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Leperflesh posted:Sorry? But spending $100k to get an art degree is not a wise financial decision, while spending $150k to get a degree in aircraft engineering might be a fantastic decision. The article is absolutely correct that people who made the former decision "didn't do a great job". It's not saying you're a worthless human being, it's pointing out that the cost of a degree is not automatically coupled with potential earnings, so people have to make those decisions themselves. I have a friend who got an undergrad degree in aero engineering from a top 5 engineering school, couldn't find a job, got a masters in aero, then found a job starting him at 30k. After 5 years he's up to 50k salary. So yeah, this is a derail, but good god it's annoying to see people think an engineering degree is a magic wand.
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Apr 5, 2013 22:08
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FISHMANPET posted:Land will always have value, except in the case of some places like Detroit. Floating houses like in Up.
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Jun 4, 2013 21:39
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It surprises me that Illinois is the only (afaik) state where the condo/HOA can evict for non-payment of fees.
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Mar 3, 2014 02:04
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Bloody Queef posted:Many states allow the HOA to foreclose on you for non payment of HOA fees. How does that work? In IL they evict you, rent out the place to another tenant for up to 13 months, then you can come back if the back fees were paid off, and the owner gets the leftover money. In other states, you lose the place forever?
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Mar 3, 2014 03:17
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A coworker just told me that when purchasing his house two years ago, he put down about 7%, acted as his own agent (he's licensed) and used that 3.5% commission towards the down payment, then had a HELOC opened at the same time that put down the other 10% so that he would be at 20% down and wouldn't have to get PMI. Is this something that's usually not done or is often a huge risk?
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Apr 1, 2014 14:20
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baquerd posted:Most people can't act as their own agent, so that's a bit unusual. He got a HELOC on what, though? On the house he's buying with only 7% actually down? That wouldn't make sense, HELOCs require equity to work. Yeah, on the house he was purchasing.
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Apr 1, 2014 17:49
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FISHMANPET posted:The advice of "never buy a condo ever" also scares the crap out of me because we can't have viable urban areas without multi-family housing, and America keeps pushing the idea of owning your domicile as a path to financial sustainability. This is a macro-economics discussion that doesn't really fit here, but it's kind of terrifying for the future of humanity if we think everybody should live in a SFH. I can't look at something like Chicago and say that the world would be better off if all of those people sprawled into the suburbs and lived in SFHs and drove everywhere etc etc. Of my friends in Chicago (average age ~30) that have bought or are about to buy, all but one are going for condos. They buy into the 'pay myself rent' and 'I'll sell it in a few years and make money' traps, but with constant rent increases, it's hard to convince them to just keep renting. The only people who seem happy renting are those who are in horrible places that are extremely cheap.
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Jul 1, 2014 22:46
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Dilbert As gently caress posted:WAIT WHAT? Do people at 26 not have their down payment thought up yet for their first house yet? Like really? Is this some kind of pulling my leg poo poo? I try to hang out with people my age and they all say "yeah totally getting my first house soon", then I ask them about 401, ROTH funds, IRA's, etc. and they go clueless. Should have figured no one my age is doing CD's and savings accounts for a house by their 26th birthday.... Where do you live, the rural south? Your frame of reference is very odd.
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Sep 28, 2014 16:14
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gvibes posted:We were looking for like 9 months, and only found three that were good enough for a showing, and one for an offer. House hunting isn't fun when you're super picky. Out of curiosity, where'd you end up? You're in the chicagoland region right? My wife really wants to buy on the north shore and I have no idea how we're ever going to afford it :I
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Feb 5, 2015 02:22
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Has anyone ever bought a condo with an impending special assessment for roof repairs? I understand you could negotiate with the seller to put a large amount of the sale price into escrow to cover the assessment but everything about this screams run away.
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Feb 10, 2015 01:11
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gvibes posted:He should pay 2.5% at worst. No, it's a 90 year old building that has a $500/mo assessment (Evanston, IL; 24 units). I'm not in any rush to make an offer but it seems like a ton of effort to be figuring out condo financials vs just looking elsewhere. I'm pretty much trying to build a case of 'never buy a condo' with my wife since a ~250k condo w/ $450ish assessment is pretty much the same monthly payment as a ~350k house (albeit the house would need more maintenance budgeted for).
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Feb 10, 2015 04:11
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Offer 10k lower. Your realtor is a scumbag and should be fired.
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Feb 16, 2015 23:53
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So it turns out the condo market near me is dead (probably because every place seems to have 400+/mo assessments and nothing to show for it), but I'd much rather look at a single family home. Went to an open house for one, within ten minutes there were over 30 people there. One loudly offered cash for it, and the realtor responded that he got 7 such offers the first day on the market (Friday). 400k for a 1100 sqft house built in 1885, basement ceiling was 5'4". I'm sure at least one offer included no inspection. (Evanston, il, ten minutes to the train on the poor side of the tracks). I think I'm starting to understand what you folks in Denver/seattle/dc/bay area are dealing with. Really depressing.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:00
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blarzgh posted:Yeah, Condos aren't the most "flexible" real estate investment. If you're going to be looking elsewhere in 6-8 years, you'll barely be putting a dime of equity in that thing. A realtor told me this weekend she used to promise everyone looking at condos that they could flip them for a profit within 2 years, now she's saying they'd need to wait 5-7 years. In my market it seems like everyone is shying away from condos because it's a lot cheaper to rent, so the small SFH market is booming.
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Mar 3, 2015 22:06
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Can I/my wife get a pre-approval without it doing a hard credit pull? We aren't that close to buying but we're trying to figure out our numbers still and I kind of want to prove to her that we could get preapproved for a laughably high amount.
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Mar 16, 2015 16:42
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gvibes posted:Lots of regional variation. That's part of why I can't buy a condo in Evanston - everywhere I look it's 3, 4, 500/mo association fees, then you add in approximately equal property taxes per month, and result in 'this would be almost the cost of my rental, not even including the mortgage'.
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Apr 3, 2015 16:49
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Elephanthead posted:Is there really anything the HOA can do to keep you from renting? I thought those threats were all bogus because all they can do is foreclose and they don't have the money to outbid you at the foreclosure sale. It varies by state. Illinois is one of the only ones I'm aware of that can straight up evict you for not paying your dues, then they're allowed to install a tenant and collect rent from them until the dues are paid off (if ever). Even if you own the condo outright they can do this. At a guess, they can probably do something similar for violating bylaws.
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Jun 18, 2015 14:49
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Every condo/townhouse in my neighborhood is of the 3 floor walkup variety, where the only shared expenses would be roof, boiler, minimal plowing of the alley, and minimal landscaping. And every one of them is minimum $350 for a 2br, if not $450. They seem to be used as a way to keep poor people out , because there's no way the expenses make sense - some of these are 6 units, some are 40. And of course, one 2br with a $450 assessment still had an ongoing special assessment for roof repairs. It's mindboggling. Of course, this neighborhood also has exactly one (1) house under 2000k sqft (its at 1966) , so if you want a smallish house you either eat the HOA fee or look elsewhere.
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Jun 18, 2015 23:41
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QuarkJets posted:you're a scrub if you don't buy empty weed-strewn lots and build your house from scratch, by yourself, with lumber that you personally harvested from a nearby forest Growing up, my 70 year old neighbor built his garage this way. Started with a shovel and a chainsaw, two years later it was finished. If you're retired you might as well do this! (or be Dick Proenneke)
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Jun 27, 2015 13:25
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Rated PG-34 posted:The concern is that if we try to resell, we may run into trouble: potential buyer may refuse purchase, since the title isn't clean for instance. Title insurance doesn't make title clean or not clean.
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Jul 25, 2015 00:48
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minivanmegafun posted:Chicago is geographically huge. There's a 17-bedroom 12-bath ex-rectory for sale in Auburn-Gresham for under $300, and if you want to get in some really sketchy neighborhoods you can buy a SFH for less than $50k. Chicago is strange because it's one of the most segregated cities in the nation with about a 33%/33%/33% split of white/black/Hispanic. Almost anyone white will live in the city then flee to a border city when they have children because of the reputation (undeserved) that Chicago public schools have. The problem now is the back to city movement with jobs, so the suburban areas in walking distance of a train are incredibly expensive. And to make matters worse, the fact that whites won't move near blacks makes minority areas "sketchy" or whatever other term is used to avoid being called a racist. Also, the final straw is that the nicest areas in town for detached homes have lost more housing units in the last decade than the blighted ones. Billionaires are knocking down ten lots to create mansions and forcing out the millionaires. But despite its size, Chicago isn't a destination for yupsters like Seattle, Portland, Austin, Denver, bay area or NYC and it's much more affordable overall. Plus I bet every winter half the population tries to find work somewhere warm. mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jul 29, 2015 |
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Jul 29, 2015 14:31
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Andy Dufresne posted:Keep in mind everyone else is borrowing cheap too so the market has reacted to it. You may find home prices dipping a bit when rates rise (or maybe not, who knows) It'll have to dip or at least freeze, because so many people buy based on the monthly payment (ergo all the 'buy now, interest rates mean you can get more house!!' crap), not the house value; rates going up means that prices can't climb unless people are making more money (haahha)
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Aug 11, 2015 15:15
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Zillow has all sorts of problems with that. Half the SFHs in Evanston, IL are actually condos. I wish there were townhouses available, they at least have reasonable assessments.
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Aug 25, 2015 01:26
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Hashtag Banterzone posted:I'm entertaining the idea of bidding on a foreclosure at auction. One is coming up at the county sheriff auction from an unpaid mortgage that looks like its at least worth checking out. I can do most electrical, plumbing and general carpentry work, so I'm not too concerned about that. Starting bid is about half of what it would go for on the open market right now. It might be different in your state, but the auction may well require you pay in full within 24 hours. Also you can contact the law firm representing the plaintiff and see if they'll disclose the opening bid.
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Aug 25, 2015 19:40
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minivanmegafun posted:Just finished a home inspection. In short, the place needs $10k worth of work pretty much up front, probably a good $30-40k over the next five years, but is currently $70k under market value, and it's in a good but undernoticed neighborhood four miles outside of downtown Chicago that could possibly catch the attention of realtors in a few years. We're not buying it as an investment but that's always attractive. West Garfield park?
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Aug 26, 2015 04:25
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minivanmegafun posted:We're waiting on the slowest close ever. Seller needs to present us with an updated zoning cert before our lender will move forward. We did put in a contingency that we wanted one when we put the bid in. They supplied us with a decade-old one marked "valid one year from issue" and didn't immediately order an updated one until they were prompted to. I think they may have thought we'd just accept a clearly expired legal document? Just FYI but in Chicago it can easily take 6 months to a year to get tenants evicted. It's one of my lines of work and I hope the tenants in your property are reasonable because otherwise someone is going to have to pay them to walk away. Otoh they might just move voluntarily and all will be well.
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Sep 9, 2015 13:48
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Jealous Cow posted:County auditors website, civil court, probate court, etc. All of it is available online. I just don't know what to do next. I don't want to take some action that makes it harder to obtain title later. I've dealt with a similar issue for my father in law, and know a bunch of real estate attorneys, and none of them were interested in dealing with something like that. It's a huge pain.
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Oct 9, 2015 18:42
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A seller's agent just contacted my wife saying the house (the only one my wife and I have both liked in a year of looking) is probably going to call through due to inspection issues and do we want a handshake deal. We don't even have a realtor or preapproval yet but are probably going to go for it. Oh and we have no clue what daycare costs will be like in 6 months when that becomes an issue. Rip my budget
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Oct 9, 2015 21:32
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OSU_Matthew posted:Could you elaborate on that? What's a call through, and what are the inspection issues? Does a handshake deal just mean you're going to get your own realtor and put together an offer and inspections when you get a chance, but that you've got first crack at doing so? We got a ton more info today: Basically, the buyers were giving a whole list of things they wanted, like having everything repainted, siding put on to replace the totally fine wood, etc that the seller was getting upset by. We'd seen this place and were very interested at the open house, and the seller's agent contacted us yesterday at noon seeing if we were still interested; turns out at 5pm the buyers pulled out and now it's not under contract. I refused to let the seller agent act as our agent as well (although my wife was ok with it) and have to figure that out, and now we need to get preapprovals from banks. What's the best way to go about doing that? We never even got preapproved anywhere because we're trying to spend way less than what our income would allow due to the mystery number for child expenses that we don't know ($1800/mo for daycare at the local Y + who knows what else) So advice on lenders? My father in law is a vet, so I think we can do NFCU and we're already USAA members. Oh and of course we're way under 20% down, but we're in a very expensive area and don't want to wait until our kid is 6 to buy a home without PMI. mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2015 17:46
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All good advice, I don't want to post too much personal stuff but our attorney actually advised us to use the seller's agent as our own. Good times (Im an attorney too but don't do much in this area). We've basically had this budgeted for for a while but there's still uncertainty. Unfortunately the housing market in this area sucks, and this area is where my in laws live so there really isn't much in the way of palatable options. I'm from the country so have minimal opinion on most of this, as getting 600 acres like I grew up with isn't exactly doable in Chicagoland. Anyways, another piece of advice I got from an acquaintance is to do a junior loan as a way to avoid PMI. I thought this was pretty much not done and am surprised it could work, because everyone would be doing it otherwise? mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 10, 2015 21:06
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gvibes posted:mastershakeman, I used guaranteed rate, and thought they were good. Thanks man. And elephanthead, that's what we were banking on. We offered about 9% less than the prior contract that feel through, and got it accepted at about 6% less. I'm jumping at shadows, my wife is convinced we did things perfectly and that the dual agency helped since the agent can potentially kick in money to get the close.
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Oct 12, 2015 14:37
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So the house I'm almost certainly buying has a 30 year old a/c compressor, 25 year old furnace and 15 year old water heater. Is a home warranty going to be useful at all in case these fail the first year (or 2 if I go for that?)
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Oct 19, 2015 14:03
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Indolent Bastard posted:Point out how old that stuff is and the fact they are past their recommended replacement dates and make a lower offer based on the replacement costs. That's been discussed and it'll kill the deal. The offer is already way under ask. I actually got the warranty fine print and it's pretty much what I expected, where a major repair will result in arbitration. Oh well the money we saved on the offer (that would be paid back over 30 years) can instead be paid year 1! Whee
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Oct 19, 2015 16:30
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The place I'm buying is in a neighborhood association that the agent swore didn't have any covenants/restrictions/etc in any way. So I went to the Recorder of Deeds' website and pulled up what was recorded, lo and behold there's a covenant regarding painting the house, no businesses out of the home, etc. Of course my wife thought this was great and it's 'important to have a neighborhood character' while I'm chafing at potentially having someone tell me what to do someday. Oh well
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Oct 28, 2015 21:39
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Awesome, found the original neighborhood declaration and it limits the property to Caucasians only. Except if they're servants in which case they can live there! I then had to explain to my wife that meant no jews either
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Oct 31, 2015 02:27
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Lining up home insurance for a property you don't own is weird. We had questions about the type of construction of walls, roofs, floors, everything and I'm going heck if I know, I've only been inside it a few times and didn't punch a hole in the wall to find out if it's plaster vs drywall
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Nov 4, 2015 23:01
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Closing set for Monday, getting real nervous. Exactly a month from getting an email from the realtor saying hey are you still interested in this house to closing seems both really fast and really slow because so little has happened
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Nov 12, 2015 00:42
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americanzero4128 posted:I'm also closing on Monday, at 9 AM, and haven't gotten an email from my lender saying exactly how much I need to bring on a certified check or anything. Really hoping an email doesn't show up Friday night or Saturday sometime when the banks are closed and I can't get the check until Monday sometime (especially because I've got the final walk through at 8 AM). I just got mine a few hours ago. It was broken down weirdly but once I realized taxes were 80% of the cost I wasn't too annoyed by it
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Nov 12, 2015 23:29
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38 days from the realtor sending us an email about interest in the property to closing. Holy moly that was fast. Getting a check at closing due to crazy county taxes is pretty cool though Edit: Lol I can't get the door to open and there's no key to the back so we're going to have to get a locksmith?? Do never buy mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 22:35
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Pryor on Fire posted:How did you do the before closing walkthrough without a working key? The door itself has one of those interior buttons that locks the handle and got pressed by the realtor at the end of the walkthrough without anyone realizing it. We eventually got in through an unlocked side door wheee
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Nov 17, 2015 01:03
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