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Residency Evil posted:Close, I'm going into radonc. I have a friend in Eugene, OR who is in radiation oncology and he says that if his hospital ever went under or if he lost his position, he would literally have to move across the country to find another job in his field. I imagine you're already aware of your prospects in the field but it's something to think about. EDIT: Also, the wife and I just had our offer accepted on this house. Ended up at $405k + closing costs so it'll round out to about $415k. We have the 20% (and then some) to put down in cash as well as an additional $60k in savings. We are ready to do this thing. DR FRASIER KRANG fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 17:59
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Does anyone know how USAA gets such lower mortage rates aside from the fact that they are tangentially related to the US government? I got a quote from them that was .25% lower than what a local broker was able to give me.
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Apr 10, 2012 22:38
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Here's some anecdotal evidence that people in Seattle still REALLY WANT THAT FUCKIN HOUSE:A friend on facebook posted:here's a glimpse into the seattle housing market right now: we are about to put an offer in on a house, only to learn that they already received FOURTEEN other offers, nearly all above the offer we planned to make (which was already $10,000 more than the asking price). did I mention the house HAD NO CLOSETS?! pure comedy. I think this particular friend is looking in NW Seattle.
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Apr 11, 2012 17:22
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I just read this on RedFin, emphasis mine:Some Person On Redfin posted:On Monday I saw a house that looked promising and my Redfin agent was able to schedule a tour of it within a couple hours of it going on the market. We made an offer about 2 hours later and scheduled a home inspection for the next morning. When it was obvious there were going to be multiple offers on this house my agent suggested adding an escalation clause to my offer and removing the home inspection contingency before the offer was accepted. No serious issues were found during the inspection. I took his advice and ending up paying $27K more than asking price and winning the house by only $1,000 over the next highest offer. There were 2 other competing offers. This seems really sketchy. How can people, in good conscience, purchase a home (worth in excess of $400,000) without first finding out if it's going to be a money pit? Seattle houses are loving OLD. Edit: Seriously, with a few outlying homes, Magnolia is all houses built between 1920 and 1960. And some of those outliers go back to 1900. DR FRASIER KRANG fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Apr 13, 2012 |
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Apr 13, 2012 21:00
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Realjones posted:I agree. I'm guessing the buyers wanted the home bad enough ($27K over list drat) that they were willing to roll the dice on their earnest money to get their offer accepted. If something really ridiculous (foundation damage or something) showed up during the inspection they could technically still walk away. Not a great tactic for most people, but if you REALLY want the home and know there will be a ton of offers on it, you have to do what you can to present the best one... Regarding earnest money, someone else in that thread on RF said they did the same thing and they doubled the earnest money payment. 
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Apr 14, 2012 16:32
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We put our offer in on 3/30. After being countered and then counter-countering, our offer was accepted on 4/03. We just finished going through the various inspections we felt were necessary and this morning we submitted our terms in light of the inspection results (we're asking for $7.5k in closing costs). I'm still fully prepared to wait until the beginning or middle of May to actually move in.
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Apr 14, 2012 21:51
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We backed out of the offer we had on a house in Seattle. Not because the inspection revealed anything we couldn't take care of, but because the seller wouldn't give us any price reduction based on the inspection findings. I think the seller feels like she had already done us a favor by accepting our offer that was 20k below the asking price (which had already been reduced 25k from the original list price). So when we came back with the inspection results and asked for $7500 in closing costs, she balked. Oh well. We got our earnest money back and only lost the cost of the home inspection. The search continues.
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Apr 20, 2012 14:37
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With the amount of money, work, and inconvenience associated with putting an addition on a home, I would strongly suggest not doing one for the sake of a bigger laundry room.
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Apr 24, 2012 22:51
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I Might Be Adam posted:This whole house hunting thing really sucks.
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Apr 25, 2012 18:22
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We found a new house that is amazing (backs up to a green belt off Fauntleroy in West Seattle) and put an offer on the first day of listing (which was yesterday). Here's hoping we hear back by the morning when the seller reviews! Seriously excited for this:  
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May 8, 2012 23:47
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IllegallySober posted:Those pictures look really nice. Here's hoping you get it. No other offers as of this morning so hopefully we can sneak in without escalating the price  I want to live among the trees so bad!
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May 9, 2012 17:51
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daggerdragon posted:Are they even allowed to do that? I thought sellers had to vacate the property while it was being shown, or is it just state-based/professional courtesy? I think they can ask and you can grant them the ability to be there. I know that the last house we almost bought, the seller and her realtor wanted to be on site while we walked through the property and our realtor told them "gently caress no, you're not doing that."
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May 9, 2012 18:21
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Apparently there is a second offer on the house we want to buy but my realtor doesn't think it's as good as ours since the selling agent asked if we would be willing to shorten our inspection period from 10 days to 8. I just hope shortening the inspection period is all we have to do... would hate to have to go up in price just because of one other offer (though, we were expecting multiple competing offers so...) DR FRASIER KRANG fucked around with this message at 00:16 on May 10, 2012 |
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May 9, 2012 23:46
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I Might Be Adam posted:We submitted our offer and the seller responded within an hour explaining there is another off and that we should submit our highest offer now. I'm kinda pissed because I get the feeling that she's asking for both offers to be higher without having to accept either. Anyone experienced this? I can offer an anecdote regarding what I'm going through right now which is sort of similar: The house we have an offer on went on the market on Monday (5/7) and that's the day we put our offer in at list price. We knew there was a ton of interest in the property based on the amount of realtor cards on the credenza (WA state law to leave one every time you visit) so we were expecting a bunch of competing offers. On Tuesday during my lunch break I went to a broker's open house to introduce myself to the selling agent and put a face to the name on the offer in hopes of boosting my prospects. Yesterday the seller reviewed our offer and said that if were willing to a) pay $10k above the asking price and b) shorten our inspection time from 10 to 7 days, that they would not even look at any other offers that were certainly coming in.
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May 10, 2012 13:29
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Commander Hen posted:I always wonder where the hell do these people come from? It's incredibly popular for pure cash buyers to buy up homes but I personally think homes have a ways to go especially out here. There's also a lot of stupid people who will dump their life savings to own a home outright rather than pay a mortgage. In fact, there's been at least one thread in GBS where some guy brags about how he just paid off his house.
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May 11, 2012 02:34
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Leperflesh posted:Well, he's in Canada, but I think the Building a life in the country thread over in DIY is an excellent look at what building a house is like. I read the first five or six posts but then realized I was really depressed and stopped reading it.
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May 14, 2012 17:51
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That siding looks perfectly fine to me  Cool patio!
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May 14, 2012 19:04
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Back in the real world: Our inspection is complete and we're moving forward with the purchase. Closing date is June 12th!
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May 16, 2012 21:44
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Elephanthead posted:New roof on garage, $3,000. Replacing steps that I knew were bad when I bought the place $3,000. Don't buy, just don't do it. How much did you budget for immediate repairs and how much have you spent? Just curious.
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May 17, 2012 14:55
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daggerdragon posted:It cost you $3,000 for a staircase? Interior or exterior, and what the heck did you replace them with, gold-plated treads? I immediately presumed they were cement exterior steps given the cost.
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May 17, 2012 17:33
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daggerdragon posted:D: Cement stairs cost that much?! How the heck is that even possible, given that a bag of cement is what, $50 and some 2x4s for making a frame is another $50? Yes, it costs $100 to replace a set of cement stairs. I don't understand why you're not a fulltime contractor already. Did you think of: 1) Cost to demolish and dispose of existing structure? 2) Cost to hire workers to complete the job? 3) Cost to rent a bobcat and a cement mixer?
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May 17, 2012 19:12
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Hope you like breaking up cement with a chisel and a hammer then! If not, you'll need to shell out some money to rent a jackhammer as well. It'd be nice if the person who posted this would clarify the kind of steps he did work on so we can continue this fake argument.
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May 17, 2012 21:14
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daggerdragon posted:Just theorizing here: In lieu of renting a jackhammer, could you achieve the same effect with a sledgehammer and elbow grease? How did you read two sentences and only process one of them?
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May 17, 2012 22:39
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It's pretty lame to rag on people for not being "DIY Enough" when a lot of the projects you can take on as a home owner require actual knowledge that you won't know you needed until you've royally hosed it up. Sure, you can spend hours reading on the subject but some people just don't have the time, energy, or desire to do that. Anecdote: I have a friend who bought a house and is doing 100% of the rebuild himself. He says it has cost him 3x more than he had budgeted for and he actually knows what he is doing. I can only imagine what would happen.
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May 17, 2012 23:30
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gninjagnome posted:A co-worker and I both needed to retile our bathtubs at around the same time. He went DIY, and I paid a contractor to do it. Mine may have cost 3x what he paid, but mine was done in 2 days, while his took him 4 months. I know a husband/wife duo that tackled three of their bathrooms to do the following things themselves: 1) Replace the countertops 2) Replace the sinks and faucets 3) Rip up the vinyl and put down tile The way they did it was the husband did crazy amounts of Internet & book research and sourced materials and techniques while his wife did a lot of the actual work. I'm under the impression that he spent dozens of hours researching grout, tile, subfloor materials, etc. In the end, their bathrooms look really amazing with the original wood cabinetry and the new hardware, sinks, and countertops. The tile looks awesome too. He told me when it was all said and done (paraphrasing) "This was so much work and so much headache for something I could have just paid a guy to do for me." Then again, when I asked him about home ownership in general he said "Don't do it. It's too much work." so it's hard to say with those two.
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May 17, 2012 23:59
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Rates were ridiculous yesterday. We locked in our 30 year fixed at 3.875% (with no points). Pretty stoked on that.
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May 19, 2012 20:02
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Laser Cow posted:On the not falling in love thing, this is the third place we bid on. We kind of fell in love with the first place we bid on (about the 10nth place we visited). Getting beaten on that dented our enthusiasm a bit but now I'm glad we lost it. We spent over a month in the process of buying a place we really wanted but ultimately we had to walk away when the seller wouldn't make any price concessions post-inspection. But, just as in your case, it was all for the best and I'm so much happier with the place we're getting now instead.
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May 21, 2012 14:29
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Wonder if the population drop has anything to do with the crazy immigration laws that the state has enacted in recent years.
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May 29, 2012 02:51
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Jibo posted:What we'd like to do is to buy a home, and pay for it while we still have our apartment in Toledo and are working until we can get jobs in Columbus. This is a bad idea. EDIT: The time between when the house you're buying goes Pending and when you actually close is such a terrible purgatory. We even pushed the closing date up an entire week and it's still killing me to wait. One more week... DR FRASIER KRANG fucked around with this message at 04:16 on May 30, 2012 |
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May 30, 2012 04:10
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Trex isn't the only composite lumber game in town either. You might also see if Timbertech is any cheaper.
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May 31, 2012 02:40
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If the Bonus Fun Fact was meant to impress, it loses affect when you don't include the area in which you bought.
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May 31, 2012 20:57
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It's official. I own a home. A box of my stuff is currently inside of it. Now to move the rest of it.
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Jun 8, 2012 16:42
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So now that I own a home, where does the Home Improvement megathread live?
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Jun 13, 2012 00:05
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Thanks. I didn't even realize we had a whole forum for DIY. I now realize that SA and Reddit are really competing for the same userbase.
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Jun 13, 2012 00:48
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Kneel Before Zog posted:Whats the consensus on the future of house values? I'm assuming most people assume they will begin to if they haven't already start to rise up, yes? Any major chances of housing values to stagnate in price or even decrease further? It really depends on what part of the country you're talking about.
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Jun 13, 2012 05:02
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SlightlyMadman posted:My anecdotal experience is not to trust your realtor's recommendation. Cost me about $50,000 in repairs that were superficially hidden by the sellers. The inspector put down all the stuff that you couldn't plainly ignore, but made no effort to so much as move the ceiling tiles and check for water damage (which there was, because the roof needed to be completely replaced). He also didn't examine the chimney at all (which needed to be replaced), check the swimming pool (which was unsound and had to be removed completely), or even check the outlets and light switches (half of which didn't work). Makes sense from the realtor's perspective to hire somebody who will do a crappy job of it, because a thorough inspector might find things that scare the buyer off, and then they'd lose the commission. You do realize pool inspection is not in the purview of a general home inspector? Certainly they can make a recommendation to have a specialized inspector look at it but they don't have any requirement to actually inspect a pool.
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Jul 18, 2012 22:19
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SlightlyMadman posted:Ok granted, but internal water damage, roof needing replacement, crumbling chimney, and severe electrical problems probably should have been caught. I was an idiot to not think something was up, considering the entire inspection took about 15 minutes (less time than I'd spend giving a tour to a friend over for dinner). I'm not saying all home inspectors are crooks or anything, just that you might want to get a trusted recommendation and not just go with whoever your realtor says. Yeah I agree completely on "it should take longer than 15 minutes". The guy we used (Ken Harper, Seattle Area) was amazingly thorough and spent 2+ hours looking at everything in the house. His report was equally thorough with photos of everything that needed to be addressed.
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Jul 19, 2012 03:36
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These prices can't help but keep going up Up UP! Seriously, home values are stupid hosed up right now. Somebody fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Feb 4, 2016 |
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Feb 4, 2016 17:19
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That only makes sense if you're leaving the market entirely. Otherwise you're stuck in the same buttfuckery all the other buyers are in.
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Feb 4, 2016 17:23
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Leperflesh posted:Run your graph back to include at least fifty years, plot the 20-year moving average, and then tell me if the current price is above, at, or below that moving average. If you look the graph you can see the current projected price is even higher than the price at the previous very-real bubble a few years back. The second $ is where we bought it.
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Feb 4, 2016 22:59
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