what to aviod while buying a house.

#2 I over looked when i bought my home
it was advertised as a 2 car garage but it was a converted
car port so my buick gn didnt fit but my tudor fits just fine
ill just call it remodeling


bill

 

Old Guy how do you like San Antonio? I hear it will be growing fast i nthe coming years!? I live in Southern California where the cost of living is high and HOA are everywhere - I HATE THEM!

 

just found so far its a go we're buyin the house for 256,000 and it appraised at 286.000!!! i see future projects in the future LOL !!!

 

Here's a tip that cost me a little over a grand - Make sure your loan officer is not a lazy ****. That business is FULL of underperformers as most people are just excited to get approved and it will bite you when you're under contract. I had a loan officer who left town to go to training and didn't update his voice mail to reflect that. The house we had under contract proved to have a bunch of hidden problems and my message to the loan officer that the 'deal was off' didn't get through until he'd scheduled both an FHA appraisal and their own appraisal. Guess who paid for that?

It also goes without saying to have your financial ducks in order before you step foot in any house you're looking at. I don't mean prequalified, preapproved - that means they pulled your credit and there were no surprises to deal with. I realize you prolly pay your bills on time, but the credit bureaus are notorious for 'accidentally' including the wrong debt on people's account. You do not want to be trying to deal with that AND buying a house at the same time.

Also, get a good realtor. It made me incredibly paranoid to have someone who was supposed to represent my interests paid as a percentage of how much money they talked me into spending, but get a good realtor. The good ones realize they'll be most successful by making sure you get the best deal and tell all your friends how great your agent was.

Check foreclosures. We bought a house that had been owned by 30 years by the same couple and left to their daughter. She took out a mortgage on it, did $30k worth of improvements and naver made a single payment. We paid $64k and it recently appraised at $100k a month after we moved in. Now I just got to resist that Home Equity Hot Rod. Buying a house rules, now I'm getting itchy to start turning some wrenches again...

 

I've been there and done that myself. I built a garage here a year ago. I had to kiss more ****ing *** than I could ever believe just to get a damn building permit (that whole process took 6 months and required a variance) and them the SOBs didn't let me build it large enough! Basically to got what the city attorney told me I could have and he made me feel like I was lucky to get that!
I've worked my *** off for everything that I have and I really don't need to ask permission from anybody about how to best manage my ***ets! These **** ****ers that make these ****ed up rules have never really had to work for a living anyway. I hate the fact that anybody has any authority over anything to do with my house or my cars or any of my ***ets! This whole zoning/covenant ******** amounts to another way for the few to rule the many under the guise of so******tic utopia. What gets me is that most of these dumb ****ers in this community really think we need this kind of ****!
Maybe I need to run for city council.

 

lots of good advise...
check radon, lead, asbestos, etc...
make sure the previous owner didnt get an insurance check to fix something and then didnt fix it...
**** covenants, people who have to pay a certain amount of money to join a "club" are pompous ****s...
tax rebates are available for energy effecient improvements
make sure wiring and plumbing are adequate, cosmetic changes are pretty easy to do
careful with realtors, when you are trying to sell a house they will tell you "oh, those things dont really add to the value of the house" but when you are trying to buy a house those are the exact same things they use to drive up the price!
kitchen and bathroom are the two most expensive, important rooms in the house
if you plan on bedrooms in the ba*****t, egress windows are good and even required in some areas
good neighbors are vital
I shy away from realtors, have been using a lawyer instead with good success, some realtors have too many hidden agendas...

 

Somedays you just get lucky. We walked into a real estate agent's the day the old farmer decided to split his buildings and 11 acres off the rest of the land. We snapped it up!. Got a great old house, now worth about 1.8x what we paid for it, plus a 44x105' bank barn, a 40x60 machine shed including a closed in garage, a 40x50 two story barn and a bunch of other buildings. I'm zoned agricultural so taxes are low and my nearest neighbor is 1/4 mile away.

Still, old buildings take a ton of work and money. It helps that we can do a lot ourselves, but we've hired out a new house roof and siding, spent several grand re-sding the weather end of the bank barn and just spent $7500 re-roofing half of it. It's only 4 miles from town and I can see all the stars, plus pee in the backyard if I want to. The surrounding land is owned by farmers,some of them Amish with steel-wheeled tractors.Stop by and visit if you're in the neighborhood (Federal Penitentiary is just over the hill!)

 

#8 If at all possible, avoid back-to-back closings (sale and purchase). If any unforseen problems come up during the walkthroughs, you have ZERO leverage to get things fixed.

This happened to us recently, and I felt like I was bent over the conference room table at the attorney's office with my pants around my ankles. (And no Vaseline....)

The movers loaded up all our belongings from the house we were selling on a Thursday, the closings were scheduled on Friday, and were supposed to move in on Saturday. There were a couple, relatively minor, problems with both our house and the new one we were buying, but when all your **** is on a moving truck and you have no place to stay and the seller's attorney wants to get out of town to play ****ing golf and your heading into a long holiday weekend, nobody feels like working WITH you, just against you!

Looking back, it's funny now, but wasn't at the time. My wife nearly had a nervous breakdown, storming around the yard of the new house dropping the f-bomb every other word. ("Um, kids...why don't you wait here in the car, Mommy is a little bit upset. In fact, Daddy thinks he'd like to wait in here with you, as Mommy is starting to scare him....")

Being able to walk away from the deal if people try to screw you is something you give up at your own peril.

 

I just bought my first house. I had my agent wright into the offer, that my offer was contingent "no covenances or neighborhood rules of any kind shall exist that would prevent the future construction of a large barn type building in the rear of the property built for the sole purpose of vehicle construction." The same statement was wrote onto my contract. I researched the **** out of the neighborhood, and an outbuilding won't be a problem.

It is on a corner lot, biggest one in the neighborhood, so access to the rear isn't a problem. Also look into ea*****ts, so just in case the city needs to come tear up your yard, they won't take you shed down. Neighbors are key too. One block to the east of me, a fellow has already built a giant shed in the back of his yard, and he has two VERY loud tuner cars, and the neighbors don't seem to care about him.