Just closed today, want to share our experience Real Estate |
- Just closed today, want to share our experience
- Cancelling selling contract as the seller
- Do none of the upgrades to my house matter? All anyone says are "The Comps"
- Will home values increase over a span of 10 years? Can someone explain this to me?
- Differences Between a Construction Remodel/Renovation Mortgage Loan vs a Typical Mortgage Loan?
- Open House �� Tomorrow
- How to prove sellers lied on home disclosure form?
- Looks like Realtors are struggling right now too.
- FTHB resources for seniors?
- International house hunting curated list
- Relative left home to my two siblings and I
- Questions from first time home buyer
- Buyer Paying Buyer Agent fees in A exclusive agreement
- How to handle a real estate agent playing games?
- [Fl Landlord] Filing for evection after multiple months of non payment non response I get this message.
- House Selling and Buying Experience in SF Bay Area
- I need advice on a 1 month lease back.
- New Construction Experience with Lennar - abnormal?
- Rate vs APR
- Cash out refi for a new home purchase
- Was synthetic stucco used in US houses in 1980?
- New house - installing fence - neighbors
- Does "best and final" usually include closing cost?
| Just closed today, want to share our experience Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:01 AM PDT Just closed on a house today. First time home buyer here. This sub has helped us a ton so I want to share our story as well. Hopefully it will help someone else in their home buying process. Location SoCal. Before we even started to search, we had all our banks provide us with bank statements and we prepared the tax forms and the ultility bills. We then got a pre-approval from Wells Fargo that we can use to send around. We started looking for houses in late June. Used a redfin agent for a bit first but we found him hard to work with because it seemed he's working with multiple buyers. Switched to our current agent who was referred to us by a friend. A few words about agents here. Our agent did a great job scheduling tours and communicating with the listing agents. However, we were the ones "driving the bus" in his words. In a hindsight, we hoped he could have given us more advices such as on how much a house should have costed based on comps, etc. We missed a house we want by 10k due to our offer being low. As you guys probably know by now, this market is nowhere near what we were expecting in a fucking pandemic. First 10 or so houses we looked at all had multiple offers in the first few days when they were listed. We looked at flippers, upper fixers, short sales, auctions and everything in between. Thing just seemed way too competitive. So we decided to look at another city instead. Our hard criteria were 1) 2 bathrooms, 2) 10/10 greatschool rating for high school, 3) not facing a major street and 4) under 750k. With this criteria, we found a dozen houses in the other city that were sitting on the market for over 14 days using redfin. We basically skipped all houses that were freshly listed and only focused on houses that were on the market for a while. Most of these were overpriced, so we had our agent talk to the sellers to see if they were willing to come down. However, we did tour all of them just in case something happened down the road. We were glad we did this because we had all the information we need to put in an offer at a second's notice. As soon as one of those houses had their price reduced to an acceptable level, we had our agent call them immediately and put in an offer right away. Doing this we were able to get at least some counter offers, which made it feel much better than bidding over multiple offers. During our house tours, we paid particular attentions to: 1) if there is crack in the foundation, 2) if there is water stain in the ceiling, 3) if there is mold under the sink, wash basin or near bathtub and toilets, 4) if there is tree near the main waste pipe, 5) if water pressure is low for shower, and 6) if there is unpermitted additions. We also asked the listing agent about 1) how old is the roof, 2) how old is the water heater, 3) how old is the AC and furnace, 4) if there is solar panel, if it's leased or owned, and how old, and 5) how old is the kitchen appliances, include trash processor, microwave, oven, dishwasher and gas range. Last but not least, I tried to call my insurance company to see how much they would insurance the house for (and if they don't insurance it due to wildfire / flood zone, etc). We were eventually able to get our offer accepted because we put in an offer the second the listing price was changed. Talking about within an hour here. When we initially toured this house, we were lucky to be able to talk to the seller because they still lived there. We chatted a bit and got to know each other a bit better. So even before we put in our offer, I prepared a letter to them and appealed to their non-financial needs. We sent in our offer along with the letter and I think this helped us get our offer accepted. We are really glad to be able to talk to them for both buying reasons and because they are actually very nice folks. Next step was to get a loan. We were skeptical about online lenders at first due to horrible stories I read here on reddit. But we still decided to go with loan depot. We were able to get in touch with a loan officer and I added him on social media so we could be in constant contact. We started with a broker, Wells Fargo Bank, loan monkey and loan depot. We had our loan officer not only match, but beat the lowest rate from everybody else and was able to get a conventional 1.99% 15 years fixed with only 0.43 points. We started this whole process the day after the offer was accepted because we knew online lenders take their sweet time. Then we wired our EMD and did the general inspection plus termite check. Again a word of warning here, make triple sure the wiring instructions are correct. Call the escrow company, look up their number on google / yelp instead of in the email they send you. Go to their office to get a physical paper copy of the instructions if you can. The house unfortunately has a 26 yr old roof plus some mold under the kitchen sink. I had 3 roofers and a few contractors to come over and did a roof replacement estimate. We then tried to negotiate repairs with the seller but sadly ended up not able to get anything extra. The seller said they already had the repair cost priced in, so they didn't badge. We decided to continue the deal. And then the waiting game began. Every other day I would contact my loan officer to obtain an update on the loan. I also had my insurance company give me a formal quote on the house and notified them about the purchase so they can work with my lender. When we applied for the loan, we found out that one of our bank account only had quarterly statements so we went to the bank to got it fixed. We wish we have done that earlier. Another thing I think we should have done earlier was to pool all our down payment money into a single account. Notice that this can only be done after the loan has be conditionally approved. I also made sure this was OK to do with my loan officer just so they know we still had all our money. The bank takes about 7 business days to remove the hold on the money if deposit by check (trying to save money on wiring). And I didn't know that, so it delayed our closing by a few days. I have posted our loan itemization here on reddit and got very valuable feedbacks on them. We were able to discover a few discrepancy in it that we had to fix, such as 1) contract says seller pays transfer tax, but it got listed, 2) contract says seller pays owner title insurance, but it got listed, 3) we should pay property tax at pre-assessment amount at closing, but itemization says we pay post-assessment amount, 4) contract says buyer and seller split escrow fee but itemization says we pay all of it. This added up to almost 10k of discrepancies. Really need to look close at this and make sure every item makes sense. Lastly, our offer included a 10-day rent-back clause so we won't get our keys for another few days. If that's the case for you, you should really try to communicate with the seller and see if they truly need the time to move, or if they plan on squatting. In our case, we had lots communication on this topic that we genuinely believe they just need a few days to move out-of-state. And that's it, this is our house buying story. If anything else that comes up, I will update this post. Hope you guys have a great buying experience as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Cancelling selling contract as the seller Posted: 14 Oct 2020 07:29 PM PDT I'm selling my property in Fl. The closing date was supposed to be Sep 23rd, but the buyer has delayed closing like 3 times til this Friday 10/16. I'm doubt that it'll be closed this week because I, my realtor and the escrow company haven't heard anything from the lender/buyer. I'm thinking to cancel the contract. I wanna receive the deposit money for the wasted time I lost, but my realtor said i might not get the money because I'm the one to cancel. I'm upset at my shitty realtor for the service he provided so I'm posting here for help. Please give me advice/suggestions about what I should do and how to get the deposit money. Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Do none of the upgrades to my house matter? All anyone says are "The Comps" Posted: 14 Oct 2020 12:28 PM PDT I understand I'm not going to get the 70k I put into the back yard. But the realtors I spoke to said it will help it sell faster but won't up the price. How is that possible? We poured a 16" by 25" patio, had a cover built, put in a 40" by 20" inground pool, poured another 3000 sq feet of concrete around that, put in grass, put in 25 Italian Cyprus trees, grass and trees are on the sprinkler system. But none of that matters because a house up the street sold for $330,000 so that's about what you will get. I could have saved 70K and sold my house for the same amount? EDIT: forgot was also replaced 1400sq of carpet downstairs with tile. EDIT 2: I never expected to get a dollar for dollar return on my upgrades. I just thought they would matter at all. Apparently, they don't and can even be negative. If I'm to listen to the realtors on here I should list it for the same as the comps and take the very first offer that comes my way. [link] [comments]  |
| Will home values increase over a span of 10 years? Can someone explain this to me? Posted: 14 Oct 2020 07:26 PM PDT So I'm buying an hour away South from Seattle which is a very booming area. People are moving into the area like a fire hose. That being said, if we stay in our home for 10 years before selling, can we expect the value of the home to increase? Why do people suggest staying at least 5 years? [link] [comments]  |
| Differences Between a Construction Remodel/Renovation Mortgage Loan vs a Typical Mortgage Loan? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 05:49 AM PDT |
| Posted: 14 Oct 2020 01:20 PM PDT The market is Durham County NC. I have spent every day at either lowes or home depot for two weeks now. House is freshly cleaned inside and out. Hope my hard work pays off. Moving North to be closer to family. [link] [comments]  |
| How to prove sellers lied on home disclosure form? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 04:57 AM PDT USA.I have tried multiple attorneys but "due to covid" they are not answering quickly (lots go to voicemail) so I want some knowledge and questions prepared when they do. We just found out about undisclosed restrictions on our new home. How can I prove a seller of a home had knowledge of land use restrictions (no fences, garage, no farm animals) this is county with farms everywhere. The sellers checked no next to restrictive covenants, deed restrictions. They owned this property since 2007 and the restrictions were put in place in 2000 it's the follows with the land type. They are friendly with the neighbors knew them by name (one neighbor was grandfathered in from restrictions, the other just built his home 4-6 months ago and had to move/change things on his property. That neighbor is how we found out about restrictions in first place because he didn't know till after he bought it. Basically there is no way the sellers didn't know. So how can I prove they knew? Also our realtor claimed to not know. We did due diligence calling county but they aren't letting people in to check records due to covid that was realtors responsibility because she KNEW we didn't want a restricted property but she obviously didn't check. Also everyone has said "call title company" but the title company says this isn't a title issue and they can't help. What can be done? [link] [comments]  |
| Looks like Realtors are struggling right now too. Posted: 15 Oct 2020 12:50 AM PDT I just saw this video by Javier Vindana about how much he is struggling with first time home buyers. Call me crazy, it's comforting to know it's not just me. My fifth Offer was rejected tonight 😓. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 15 Oct 2020 04:28 AM PDT My SO and I are trying to guide her parents through the process of buying their first home. They're both in their sixties and have rented for their entire lives. They have recently paid off some debt and now have extremely small debt obligations, they have stellar credit, but don't make a ton of money. Can anyone recommend any first time homebuyer resources that may be more helpful for someone in those circumstances as opposed to the stereotypical "young people starting out" FTHB situation? Or just any resources in general that could be useful for someone like them? We're both experienced in the "how to buy a house" side of things so we've at least got that part covered. [link] [comments]  |
| International house hunting curated list Posted: 15 Oct 2020 03:55 AM PDT Hi! I have hopelessly trying to find something similar to the international real estate section of the New York Times: a regular (or irregular) curated list of nice properties for sale in many countries of the world. Does anyone know of anything like that? [link] [comments]  |
| Relative left home to my two siblings and I Posted: 14 Oct 2020 04:56 PM PDT Hi r/realestate I hope I am in the right place for this. A relative of mine recently passed and left behind her Los Angeles home to my two siblings and I. Theres approximately $150,000 left to pay on the mortgage, and the home is valued at roughly $800,000. None of us want to live in it so we're trying to decide whether to rent it out or sell. A friend of ours who is a real estate agent told us we could probably get $3500-$4000 per month as a rental. For additional context, it's a one story, corner house, 4 bedroom 2 bath. Any advice is appreciated, thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Questions from first time home buyer Posted: 14 Oct 2020 07:17 PM PDT Hi all, Thanks for all your posts on this subreddit. They've been immensely beneficial to me as a first time home buyer - in choosing an agent, searching for homes, going through the buying process. Context: Our family is planning to buy our first home. There is a lot uncertainty about how long we will live in the city or the country, so we're not buying a forever home, but one where we can live for at least an yr and then we either rent it out or sell. The reason we are buying instead of renting is that we've rented for 5 years, and want to live in our own home (plus the current interest rates help). We are being conservative with our budget, because of the uncertainties and so while my ideal home would be contemporary style in the city, we have made an offer on a traditional style home in the suburbs with a good school district. Our offer is accepted, inspection came good, and now we're in the closing process. I wanted your help with some questions that keep bothering me as we make the biggest financial decision of our lives: Question:
Would love to get your thoughts. Perhaps it is my anxiety in making this big financial decision, but I am not yet 100% comfortable with the decision. Your inputs might help a lot here. [link] [comments]  |
| Buyer Paying Buyer Agent fees in A exclusive agreement Posted: 14 Oct 2020 09:16 PM PDT Looking into buying a house. It looks like the agent wants to enter into a exclusive agency relationship agreement for 6 months. Its unclear in the agreement but it seems like me the buyer would pay 3% of purchase price. Checkout the part of the contract https://imgur.com/HQaZzjy [link] [comments]  |
| How to handle a real estate agent playing games? Posted: 15 Oct 2020 12:57 AM PDT Hiya, How would you handle it from here? I would kind of like it if the other people didnt make an offer and we pulled ours and the games being played could backfire on the agent, but my partner and kids really want the house. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Oct 2020 01:38 PM PDT Long story short I had a tenant ghost me a few months ago. Due to the eviction moratorium my hands were tired up entail last week. I got this text today after the process server nailed the notice on the door today. Any thoughts on my next step? It's an old mobile home that I planned on tearing down and moving a new one onto the property. It looks like my original tenant illegally subletting the place to someone I'm not familiar with. Any thoughts in the next steps? [link] [comments]  |
| House Selling and Buying Experience in SF Bay Area Posted: 14 Oct 2020 09:35 AM PDT We decided to sell our SFH in the East Bay as we were tired of our commute. We interviewed three agents (one of which helped us to buy the home 5 years ago), and chose a local agent that knew the area. We had handymen do some touching up, the agent hired a staging consultant (who told us our existing furniture was great for staging so we just went with that) and listed at about $20k less than what we were looking for. We received 13 offers over the next two days, and the highest offer being $50k more than asking! the top 6 offers all waived inspection contingency, and the top offer also waived appraisal contingency. We knew that the home would not appraise based on our own research on comps, so the top offer waiving appraisal contingency was even more reason to choose it. Everything was going smoothly until the appraisal report came out and was $30k less than the offer. The buyers then wanted us to meet them at $20k less than the offer ($10k more than appraisal). We initially refused as they had waived appraisal contingency, they should've known what they were getting into. A week passes and our agent hears from the buyer's agent that the sellers are going to back out using the loan contingency... Apparently the appraisal contingency is a joke, it's easy to ask your lender to write something saying you no longer qualify for the loan. Our agent and their agent came up with a compromise to lower their commissions so that we would go with the buyer's new price, but we would pocket the same amount as if we sold at the offer price with the initial commission. We decided to accept this proposal. After selling, we lived at the in-laws while searching for a new home. We were searching in a more expensive city closer to work (still East Bay), and there were very few homes in our price range every week. We saw 13 homes over 2 months, and offered on 6 of them, losing for various reasons. Some offers we still were contingent on the sale of our home, so I'm thinking that automatically got our offers thrown in the trash. Other offers after our home sale was completed we were beat by dollar amounts. Everyone and their grandma is waiving ALL contingencies in this city. We were initially not waiving all our contingencies, but after being beat so often, we figured we have to waive all as well. Finally on the the 7th home we offered on (also the best home we've seen), we won! For all of our offers, we were submitting personal letters, because it rarely helps, but never hurts. Well it turns out our personal letter was a huge deciding factor to the sellers of this home. We were the second highest offer (out of 7 total all wavied all contingencies), and the top offer beat us by $40k, but the sellers liked our personal letter so much they asked us to counter, even telling us we didn't have to match the highest. We went $30k higher (still $10k less than the top), and they accepted us! Buying process went smoothly, home didn't appraise (because of course it didn't), but we were putting more than 20% down anyway so it didn't breach the LTV ratio cutoff. The sellers actually met us at the final walk through and personally showed us the ins and outs of the home, they had a lot of pride of ownership. TL;DR: Selling is easy, buying is hard. [link] [comments]  |
| I need advice on a 1 month lease back. Posted: 14 Oct 2020 07:46 PM PDT So I am buying my 1st home. Which I am pretty excited about. I had a the seller counter offer me asking for a 1 month lease back. In order for them to have the 30 days while their new construction is being built. They did agree to pay me upfront for those 30 days but I am very new to this and I just really don't want to be taken advantage of. What are pros and cons of doing a lease back? Is this a bad idea and should I just walk away from this property? My realtor has said shes done this before and has never had an issue with it. She seems pretty confident in it. I am in AZ btw. [link] [comments]  |
| New Construction Experience with Lennar - abnormal? Posted: 14 Oct 2020 12:18 PM PDT Hello and thanks for reading! My wife and I are looking at new construction homes in the Orlando Metro area and came across Lennar due to their floorplans and how they met our needs. I've been doing my due diligence as much as possible and it seems like Lennar is up to standard, so we scheduled a meeting with a couple of communities and our real estate agent. We are still waiting on our second site, but we were very excited about the first until we learned a couple things. Our New Home Consultant provided us with some paperwork before the (virtual) meeting and it included 3 options for cabinets/flooring/countertops/etc (this was considered a "plus" for my wife and I as we didn't really want to have to choose everything at a design center) and we also had some choices on appliances (we were considering their upgraded appliance package as it had the type of fridge and washer/dryer we wanted and were willing to pay the extra fee for it.) But based on what the New Home Consultant said, these choices are determined when they start construction and the buyer does not get to make these choices. This floored us and seemed very abnormal. To us, it seems like Lennar is just selling brand new pre-built homes if this is the truth. Is this normal for Lennar? Has anyone else experienced this? Thanks again. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 14 Oct 2020 09:50 PM PDT I'd using APR a sufficient way to cut through the methods that lenders use to make the loan appear more attractive than others? I have 2 quotes in front of me - one which is 2.5% rate and 2.56% APR where I AM paying points, and another with 2.5% rate and 2.58% APR with NO points. Lender 1 isn't changing an origination fee. Lender 2 is charging a 1% origination fee. Can I simply use the APR as my true measure of the loan cost? [link] [comments]  |
| Cash out refi for a new home purchase Posted: 14 Oct 2020 08:32 PM PDT I purchased a new construction for 750k and I can 14% down payment which brings the loan amount to 650k and so I can only get a jumbo loan for approx 4% interest. Planning to get a loan on my wife's name. She never had a loan on her name. So here we are paying high interest rates and about 250$ per month PMI Our current home is on my name and have about 80k equity. It's a 15 year loan with 2.8% I can take a cash out and still have the same rate if not less And I can take another loan later on my 401k account for 40k So I can source about 120k towards my new house, which brings the loan amount down to 525k. It would still be a jumbo loan but I'm assuming the interest rate would be much lower let's say 3% and no PMI The new construction will be available next October So I can manage to avoid mortgage fraud I am planning to rent out my current home later. What would you do? 1. Would you Cash out refi to lower Interest rate and PMI? 2. No cash out and Just pay higher interest rate given the uncertainty in the pandemic? 3. Separate topic- Can my wife withdraw 10k from her 401k without any penalty since this is her first home? 4. Once I rent my current home next year, will I have to pay more interest rate since it's not my primary home [link] [comments]  |
| Was synthetic stucco used in US houses in 1980? Posted: 14 Oct 2020 07:57 PM PDT I'm considering a townhouse condo built in 1980, all made from stucco. I know this requires caution in homes built 10 or 20 years ago, especially in rainy areas, but was this an issue for older residential properties also? [link] [comments]  |
| New house - installing fence - neighbors Posted: 14 Oct 2020 07:24 PM PDT So title basically sums it up, I have dogs and want to get a fence installed. Depending on price I'm going to try to do a nicer looking fence such as simtek where it's fake brick with ornamental on top. Anyway it's a very nice area and most of the houses have .3 to .5 acres and none of them have fences. I really don't want to up set anyone and plan on saying hi and letting them know why. Any tips or advice on this? They are higher up on the ground then me so I don't think it should be an issue but still, it could ruin there "nature". [link] [comments]  |
| Does "best and final" usually include closing cost? Posted: 14 Oct 2020 07:10 PM PDT |
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