It almost been a month since we made an offer on a house, and there is still a month to go until closing. This is so damn frustrating when you have to wait 45-60 until you can finally pick up the keys to your house and start to get it ready to move in.
Now is that time when in the back of your mind that you know that house is yours, but it sits there vacant. There is no one going in there any more checking up on the property, the pool is turning a lovely shade of green because they turned off the pump and the only time you can check up on it is during the inspections.
Ahh the inspections, those lovely report that tell you that that dream house you thought you were getting is filled with little problems, our favorite so far. RODENTS AND FUNGUS! Come to find out there is a small opening in the roof where it looks like rodents were getting in, and while up in the attic during the inspection we found some lovely little souvenirs. Also there is that nice report of wood eating fungus on the outside garage door.
Damn I want to get in there now and be able to fix up some shit. But alas we still have 28 days and counting.. This lovely wait, I can’t wait till it is over!
Showing posts with label real estate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label real estate. Show all posts
0
that horrible wait till closing.
Posted on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 8:27 AM
in
house,
rant,
real estate
by
The Wampa Guy
Buying a House in this economy - Part 2
Posted on at 8:26 AM
in
house,
rant,
real estate
by
The Wampa Guy
Fixer-Upper vs. Remodel
Today we looked at 5 more properties only to find out 2 were already under contract, one looked like it was a former swinger party den, one was by high voltage power lines and one was over priced and too far north.
Although it sounds like a motley crew of locations one did shine so bright that we we actually placed a bid on it and would you believe it was the one that was overpriced? This house had nine out of ten of our things we were looking for in a house. It had real hardwood floors, it had a 2 car garage, it had a fenced in back yard (vinyl fence too!), it had a pool, it had an wide open floor plan. The one thing it didn’t have was a big open kitchen but as the song says you can’t always get what you want.
The house was set as a short sale, and is not guaranteed because we did have slightly lower bid than asking but we think we may be in luck. And as in the previous article mentions there are vultures out there just waiting to pick these things off. The house also has a mortgage that is $70,000 more than the asking price, so that alone shows you how good of a deal it is.
But why not just buy a house that is a much lower price that is a “Fixer Upper”? If you have the time on your hands and not the 2 small boys like we have then this may be your cup of tea, but many of the ones that we evaluated it seemed like many of these fell in neighborhoods where the lack of home pride was apparent. And when you think of it in a long run, that 20,000-40,000 more you are spending on a house that is already remodeled is going to let you start your life the day you move in. How many of these jobs that you had high hopes of “down the road” never happen? There are many of those unfinished honey-do lists out there, and you just look at that old carpet and wonder when you can replace it.
Yeah you will probably pay double or triple the price of the actual repairs over the life of your loan when you consider interest, but the piece of mind that it is already done and don’t need to bring outside workers or bust a knuckle or cut off a finger (ask my dad!) on a DIY job may be worth every penny.
Today we looked at 5 more properties only to find out 2 were already under contract, one looked like it was a former swinger party den, one was by high voltage power lines and one was over priced and too far north.
Although it sounds like a motley crew of locations one did shine so bright that we we actually placed a bid on it and would you believe it was the one that was overpriced? This house had nine out of ten of our things we were looking for in a house. It had real hardwood floors, it had a 2 car garage, it had a fenced in back yard (vinyl fence too!), it had a pool, it had an wide open floor plan. The one thing it didn’t have was a big open kitchen but as the song says you can’t always get what you want.
The house was set as a short sale, and is not guaranteed because we did have slightly lower bid than asking but we think we may be in luck. And as in the previous article mentions there are vultures out there just waiting to pick these things off. The house also has a mortgage that is $70,000 more than the asking price, so that alone shows you how good of a deal it is.
But why not just buy a house that is a much lower price that is a “Fixer Upper”? If you have the time on your hands and not the 2 small boys like we have then this may be your cup of tea, but many of the ones that we evaluated it seemed like many of these fell in neighborhoods where the lack of home pride was apparent. And when you think of it in a long run, that 20,000-40,000 more you are spending on a house that is already remodeled is going to let you start your life the day you move in. How many of these jobs that you had high hopes of “down the road” never happen? There are many of those unfinished honey-do lists out there, and you just look at that old carpet and wonder when you can replace it.
Yeah you will probably pay double or triple the price of the actual repairs over the life of your loan when you consider interest, but the piece of mind that it is already done and don’t need to bring outside workers or bust a knuckle or cut off a finger (ask my dad!) on a DIY job may be worth every penny.
Buying a house in this Economy - Part 1
Posted on at 8:25 AM
in
house,
rant,
real estate
by
The Wampa Guy
Hey folks, all 2 of you watching this blog, I want a place to vent when buying a house, and in this economy people are saying it is the best time to buy. I beg to differ in many ways but here I go!
First before we even attempted to buy a house, I have been tracking the Median and Average house prices for the past 100 years. If anyone looked at this chart you would see that the housing bubble that many mentioned on TV was absolutely true. Starting around the late ninetys houses began to inflate to almost double their value (see chart below), it was almost a matter of time before stuff blew up andthe market attempted to correct itself and prices came back down.
Click below to read the rest!
A major part of this came from the leniency of new laws allowing people that really couldn’t afford a house at that time to get adjustable rate mortgages. Predator lenders came out and preyed upon these people. Now this brings us to today, many houses are being foreclosed on and being sold short sale.
We are seeing houses in our price range that are steals, and some are laughable because those poor saps who are backwards in their mortgages now who owe more than the house is worth are trying to still think they can get what they bought it for, and not realizing the people right down the street are selling their house for 25k-50k less.
Today we ran into a fun yet disturbing after effect. 2 houses we went to see had tenants that did not want to cooperate. One was from an owner that was renting out the house on a monthly basis. The owner is being about to be foreclosed upon and they want to sell the house now before they lose it. The problem is the renter does not want to move and is doing anything in their power to not cooperate with the company hired to show the property, so there goes one house we were in love with and unable to see and possibly put in an offer. Now we have to wait until the tenant is kicked out at the end of the month, and maybe we can look inside.
The other case is a lender owned house. On paper we saw, it was vacant and ready to be shown anytime, again with lockbox on the door. Come to find out, since they wrote that, they have rented out the house. Once again, a tenant did not want to cooperate and decided to HIDE the box while she went out of town. So out of 4 houses, 2 were blocked by renters, almost a complete waste of our time today. A 3rd house had a renter also, and was completely cooperative, but we were really not that interested in the house and it was a family with 2 young girls, they had the rooms all decorated and would feel a bit guilty kicking them out of their home.
2 other houses we really liked were also pre-short sale houses but had been snagged up by “investors”, isn’t that part of this whole problem with the flipper types? Both were beautiful and big especially for the asking price, we knew these would go fast, appearantly in under a week.
Which brings me back to the begining of the blog, the last house we saw they were originally asking $225,000 and have “reduced the price” to $179,000 for 2 stories and a screened in pool, sounds like a steal right? Well when the value of the rest of the houses in the direct neighborhood have fallen to about $150,000 (some houses in the $90,000’s!) it still seems to be they still have wishful thinking, especially when the house has no garage or attic for storing goodies like holiday stuff.
So the hunt is still on, we have till the end of the month before we can see the house we really like (maybe) and till the end of august till our lease ends. Feel free to check back as I vent some more, I still have much more to say about how we became financally capable of looking at the house and the run around when it comes to applying to become pre-approved for a mortgage. And more than likely I will post more about the run around with closing costs, redecorating and all those goodies that come along with houses.
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