Home Buying Help Thread

[Forge]

2 hours ago, MWil23 said:

Some lenders, at least here in Ohio, won't even allow you to put in over asking price if the appraisal comes back under. Do you know how this works and what the workarounds are, if any?

They shouldn't care. The money comes out of your own pocket because the lender can only do a certain percentage of the lower of the appraised value / purchase price. 

[MKnight82]

3 hours ago, Forge said:

They shouldn't care. The money comes out of your own pocket because the lender can only do a certain percentage of the lower of the appraised value / purchase price. 

This.  If the appraisal comes in low it just means you have to pony up more cash. 

[vike daddy]

my son is trying to buy his first house, in Olympia WA.

sheesh... at the prices, and what people pay over them.

[Slappy Mc]

5 hours ago, vike daddy said:

my son is trying to buy his first house, in Olympia WA.

sheesh... at the prices, and what people pay over them.

I live very close to Olympia (Port Orchard, Wa) and the housing market here has exploded over the pandemic. We are currently trying to buy as well. My advice to your son is to be patient. If there is something they fall in love with, be aggressive, but never settle for something because "that's all there is right now". Getting a good real estate agent and asking a bunch of questions is also very helpful. 

[vike daddy]

1 hour ago, Slappy Mc said:

I live very close to Olympia (Port Orchard, Wa) and the housing market here has exploded over the pandemic. We are currently trying to buy as well. My advice to your son is to be patient. If there is something they fall in love with, be aggressive, but never settle for something because "that's all there is right now". Getting a good real estate agent and asking a bunch of questions is also very helpful. 

yes, all good advice. they've personally seen a dozen or so homes by now, and probably made offers on 5 or 6. they have a top limit they can afford to pay out, plus have to think about closing and remodeling costs which can't be financed.

i know many of you guys shopping for homes now have experienced what they have - they make an offer 30-50K over the asking price, and get bid out by someone offering 80-100K over. in cash.

they keep a good attitude about it, and keep themselves from getting emotionally invested in a house before they have it as their own.

[Slappy Mc]

6 minutes ago, vike daddy said:

i know many of you guys shopping for homes now have experienced what they have - they make an offer 30-50K over the asking price, and get bid out by someone offering 80-100K over. in cash

This is the biggest problem IMO. Too many homes that could go to good families get sold for cash, remodelled and flipped for a significant profit. 

I wish your kid and his family luck. It would be nice if the market crashed again, but that is wishful thinking.

[vike daddy]

16 hours ago, Slappy Mc said:

This is the biggest problem IMO. Too many homes that could go to good families get sold for cash, remodelled and flipped for a significant profit. 

i'm sure plenty of those situations exist, but i think what might be even more common is folks can now move out of the big cities to smaller ones because they can now work online. so they sell that condo in Seattle for 1.2 million and buy a house in Olympia for $550,000 and still have cash on hand.

tough to compete with those buyers.

[StatKing]

10 hours ago, vike daddy said:

i'm sure plenty of those situations exist, but i think what might be even more common is folks can now move out of the big cities to smaller ones because they can now work online. so they sell that condo in Seattle for 1.2 million and buy a house in Olympia for $550,000 and still have cash on hand.

tough to compete with those buyers.

Bingo

[Tugboat]

The other day i was thinking about buying a piece of home in the sky, with a highrise condo at some point.  Thinking that seems pretty dope.  And then like a day later, 3 different highrise condo fires broke out.  So i'm gonna take that as a sign i guess.

 

Honestly seems pretty rare tho.  I'm still into it.  Garbage investment and all...it'd just be cool to own a cube of space hundreds of feet in the air somewhere.

[vike daddy]

4 hours ago, Tugboat said:

it'd just be cool to own a cube of space hundreds of feet in the air somewhere.

i know a couple who own a condo in Portland OR that's on the 4th floor. so they look out and down at the tops of the trees along the street, and it's like a green lawn beneath them.

[Tugboat]

1 hour ago, vike daddy said:

i know a couple who own a condo in Portland OR that's on the 4th floor. so they look out and down at the tops of the trees along the street, and it's like a green lawn beneath them.

I probably sound like i'm mocking, but honestly...as stupid as it is in a material sense, that's my ideal living situation.  Not on the 4th floor.  You usually can't see **** from there.  But Like 15+ Floors up, just a view of...something.  You can't avoid it at that point.  I'm into that kind of thing.  A lot of people aren't i guess.  idk.

 

Lot of people get real claustrophobic in places like that.  Makes them a terrible investment (among other reasons), but it's so cool.  Everything is around you.  That's neat.

[Slappy Mc]

Sorry for bumping a thread that is months old, but I need to vent a little on my home buying process.

First and foremost, I have an accepted offer, inspection and appraisal are complete and the finish line is in sight. Closing date is in a week. The part I need to vent on is how incredibly hard it is to deal with people when it comes to finances and your ability to pay your bills. I preface this by saying that I currently live in a 2BR/2BR apartment (under 900 sq. ft.) with my fiance and 3 children. We currently pay $2050/month.

After two and a half straight years of searching for our home, we found a house that had been on the market for a while (37 days) and had already gone through an offer review cycle and never went pending. Since the interest rates and housing market have skyrocketed, the amount we qualified for on a home had been dwindling daily. The house was originally listed for 350k. They had dropped the price to 340k the week before we went and looked at it. The interior was not the best looking as it was evident that the current owner had pets and cosmetically they did some damage, but the bones of the house seemed strong. Stick built home on .3 acres, with a garage/attached workshop. We ended up offering 308k (and asking for closing concession). For those that struggle, that is 40k less than asking price. To our surprise they counter offered and asked for 7k more. We accepted. In today's market, a home with at least a quarter acre that is stick built for a decent prices is unheard of. The inspection yielded information that we could mostly tell from walking through the home. The biggest defects were a leak in the roof (from five years prior that got "patched") and a dead tree in the back yard (that previously had broken and fallen on the neighbors property). The sellers were insistent on not repairing any problems so we had to decide whether these were deal breakers or not for us. Fortunately I have family that works in both the construction and arborsmith industries. Both things should cost us a combined 10k and neither were deemed an immediate need, so we are very fortunate.

Next step was the appraisal. With us asking for the closing costs to be paid by the seller out of closing, the appraisal cost should have come out of closing. What in fact happened was I was forced to put money down as a placeholder to ensure the appraiser got paid (understandable, but also not money that I had in addition to the down-payment). So when my cash to close came out and I was the exact amount of the appraisal short, I panicked. I had to get a "gift from a family member" in a hurry. Now the thing about this is that frustrating is that the appraisal amount that I pulled from my down-payment fund is going to be refunded to me "after closing" which means that I could not use it for what it was intended for. I was fortunate that my family had the funding to help otherwise this would have doomed us. After having the funds transferred, the letter written and signed, we were back on track. 

With a week till we are supposed to close, my biggest gripe is communication and the expectancy of buyers. We are expected to provide documents on a whim and mortgage companies can take hours/days to respond to communication on specific topics. Then when they do answer its the same BS non-specific answers to specific questions. The debt to income ratio that is expected from banks also blatantly ignore the reality that most people already pay the amounts that they supposedly "can't afford" according to their ratios.

Good luck to all home buyers out there. Be patient and find the right situation.

[MWil23]

21 hours ago, Slappy Mc said:

Sorry for bumping a thread that is months old, but I need to vent a little on my home buying process.

First and foremost, I have an accepted offer, inspection and appraisal are complete and the finish line is in sight. Closing date is in a week. The part I need to vent on is how incredibly hard it is to deal with people when it comes to finances and your ability to pay your bills. I preface this by saying that I currently live in a 2BR/2BR apartment (under 900 sq. ft.) with my fiance and 3 children. We currently pay $2050/month.

After two and a half straight years of searching for our home, we found a house that had been on the market for a while (37 days) and had already gone through an offer review cycle and never went pending. Since the interest rates and housing market have skyrocketed, the amount we qualified for on a home had been dwindling daily. The house was originally listed for 350k. They had dropped the price to 340k the week before we went and looked at it. The interior was not the best looking as it was evident that the current owner had pets and cosmetically they did some damage, but the bones of the house seemed strong. Stick built home on .3 acres, with a garage/attached workshop. We ended up offering 308k (and asking for closing concession). For those that struggle, that is 40k less than asking price. To our surprise they counter offered and asked for 7k more. We accepted. In today's market, a home with at least a quarter acre that is stick built for a decent prices is unheard of. The inspection yielded information that we could mostly tell from walking through the home. The biggest defects were a leak in the roof (from five years prior that got "patched") and a dead tree in the back yard (that previously had broken and fallen on the neighbors property). The sellers were insistent on not repairing any problems so we had to decide whether these were deal breakers or not for us. Fortunately I have family that works in both the construction and arborsmith industries. Both things should cost us a combined 10k and neither were deemed an immediate need, so we are very fortunate.

Next step was the appraisal. With us asking for the closing costs to be paid by the seller out of closing, the appraisal cost should have come out of closing. What in fact happened was I was forced to put money down as a placeholder to ensure the appraiser got paid (understandable, but also not money that I had in addition to the down-payment). So when my cash to close came out and I was the exact amount of the appraisal short, I panicked. I had to get a "gift from a family member" in a hurry. Now the thing about this is that frustrating is that the appraisal amount that I pulled from my down-payment fund is going to be refunded to me "after closing" which means that I could not use it for what it was intended for. I was fortunate that my family had the funding to help otherwise this would have doomed us. After having the funds transferred, the letter written and signed, we were back on track. 

With a week till we are supposed to close, my biggest gripe is communication and the expectancy of buyers. We are expected to provide documents on a whim and mortgage companies can take hours/days to respond to communication on specific topics. Then when they do answer its the same BS non-specific answers to specific questions. The debt to income ratio that is expected from banks also blatantly ignore the reality that most people already pay the amounts that they supposedly "can't afford" according to their ratios.

Good luck to all home buyers out there. Be patient and find the right situation.

The best thing I ever did when it came to buying a house was using a mortgage broker. He was awesome. He essentially had banks vying for our business who were highly motivated so all that nonsense didn’t happen for us. Sorry man!!!!!

[MKnight82]

On 5/30/2022 at 2:12 PM, Slappy Mc said:

Next step was the appraisal. With us asking for the closing costs to be paid by the seller out of closing, the appraisal cost should have come out of closing. What in fact happened was I was forced to put money down as a placeholder to ensure the appraiser got paid (understandable, but also not money that I had in addition to the down-payment). So when my cash to close came out and I was the exact amount of the appraisal short, I panicked. I had to get a "gift from a family member" in a hurry. Now the thing about this is that frustrating is that the appraisal amount that I pulled from my down-payment fund is going to be refunded to me "after closing" which means that I could not use it for what it was intended for. I was fortunate that my family had the funding to help otherwise this would have doomed us. After having the funds transferred, the letter written and signed, we were back on track. 

How much was the appraisal fee?  It shouldn't have been more than $300-$400. 

Edited May 31, 2022 by MKnight82

[Slappy Mc]

1 hour ago, MKnight82 said:

How much was the appraisal fee?  It shouldn't have been more than $300-$400. 

$950. Welcome to Washington State.