My house is on a corner and it’s great because it’s actually the elbow of an L. So a bigger lot and no neighbor on one side.
Sometimes it’s possible to get the inspection paid for by the seller. If the deal falls through, they’d have that inspection all ready to show the next possible purchaser. (If the results are terrible, of course, they may not wish to do so; but the deal could fall through for other reasons, or they might fix a problem and have the proof that that problem’s fixed and the inspection didn’t show other problems, or a problem that’s a dealbreaker for you might not be for someone else and the inspection might show that something the other person’s worried about isn’t a problem.)
It’s worth asking, at least unless the buyer always pays in your area – but make sure you’d still have a say in who does the inspection.
In our state the electric company offers a free “energy audit” that does this (among other things). Basically they drill a very small hole in someplace like a closet, and insert a wire and see what they pull out, which should be some kind of insulation. Not sure if the seller would object to that in an inspection of a home you haven’t yet purchased.
Guess where I live: at a T intersection. Right at the intersection. There’s a plank wood fence there, so the sweeping lights are more like strobe lights. You can’t know how quality a wonderful a black-out shade is for sleeping.
But I’ll take that ten times over the house-rattling, booming stereos at the stoplight, or the screaming F1 peel-outs when the light turns green. I never like to wish bad things on people, but I pray for mortal transmission failures and repossessions on the regular.
I’m actually with you on a number of these.
Kept thinking about this one. Because of flooding risk?
The last one I had was a small creek…only a couple feet in width at most times. During bad rains, it would get eroded and create 2’ to 3’ drop off. Looked like crap. Branches and debris would clog it. Worst of all, my cat would bring frogs and fish from the creek into the house.
Before that, I had a creek that was actually the boundary at the back of the lot. For some reason, people would bring trash and old appliances and dump them on the other side of the creek. (I didn’t know that dumping your junk on the side of a creek was a thing.) The property on the other side of the creek was posted, so I tried getting the owner to clean up. Nope. Maybe it was their junk.
I suspect so. We lived on a coulee (a drainage ditch) in Louisiana, and the thing flooded during the frequent summer thunderstorms more than once. Luckily our house was a bit higher, but the house across the coulee from us would have water lapping at its slab.
I had to look back at the date on which I wrote my original post—I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in the last seven days. This is long so I labeled my topics:
Realtor learning:
As an exercise I met with a realtor team who were willing to meet with me without meeting with a lender first, and they didn’t tell me much more about the basics that I hadn’t already learned on my own in the last 7 days, so yay me.
I did learn a few realities about the current market from their perspective like anything I learned about seller concessions only happens in a buyer’s market, and among the current seller’s market strategies are things like be ready to act at a moment’s notice (showings, communicating with my realtor, putting in an offer), to potentially ask above pricing (if it’s a 1000% match) or even be willing to pay above appraisal if it’s not outrageous, or to be willing to pay a portion of seller fees, and that they have seen multiple offers on homes by people willing to waive an inspection (that’s a hell no from me, and one of the reasons I like this couple—the wife, especially—because she is risk-averse like me, and would never recommend someone buy a home without an inspection (she laughed at my joke, “how many inspections can I get?”). Their point was that people do it all the time and so one of the things I need to prepare myself for is that I will likely not have my first offer accepted and that first one might hurt but I’ll get used to it.
The wife is a broker and is also training people within her brokerage so I can tell she knows her stuff. Has been selling home for over 10 years. So when…if, I might consider these two. I liked the husband less, but he reminded me of someone I don’t care for which isn’t really his fault. I feel more of a connection of trust with the wife—they mentioned working as a team but I wonder if that is really true in practice.
They mentioned first touring all kinds of houses in a number of areas to get a feel for what I’m seeing and feeling, and really dial in my needs/wants/expectations for a home and environs. They also shared a couple of those price sheets one usually sees that has all the home facts on it (build year/type, taxes, days on market, etc) so I can see the type of info that will be avail to me.
And then they let me go with no real pressure to call them back.
Lender learning (to come):
Next is a prelim lender meet (with someone who’s willing to prelim meet with me lol). I have a list of 6 small-med lenders (from this team and another realtor who reached out), and was advised that a small lender will likely be the fastest-moving because of their size. The realtors cautioned against slower-moving big banks right now. And that I’ll have the opportunity to shop lenders for the best rates later in the process (using my approval letter), so really my early work is to find a lender who will answer every last question I have without expecting me to get approved on the spot.
Budget learning:
I have also gotten wayyyyy less romantic and wayyyyy more realistic about my budget in the last week. I am a YNAB-er (anyone familiar with this online budgeting tool? Premise is you use it to build your list of expenses and then add on all the other wants needs and you “give every dollar a job” and the tool helps you meet your goals because you’re not seeing any extra “blow it” money hanging around and tempting you). I think a lot of people who are in debt use this tool to get out of debt, but it has really worked for me as a debt-free person to realize how I can focus on savings, and that I actually have more money for those savings than I thought.
So I used my YNAB tool and built up a completely separate beta budget with all my current realities plus mortgage, taxes, utilities, insurance, savings for repairs—as well savings for all the other areas I need savings. And guys, using a mortgage payment (plus taxes/insurance) as a guide, I can afford much less of a house than I thought. By an order of magnitude of tens of thousands less, especially with a 15-year mortgage. I see myself as kind of an anomaly of a person who would sit and crunch numbers all day long to get to this point of reckoning and resetting my expectations (I’m also not a natural numbers person so it takes me three times as long to get to an answer). I’m sure there are many others out there like me, but how many people don’t do this work and get totally upside down in a home purchase??
I could stand to have a little bit more savings for down payment, earnest, closing, upfront costs etc, and be able to have some left over, so I may try an exercise for the next several months or more of living according to my beta budget and setting aside that mortgage/tax/insurance/utilities money (minus my current similar expenditures) and see if it plays out as I estimated. I would be dialing back a lot of my discretionary spending—it’s not lost on me that life as I know it would change. And I like to think for the better, ultimately.