We bought our second house a year and a half ago in the same area Lorene’s looking in now. We bought a house in a great neighborhood that needed some work. Every house in our price range needed some work so we picked one with needs we felt we could deal with and left the original 104 year old steam boiler wrapped in asbestos to someone else.
The first time we went looking we found our house by accident. After tons of drive bys and listing searches I got a copy of a real estate book (the ones you find free at the supermarket) and brought that to my agent. The book had come out that day and we made an offer the day we did the walkthrough.
If we had to go house hunting today we couldn’t afford our own home. How sad is that?
I bought my first house a year ago just North of you - in Yardley, Bucks Co. A horribly expensive area, but both my wife and I work there and her employer expects her to be local. On top of this, we needed a fenced yard due to our 2 Border Collies.
We looked at about 35 houses before finding one we both liked that was still available. It had been on the market for two days when we put our offer in. We offered below his asking price, then raised it somewhat when he came back but we had him pay for a one year home warranty (about $500) for our peace of mind. We also installed our own fence.
We had a great real estate agent - she was recommended to us and we’ve recommended her to others. She would Email me house info at work as they were hitting the market, I’d call her and we’d hit the road and check them out that night.
We did the same thing you did at first, and debated a house for a while and watched someone else snatch it up.
Best of luck - if you end up looking in Bucks Co., let me know, I’ve got a great real estate agent for ya.
tanookie, from what I understand, that is going around. My parents said the same thing recently. Their house was recently reassessed for taxes in their school district, and their property is worth close to twice what they bought it for almost 20 years ago. She said that one of their former neighbors got $25,000 more than the original asking price of their house over the summer. (!!)
A little good (or at least promising) news: We have expanded our search area slightly, by like another 5 miles from where we work, and a whole crapload of new possibilities abound. We are going to drive by about 20 houses tonight and try to set up walk-throughs for tomorrow. Hopefully we will not get lost. Let’s see what happens …
Pardon me if I am repeating some-one, but I would get another agent IMMEDIATELY; no one needs to be condescended to. [Not because he doesn’t like you, though. If your agent doesn’t loathe the sight of you, you probably are not examining the houses closely enough.]
Talk to the realtor who sold your friends their house; s/he may be better.
Concentrate on the basement, the attic, and the layout; you can clean up and paint anything. Wallboarding is a learnable skill.
And if the market is that hot, be a vulture. Check the obituaries for people who are survived only by grown children, and find their addresses on the public tax rolls, and do a drive-by. Maybe you can check probate filings; then you would have the name of an attorney to contact. [Trying to buy the house out from under a grieving family is tacky, but children with their own homes are usually anxious to sell the family home. And since you’re not the realtor, it’s not so bad; you’re looking for a home, not a profit].
Relax, you are in the perfect position to buy a house, as you don’t have to worry about timing it to the sale of your current house.
And relax, you don’t want to end up moving when you’re five months pregnant.
Here’s a crazy thought that I don’t think has been mentioned yet. Have you considered going back to the cunt? You say her house is still on the market. Go in with a lawyer, set a quick close date, specify include liquidated damages in the K, and be prepared to sue for specific performance (RE is one area where cts may award them.)
Most importantly, don’t worry too much about it. Tho it is by no means a law of nature, my experience is that often the harder you work at something you really want, the less likely it is to happen. Then, once you step back a bit - or even give up - boom!
<Insert obligatory house sale/purchase horror story here>
All of these are valid points. Discussed the realtor situation with chembug today, and we decided that if I am willing to ease up my chokehold on my control issues, then he is willing to do all the face-to-face negotiating with the realtor. I think I am OK with that. He and I will decide ahead of time what we want to offer, how high we are willing to go, etc., and he will do the talking. Perhaps this will be instructive for both of us. Or perhaps I won’t have to worry about finding a new realtor because I will be in prison for strangling this one. We shall see, I suppose.
We also considered the vulture technique, but maybe we are not that desperate - yet. We drove by a few houses tonight that we want to look at, and we will see what pans out. If nothing, then we get downright vicious if necessary. But I am not sure I am prepared to sell my soul for a house just yet. I do own my car, and the backseat is pretty comfy.
As for the timing, we do have lease issues, but those can be worked out. And I can honestly say that I might like to move while 5 months pregnant. But I’d like to be pregnant first, and that isn’t working out too well either. God, I am such a control freak - I can’t relax unless things are working out according to plan! Damn. Need to work on that.
Every day, actually. We really liked that house. But I doubt very much that she would sell us the house now, since we threatened to sue her before. We could take her to court for specific performance, but if we bought the house for the original contract price, we wouldn’t be able to afford the necessary repairs. We did not find out about all the problems until the home inspection was done. Turns out that the home inspection was the best $600 we ever spent.
Babies tend to be made when they are least expected IME. We went through a lot trying to make munchkins and none of it worked… Then we gave up and now I’ve had to get my tubes tied so we don’t make any more!
Life’s like that sometimes. I wish you lots of luck in both endeavors!!
** Rockle** Have you read [Taking Control of Your Fertility ** by Toni Weschler? It’s an excellent book for people having fertility problems. She details the process of charting which should help pinpoint rather accurately where your problems might exist. The book helped me and many of my friends.
I would second the motion about not being pregnant when you’re househunting. I delayed trying for a year while selling our house and buying another. You really don’t want to switch OB-Gyn’s during the process, expose your unborn child to paint or start making day care arrangements when you’re not sure exactly where you’ll be living. One of my friends househunted while pregnant with twins. While she was able to pull it off, she regrets not waiting until after the birth.
Oh man oh man oh man, I hope we don’t repeat this horror story! burundi and I are closing on our first home in a little less than 72 hours – it hadn’t even OCCURRED to me that the sellers could futz up the deal at this point. One more thing to worry about…
And it’s probably good for me to hear what other house markets are like. Asheville is pretty expensive for North Carolina, but $400,000 for a 1000 square foot home? That’s about quadruple what most homes cost around here, and about seven times what we’re paying per square foot. It’s all relative, I guess.
Our first buyer’s agent was a pretty aggressive guy, came across as faintly patronizing and impatient with us, and intimidated both of us. However, he got called away on business, and the company gave us another agent, who’s been wonderful to work with. I’m completely convinced we couldn’t have done this without an agent – not on our first home, anyway – and that having the right agent makes all the difference in the world.
Yeah, that’s quadruple what our house cost per square foot, and that’s not counting our unfinished full basement, which would make it about 8 times what we paid. Plus our house is on a 100’X 50’ landscaped lot with mature trees. Of course, when we move back home, we should be able to buy a lot more land and a nicer house for the same money or less.
Ah, fuckity fuckity fuck, I posted too soon. About an hour after that post, I got an email from our agent telling us that:
The renter schmuck who was supposed to move out of the house on October 1st is still there, with all his shit;
The repairs that they were supposed to have done to the house before we moved in are maybe scheduled to begin the day AFTER we move in;
Our house won’t have a certificate of occupancy until the repairs are completed;
They’re willing to tear down the structurally damaged carport as discussed, but they’re not willing to pay the $400 to cart off the debris from tearing it down; and
Because of several of these steps, if they’re not taken care of in a timely fashion, the city might cut off our water.
Apparently the seller’s agent doesn’t speak any Spanish. Which isn’t normally a problem, except that the sellers don’t speak much English at all, and they didn’t bother to find a fucking agent who fucking speaks the same language as themselves. (We live in an area with a reasonably strong Latino population – I’m pretty sure that in two phone calls I could find a Spanish speaking realtor). And the seller’s agent has therefore not been communicating much if any of our concerns to the sellers.
Woo fucking hoo! Monday morning at nine, it all goes down!
Daniel
unhappy
Eeek… you may not want to go through with the purchase if the contract is not fulfilled as promised. Tenants can be horrible to get out (It took us months to evict ours and that was only because we got lucky and she left just before things were to go to court)
Daniel, all I can think of to say at this point is - YIKES! Also, do you have an attorney? Because it DEFINITELY sounds to me like you need one - even more than we did! Contact your realtor IMMEDIATELY and find out what you can do.
IANA real estate professional, but IMHO if you can get out of this deal, or reschedule anything, you probably should … I wonder if you even have a “valid” contract at this point, since the seller doesn’t speak much English. How can they enforce a contract the seller doesn’t understand?
As for an update on us … we walked through 8 houses last night. We looked in Pottstown, which is about 10 minutes further away than the area we were originally looking, but with about 10x more available properties and possibilities. We put in an offer this morning on a house that has been on the market for a month, with no prior offers and no showings scheduled in the near future.
This house is very nice. (I am trying to control my enthusiasm.) The only things I can think of to complain about are that the kitchen is small and the bathroom is ugly. But, the dining room and living rooms are HUGE, and ugly bathrooms can be redone. Please keep your fingers, toes, antennae, and whatever else crossed …
DanielWithrow and I do have an attorney, so I’m hoping all will be resolved. Apparently, the tenant is living there without a lease, so legally it will be easy to remove him–“If you’re not gone by noon, we’re calling the police to get you out of our house.” Though hopefully it won’t come to that point.
As for the language barrier: hell, my sister-in-law is fluent in Spanish; we may call her in if need be. The sellers have bought and sold at least one house here before, so they should have some clue as to how contracts work.
Part of the problem is that we have to be out of our rental and have it cleaned and ready for the next tenant by October 31, so pushing things back is not too feasible.
Please look into the tenant laws for your state. We had a tenant without a lease ‘tenant at will’ and without a court ordered eviciton there was no way to get them out.
Not that I want to be the harbinger of doom… just that I’ve been there and it really sucked. Took forever to get them out and they left in the middle of the night no forwarding info and a lot of damage left behind.
Please, for your own sake, listen to tanookie! If you take possession of that house while the tenant is still living in it, it could be months before you can get him evicted from the property, lease or no lease. And all that time you’ll be stuck paying the mortgage on a house you can’t live in! Even if the tenant clears out, you can’t legally live in a house that lacks a Certificate of Occupancy. Go through with this closing as things stand now and you could find yourself paying rent on an apartment AND the mortgage on your new house AND major repair bills on your new house simultaneously. Not many people can afford that!
My advice: refuse to close on the property until the owners can provide a Certificate of Occupancy and a pre-closing walkthough (done just an hour or so before the scheduled closing) confirms that the present tenant has completely moved out. You might have to put your belongings into storage and move into a motel temporarily - but that’s better than going through the nightmare I described above.
DW and burundi, I have to agree very strongly with tanookie and artemis here. Please check with your lawyer about what you can and cannot do about everything. I understand about your lease situation, but since it appears the seller did not uphold their end of the contract (evicting the tenant, making the required U&O repairs, etc.), you may be able to get damages from them if you have to take up alternate living arrangements temporarily. Then again, IANA lawyer - so speak with yours!! (Assuming you haven’t discussed this already.)
Best of luck on this, and please let us know what’s up!! Your closing is soon by my clock - hope everything turns out well before The Moment Of No Return. Keep us posted …