How did you find a house of Craig’s List? Are there any less traditional paths that have been helpful for you?
We are primarily looking at single-family homes, but could do a townhouse or even the right condo. We both commute in opposite directions, so we face some real limits geographically. With our price range, that doesn’t leave us much choice. We are mostly convened with finding someplace we don’t hate and that isn’t a money pit.
Yeah, that’s pretty much how home ownership works. 
MRIS Homes is the site we used to find houses. I liked it much better than Realtor.com or Zillow or whatnot because it’s DC area-specific and it only shows you listings that are actually for sale and active. I got really pissed of with other sites because half of the listings were already under contract so why the fuck are you showing them to me?!
Once we bought our house, I wish we had started using Angie’s List sooner. Now, after bitter experience, we don’t use anyone who doesn’t have an A listing and even then we make sure to do a deep dive into their reviews.
I’m not a homeowner so this may sound stupid, take it for what it’s worth.
Several years ago a house next my son’s school was in the process of being built. It was a large 2-story McMansion being built in a new development. When the real estate bubble burst construction on the house halted. The roof was on but not the skin—not even the Tyvex housewrap. The pressboard sheeting was exposed for at least two years while whatever was holding up the construction was being worked out.
Now, this is southern Oregon. Lots and lots and lots of rain. This house sat with its walls, window openings, and everything but the trusses exposes to Oregon’s famous wet climate for two years. One day a crew showed up and began to finish the house: housewrap, then siding, landscaping, the whole works. The house was finished rather quickly. I don’t remember when exactly it was but it was during the school year, so still during the wet season.
I still drive by that house from time and shudder to think how much mold and moisture must have been sealed up when they finished the construction. I know I would be hesitant to even visit let alone live there. From the outside it looks pristine.
I was told once be a realtor that one can go to the county records office (or access it online for all I know) and there will be a record of when construction started and when construction officially finished. I’ve never looked into this myself as I’ve never bought a house, but my wife and I agree that when we do look for a house, determining when (that is, what part of the year) it was built is going to be paramount.
So my advice is determine what the chances are of structural damage existing from the build. For an old house I would imagine it’s not that big an issue as any problems would have manifested themselves and been dealt with (hopefully).
Thanks! I still can’t believe it!
I went on Craigslist on whim. I was bummed out because I had made offers on the two houses the realtor had found for me, and both had been rejected. So I went on Craigslist to see what I could find. And what I found was a gem in the “houses for sale–by owner” section. The ad had only been up for a few hours when I landed on it.
Sounds like our basement apartment on Beacon Hill. There was a drain in the middle of the living room.
I bought about 2 years ago, and my only sizable regret is that I didn’t fully realize what being on the corner meant.
From my perspective DC is still very much a seller’s market. I highly doubt there is anything within your parameters that will have a reasonable likelihood of being a good investment given the current market conditions. (To be exact, I believe there are plenty good investment opportunities, but none of them look anything like this).
That being said, perhaps there is some information I am not aware of that would lead me to believe otherwise.
We aren’t expecting to turn a profit, I’m just hoping not to end up worse than we started.
Things that can hurt home value. There is a house in my city close to the landfill and the house been on the market 4 times already . The price was just reduced . The owners are been trying to move out for years b/c they can’t use their back yard when the landfill act up or sleep at night. People don’t think about landfills until they start to smell like rotten eggs and sulfur. This what I would do difference and so would a lot of my neighbors , find out if is any landfill close by to a house they want to buy.
Websites discussing and rating Montgomery County public schools.
If you are going to stay for any length of time:
You WILL repaint the living room, the bath, and the bedroom
You WILL replace the floor covering
You MAY replace the roof
If it is an older house, bath and/or kitchen remodels are likely.
IOW - buy the biggest, best location you can afford.
The ugly paint, the peeling wallpaper, the leaking toilet - all those reason TO buy a place - they drive down the price, and do not affect livability.
As long as the place is waterproof, the rest can wait until time and money are available.
It is MUCH easier to remodel a bath than it is to re-locate that cute-as-a-button but too small and not where we wanted, but we could afford it cottage.
Long way of saying: Sweat equity and/or patience for ugly.
Note:
I was young, healthy and raised by farm kids in an old house which needed all kinds of work.
Upshot: I knew how to assess structural/partition walls, build walls, hang paper, hang cabinets, string wire and pipes.
I enlarged the MBd, added a bath, created a walk-in and put in a new kitchen for the price of materials plus $2200 for the cast-iron pipe work required by the new bath.
If you have to hire it out, it will take longer, but an ugly sink in a good location beats a pretty one in a bad location.
Forgive me if this is a thread hijack, but I was wondering what the financial benefits would be of buying a home. If you can’t put at least 20% down, it is not really a good idea to buy because of the additional cost of mortgage insurance. So, if you put $80,000 down, there is an opportunity cost to that - at 5% interest it is $20,000 after 5 years and $50,000 after 10 years. And then the taxes - at 1% taxes are $4000 a year, at 2% they are $8000 a years. After five years, you would have barely made a dent in the principal, so if you buy and only stay a few years and resell for the same amount you probably would be in a worse financial position than if you had rented.
Of course there are reasons to buy that are non-financial. With my (limited) knowledge of the market here I can’t see the financial benefit of short term ownership. It just seems so much riskier in this situation to buy rather than rent.
You’re not getting 5% interest on that money any time soon. The top rates on safe CDs are under 2% at the moment. The best rates you can get even on “all your money might be gone” money market CDs top out at 4%.
In any event, in my experience people stay in houses twice as long as they plan to. We’ve been in our “five year home” for seven years, and we have no plans to leave until Kid 2 arrives. Considering Kid 1 isn’t here yet and we haven’t even started trying to create him (or her), I doubt we’ll be moving in the next 12 years.
Your stuff grows to fill a house you own in a way that doesn’t happen with rentals. After a few years you can’t imagine having to move it somewhere else.
Where we are is that we are a family of three living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment and we would like a little more space. The cost to move in to a two-bedroom apartment would be about the same as a mortgage on a small house (even with PMI).
Selling in 5 years is not a given. We may end up overseas, in which case we would rent the house out (we have family in the area who can manage it).
There are more things to invest in than what you have just mentioned. If it was part of a larger chunk of a managed portfolio or indexed fund 5% isn’t anything crazy AFAIK. I really don’t know what the investment options are at 80k; it seems you need at least 100k to begin to start having more varied investment options. I just was trying to make a basic point without getting too bogged down in details and caveats.
My humble opinion - if renting out is a real possibility, I think a lot of potential renters for a two-ish bedroom place will want to avoid yardwork. I think that might push you toward the condo/townhouse solution.
Some of the condos/townhouses in the area seem better suited for what the OP is looking for from what I’ve seen; of course there are myriad pros and cons with this. They even have these things called coops here - which are similar but wackier in a way.