|
My beloved landlord of 8 years stopped by last week to let us know that he and his wife are selling the house for medical reasons. So my spouse and I are scrambling to get up to speed and think through the rent vs buying decision for our next steps. We don't want to keep this place (the top three things we liked about it were the landlord, the rent, and the location and two are going away — the house as a whole has too many things that don't really work for us at market prices). So I think I'm about to spend a lot of time in this thread. A step we're working on now is getting clear about our priorities for the next place we live. More than one person has suggested that we make lists individually and then jointly compare. I'm wondering if anyone has any good frameworks or worksheets to help us think through desires/goals. What I'm looking for are prompts or questions that might bring my attention to things I wouldn't think about just freeform brainstorming.
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2024 15:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:47 |
|
|
Lockback posted:Going to a bunch of open houses is a great idea, also try not to make a panic decision. There were factors keeping you renting and maybe it's time to consider buying but make sure it's the right choice. "Renting somewhere else for a year then buying" might sound like a pain in the rear end but it also might be the long term right choice. Or not but don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself. Oh yeah, these are all on the table. I will say that one of the major factors keeping us renting was "the landlord is a delight to work with, took care of the house as a kind of retirement hobby, and did not raise the rent for 8 years" which is an utterly unique situation that I do not expect to ever see again. It's been among the factors that allows us to save aggressively — we knew this couldn't last forever. So we're definitely considering that renting again (short or long term) might be the right call, especially given the likely very tight timeline of moving out. But it's been a good impetus to kick off looking closely at our finances and understanding the process overall.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2024 19:14
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2024 11:33
|
|
|
We are following the HELL out of it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2024 16:50
|
|
|
adnam posted: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. It was the buyer’s realtor. They were proposing that we officially cancel our lease and enter into a new (similar) lease with the new owner in service of creating some kind of legal fiction that would allow her to value the house at market rent instead of our below market rent. Honestly I don’t understand it and the professionals we talked to for advice didn’t understand it either. Hence the advice not to sign. Since that post, the seller’s realtor who told us they’d step in for us came back to us with substantially similar documents. While we did another round of evaluating if we could safely sign them, we were subjected to a mounting pressure campaign that saw the landlord show up unannounced to home, lean on the front door bell, then come around to the back door, knocking until my spouse answered to say she couldn’t speak to him. Then our upstairs neighbour sent us a novel of an email telling us that her entire deal and life’s happiness hinged on us signing these questionable forms. Followed by a barrage of text messages. We’ve made very clear that we will not sign anything, and given notice that we’re leaving at the end of our lease. So far, the harassment has stopped. Our realtor and closing attorney have been extremely helpful in dealing with this. I have no idea what would have happened if they’d come at us like this when we didn’t have our own experts willing to help us beyond the scope of our actual deal. Which is going fine.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2024 15:52
|
|
|
Hadlock posted:I wonder if the lease you have is "too low" and so the appraisal they got was way lower than what they offered. Shortening your lease and re listing it with the higher rent would drag the average way up, probably close to what the person offered to buy it was Our landlord had not raised our rent in 7 years. So we are well below market. The proposal to us was to cancel the lease and then sign a 2 month 8 day lease with the same rate with the buyer to be. Which I guess means their plan was to create a legal fiction for the lender that the house had no lease so they could pretend our apartment would be market rate? Honestly, the plan makes no sense and we’ve given up on trying to make sense of things given how they escalated when we asked questions and started saying “no.”
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2024 23:47
|
|
|
Well. No one has said (or emailed) a single word of acknowledgement to our last notes definitively saying no and (to the landlord) giving our notice for the end of June. Good riddance. In happier news, I’m trying to get a clearer sense of what documents we’ll be asked to sign in RI at the closing. It would be nice to see as much as we can in advance since everyone involved seems to simultaneously say “there’s a lot to sign!” and “it’s all very standard” and “we don’t have examples to share!” This is probably just first time buyers nerves, but it’d be nice to have a chance to read what we’re signing before the big nervy day.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2024 13:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 21, 2024 04:47 |
|
|
As part of the sale, the sellers and we need to true-up on property taxes. How much should they credit us? Well it's simple, really! Taxes are paid quarterly so you just need the bill that will be issued in July (that's the one that covers last Jan-March) and October (which covers last April-June). Not a time traveller? You can estimate the amount by looking at the updated house assessment which came out in March and multiplying it by the rate which will be set sometime in June, assuming the current budget passes. It's all fine — there is a number in the Closing Disclosures which is close to our best guess about what it should be after talking to the tax office. But boy what an utterly bonkers way to conduct city business.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2024 17:48
|
|