Buying a house

The thing that sucks with the inspection is that a lot of major issues need to have drywall torn down to really find out what is happening.
 
Cessnaflyer said:
The thing that sucks with the inspection is that a lot of major issues need to have drywall torn down to really find out what is happening.
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Yes. I found this out first hand. There was a leaking elbow on the septic soil stack (sewer vent), and an additional leak at the gasket where it passes through the roof. And a prior roof leak from before the roof being redone. My attic looked good with a casual glance, put pull up some insulation and its amazing what a few drops of water every rain will do. Needless to say, I had to get an early start on my renovation. The good news is sheetrock and insulation are relatively cheap.

There were subtle signs of water issues when I was looking at the house, but I just didn't take them seriously enough. Next time I'll put on a tyvek suit and crawl the attic myself.
 
Been looking for almost a year in SW Connecticut. 300k gets you a 70 year old, asbestos filled, 1,000 square foot cape or ranch. 1/2 acre if you're lucky and taxes 5-8k/year.

I want to move.
 
VA guarantees are great. I bought my first house using my entitlement and our next house with my wife's entitlement. If you plan on using your entitlement, make sure you fully understand the terms and conditions.

Some things to understand are that VA entitlements are re-useable under certain conditions, that there is a VA funding fee rolled onto the purchase price (2.15% first time, IIRC) unless you have a 10% or better disability rating which eliminates the fee. Also the mortgage will be a 30 yr fixed rate with no pre-payment penalty.

If your intent is to purchase investment property, the use of your entitlement may not be the smartest way to go.

Buying a house, while a personal and emotional event, should be looked at from a business standpoint. Our first house we bought the smallest house we could afford in the best neighborhood, did some DIY upgrades and when we PCSd six years later saw the value increase by 28% after we subtracted selling expenses.

Our next duty station, we are doing the same thing. I have a lot of friends who found great deals (new, large house in new development, great price) in neighborhoods that weren't so great and found their values to either stagnate or drop over similar time frames.

Best of luck in your decision.
 
Nothing to add to this really, just need to vent. Lost out on the 2nd house in a row tonight that we wanted to put an offer in on. Offer was accepted while my Wife and Mother (on trip) were in the damn thing and talking about what we wanted to offer via facetime. Feel like the agent kinda screwed the seller a little bit and didn't give our agent a heads up this afternoon when he knew we were looking. Frustrating, the last one happened because we waited for me to come home the next day ( after wife looked and liked it) to see it before we did anything. Offer accepted as I was about to start driving there. Ugh. Winter is coming too and I am NOT moving in that crap. Vent over.
 
Seggy said:
Another reason why MSP sucks.....

You can move 365 days a year in Texas.
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Yes it does. Hence why Im based there and thaw out in Dallas at home.

Congrats on the move btw Seggy!!

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ClarkGriswold said:
Nothing to add to this really, just need to vent. Lost out on the 2nd house in a row tonight that we wanted to put an offer in on. Offer was accepted while my Wife and Mother (on trip) were in the damn thing and talking about what we wanted to offer via facetime. Feel like the agent kinda screwed the seller a little bit and didn't give our agent a heads up this afternoon when he knew we were looking. Frustrating, the last one happened because we waited for me to come home the next day ( after wife looked and liked it) to see it before we did anything. Offer accepted as I was about to start driving there. Ugh. Winter is coming too and I am NOT moving in that crap. Vent over.
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Wes, there is no reason to rush into making an offer. When you do that you get tunnel vision and can miss a lot of important signs. Granted, I have only bought real estate on the investment side and not the personal pleasure side so take what I say with a grain of salt. Let me know how the rest of the search goes.
 
ClarkGriswold said:
Nothing to add to this really, just need to vent.
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It's tough to do, but try to remove emotion from the buying process. My wife and I bought our first house 4 years ago and in retrospect, I realized that we were guided by emotion more than we should have been and it affected our decision-making. You are buying a bunch of wood, metal, plastic, sheet rock, and insulation that happen to be assembled in a way that you like.

  • Avoid emotionally charged phrases like "I love that house."
  • Do not watch HGTV
  • Be willing to walk away at all times. There are other houses out there.
 
Home Inspections: Walk around with the inspector. You can pick his/her brain, and separate the "I gotta write it up" issues from the "House'll fall down" things. You can also get some ballpark estimates on construction costs, if you don't know the area yet. Get the inspection in writing. Sounds simple, and nowadays, it's a computerized process that's far more comprehensive, but I once bought a house in a (different) state where it doesn't snow. When I sold it five years later, the same inspector wrote up the hydroscopic clay (expands, cracks foundations, shrinks, opens up the cracks! ) as a problem despite there being no difference in the minor cracking from when he inspected it five years earlier. No written first inspection, no photographs, couldn't prove it was stable so I had to knock a few bucks off the price.

Insurance companies can also be a pain. When I bought my present house three years ago & walked around with the inspector, we agreed that there were two layers on the roof, but the top layer still had 3-4 years to go before replacement. Insurance company said, "There's only one layer of roofing on your house and it's 21 years old, you have to re-shingle." "No, there are two. I'll send you the inspection and photos of the two layers of shingles." Ins Co: "There's no permit filed for a second layer of roofing, we checked on-line with the county, so it doesn't exist." It had evidently been a home-owner roofing job without a permit. No budging them, so I had to buy a roof. It did give me a chance to upgrade the decking nailing to hurricane standards, ditto the sealing membrane, vents, and shingle nailing. I flew down to be there while the work was being done, bought soda and water for the crew, and although we had a good contractor, I kept counting the nail-gun pops. Hurricane standards require six nails per shingle. I kept hearing "pop, pop, pop, pop, pause, pause, pop, pop."

Plant trees and shrubs as soon as possible. They grow.

Closings can be nerve-wracking. Either they are getting easier, or I'm more blase now in the sixth house I've owned, or both. But the best advice I was given a few houses ago: "Bring your own Vaseline. Theirs has sand in it."
 
I just bought my first house this Summer. We did USDA rural development, got a great rate and basically paid 1500 out of pocket for our home. I'd echo the inspection portion was a headache, but I'd say if you can get a special pest inspector, the structural guys don't have to really touch anything and would have missed the termite damage to our sill plate the pest woman found. It saved us $2000 grand in repairs/treatment. Also you need to be very forceful in negotiations, so many of the affiliated parties just want to get their commission with as little work as possible. Don't try and be their friends it's business, do your best to get what you at the price you want. We definitely ruffled some feathers but got a great deal on a great house- even with a low paying flying job.
 
Well we got one going to inspection in a couple days. We've seen it on the market and liked it but it was listed way too high. They dropped the price into our budget a couple days ago. Almost walked away but they ended up coming down further.
 
ClarkGriswold said:
Well we got one going to inspection in a couple days. We've seen it on the market and liked it but it was listed way too high. They dropped the price into our budget a couple days ago. Almost walked away but they ended up coming down further.
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Hope it works out for you. We close on our second house at the end of the month.


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Seggy said:
Another reason why MSP sucks.....

You can move 365 days a year in Texas.
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Pick your poison. Texas - Heat, MSP - Cold, New Jersey - well, it's New Jersey.....

We all suck for different reasons. Besides, the cold helps keep the <another name for cat>'s out of the state..... ;-)
 
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