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meanolmrcloud posted:Bit of a bummer here in our first time home buying experience. Found a huge and awesome fixer-upper for our budget, good neighborhood and all that. No hint on any listing on any website that something was wrong. Got inspected, got the loan approved from our bank, insurance quotes and utilities in my name only to find that, 3 weeks after signing the agreement, oops, actually, the current owners owed money and now it's a short sale. Our original close date was nov. 5 and we are still waiting on the bank to finish their end. I think they are currently ordering an appraisal. That sucks and I'm sorry you're having to deal with this. You're probably not going to make the bank speed up, since they're not a direct party to the transaction and they have no particular reason to give a poo poo, particularly if it's going to be a short sale in the end. Re: this listing agent, they should be under some pressure because blowing a closing makes the agent look bad, but how much they care depends a lot on the area and given that you apparently talked to their manager, that ship has presumably already sailed. quote:2. The listing agents manager said that it's common practice to take home owners at their word regarding what they owe, and in this case, the little old lady who owned the house was misinformed somehow. Do they have any liability in this? If we ditch the house and move on, we are likely out a buncha money and time. The mortgage should have come up in the search when getting title insurance if not before. I don't know when in the process this comes up in normal places because the Bay Area is weird. You should look at the offer contract and see if it says anything about this eventuality. If it doesn't outline anything, then they're probably liable for anything you incurred on a good-faith belief that it was necessary to buy the house, but unless it's tens of thousands of dollars, it will probably cost more than it's worth to get it out of a little old lady who's upside-down on her house. quote:3. Because conversations between the listing agent and the bank and then the listing agent to our realtor, and then my realtor to me, I have no idea what's actually been said. Last I heard they were at the appraisal stage. How soon after that could we expect to get a closing date? I believe, or loving hope, they know we have are still under contract, but as I understand it, they have no obligation to sell it to us. If it appraises for 10k over our offer, are they likely to take the deal? No clue on this one. If you care, you might pay a real-estate attorney in your area for an hour or two of their time, but given the situation it might well be throwing good money after bad. quote:I guess I don't really expect answers, but ranting here feels better than being pissed at a dumb bank. Yup. That sucks. FWIW, be pissed at the dumb seller.
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Dec 11, 2018 00:04
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Jealous Cow posted:The position requires Mountain View. At least there seems to be some decent stuff available up in the hills to the west. Take a good hard look at the weather and the commute if you're looking in the hills to the west. There's not great roads going that direction so you may end up doing a lot of your commute on surface streets and windy roads. And if you end up on the west face of the hills, you get significantly colder weather and lots of fog. Also factor in that in most areas on the peninsula, houses go for at least 120% of the asking price. Housing market here sucks for buyers. 
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Feb 21, 2019 19:32
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Apparently my penance for trying to warn others away from the bay area market is that I now have to deal with having bought a house in the bay area. Entered escrow on Friday. 18-day close because why should this market be any less crazy afterwards. Trying to convince insurance brokers outside of the area that "no, really, I need a quote for the mortgage broker on this house with a random assortment of wiring from the last century before the appraisal is done" is so much fun. Got a mortgage locked in after multiple quotes, got multiple quote requests for insurance out, about to start asking for quotes from the movers. Anything I'm probably forgetting that I should add to this cluster?
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Feb 26, 2019 22:04
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So I apparently I successfully bought a big dumb house. My agent is still trying to get the keys from the listing agent. I assume it has flooded and probably collapsed in the two hours since the deed got recorded.
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Mar 12, 2019 00:58
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Motronic posted:Did you not do a final walkthrough literally on the way to closing? That's how I roll. And I've been handed the keys every time and simply brought them with me to closing. As an update, we got the keys by end-of-day, moved yesterday, and house hasn't fallen down yet. We did a walkthrough a couple of days before close, but for logistical reasons couldn't get out there day of. Definitely assumed some risk there that ideally we wouldn't have, but in this case worked out. Our agent was actually pretty on-the-ball. The title/escrow company was screwing around so we ended up not signing the mortgage docs until the Saturday before Monday close, then doing transfer of funds, and all the actual closing stuff on Monday, so was a bit of a shitshow.
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Mar 13, 2019 22:56
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Maybe this is something that's different in other parts of the country, but the dynamic you're describing where you're taking on the burden of interfacing between the lender and other parties seems really weird to me. In my case, both the escrow company and my agent were pushing on the mortgage company to get their poo poo done by closing basically every day. Granted, my agent already knew the mortgage broker, but both of those entities seem like they'd have a much better calibrated sense of what part of this is bullshit, although they obviously don't have as much personal stake as you in getting a good outcome.
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Mar 20, 2019 01:16
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Hed posted:I already realized I hosed up and used our names on the trust instead of calling it something really generic. Some data middleman cuts off names at a length such that "Rabidbunnylover Living Trust" got truncated to "Rabidbunnylover Li" and now I get tons of spam targeted to the Chinese community. It's great.
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Oct 25, 2019 22:23
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IOwnCalculus posted:Can't call it a renovated bathroom if it's already been defiled. Yeah, now you're obligated to disclose that poo poo. Drives the price down.
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Feb 11, 2020 21:09
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Dumb Lowtax posted:
From https://www.pingmortgage.com/til.htm#:~:text=States%20that%20if%20you%20pay,already%20paid%20are%20not%20refundable. - it sounds like that's talking about refunding interest already paid.
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Jun 26, 2020 05:24
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Sundae posted:How did you pull $750K in rebuild cost? That's not even an option on it for me on the page. Nothing, literally nothing, goes above $100K for me on the CEA premium calculator, and that still puts me at $3,190. Are you looking at loss-of-use? That caps out at $100k for me, but that's just e.g. temporary housing while you're rebuilding. The amount covered is the amount you put in the insured field at the start of the calculator less the (significant) deductible
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Sep 8, 2020 08:02
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The Charles Schwab folks who called to verify the wire did a neat thing where they checked the deposit account number and were able to see that 1k+ other accounts had also wired money to that number (suggesting that it was either the title company or a really successful scam).
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May 27, 2021 19:31
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Luckily, we here in North Oakland have figured out how to get residents excited about building housing - threaten them with a Home Depot: https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-residents-rally-against-plans-for-new-home-depot I am sure their zealousness for housing is totally legitimate and will continue at least three minutes past the developer shelving that idea.
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Oct 27, 2022 17:18
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Popete posted:The amount of junk mail you get the first year you move in is nuts and it's also pseudo official looking to try and trick you into buying a copy of your title or some other scam you don't need. I had fun with it because technically the owner for our house was the "Rabidbunnylover Living Trust" but apparently the data feed all the spammers use truncated it to "Rabidbunnylover Li" so like 75% of the spam was Chinese-focused.
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Mar 13, 2023 20:45
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My Dearest [Agent Name], The nights on the front grow long, and I find my thoughts drifting more and more towards the tender comforts of home. A home that I find I am denied through cruel happenstance overseen by an uncaring God. What has happened to pit brother against brother in this uncivil war of final and best offers? I fear that my thoughts of you shall be unrequited, my unending source of comfort and lowball offers, for I do not now believe I shall ever see home again as long as I think of you (as my realtor). I shall soldier on and we shall see what the dawn brings us. Yours now and always, in spirit if not in 3% commission, JUNGLE BOY
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Apr 21, 2023 20:30
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Motronic posted:Read these two sentences again. Now think about the suggestions three different people have given you. How is it that your have "basically nothing to do"? I agree there's more than "basically nothing to do", but I think it's worth pointing out given what we've heard from OP about their financial situation, time is explicitly another lever. If you don't need to move the house now and you have good comps that suggest the house would be going higher if not for the local construction, then it might be the right answer to pull it from the market and relist later. It obviously doesn't feel great having it sit there sucking up money, but if you have a 3-4% a year carrying cost for property taxes/mortgage and it's maybe a 5-10% swing in home price, then financially it might make sense to pull and relist. That said: 1) you're taking on risk that the market goes down enough more, 2) you're taking on some risk that folks read the previous listing as an issue (local MLS rules govern how visible previous listing will be on Zillow/Redfin/etc.), and 3) in a lot of markets if you take the listing down now, it won't make sense to relist until Apr/May due to seasonality, so it's not without tradeoffs.
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Aug 16, 2023 17:46
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Motronic posted:Did you miss the part about the new loan? They're servicing what is essentially an all-interest mortgage on their new place. It's going to be really difficult to justify the carrying cost. Especially for as long as you're talking about. The math just doesn't work without making some wildly optimistic assumptions. We/they need more information - how large is the mortgage compared to house cost and what are the terms (i.e. how much are they paying 7-8% on versus just forgoing like 5% in a high-yield savings or whatever), how much is the price drop so far/how much does their real estate agent think they need to drop for it to actually move, and what do the comps suggest it would move for absent construction? I guess the point I'm making is really just that you are absolutely right that OP needs to divorce emotion from the comp assessment, but nervousness about holding can also be emotional rather than an assessment of carrying costs.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:37
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Leviathan Song posted:It's good news that it's not a historic building but depending on the regulations on the specific historic district you still may have restrictions on activities that affect the historic character of the district. Without knowing the specific district, you're only going to get wild speculation about how that affects your plan. Historic districts can vary drastically in their powers and aims. For what it's worth - I'm pretty sure the vacant lot insurance thing for this fact pattern is locality dependent - in some places I've lived (e.g. central Texas) it's very normal for larger houses to be composed of multiple adjacent/contiguous lots and the local insurance brokers are more than happy to write homeowners policies on that without much fuss. Agreed that the big problem is doing this with the amount of cash OP has. This is definitely one of those things where the best next step would be to find whoever runs property taxes (county assessor, etc.) and ideally go down to their office or, if not that, then call them up, mention that you're looking at the adjacent property and wondering if the owner would be interested in selling to get their taxes current. Generally the tax folks are going to be happy that they have someone who _wants_ to pay some taxes. The info they can give you is going to be state-dependent, but my experience is that they'll be more than happy to tell you what they can.
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Oct 21, 2023 16:56
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Looking at the Oakland permits for that, I think the story is just one person who bought it in 2020 being BWM: Land was bought in 2004 then a permit for building a large-ish house was filed in 2014. Not a whole lot happened (hard to tell exactly what, but planning permit got approved but building permit didn't have much happen on it). House was listed again in mid-2020 - that's where the listing language in Zillow about COVID came from - can't tell if the more recent listing didn't have any description or if MLS rules made them pull it. Guessing given language/big price hike, the idea was "everybody wants single family homes in the hills now that they're all WFH, we've got permitted plans ready to go, take this and flip it" and somebody bit but then didn't actually execute on it (maybe because it was falling off a cliff, maybe because they're not actually pros and just bit on the "opportunity" because they were bored and at home). The this year they try to get out of it, list it on MLS, don't get any takers, then sell it off-market for a fraction of what they paid for it.
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Nov 10, 2023 18:36
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Sublimer posted:Selling my previous house and after about 2 months of being on market I got a lowball offer. I countered at pretty close to asking price and they basically verbally accepted through our realtor in a structure that I’m not familiar with so I wanted to post here. My counter was 270k and they’ve offered 300k with 30k back for updates/repairs/closing costs. Apparently it’s a VA loan and they want to do it this way because they don’t have the money on hand to make the upgrades themselves. If it doesn’t appraise, I won’t be required to sell at the lower price point. It also seems likely that we could make it a “sliding scale” so if the house appraises for 295k, they’d get 25k back instead. Not super familiar with VA loans, but the big risk I see is just that they get into "one weird trick" territory with their lender, end up not being able to close the loan, use the finance contingency to back out, and you end up in the same place you are now, a month down the line, and with a note on the MLS that it fell out of contingency. I think the big questions I'd have for either a real estate agent who's super experienced with VA loans or a real estate lawyer are: 1. Does that strategy actually work with the VA loan? (Online it looks like there may be a cap of 4% for credits, although unclear if that includes repair credits) 2. Is there some way to derisk this before you actually go into contingency? For example, can they get their lender to commit in pre-approval to this plan in some way, or can you structure the financing/appraisal contingency to protect you from this risk?
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Nov 15, 2023 18:21
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We're doing the stereotypical Bay Area -> Austin thing (mostly to be closer to family though and have an indefinite timeline, so that's nice). I never thought I'd be wistful for the meat grinder that is Bay Area real estate, but the neighborhood we're primarily looking at is firmly in the "hot enough that A tier properties get a couple of offers" level and it's just the worst of all possible worlds: you have the short timeline of a multiple offer scenario, but none of the agents are actually good at dealing with multiple offers and Austin agents have extremely weird and, as far as I can tell, incorrect, ideas of the ethics of sharing information in multiple offer situations. Adding on to that, pre-inspections/waiving inspections isn't really a thing, leading to us offering on three houses and so far: 1) List clearly under market. Offered 110% of list price - informed that we got solidly beat by another offer and we said we were happy to be backup offer. When it went sold in MLS, it was for 85% of our asking price - under list (both parties were traditional financing). Everybody involved shrugged and said the inspection must have revealed something bad, which like - it was a house from the 70's that had basically been untouched. No poo poo? 2) List price was $X, had been on market for 2.5 months. We offered 90% of X. Informed that another offer came in shortly after (presumably listing agent telling everybody else they had an offer, which...fair) at slightly higher. Learned later that seller said no to slightly higher offer, they countered at list. Then seller said no to _that_ offer and pulled the house to rent it. 3) List price was $X, we offered $X basically immediately. They said they got another offer and did we want to raise but with no information. We raised 2% because shruggie. Announced that they were taking the other offer that was 105% of list. Really leaves me tapping the thread title.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:45
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Shifty Pony posted:Austin prices were in the stratosphere and climbing a year and a half ago and from what I gather sellers are still being stupid about things. It's settled down some, but yeah - still a lot higher than pre-2021. Mostly NW Hills with an outside chance of West Lake Hills-ish.
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Apr 19, 2024 00:20
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