Holy Crap I'm Buying a House
Divebommah
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
After years of hardship and saving my moneys I can finally afford a home. And I found it, and the seller accepted my offer. YAY! I'm writing to you fine folks however because I'm vexed.
No matter how much damn reading I do about the home buying process, I always seem to get surprises. So I'd like to try and get a sense from forumers of what the heck comes next. This is for a condo, BTW.
I just got my offer letter accepted. I have a broker and some good faith estimates to review. After I make my selection, I understand an appraisal gets ordered by the bank I'm getting the mortgage from, and then the bank decides whether to give me the loan or not based on the appraisal. I've also got a home insurance quote and I'll be signing up for that as well...
After that, far as I know, there's the home inspection. If all is well I then go to the escrow company and hand over the checks, plus pay my broker.
Is it really that straightforward or am I missing anything?
No matter how much damn reading I do about the home buying process, I always seem to get surprises. So I'd like to try and get a sense from forumers of what the heck comes next. This is for a condo, BTW.
I just got my offer letter accepted. I have a broker and some good faith estimates to review. After I make my selection, I understand an appraisal gets ordered by the bank I'm getting the mortgage from, and then the bank decides whether to give me the loan or not based on the appraisal. I've also got a home insurance quote and I'll be signing up for that as well...
After that, far as I know, there's the home inspection. If all is well I then go to the escrow company and hand over the checks, plus pay my broker.
Is it really that straightforward or am I missing anything?
Divebommah on
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Pretty much. Just make sure to walk with the home inspector during his walkthrough. You will learn a great deal of in and out things about your property if you do so. Also make sure you have all the checks and what not before the day of the signing. I was two hours late to mine because my title company was still doing the work. Make sure that is all done before going to sign.
Unless something comes up in the inspections, that's it. And if something does come up, you can always renegotiate.
If the Real Estate agents involved are any good, there shouldn't be a problem with the appraisal. You can probrably look up the city assessed value, and if your paying somewhere close to that I wouldn't worry too much.
Congratulations BTW.
If you have an agent, s/he should be guiding you through this process as best as possible. Every home sale is different, though, so sometimes even the agent can miss things.
Are you getting an FHA loan? If so, be prepared for them to ask for two different appraisals.
The Best in Terms of Pants on JCCC3
Good advice about the home inspector. This is a loft BTW so I'm thinking/hoping everything is going to be straightforward since a lot of the plumbing and such is out in the open.
Thanks for reminding me about the checks. I need to transfer money around and there will be three day delays while that happens.
I forgot to mention that I'm renting, my lease ends at the end of the month, and the landlord won't give us a temporary extension -- we gotta be outta here be Jan 31
It's very possible that you won't be closing by then. Did you offer have a closing date listed? There are frequently minor delays/problems with the bank or whatnot, and I wouldn't count on having a closing happen in roughly 3 weeks, so you probably want to start looking for some temporary accommodations and storage in case you don't close by the 31st.
Pre-approval: Check.
Regarding the city assessed value -- I did look it up and it says $171,480.00...I'm paying $250,000. Would that cause any hiccups do you think? (on the same page it says the market value is $290,820 if that makes a diff)
And thanks!
I have an agent and she is okay...not super detail oriented as I caught some minor errors in her paperwork. I'm super buttoned up and confident I can take care of little details like that as long as she can shepherd the process along.
I am not getting an FHA, aiming for a 20 year fixed. We're putting 36% down I think.
The offer listed a closing date of Jan 28. My agent and broker say that it should all come together in time as long as there are no hiccups...that's what I'm trying to anticipate by posting here, basically
As to temporary accommodation...god I hope it doesn't come to that but if things aren't looking good by the end of next week I agree that it will be something we'll have to look into.
Just went through the process for a house. Are you getting an FHA loan? the one hiccup through that is if the house doesn't appraise for mortgage value. if the seller is looking for more it gives him an out and you might have to renegotiate. happened to us. pretty stressful in fact.
definitely have an agent if not yourself at the inspection and don't just hire anyone try and find some recs for an inspector since this is the biggest thing you need to do and you don't want any surprises down the line.
edit: is the condo occupied? you might be able to work something out if closing gets pushed backa little to keep your stuff there. if not a week or so of storage is not that expensive as many places have first month free deals
Hm. I posted earlier about the city assessed value and the market value -- which one of those two numbers are you referring to? And how exactly did it hurt you -- did you have to increase what you paid to match the higher number or...?
The condo is not occupied. The owner lives in Utah, I'm in Oregon. Maybe I can work in an early move/storage or something. Is that unusual?
You should be fine, your move out/in dates should coincide nicely.
So the town assessed the value to be at pre-economy collapse prices, putting our place at around 240K. The "market value" was never given to us, probably because it would show that the place (and similar places around it) were going for 195K, which is where the bank put it. Big difference! The seller was no idiot though, and knew no one was going to buy for 240 and so was only asking for 210K. In the end, we talked her down to 200K and had to eat the extra 5K before the bank would service our mortgage. So, that sucked, and I thought it was way sneaky and raised holy hell with everybody which is probably why the seller was talked down so quick because she stood to loose as much as we did by backing out of the deal.
I'm glad for you to get a place, but I wish I could seriously erase my memories about buying. It was stressful and horrible the entire time, an era of my life I would rather forget.
Hm, this is concerning, thanks for sharing this experience. I think I'll tell my agent & broker about what I've seen as far as assessed values by the city so they can prepare somehow.
I know what you mean about stress. My wife and I are snapping at each other like...like...turtles!
Also, make sure what you're looking at is actually assessed value. Some areas will actually list something like "taxable value" which can be very different. On our recent home purchase, the records site just lists taxable value which in our area is about 50% of appraised value.
I don't know how your contract goes, but we had 5 business days from when the contract was signed to when the inspection and attorney review period ended. If you don't have an attorney, contact one now. You will need to have one the second the inspection process is over so you know what concessions to ask for from the seller.
We actually had a sale fall through because of some inspection issues that turned up, and we went to the bank first, so we had to eat $300 or so that they paid to the underwriter. In this case though since you are hard pressed for time and can't afford to miss your closing date, lest you become homeless, I would talk to the broker as soon as possible and then deal with the inspection.
On the plus side, the mortgage lender is apparently working this weekend and is working on our application so we're making good time.
Folks, heads up: the format for good faith estimates has changed and it is WAY better! Way easier to read, lots of clear explanation as to what everything means. The one catch (from my perspective) is that the way points are discussed is a little more confusing in that they aren't referred to as points anymore -- they just tell you "If you take this interest rate, you'll pay more but save $xx.xx per month"
Currently feeling like we'll be able to close before month end. We'll see in a week how I continue to feel.
Our home inspection was two days ago. Came back roses -- the oven has a malfunction that causes it to beep whenever it is actually plugged in and the screen door leading to the balcony is a little warped, and that's it. The seller will replace it.
So now all I have to do is not lose my job for the next 20 years :P Thanks again to everyone who shared their experiences and advice!
My wife and I bought a home in June of '07 and when we refinanced in January of 2009, our mortgage officer was telling us how banks were used to taking their sweet time getting loans finalized, but after the economic situation they weren't allowing enough time to actually get deals closed, so I think that is why they have sped the paperwork process up and changed the way good-faith reads.
To have only a stove issue and warped screen-door is phenomenal!!!
Hope it works out well for you.
I heard so many horror stories about closing and buying, that after it was all done, I was left with a "Wait?!? thats it?" feeling.
The hardest part of our whole experience was moving our stuff. I ended up with an awesome 80 year old home, that is in a real quiet neighborhood. Everyone has said they can't believe how good of shape it is in. (Yes, it has been verified by an independent inspector)
The only thing that I will give you advice on, is to double check your walk-through inspection, sometimes it is easy to get overwhelmed on the big day, but just try to make a list of things you want to check. (Although it sounds like you are way ahead of this.
Good luck, and I hope your is as easy as mine was.
I mean, your realtor did add a clause to the offer outlining a specific number of allowed visits before closing, right?
In your case, since the place is unoccupied, you should be okay, but do a final walkthrough just in case before closing to make sure everything has been done that should have. If, for some reason, the proper fixes were not made before closing, talk to your lawyer. Your lawyer will withhold money from the seller until the contractual obligations are filled.
If you close and think you're going to deal with this shit after the fact, you're looking at small claims court instead. Good luck with that.
Thankfully it is a condo so our list of concerns is slightly smaller than with a proper house. The seller agreed to all our demands for repairs which is great, too. Thanks for the good wishes.
My parents, Italian, had this tradition that they'd throw a broom into a new house in order to chase out the evil spirits. I'm not superstitious but I wonder if I should go ahead and do that?
Great advice, but all is well. I take spending all this money really seriously and don't want to take any chances.
My realtor is a terrible business person. When we were negotiating price, our realtor got the seller to come down $9k. We asked her to see if they could come down another $10k and she said they won't and pushed back on us...we insisted, she asked, they did.
Now when it came to the repairs we wanted, she did the same thing. She said "they'll never replace X or Y" but they came back and agreed to do it all. We also found the damn property using the Web, she's just filling out frickin' paperwork. The BROKER though, man, he earned his money...
But yes, we are doing a final walkthrough after the repairs we asked for are done. As I mentioned to someone above, this is Serious Business.
No home warranty. The seller won't buy one since they came down so much in price (and I don't blame them) and I have enough stashed away in savings that I can take quite the beating.
And I have a great insurance policy. It should cover everything short of a zombie apocalypse.
Our realtor suggested paying full asking price. We did, and I am glad we did because we made it up elsewhere... saved on closing costs, and got some major changes made to the property also. So just because they don't want to keep going down, down, down doesn't make them terrible, but it does concern me that your realtor would resist your wishes. Its not like you were asking them to act against their ethics.
as a FYI, you can't e-file for the 8000$ FTHB credit for either 2008 or 2009 anymore. It sucks, and takes a hell of a lot longer, but hopefully you werent relying on getting it asap.
The money we saved is more than double our closing costs so I'm feeling good about being something of a prick here.
It is my first home indeed.
Crud about not being able to e-file the $8,000 credit. I'm not going to be able to worry about it until this time NEXT year anyway unfortunately...
I do need to read up on all the tax breaks we suddenly qualify for though.
Our house was appraised at $40k below appraised value.. but we didn't tell the contractor that! So between that, and getting our closing costs paid, and making a few changes, I was happy.
Glad to hear your condo purchase is going well!
I wouldn't stall on getting your money, especially since they have been having lots of issues could just pull the plug.