Nah, when you sell a house there's something called a "agent open house" or something. Agents swing by a day or two before the open house to take a look for their clients.
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I had no idea buying a home was so intense
- Thread starter stone616
- Start date
Except that they should have connections and know about houses before they go on the market.
Exactly.
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An agents open house is an open house for agents. There's nothing that states that it has to happen before the property is ever listed. If they get an advance heads up they can suggest a property to a client but how many random people every day decide they're gonna sell their house and call some competing broker? You're basically suggesting an agent should have some hidden network so whenever somebody calls a competitor to sell a home they know about it many days in advance and can book a showing? That's absurd.
But.. they do. Especially when you have an agent that's part of one of those MLM-ish brokers like Keller-Wiiliams.
Always curious about markets where homes are selling for way more than asking, is that because the seller has the house listed below market or just buyers using cash? I don't know how a bank would approve financing on you purchasing a house worth 250K for 280k. You're underwater from the start.
Or is it just banks going "this guy makes more than enough money, it's fine"?
Or is it just banks going "this guy makes more than enough money, it's fine"?
I too live in a ho hum suburb in south east Michigan with no major industry.
Love it here. Good luck on the house.
For the first time I'm buying a house and selling. It's a hot market so we locked in a house for purchase, used a HELOC, and then hoped to sell our house.
Put our house on the market last Thursday. Had 35 showings over the weekend. 8 offers by that Sunday at noon. We accepted one. I was dreading the inspection, we waited 4 days afterward to hear anything only to hear, "All good. Just change this one simple thing." They were flexible on the close date too, so we picked it and they were like "That's fine."
The whole process has been so stressful, but man, that was smooth once it kicked in.
Our house went from low $200s to mid $300s in 7 years.
Put our house on the market last Thursday. Had 35 showings over the weekend. 8 offers by that Sunday at noon. We accepted one. I was dreading the inspection, we waited 4 days afterward to hear anything only to hear, "All good. Just change this one simple thing." They were flexible on the close date too, so we picked it and they were like "That's fine."
The whole process has been so stressful, but man, that was smooth once it kicked in.
Our house went from low $200s to mid $300s in 7 years.
Yeah seriously man I just dropped 250k for my house and it was so easy.
Don't go without inspection. The horror stories are out there . Multitudes of them. When we bought we competed with like 5 other offers but we gave over asking price. After the inspection. You buy a house with fd up renos or flood damage and you may as well burn it. A lady I work with found out her house with a lovely stream out back was sinking . 175k later shes put off retirement forever.
Who the hell puts off inspection? No way I'd ever do that. That said, inspections aren't going to always catch everything.
It's been this way for about 5 years. When I bought my house I was lucky and got it for asking price. I had 3 other houses I got outbid on.
Ah, right. Seems like that that point you have more money than sense in some ways. Or you do a a damn good job checking it before the offer. In the end, if they have the money to burn maybe it's worth it for them.
I get it, people don't save money for houses here, some already said so. No need to be triggered weeks later, and don't act like I said "how do you not just have a million dollars in your bank account?"
Don't be daft.
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Or people that lucked out in the housing market in the last crash that make a lot more money now. Fuck paying 50-60% of the value of the mortgage in interest. At a 500k loan, you're looking at like 250k in interest on 30 years.
More than that even. With today's rates, a 20% downpayemt on a 500k house means you are paing about $300k in interest over the life of the loan.
Your suggestion to a generation drowning in student debt, living with stagnating wages and trying to live with a borderline immoral medical system was to 'just buy a house in cash'. What kind of reaction did you really expect? Are you naive or are you trolling?
That's why you don't fuck around. We came in at asking price within 2 days of listing with no contingencies so the seller could move it fast as possible. There were definitely things that came up in inspection that we could have wormed another few grand out of, but we didn't want to risk someone coming in with a higher offer.
This post confuses me just as much as the people that buy $30k cars for cash. Rates are so low that you should be diversifying your investments and not having all your eggs in a house. If you have the spare cash and your investments are already diversified, sure. But to drop everything else to buy a house so you don't have "debt" is a bad idea.
Point being that you should be able to get a home loan for ~4-5% with good credit and you should be able to see a 10% annual return in the market over that same 30 year time period. So what do you do with the extra cash beyond the required down payment? That answer should be entirely dependent on your current portfolio of investments.
I've seen people pay outright for a car when the dealership was offering 0% financing, it's baffling.
This post confuses me just as much as the people that buy $30k cars for cash. Rates are so low that you should be diversifying your investments and not having all your eggs in a house. If you have the spare cash and your investments are already diversified, sure. But to drop everything else to buy a house so you don't have "debt" is a bad idea.
Point being that you should be able to get a home loan for ~4-5% with good credit and you should be able to see a 10% annual return in the market over that same 30 year time period. So what do you do with the extra cash beyond the required down payment? That answer should be entirely dependent on your current portfolio of investments.
I've seen people pay outright for a car when the dealership was offering 0% financing, it's baffling.
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My comment was about waiving the inspection, not about cash offers specifically.
I lucked out on a smaller degree because of the crash. Was a student, got an ok enough job between my wife and I and got a house that was incredibly cheap. Selling it now and making a lot more money too. So we can now afford to have a nice house in the neighborhood we want near our jobs.
Still couldn't quite pay cash. Even so, I'd never waive an inspection. If I could pay cash it'd be a lot of what I had saved up.
Are you seriously suggesting that no one saves up money to buy houses all the time and that everyone here is poor? Don't pull that everyone is poor crap. Tons of people save for stuff all the time. I know people that work in real estate and also people that have bought houses that probably make way less than many here. Not to mention people in my very neighborhood, some that came to the US with nothing. All I said is that I didn't know so many people were going the mortgage route...someone said that many people do. And that was it!
Again, don't act like I attacked anyone here personally by *GASP* not knowing that people aren't saving money for house purchases...and in the United States, don't pull that everyone on this message board is poor and makes minimum wages crap. The thread title, and first post, is not "How to buy a house when poor". Either people are being sensitive, or you are trying to tone police because you are bitter at people that do save money for houses, or at the mere suggestion. There are even people in this thread that have saved enough to buy a house or are competing with those who do. If you are acting like it is outrageous that someone on a videogame messaging board, an expensive first-world hobby where many people on this spending up to thousands a year on games...that no one out there but rich people are saving money...then YOU are the one trolling.
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As someone who just bought a house barely with some inheritence, when you don't have money even if you work a decent job it's impossible to save for a house. If you're renting all that money you should save by having a mortgage is going straight in the trash.
Look at the stats. Sample month from 2017 January, 1.4% of house sales are first time home buyers paying cash.
Paying cash is absolutely not the norm for first time house buyers. If you see 'tons of people' saving to buy a house, you are not aware of the wider picture.
And even if you had cash for a house, it is not the best decision to pay all in cash when you are getting such an easy 4% loan (but that is a different discussion altogether).
Exactly. My wife and I make good money, but there's no reason to wait until we can pay cash for a house when the loan is 4%. We can easily refinance later if we need to or make additional payments. Even making really good money, it'd take us another 5-10 years to save enough to pay cash. If we'd follow that rule we also wouldn't have bought a house in 2012 and made $100,000 in the last 7 years off a sale.
I am so confused by this shallow thinking. How long do you think it should take for someone to buy a 250k home with cash?
If an agent can't get you a heads up on new inventory there is no point to the agent. You can do everything else yourself.
Selling price is usually set just under market to encourage bidding war.
Banks only finance assessed value. Anything above that is cash from buyer.
Lol you make this ignorant ass post and your calling me daft? I didn't even realize how old the post was but what I find funny that even now you have to act like a condescending dick. "People don't save for houses here"what? Everyone saves for their house but buying a house cash is not feasible for the average person unless they're willing to save for decades. You obviously don't get it.
If you have that much cash, buying a house usually isn't the best way to maximize the return on your money anyway. Especially with rates < 5%, unless you're in a hot market. It's the equivalent of putting all your money in a single volatile stock.
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Just had an offer accepted on a home. I offered $3000 over listing and they bit but they want 30 days past closing to move out and are rushing the inspection for 5 days. How does one go about finding a good local inspector? I'm not sure Google reviews are trustworthy. Not really sure I like how they're rushing for an inspection so quick but all that matters is it happens.
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Many people pretty much do. It's why Zillow is trying to sell direct to buyers and buy homes direct from sellers. In the internet age it's questionable if you really even need an agent as a buyer. Then again as a buyer you don't pay the agent so it doesn't really matter.
It's still an ignorant take on the situation. And you basically did ask why people don't have a huge pile of cash to purchase their first home.
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Might have to stick with Google reviews because the sample size for reviews on either of those is way too small for my area. The highest company has 34 reviews the next 10 and nobody else has any.
Can confirm. My house inspector peeked into our attic from the hatch (which was what we agreed he'd do on the contract) and pointed out some mold, but nothing terrible.
After we closed the house, we got a guy to take a look at the roof to see what could be done about that mold + maybe redo the insulation while he was there. This guy climbed into the attic to take a closer look at everything. He spotted a pretty bad leak and mold spot that couldn't be seen from the hatch. Had to redo like half my roof to fix it.
That SUCKS. If the owners knew about it and didn't say that's illegal.
I dunno if they knew. They neglected any maintenance work on the house for around a decade, so it's possible that they just didn't care.
The most tame evidence that the former owners gave no fucks about the house was the lint collector in the dryer. I had to pull a sheet of wool several inches thick out of that thing because apparently that's what happens if leave it alone long enough. Ew.
Wow. Yah, that's tough if it was clearly majorly neglected. That said, if they clearly tried to hide it you can technically sue. Hard to prove though.
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I just had the home inspection. Inspector had his much younger son go into the attic and investigate it. There's a "spore like substance up there" but pretty minor. I'm just gonna ask the home owner to address that. And the chimney seal leaked all the way down the side of the home into the basement and there's a section of rotted wood down there. Asking them to address that too. He also thinks the roof it over 15 years old but I have a roof guy that can do that for me and some of the windows should be replaced. I'll probably take that on myself too over time.
The home inspector did try to upsell me on several services like to get the spore like substance tested. I opted not to. I say let the current home owner investigate that.
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It shouldn't be illegal for a seller to be able to list a property without getting a home inspection and providing that in addition to "sellers disclosure."
Instead we have a system that encourages sellers to attempt to stay as ignorant as possible about the issues in their home so they can have plausible deniability about their home's state.
If I sell something that's $20 on eBay and the buyer gets it and doesn't like it I'm forced to take that back but people can sell $100,000+ homes and not have to do any due diligence to make sure what they're selling is up to snuff.
Instead we have a system that encourages sellers to attempt to stay as ignorant as possible about the issues in their home so they can have plausible deniability about their home's state.
If I sell something that's $20 on eBay and the buyer gets it and doesn't like it I'm forced to take that back but people can sell $100,000+ homes and not have to do any due diligence to make sure what they're selling is up to snuff.
Yeah in hindsight we put too much faith in the inspection of our house. Pretty much all the plumbing is blocked and needs to be replaced. We have a significant water leak somewhere (looking at previous bills into has been there for at least a year). We have more than 1 peak in the roof some mound/rising damp and blocked downpipes.
Thankfully we have the money to fix these things but it's annoying how you can be sold a house with these sorts of issues and have no real recourse.
Thankfully we have the money to fix these things but it's annoying how you can be sold a house with these sorts of issues and have no real recourse.
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I wish they wouldn't. Many of the major things in the home are inside the age of failure. The AC, furnace, roof, garage roof, there's mold in the attic, a leak around the chimney causing water damage and dry rot into the basement.
My realtor says stay tuned but I'd be just as glad to walk away and get my earnest money back. All that stuff is likely to fail in 2-5 years and need replacing. Had the home inspection been done before I made the offer I would have offered much less
I'm not an expert on this stuff. The roof looked visibly ok so I thought it was good. It's like people lived there and ran out the clock on many of the systems in the home then said screw it let's move out and pass this on to somebody else.
I mean normally what would happen is you would ask that the sellers fix this stuff or take enough money off of the price for you to pay for it. Your offer should have had a contingency in there that stated that the house would need to "pass" inspection (problems fixed or sellers give you money) or the deal would be off. You should be able to walk away if you're not satisfied
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I asked my seller to fix the issues with the home I'm under contract for and they refused. They told me I could get $1000 credit for it.
The chimney flashing was improperly done and there is water damage including rotting of structural components in the basement including joist, subfloor, and plate. Also in the closet on the main floor you can see the water damage.
I'm not taking just $1000 for it. My agent suggested I take $3000 in seller credits. I want the maximum $4200 I'm able to get because I'll have to get it fixed myself.
At this point because they know about it so if they have to put the house back on the market seems like they'd have to disclose it and whoever comes after me is probably gonna hammer them on it and offer them below what they listed it for when I offered them $3000 over listing before knowing.
Not all homes come with warranties, and they're notoriously hard to use if there is one.
Then it comes down to how much you want the house. If you love the house and you're in a hot market it would seem silly to me to lose it over a couple of grand.
That's just me though and the way my wife and I think
Yeah, that $3000 seems like a fair compromise. I took a couple of thousand in credits because my first inspection was on a snow day and we hadn't noticed the broken up driveway.
But any of these issues would have been deal breakers for me. (Unless all of that was figured into the asking price). You are looking at $30k-$50k in costs in the next few years.
blocked plumbing
new roof in 2-5 years
new hvac in 2-5 years
attic /main level closet/basement water damage (to the joists/subfloor) and mold
The market is so hot they will probably find someone who will buy it without haggling them.
Based on your description of the water damage though I would just walk away from this house.
i live in loudoun county and my wife and i recently purchased a home in december. The market is so aggressive here that you pretty much have to make an offer the day you view the house. If you even wait until that night there is a chance the house already has an offer over asking.
Yeah, I guess I didn't read it in detail enough. That list of stuff would be a deal breaker for me too unless it was figured into the price.