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20% is... not quite the biggest gap I've ever heard of, but it's close. It really sucks to get this close and have this happen, and you probably will be tempted to talk yourself into paying 20% more, but it's probably wisest to just move on.
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Oct 14, 2017 16:18
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Yeah but from a seller's perspective, taking an offer from someone and then having it eventually turn out, a month or more later, that the prospective buy never had a prayer of financing the purchase and no loving clue what they're doing, it's a colossal waste of time and a huge hassle. "No you can't even look at the house without a prequal letter" might be extreme but generally I wouldn't fault a seller for wanting some kind of evidence a prospective buyer knows what the hell he's doing before even considering taking a bid from him.
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Oct 15, 2017 02:50
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Yeah, as a fellow Pennsylvanian and based on what you've said, I'm confident in saying run away from that property and never look back
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Oct 16, 2017 02:08
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As in every other line of work, some appraisers are incompetent. Sometimes their employers quickly recognize they're incompetent and replace them, sometimes they don't and they stick around for years. Also sometimes the bank isn't really that enthusiastic about the potential mortgage and decide they want the pot sweetened a bit to make it worth their time. In recent years it's gotten real fun comparing a bank's appraisal of a property to the appraisal of tax assessors representing increasingly desperate-for-cash local governments.
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Oct 18, 2017 03:06
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I can't imagine buying a car without first having it thoroughly inspected by a professional I trust, much less a house.
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Oct 18, 2017 04:02
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Steampunk Hitler posted:Eastern PA, best PA.
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Oct 22, 2017 03:40
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Mourne posted:Dude my in-laws live in Johnstown. Please stop. Yep, I came up with all that information secondhand and totally not because family considerations result in me spending time in Altoona on a monthly basis
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Oct 25, 2017 18:58
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Motronic posted:Confirmed. It's under the floor of the studio. The studio isn't actually reachable from the house itself, the second floor of the studio is a foot lower than the second floor of the house and is in such poor shape the only logical solution is demoing it entirely. Original hand made windows/hand made glass, most not functioning at all. No storm windows. The roof leaks, the internal stairway has ben blocked off. In the end, you'd spend $70k on demo and be left with 2 floors of 22x32 feet that need extensive window restoration, a staircase a roof and an addition (1400 sq ft is not enough). lol, I always love houses listed as if they're in pristine condition when in fact the property is worth less than it would be if it were just empty land, because you'll have to pay to demolish the rotting monstrosity that's there before you can build a house on it. i.e., pretty much every property in western Pennsylvania
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Oct 29, 2017 21:47
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I live in a county where everything was just reassessed last year and the assessments were about 30% higher than any reasonable expectation of a sale price, pretty much across the board. EVERYONE was enraged by it and the county officials just didn't give a poo poo. I mean it was transparently an attempt at dramatically raising property taxes without officially raising property taxes.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:09
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:If EVERYONE is enraged by it, sounds like you need to vote the bums out? Would you be surprised to learn that the assessments were conducted about a month after primary elections, in a county which (like most counties in the U.S.) is effectively ruled by one major party and so primary elections are the only ones that matter?
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Oct 31, 2017 21:20
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BigPaddy posted:If your county reassesses your home to a stupid level is there a way to appeal it? I mean we know any appeal board is going to be on the take as well but in an ideal world there should be some oversight of stuff like this. In my county, the county commission's response was "sure, you can appeal it! On these two specific days next week between 9:00 AM and noon. Oh, you have to work and can't get time off on that short notice? Sucks to be you!"
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Nov 3, 2017 16:10
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Yeah, I can't see any way that people continuing to live in a house they know is already sold could possibly go wrong
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Nov 16, 2017 15:47
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Sepist posted:.Edit: turns out this is my attorneys fault, he has the contract sitting in his inbox. He was referred by a friend. Red flags should have been he uses an aol account and still has an answering machine. drat! 
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Nov 17, 2017 23:42
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totalnewbie posted:Last house offered: 356. Appraised: 280 I mean it sounds like that bank just isn't interested in financing that house for whatever inscrutable bank reason
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Nov 27, 2017 13:22
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This is just me but personally, for the exact same cost I would rather live in a dingy efficiency near my workplace than a beautiful 4 bedroom 2 bath 20 acre estate and spend 20 hours a week in my car.
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Dec 1, 2017 17:22
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In a lot of circumstances renting makes more sense than people over 50 think it does. Personally the no-details-known guideline I would give to start the thought process would be that if any two of these three are true: 1. You are not absolutely certain you're going to live in this area for at least the next five (better yet, ten) years 2. You are not absolutely certain your needs won't outgrow your current needs (i.e., marriage/children) for at least the next five (better yet, ten) years 3. You know nothing about how to do basic home repair things like AC/heater work, plumbing, painting, flooring, etc. yourself and aren't interested in learning Then you should probably rent for now unless you have a very good, very specific reason not to. Also if you are going to buy for the first time, recruit the assistance of someone who's done it many times before and knows where the land mines are. Otherwise you're at high risk of being bent over by your real estate agent, much more so the lawyers and bankers behind the curtain. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Mar 4, 2018 |
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Mar 4, 2018 00:10
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Leperflesh posted:I think old people think houses are great investments at least in part for the same reason they think a hamburger should really still cost fifty cents. That is to say, it's hard to make your brain adjust a wide range of numbers for inflation. So they bought a house for $30k in 1960 and they don't realize that that's exactly the same buying power as $250k today, so if their house is now worth a staggering $300,000, it seems like they built a huge profit when actually they had a pretty loving crap 0.4% annual inflation-adjusted return over a fifty-year horizon. (Back of the envelope math here, of course). And then when you throw in how much money it cost them in taxes and maintenance, and their incredible wealth-building investment actually lost money. Not nearly as much as paying all that money in rent for 60 years and owning nothing at the end of it, though. I mean I just said that there are sometimes good reasons to rent, but there are a lot of good reasons to buy too. Buying and managing and flipping a bunch of real estate is a great way to turn $1 million into $10 million if you have the knack for it. If you buy one house and live in it, that's not an "investment" in the sense it's going to make you rich in a few decades. Way way better than renting though--IF you're actually going to live there for a while and take care of it.
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Mar 4, 2018 03:46
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It's two things: singleness and college debt. Mostly it's married (or at least cohabiting) people that want to buy houses rather than rent them, and most "millennials" (really all we mean here is "young people" rather than some specific generational category) are only just now getting to the marriage/children stage of their lives. And for younger millennials who might want to buy, banks aren't interested in giving mortgages to people that are already in the high tens of thousands or low hundreds of thousands in top priority ironclad debt.
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Mar 5, 2018 00:28
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lovely landlords are everywhere.
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Apr 5, 2018 14:15
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enraged_camel posted:Traffic noise was almost non-existent when I checked out the house. Granted it was Sunday, but the realtor pointed out that putting in modern windows would make the house itself nearly impervious to traffic noise. The backyard is also facing away from the highway and offers quite a bit of privacy from what I've seen. You learned absolutely nothing about the traffic noise situation going there on a Sunday
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Apr 10, 2018 15:00
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enraged_camel posted:While realtors have inherent conflicts of interest, the most successful ones I know make their clients' happiness their number one priority because they know happy clients is how you get referrals. I would add to this that the most successful realtors (and the most successful people in any line of sales, really) know which clients to nurture and which clients to fire because they suck up enormous amounts of your time while actually doing very little business. Shame that retail businesses don't grasp this distinction.
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May 9, 2018 17:59
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You should read the Corporate America thread too. You think buying a hugely expensive house and then a major management change happening four months later and you suddenly being unemployed inside of a year is a thing that happens to other people but would never happen to you. You might be right. But you might be wrong. Your wife wants A New House so that's what you're going to buy but it's probably going to be a disaster in the medium term. I'm not sayin'. I'm just sayin'.
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May 14, 2018 00:16
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You do not meaningfully 'own' your home if you are subject to a HOA It's most of the drawbacks of renting without the benefits
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May 31, 2018 12:47
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Right except you're also paying property taxes anyway
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May 31, 2018 13:20
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Yeah I'm talking about detached homes in modern suburbian paradise developments, obviously condos are different.
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May 31, 2018 13:57
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Tunicate posted:HOAs originated as a way to keep undesirable blacks out of white neighborhoods, and have persisted out of sheer spite HOA neighborhoods are heaven on earth for nosy people
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May 31, 2018 14:35
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Jose Valasquez posted:Don't buy. Your reasons are good hers are bad This is very correct but showing her this thread won't help and you're going to end up buying.
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Jun 2, 2018 19:25
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Dude I don't mean to be a dick or go all E/N on you but you need some marriage counseling stat, unless you want to skip right to a lawyer. There are two things I have seen, over and over and over in my life, couples who deep deep down inside know their relationship is doomed do before they finally divorce/break up: buy a house together, and have kids. I won't get into the having kids part but the buying a house part almost invariably turns out to be a catastrophic mistake. (protip, don't mention this particular post in your ongoing argument with her)
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Jun 2, 2018 22:14
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This is not E/N so I'm limiting myself to just observing, on topic for this thread and forum, that buying a house would be a very very bad idea under the enumerated circumstances.
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Jun 3, 2018 15:17
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Slappy Pappy posted:I'm not naive enough to project my own morality onto every agent but I'd like to think agents who would not act in their client's best interest are the exception and not the norm. That is, in fact, very naive.
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Jun 5, 2018 21:04
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Anonymous Zebra posted:See, this is where you're incorrect. A lawyer is paid a fee to act in your best interest. A financial planner is paid a flat fee to act in your financial best interest. On the other hand, your buying agent doesn't get paid until you buy a house and only receives a percentage and thus has an incentive for you to buy the most expensive house they can convince you to. Speed is way more important to realtors than price. Their #1 incentive is to get a house sold ASAP and move on to the next.
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Jun 5, 2018 21:32
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A good definition of naivete is failure to understand either the fundamental concept that humans respond predictably to incentives, or what the incentives are in a particular case.
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Jun 6, 2018 17:28
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Indolent Bastard posted:Yeah. I figured. One dude in my office who is allegedly "money smart" offered up the rental option. "Why pay out now when you can keep that cash and grow it?"  Can you quote some of the dudes in your office who are considered money dumb? Sounds like it would be hilarious.
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Jun 14, 2018 15:17
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Mine said he was hungry 30 minutes after breakfast, I offered him cheerios, he said no, I told him let me know when he's actually hungry and I'll give him some cheerios. I am the best parent.
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Jun 14, 2018 16:21
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It would be a lovely seller's agent indeed who didn't say they had another excellent offer already on the table, regardless of whether or not they actually do
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Jul 2, 2018 03:43
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Leperflesh posted:I'm sympathetic about the pets, though. Finding a month-to-month rental where you can have a dog and a cat may be a pain in the rear end as well. In many places it's not a pain in the rear end, it's straight up impossible.
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Jul 11, 2018 20:59
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Sellers are experienced crooks who knew OP for a sucker the minute they met them and are going to foist the DOR dogs onto their sucker rear end. Well played by them. e: ^^^ if I understand what I've read correctly, the hustle is that if sellers move out tomorrow that $25K will go straight to the DOR without passing Go, and if they don't, it goes to OP instead and then the DOR will be suing OP for it. And also the sellers-turned-squatters will refuse to move out of the house unless OP gives the $25K back to them. The funniest part is the thousands of dollars in tax liability OP will incur at 5:01 PM tomorrow with no takebacksies no matter how the rest of it plays out Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Sep 13, 2023 |
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Sep 13, 2023 17:19
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Ham Equity posted:I don't know if it's still legal, but you used to be able to take out life insurance policies on people without informing them. Wal-mart did it to their employees for awhile. Because they figured they'd be more valuable dead?
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Sep 14, 2023 17:58
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Mind_Taker posted:Hi thread. I mean... Not having to worry about getting straight up evicted (or soft-evicted via a giant rent increase) for whatever random reason crosses the landlord's mind is nice. Locking in your monthly payment and not having to deal with it going up almost every year is nice. (Though property taxes of course will rise and you'll want to account for that in your budgeting.) Being able to physically alter the place you live in whatever way you like is nice. Having some equity to show for all that money you've paid someone for all those years is nice. Renting does have advantages. But mostly even those advantages (primarily, it being Not Your Problem when poo poo breaks, and being able to move with less hassle if you need to) depend on having a reasonable and competent landlord who gives a poo poo, and those are rare and getting rarer. If I were you, I would still look into buying. Just don't be an idiot about it, and understand going in that your average monthly cost is not just your mortgage payment, it's that plus like 50% to account for TCO. This is a well written and entertaining (very) long form account written by a guy (the guy behind the screamingly hilarious DM of the Rings all those years ago, actually) who bankrupted himself just buying whatever the realtor recommended and realized his mistake far too late, and the aftermath of that as he got foreclosed right in the middle of the Mortgage Crash. Keep your realtor on a tight leash and do your own loving homework, or you'll get an epic hosing for sure. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Sep 14, 2023 |
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Sep 14, 2023 20:01
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Epitope posted:Boring arguing cuz we're all Hi, I didn't want you to break your F5 key, so I built a time machine and came here from the future to give you the update now: OP did not talk to a lawyer. Seller did not turn over keys. OP is now on the hook for $25,000 in taxable income on money they will end up having to turn over to the DOR. Seller/squatter demanded the $25,000 before he'll vacate. OP refused. Seller/squatter laughed and wished them luck trying to evict their new tenant.
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Sep 14, 2023 21:53
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for ham equity update