 8, 2014 05:30
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You've given zero detail in any of your posts for the thread to point out where you may or may not be wrong so don't say we didn't warn you. Either you're grossly underestimating your utility and maintenance costs, have a huge down payment, or you're just lucky to live in an area with depressed prices and inflated rent. I don't mean to be cranky but seriously, which is more likely? That you're the one unique snowflake in this whole thread who beats the odds and comes out on top? Or that you're totally neglecting to mention that your 100 year old money pit is going to cost you $40k in unexpected renovation costs over the next 5 years? LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 16:02
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Or maybe the thread has turned into an echo chamber of "do never buy" that ignores people's individual circumstances in favor of regurgitating the same "advice" over and over.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:29
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I already bought the house so it's too late for advice really, but here's my info if it's such a burden for you: We rent a two bedroom, one bathroom + weird basement toilet duplex with detached garage for $850 per month. We pay all utilities, but the landlord covers lawn care/snow removal and obviously home maintenance. It's in a perfect location but has a teeny, tiny kitchen. We're buying a three bedroom (although one bedroom is more of a den off the living room, which is better for us anyway), 1 and a half bathroom house with detached garage. The location is less perfect but still very good. Utilities look to be similar to our current place going by the numbers I got from our utility company. It's a 1920 house that will require some extra maintenance but the home inspection came back very good and we're getting the current owners are taking care of the only big things that came up. The house is $100k even, we're putting down $10k and our closing costs are $1500. Our monthly comes to $755 with homeowner's insurance. The house is a definite upgrade in our living situation and I expect to pay more than we're paying now with added maintenance costs, but I think it's a good move for us anyway. Edit: renting something similar would probably run $1100-$1300 per month in the area we're looking. Our duplex is a pretty good deal for the area and amount of space we have. powderific fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 17:15
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Drink and Fight, how much of your "investment accounts" is tax-sheltered retirement? We usually do not recommend tapping into those accounts for buying a house, because in some cases you pay a penalty, and even when you don't, you're risking money that you probably shouldn't be risking. At the very least, you lose the wealth that the money would have accumulated if you hadn't removed it, so you must consider that as an opportunity cost of borrowing or withdrawing from your long-term savings. I think you have the income to afford to purchase something in the bay area. You might have to compromise on location, or size of the home, or quality of the home, and you definitely need to save a lot more cash for a down payment and closing costs unless you're ready to clean out a large fraction of your investments. But if your time horizon for buying is a couple of years out, that's certainly doable. What are you looking for in a purchased home? Do you want a condo, an apartment, a single family house? The nicer parts of Oakland are rapidly becoming very expensive, but there's some really lovely parts of Oakland you can probably still afford. Do you have a neighborhood in mind? I think the first thing for a potential home buyer to do is to sit down and really figure out what you can afford. A house costs not only the principal + interest, but also insurance (PMI if you pay less than 20% down, plus homeowner's insurance regardless), taxes, maintenance costs (which can be very significant), utilities, and then potentially an adjustment to your other costs of living depending on change in location (stuff like longer commute, more expensive groceries, etc.). Every homeowner needs to be able to take the normal cost of housing out of their budget and still have money leftover to accumulate savings, in order to handle the sudden large expenses that tend to crop up. A new roof could be $10k. Needing to excavate and replace a leaking sewer line that runs under your driveway could be $15k. Having to rewire the house, replace a furnace, thousands of dollars are possible there. You make plenty of money, but if you buy more house than you can really afford, you'll be "house poor" and in a bad spot when these inevitable expenses arise. So figure out your budget and that will inform you about where in the Bay Area you might be able to afford to buy. And that will help you decide whether buying is a good idea at all. Another thing to consider since you're unmarried is whether you might want to get married in the next decade. If that happened, would you want children? Your priorities could change a lot. You might suddenly care about availability of daycare, quality of schools, your potential spouse's work commute, all that sort of thing. If you wind up wanting to sell in 6 years, buying might turn out to have been a bad idea, because the costs of selling a house are very high, and they could eat up all of the appreciation that you accumulated in that time. esquilax posted:Or maybe the thread has turned into an echo chamber of "do never buy" that ignores people's individual circumstances in favor of regurgitating the same "advice" over and over. This thread is an "echo chamber of do never buy" in part because, despite a national collapse in home prices that left millions of people destitute, stripped millions of people of their life savings, and ruined the economy, there still seems to be a neverending supply of well-meaning advisors in people's lives (especially parents) who parrot all the benefits (real and not) of home ownership without mentioning (or perhaps even knowing) the drawbacks. The old saw about how owning a home is the key to growing wealth is especially prevalent. People say that renting is "throwing money away" and that homes only go up in value. People can feel a lot of peer pressure to buy a home as soon as possible, and even with much tighter credit these days, it's still very possible to borrow way more than you can really afford and it's always been possible to buy a home that turns out to be a lemon. And of course, most people do not read the whole thread. So we repeat ourselves a lot. The default assumption when someone comes in asking about buying a house is that they probably don't have a complete picture and are likely operating under some false assumptions. My own belief is that I'm very unlikely to convince someone not to buy who is actually in a good position to buy, but if I can convince someone not to buy for whom buying would be a terrible decision, then that's the thread doing its job. BFC is a subforum about throwing some sobering cold water on people with bad spending habits or bad budgeting, helping a lot of people out of the financial trouble they've gotten into, and sharing well-researched balanced information to counter the poorly-researched or biased information that most people are regularly exposed to. But don't forget that most of us giving advice are homeowners and most of us do not regret becoming homeowners. I'm certainly still happy I bought, and I was hardly in the most perfect and ideal financial position to buy when I did. I think a lot of people who ask for advice here do wind up buying, sometimes immediately and sometimes after a few months or years, and that's great. As long as they're fully informed, that's their decision and I don't think you'll see people really getting down on them much about it. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 17:31
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Drink and Fight posted:According to this I would need to be able to rent a place for $1400 or less, which is absolutely not happening. What numbers are you using? A place in Oakland for that little is going to be a poo poo hole from what I was looking at, make sure your numbers are realistic. I had to change a lot of defaults for my situation. Are you using house data from Redfin/Zillow? Not to say that it's not possible, just weren't the numbers I was seeing. (Although, to be fair, I ended up looking at SFH in the 600k - million dollar range...) I agree with above that your main problem will be the down payment, but would love to hear more exact details of your situation. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 17:37
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Our reason for buying was several-fold: 1.) It was becoming a huge problem to find a place to rent in the appropriate area (i.e. something resembling halfway between my work and my wife's work, in the country or a small town somewhere) that would accept 3 pets, or if they did accept them, not charge an extra $150/mo for "pet fees." 2.) We had a massive down payment available. It worked out being about 61% of the cost of the house was paid for in a down payment. This allowed us to do a 15 year FRM on solely my income and still be comfortable. 3.) We really wanted a house in the country if possible. The ones that were available to rent and still allowed pets were in the $1600-$2000/mo range for a 3 bedroom. We bought a house in the country and the mortgage by itself is $765/mo or so. Yeah there's taxes and everything and maintenance blah blah but it still made a ton of sense in our situation. We didn't know that we had item 2 available and outright vetoed a house even though it still would have worked out "cheaper" to get at least a decent house. #2 was really the big thing for us. I think if you have a ludicrous down payment it makes a ton of sense to buy, but otherwise, it's very very situational.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:42
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Leperflesh posted:Drink and Fight, how much of your "investment accounts" is tax-sheltered retirement? We usually do not recommend tapping into those accounts for buying a house, because in some cases you pay a penalty, and even when you don't, you're risking money that you probably shouldn't be risking. At the very least, you lose the wealth that the money would have accumulated if you hadn't removed it, so you must consider that as an opportunity cost of borrowing or withdrawing from your long-term savings. I have, currently, $45k in a 401k, $40k in a Roth IRA, and $11k in an investment account. quote:What are you looking for in a purchased home? Do you want a condo, an apartment, a single family house? The nicer parts of Oakland are rapidly becoming very expensive, but there's some really lovely parts of Oakland you can probably still afford. Do you have a neighborhood in mind? I live in Temescal now and I love it; ideally I'd stay here. Preferably a duplex or 4plex, otherwise probably a condo. I know I can't afford a SFH anytime soon unless it was a major fixer-upper which I'm not really equipped to deal with. quote:So figure out your budget and that will inform you about where in the Bay Area you might be able to afford to buy. And that will help you decide whether buying is a good idea at all. How do I do that more precisely? Most of my expenses after rent are bullshit like eating out. I have no debts. quote:Another thing to consider since you're unmarried is whether you might want to get married in the next decade. If that happened, would you want children? Your priorities could change a lot. You might suddenly care about availability of daycare, quality of schools, your potential spouse's work commute, all that sort of thing. If you wind up wanting to sell in 6 years, buying might turn out to have been a bad idea, because the costs of selling a house are very high, and they could eat up all of the appreciation that you accumulated in that time. I have no idea whether I'll get married but I know I'll never want kids. Rurutia posted:What numbers are you using? A place in Oakland for that little is going to be a poo poo hole from what I was looking at, make sure your numbers are realistic. I had to change a lot of defaults for my situation. Are you using house data from Redfin/Zillow? I put in a home price of $500k then pushed the sliders around a bit. The most important factor was the rent growth rate in this city, which was %8.9 last year. Putting in only the home price and not touching anything else but down payment % gave me $1850, which is what I'm currently renting for. I'll probably be paying more after I move.
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Jul 9, 2014 03:31
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Drink and Fight posted:I live in Temescal now and I love it; ideally I'd stay here. Preferably a duplex or 4plex, otherwise probably a condo. I know I can't afford a SFH anytime soon unless it was a major fixer-upper which I'm not really equipped to deal with. There's a loft in Jack London listed at $350, but there's no way it's going to sell that low even though it's got ~$500/mo HOA fees. Adams Point or part of Grand Lake might have some good condos, and you still might be able to find something good in West Oakland or east of the lake before 14th. But that's really it unless you want to go out further into the burbs.
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Jul 9, 2014 04:24
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krysmopompas posted:The big problem you'll face is that with %20 down, you're going to be looking at $350k and below, and there's not a whole lot of that. I can probably count the number of listings on my hands. Yeah I know I don't have 20% down on anything. A friend suggested FHA loans might be the way to go but I don't want to gently caress myself in the long term either. Maybe I need a financial consultant?
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Jul 9, 2014 05:27
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Drink and Fight posted:Maybe I need
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Jul 9, 2014 06:04
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Yeah. Your calculator giving you an $1850 cost on a $500k home is not including insurance or taxes or maintenance. For $500k you probably should budget at least $2500 a month for housing costs. If you have to buy a poorly maintained house in order to get into your budget, it could wind up being more. Of your $96k, only the $11k that is not in your retirement accounts is free and clear for you to spend: that won't even cover closing costs on a $500k house, leaving you without any down payment at all. (Legally you can raid your retirement to pay your down payment, but I would never advise you to do that and I think most other BFC posters will agree with me.) FHA loans have gotten to be a much, much worse deal than they were four years ago. Now, you must pay mortgage insurance for the life of the loan, so the only benefit over a conventional loan is that you can put as little as 3.5% down. That's a terrible idea on risky $500k+ property in Oakland that you can only barely afford anyway. You need to save like $50k. That'd still only be a 10% down payment, but at least it'd prove to yourself that you can save money in a serious way, and open up that gap in your budget that will be filled by your home costs. Your other option is to look outside Oakland. You can still get a house in Concord, where I live, for $300-$350k on the low end, for example. Even then, you should have $60k for a 20% down payment, which is the minimum to avoid paying mortgage insurance. You have a good income. Save money for a couple years and maybe you can afford to buy. Especially if you get married to someone with a decent income as well, and together you can pick something you'll both want to live in for 10+ years.
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Jul 9, 2014 07:17
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah. Your calculator giving you an $1850 cost on a $500k home is not including insurance or taxes or maintenance. For $500k you probably should budget at least $2500 a month for housing costs. If you have to buy a poorly maintained house in order to get into your budget, it could wind up being more. The calculator definitely includes those. It's probably the rent increase rate that they changed that's doing it.
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Jul 9, 2014 11:37
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BCRock posted:I'm about to close on my house and one of the things that the seller has agreed to is to pay for one year of a home warranty (up to $600) through any company of my choosing. I had mixed experiences with 2-10 and that seems to be one of the better companies. Not great, just better. I think that for the piece of mind in the first year in a 1950s home and the work I did have done it was worth it. We had a leak and drywall repair and while the work was done the plumber overcharged my credit card (which isn't 2-10's fault). Then the first drywall guy never returned calls, and the second one misreported the work to 2-10 and wound up getting pulled off the job because they asked for more work to be approved when they hadn't even been to my house (which the contractor got upset at me for). Finally they posted the request on a contractor site, posted my information by accident, and but ultimately a guy showed up and fixed it. It was a huge hassle but they ultimately refunded me the service charge. Next week I'm having my HVAC system inspected before the warranty is up. We'll see what happens if they find any issues. I'm not renewing because the big items I see coming up in the future are the roof (only leaks are covered) and the HVAC (I'd rather have flexibility to pick units). I'd rather spend the $700 on improvements.
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Jul 9, 2014 18:13
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Just going to leave this here: http://www.hoodwinkedhouse.com/
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Jul 10, 2014 12:19
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Man. I have a great offer to get rid of my house once and for all and actually make money but my wife thinks the place is a gold mine or something. If I end up making a payment in August I'm going to be pissed. edit: I still love the new house. Less than half the cost of the old one, the neighbors are nicer, the community is better everything is better. Chin Strap posted:Just going to leave this here: http://www.hoodwinkedhouse.com/ Caveat Emptor. Sephiroth_IRA fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 14:16
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Chin Strap posted:Just going to leave this here: http://www.hoodwinkedhouse.com/ I would have walked away, then killed the realtor and home inspector.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:45
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Spermy Smurf posted:I would have walked away, then killed the realtor and home inspector. but you signed the papers! what about the poor bank that financed the home and your neighbors? 
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Jul 10, 2014 14:54
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The realtor advised him to sign the "buying the home as is" disclosure. Sounds to me like the home inspector, seller, and person who did the work were all in on it together.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:57
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I can't think of anything more American. 
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Jul 10, 2014 15:07
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Surprised it happened in Minnesota and not in Texas.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:31
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