House-buying thread - Why is everyone involved in this process so deeply stupid?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > House-buying thread - Why is everyone involved in this process so deeply stupid?

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Let me know if I need to read the primer or a different thread but I just wanted to confirm my understanding about buying a home while trying to sell a home. Having little kids and a high-stress in person job that doesn't allow me time off work to go deal with contractors/home issues, my understanding is that 1) I need to have a big enough cash accrual to have a deposit on the house I want to purchase, negotiate with sellers, get a mortgage and then sign off all that stuff, and then 2) pay 2 mortgages while I try to sell off the old house after shipping said little kids to new house and establishing them in new school districts/etc. 3) sell old house and deal with that
I really don't want to sell at the same time I'm looking/buying because home/family stability is my priority, but am I missing something from this process?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2024 23:14

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 11:14

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Leperflesh posted:

Yes, you can buy a house with an offer that has an attached sale contingency: essentially, you sell at the same time, and your purchase offer is revokable if your house fails to sell in time. Offers with sale contingencies are less attractive to sellers than those without, so you may have to offer more money to compensate depending on how hot your market is.

You can also sell first, move into a month to month apartment or extended stay hotel, put all your stuff in storage, and then shop as a buyer. That is a hassle and can be costly but it may mean a more competitive offer that gets accepted on the house you want to buy, which can save you a lot more than you spent on a month of airBnB and storage. Very market dependent.

Thank you, unfortunately the city I want to live in is extremely expensive and market is hot, so looks like sales contingency probably a no-go like I thought about originally. I absolutely want to avoid being in month-month or extended stay but it might be what needs to be done. I appreciate your help!

# ¿ Jan 8, 2024 23:31

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Sundae posted:

1) Your life circumstances aren't other people's circumstances. I hope you enjoy having non-disposable humans in your life and can definitely see how that would work that into your calculus. I also envy it, a little For people like me, though (3 countries and 12 states by the time I was 18, 4 high schools, 2 colleges, 5 states since graduating largely because of industry instability), there aren't even that many people in my life to make that decision about. The humans in my life aren't replaceable, but fortunately there are exactly two of them--my wife and daughter--and I get to bring them with me!

2) Job-hopping is the primary means to getting substantially better compensation in a lot of industries, and depending on where you live, there may be no other relevant employers to jump to without leaving. Refer back to point 1, then... how much do you value those people vs career advancement? (Or even career continuation, in the case of layoffs/closures.)

3) Everyone else is making that same calculation about you, too. Are you worth hanging around for? Or are they going to go jump ship to somewhere cheaper/a better job / get laid off and ditch you? How certain are you of that answer?

4) This one should be obvious, but given I live in the bay area, I'll make the obvious one: You may have no choice because you can't afford to stay.

I moved 4 times inside a decade for medical school, graduate school, residency, then my current job (and planning a move in the near future due to life/family issues). I wish I could have stayed put and I envy those who did but there's absolutely no way I could have made the career choices I did without completely uprooting my life as I did, and you bet your rear end I left people I cared behind, but it had to be done.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2024 04:58

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Sundae posted:

Look, I'm just saying that you can price this at 1.02M instead of 1.01.

Lol, I've been watching the San Diego housing market and that's a rounding error, honestly.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2024 19:11

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

QuarkJets posted:

Have you considered that lots of things are better when you have two of them? Such as ice cream scoops, hands, or urethras

No, actually this is not a net plus.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2024 00:12

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Hadlock posted:

Bolinas is a gorgeous beach town north of San Francisco and they have lots of vacant lots and could easily be the next Santa Cruz but the locals have decided to not fund additional water reservoirs with the specific intent of not allowing additional water meter hook ups, specifically to disallow additional new houses

Cities near Monterey are similar not to disallow development, but just because water is really scarce there and they're already at carrying capacity for the region without $ desalination plants

So yeah if there's buildable land and nobody has bought it yet, ask yourself "how is it that I'm the first person to think of this? And why has nobody else done it yet?"

Everytime I hear about Bolinas it is like the poster child for NIMBY brought to its absolutely worst extreme

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/bay-area-town-bolinas-loses-post-office-18267103.php

quote:

In another town, this might have been a short-term inconvenience. In Bolinas, it�s a drawn-out disaster with no end in sight. Typically when a post office loses its lease, it just leases out a new building, but Bolinas is a famously reclusive town, which for years has staunchly resisted development. (According to a 1989 LA Times article, Bolinas residents used to steal Caltrans road signs directing motorists to the town in an effort to keep out tourists.)

A 1971 water meter moratorium has effectively prohibited development of new houses and commercial properties in the town for the past 50 years. �We have completely no viable commercial real estate in Bolinas,� explained John Borg, one of the leaders in Bolinas� effort to restore its post office. �There�s nothing, there�s no place to put a new post office.�

# ¿ Feb 12, 2024 23:55

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

quote:

Fortunately, I am friends with two plumbers. Unfortunately, neither can see through the walls.

quote:

I still keep in touch with the plumber and the HVAC guy, they both go to my church. Not the others, I will have to give them a call to check availability before bidding. Which is a bit away, I have not viewed the property yet and will not until next Friday (the first day the GC was available).

Ah, you're one of those guys

# ¿ Feb 24, 2024 19:55

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Shifty Pony posted:

Kids start making actual friendships around 3-7 (depending on how you define "friendship") so moving to a different school becomes increasingly disruptive to them once they hit kindergarten.

As for house construction date I would say late 50s to mid 60's all the way to about the very early 90s is fine as long as it was wired with grounds. That gets you plumbing/electrical which is pretty compatible with modern stuff while avoiding (for the most part) plaster, framing made from sponge-dense wood, and boneheaded open layouts.

Yeah, my dad moved the entire family when I was in my second year of high school and it completely zeroed out my friend base/social growth for years. I'd say it actually was even more difficult for me in college to reestablish any semblance of normal. I tried to talk to him about it recently and it was a "What? You were fine. You got into college right?" kind of conversation. Anyways, I've told my spouse that when little adnams get to around the same time I'd rather drive 2 hours both ways in traffic than to make that kind of massive shift if possible.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

If it's anything like my area, after a couple weeks of refreshing zillow, which I have decided is as toxic as any other social media site, my guess is:

I never thought about it as a social media site but after reviewing how I feel after I look at homes I'll never afford on there, that's about 100% right.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2024 22:26

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Duck and Cover posted:

Children will make plenty of friends working the mines.

I keep telling my wife that Minecraft is just the new thing and in reality, all kids secretly long for working in the mines. Thankfully the red states are relaxing child labor laws and I can prove my theory to her /s

Epitope posted:

What was house shopping/browsing like in the Craigslist era (the golden age of the internet)?

I have no idea. I spent the majority of my working life poor and/or in graduate school and bought my first house slightly pre-COVID. However, using Craigslist to find rentals was terrible. I had a google spreadsheet and would just scrape and monitor availabilities, and I guess it worked? But it was a giant headache back then for rentals but also the only way outside of word-of-mouth to find an apartment.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2024 19:40

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

A realtor once told me that studies have indicated that moving / house shopping is on par with death of a family member in terms of overall stress.

The SO and I are game planning a move to a better school district in a few years, and while I feel fortunate that financially we could do it, I feel like that quote about a guy behind the king saying "Some day you will... ~~die~~ move" and it's just like rain on the horizon for me whether or not I consciously think about it.

Hadlock posted:

Try doing coast to coast moves two years in a row without getting cirrhosis of the liver

Due to bad planning we ended up living in a lovely airbnb for like 6 weeks moving at the tail end of the pandemic with a just barely 1 year old

That was grim

I moved 5 times in 6 years because I'm a loving idiot/circumstances got together to gently caress me over, so it was refreshing to put down roots for longer than a few years at a time. I guess it kept us lean w/r/t accumulating poo poo.

Sundae posted:

Just don't stop moving and the stress becomes your new baseline!

E: I just pulled up notepad and counted out the moves. I have moved 26 times in 41 years if I include each college relocation, 20 if I don't.

I had to keep prior addresses in a file for security clearance, and lol that is insane. You must have a trail of W2s in the wind, lol.

adnam fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Feb 28, 2024

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 06:16

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Thom Yorke raps posted:

I bought my first house in part because I had to move 4 times in 3 years because of lovely landlords and was like.. never again

I actually liked my last landlord, because I'm pretty sure he was a front for a Chinese multinational. He didn't really care what we did with the house as long as it wasn't obviously horrible/over-the-top. He also had a Youtube channel of him playing amateur violin and would text occasional things like "gunshots reported over in this corner" or "watch out there's a fugitive and police are over here"

In retrospect, he might have been a slumlord

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 21:11

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Cyrano4747 posted:

And if you buy a poo poo property with massive defects that are expensive to fix you�ll loose far more than you would if you continue on as a renter.

And I say this as the guy who harps on how buying can actually be a great financial decision.

Don�t let yourself get FOMO�d into buying a garbage property for too much. Yeah someone else will and the world is full of suckers who manage to lose money on their �sure thing� hot market home because of it.

Also remember that everybody on here will make eternal fun of you whenever you post issues after buying this house
Having said that, I also empathize because the area I wish to purchase a house in is exactly the same condition with each house being offered cash offers 10% above closing costs within hours of being sold and it is incredibly difficult not to just say "i'm buying it" and dealing with the issues, but seeing all the voices on here helps me also not suddenly make unwise choices.

Leperflesh posted:

In 2009, with the housing market crashed and flooded with foreclosed homes at or below $250k in the SF bay area, suddenly my wife and I were able to just about afford a house. We started looking in April or May of that year, visiting properties on our own first to do drivebys or look over fences and such, and then visiting winners with a realtor about every other weekend. But we were shopping at the bottom of the market, for houses that the owners had been forced out of rather than fixed up to sell, and so we were seeing a shitload of houses-with-problems.

The strategy we adopted was perserverance. We had a good realtor who genuinely didn't seem to mind that A) we were probably his poorest clients, since he was based in Piedmont, a wealthy enclave, and B) we were using a huge amount of his time. Genuinely really nice guy, and he died a few years later of some untreatable cancer thing in his like early 40s, RIP Doug Fuller.

We ruled out every house with foundation defects (which was a ton of them), every house in obviously dangerous neighborhoods since my wife walks to and from public transit alone after dark (one easy rubric: bars on the windows of every building in a neighborhood), and countless houses that just had too many other problems. We saw houses that reeked of cigarette smoke or dog, houses with illegal additions falling off of them, houses with obvious severe interior water damage, houses with exposed faulty wiring and knob and tube, it goes on and on.

Anyway eventually we found a couple of houses worth bidding on. In December. We must have reviewed hundreds of listings, driven past at least 100 houses, and our realtor showed us like 40+, before we made our first bid. If you are in a market where you're shopping at the bottom, for houses with defects, and competing with other shoppers as well, you have two choices IMO:
1. buy a lovely house that you'll regret and will financially ruin you
2. be extremely patient

Patience paid off for us as december 2009 was a lower point, it was raining a lot and cold, and the house we finally bought has a good foundation, the roof still had 10 years left (actually we're at 14+ now and it still isn't leaking), windows are all double-glazed, wiring is older but not faulty. We needed to re-do the hardwood floors (did them ourselves), the kitchen and bathrooms are severely dated, the patio roof leaks, the garage needs to be insulated and finished so we can use it as our workshop, we've done a lot of DIY landscaping, etc. It's not perfect at all. But we were the only bidder and got the house at list price because we were not hurrying to buy ASAP and it was clear the market was not going to suddenly clear itself out of foreclosed houses in the next few months.

I appreciate this because this is the kind of level-headed advice I never got from my family. In fact it was just the opposite, where all I was told was "buy the biggest house you can afford, the values will just go up, up, up" without any caveats. When we were considering houses in 2019 my dad kept sending me listings for giant 4,000 sqft houses in a historic district of our city (aka built in the late 1800s) which was insane.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2024 20:56

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

QuarkJets posted:

This thread is too altruistic, have any of you good-advice-giving SICKOS stopped to consider how you're depriving the forums? Countless groverhaus threads lost in a swirl of alternate universes that we'll never get to see

I'm kidding obviously, I'm glad this thread is a positive resource

are you kidding me? every house is a potential groverhaus. it's just a matter of time, it's literally disintegrating around me as we speak! (entropy)
but in reality yeah everything is a timebomb right, replace roof, walls, stucco, foundation, appliances over x time. nothing lasts forever

edit: omg i didn't know groverhaus was a real thing, holy crap.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 00:26

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Paper Tiger posted:

we have such sights to show you

AND i have archives access! yesss

this is amazing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJU-Q9gw_sg

adnam fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Mar 7, 2024

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 00:45

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Do not buy that house.

also: https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live

# ¿ Mar 7, 2024 20:31

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Leperflesh posted:

there are countless near-million or over-million dollar homes on crumbling California cliffsides. Geologists understood how cliff erosion happens a hundred years ago and every one of those houses was constructed with local permits granted, on land that was surveyed and approved, by people who knew what was going to happen, and then purchased by people who simply didn't want to think about the inevitability or didn't care to find out. Many of them have subsequently demanded municipalities spend extraordinary amounts to try to save their homes, by dumping huge boulders at the bases of their cliffs, etc.; all such measures are temporary at best. Quite a few of them are shocked that their insurance doesn't cover their house falling into the ocean, they cannot sell it to anyone, and they've lost a million dollars.

That's just one example. Countless homes are constructed and sold, situated in regular flood zones, at the bases of mudslide-prone hills, straddling active fault lines, and directly in the path of tornadoes and hurricanes. We as a society have constantly ignored obvious impending dangers and risks, because of the lovely views or convenient access or quiet nature or grand vista etc.

Let someone else be the fool and their money, soon parted.

But also the people living in near-million or over-million dollar houses on crumbling California coasts have additional houses and/or millions to 1) fix and rebuild and 2) put the necessary political pressure to ensure they get all the additional federal/state resources they need to bulwark the cliffs. See Newport Beach, California vs. East Palestine, Ohio for example of a disparity in resources.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2024 19:03

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Shifty Pony posted:

I'm a huge fan of things that address minor but frequent inconveniences.

You can't go wrong replacing basically all of your fixed lower kitchen cabinet shelves with slide-outs. They are absurdly convenient.

I thought it would be only marginally useful but turns out Lutron's Caseta smart switches/dimmers own. Snug in bed but the bathroom light got left on? "Siri, turn the bathroom lights off." Sync up all lights in a room even on different circuits. Entryway lights automatically turn on when you drive up, etc.

Yes this 100%. The electrician I was talking with back in 2018-2019 when the Hue lights became all the rage was going over my idiot plan to replace all our ceiling lighting with Hue lights, and basically said that's dumb use a switch. They have worked since 2019 and are bomb-proof, probably my favorite home upgrade and wasn't that expensive all said and done. (actually was cheaper than my Hue plan by quite a bit and much less IoT controlled)

# ¿ Mar 9, 2024 17:43

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 2, 2024 11:14

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

doingitwrong posted:

We are moving because our landlord is selling the house. Our upstairs neighbor (who is a friend) is buying the house. On Friday, her realtor approached us and said they needed us to sign paperwork terminating our lease (they�d give us a new lease with identical terms to the end of June when our current lease ends) because our below market rent was impacting her lender�s analysis so the lender needed our current lease to officially be gone so they could evaluate on market rent not actual rent. This was delivered in a long wordy email that admitted that technically they couldn�t ask us about this.

We asked the realtor to send us what she actually wanted signed. Saturday, she sent over a perfectly standard tenant�s estoppel that confirmed the dates and terms of our current lease, security deposit etc. We pointed out that this didn�t seem to do what she said it would do. She said she wanted to go ahead with signing it. We spent a bunch of time reviewing the tenancy laws. We asked around and though everyone we spoke with (our closing attorney for our own deal and our realtor) agreed that this made no sense, there was no harm in signing confirmation of our current lease terms. Sunday, we said we�d be willing to sign the estoppel.

Monday, the realtor sent us a Dotloop version of the estoppel with the lease termination date altered from June 30 to April 22 (the closing date) saying that our landlord had already signed. We were like �loving, no.� Then we spoke to our closing attorney who was like, �absolutely not,� and �don�t talk to her anymore,� and �estoppels can�t do this,� and �why didn�t she do these other much simpler things?� Then we spoke to our landlord�s realtor and his closing attorney wife who (after some confusion) told us that the estoppel that the buying realtor had sent them had the correct June 30 date. They were like, �absolutely not,� and �don�t talk to her anymore,� and �why didn�t she do these other much simpler things?�

So I guess now the sellers are going to try to salvage the deal. We have no idea what she is telling our neighbor/friend and every step of this has been unnecessarily shifty and uncomfortable.

If I'm reading this correctly, the landlord's realtor wants you to sign a document vacating much earlier (April 22) than what was originally agreed to (June 30)? That's impressively terrible especially given your back and forth with the landlord's realtor.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2024 21:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > House-buying thread - Why is everyone involved in this process so deeply stupid?