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The Home buying Thread

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by downndirty, Nov 5, 2021.

  1. sisterkathlouise

    sisterkathlouise
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    Yeah, we are kind of waffling between buying something that we can afford that either needs a fair amount of work, will need a future addition, or isn’t in our ideal location vs. waiting to see if things get less crazy. We are able to save close to half of our take home rn so maybe it’s not bad to stay. The condo just feels a lot smaller since my husband is still full time WFH and we have a baby.
     
  2. downndirty

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    I am putting an offer in on a place that's $20k over asking. I have absolutely no confidence, faith or hope that the offer wins.
     
  3. NatCH

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    If I were you, I’d write a letter to the sellers and tell them about your plans for the basement.

    You might just luck out one of these times…
     
  4. Fiveslide

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    I wonder if the era of talking a seller down will ever return. We talked $20k off asking price, started offering at $35k below.
     
  5. downndirty

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    We're primed for a recession, and the supply of housing has to catch up sooner or later.....

    I'll be dead of old age before it happens, but I hope my niece can afford a sub-$10m 2 bed/2bath mobile home at some point. At the rate we're going, however.....
     
  6. NatCH

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    Yeah, I mean we got ours for about $15k under asking…but that was because they were asking the amount they needed to pay off their debts, as I documented on the board during the process.
    Our realtor is a great guy, but I think we all learned a few things during that debacle.
    On the plus side, every property we happen to see on the market is not as enticing as what we got. Home is feeling more like home every day.
     
  7. Nettdata

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    I think it depends on the house.

    There are a lot of shit houses that are trying to sneak-sell with the hot market... most trying to get you to waive any kind of an inspection as a condition.

    There was one that a friend bought (he's an agent, so he was the buying agent, not the purchaser), who noticed the very noticeable foundation issues. Turns out the buyer did foundation repair for a living, so knew what he was looking at and could fix it for pennies on the dollar. They pointed out the obvious fucked basement, and said "drop $20k off the price and we'll take it despite the fault."

    The seller agreed.

    I'm very sure that's a hell of an exception right now... there are a lot of problem-infested houses being sold to hapless buyers for way too much money.
     
  8. bewildered

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    When you have a market crash, sure, some people who were waiting, get in.

    But you also have a lot of richies sucking up all the cheap property to use as investments.
     
  9. downndirty

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    This is the second time I've been asked to provide a financial disclosure sheet to a potential seller. I detest this, because that's none of their business, I have no idea what they do with this information, and I've already gone through this with my lender(s). Anyone else doing this?
     
  10. Nettdata

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    Nope. All I had was "subject to financing" on my offer and then it was up to me. None of their business.

    One problem is that with such a hot market, a number of agents are having to work with 40-60 offers, and sometimes those "preapproved mortgages" are bullshit and mean fuck-all, so they may be using this as some sort of pre-test to weed out having to deal with a ton of offers that will never work out anyway.

    They also might be figuring out who's got the most cash to spend to see who they want to allow into the bidding war.

    Don't know.
     
  11. xrayvision

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    It could be a way for the seller to try to discriminate on who buys their house. Is the request coming directly from the seller or their agent?
     
  12. xrayvision

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    That does make a lot of sense. Just because someone is willing to pay a certain amount for a house doesn’t mean it will appraise for said amount and the bank may not issue a mortgage for more than the appraised value of the house. They want to see if you have the liquid funds to bring to the table in the event of a bidding war.
     
  13. AFHokie

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    I've mentioned it before on the board, but we had this happen in my neighborhood. New construction neighborhood of 148 homes and seven that I know of were bought by some sort of Chinese company/family. I could care less who lives in them, but the HOA is working overtime making sure they maintain the exterior of the properties...which are predominately overgrown weed gardens.

    We bought in 2018 and the only the seller's market is essentially why we went with a new build. I used my VA loan which means it'll take longer to close and trying to offer more than assessed value could be difficult if not impossible when a VA loan is involved meant we were often outbid.

    Two identical houses in my neighborhood to mine just sold for over $225k what they were built for in 2018-2020.
     
  14. downndirty

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    I lost the bid I put in, and I think it wasn't even close: mine was $20k over asking ($300k condo), and I think the winning bid was $40k over.

    I'm curious about flipping the script, and buying commercial property. I'm specifically thinking of a building my ex worked in near Baltimore. Rent the bottom two floors and have an apartment on the top. Zoning notwithstanding, surely all this unused, empty office space can get converted to housing when folks realize they aren't coming back to the office, no?
     
  15. Juice

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    I would really do your homework in the local requirements for buying and converting commercial real estate. You are going to drop a lot more money than just the cost of the building/remodeling for just cutting through the red tape alone.
     
  16. downndirty

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    Eh, I wouldn't try to convert it....I'd buy a mixed use place, or something that was already zoned for what I had in mind.

    There are few places like that that have popped up.

    At this point, I could probably get a fucking industrial space for less than a house, throw in a shower stall and close off the office space, and enjoy my indoor shooting range.
     
  17. Juice

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    Well since it's Baltimore, no one will notice the gunshots. Enjoy.
     
  18. Nettdata

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    Not sure about your area, but be wary of taxes... around here taxes are somewhat based on zoning, so commercially zoned areas, even if used only as residential, are taxed way, way higher.

    There was an old auto shop that came up for sale here in town that i was tempted to buy... 2 bays, lifts, storage, fenced yard, covered parking, plus 2.5k square feet of space that could be converted to a nice apartment. But man... those taxes were 4 times what I was expecting.
     
  19. GTE

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    Probably related to my area (California) but commercial properties are WAY more expensive than houses. There are four commercial buildings in my area that are under $500k. Two are single offices in a corporate building, one is in an area of town I would not drive into at night and the last is a "deferred maintenance" shop that is on a .10 acre lot. This gem is 600' from busy railroad tracks and between the shop and the railroad tracks is a major homeless camp. Sweet dreams!!
    https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/1630-Basler-St-Sacramento-CA/24714668/
     
  20. AFHokie

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