Buying A House

[Taxious]

Had the inspection last night and everything went really well. He said it was one of the better homes he's seen. The few issues that came up were with an old water heater. It still functions but should be replaced in the next ~5 years. I'll probably be asking for a new one from her anyway. Small gas leak on furnace valve. A few reversed polarity outlets in basement. Nothing huge or deal breaking.

Turdy - here is another link with pictures:
http://www.recolorado.com/homes-for-sal ... t-90438595

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Looks like a nice house, Tax. You really have your shit together.

We are looking to change houses in the next couple years, which is going to be a decent challenge for us. We're going to do what we should've done the first time around, which is use the equity from selling our house to buy a modest one cash and not have a mortgage. One with lots of property so nobody can hear our tiny little asshole dogs barking. May even get something zoned agricultural but certainly rural.

[Ddrak]

She'll probably baulk at the furnace replacement, so "do her a deal" and get her to take half the cost off the purchase price.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Just the valve can be replaced, iirc we had something similar to that when we bought our house.

[Taxious]

For the furnace, he said it needed a deep cleaning and that valve replaced, nothing too expensive. For the water heater, he said it will most likely not function in the next few years and that I should get it replaced, so I'm asked for that.. but we'll see.. My realtor worded everything like "Fix or pay $x.xx" which I think is fine.

I demanded that everything the inspector found be put on the inspection objective, so now I'm just waiting to hear either a big "no" back form the seller (I'd probably still get the home) or best case scenario, she just knocks off a few grand off the price and we close smoothly.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

You still may end up replacing that furnace in a few years, but that really depends on its age, etc. We replaced our Furnace and AC last year, but that was mainly to adjust for the Upstairs addition (and partly because of the age of the units (15-20 years)).

[Arathena]

So, it looks like the wife and i will be moving to Johnstown, PA - still waiting on the school boards approval, but she finally got a job offer.

And AFAI can tell... that town is one fucked up place to be buying property. Houses seem to run from $400,000 to $15,000 without much rhyme or reason.

[Xican]

You know Arathena, that's something that always really confused me about the real estate market in the States in general. My first couple homes I bought were all in Canada and all of them more-or-less had similar pricing/value. Then when I moved to the States, it seemed like the pricing was just wildly random. A perfect example was when I moved to Syracuse, there were 2 homes, literally across the street from one another. Similar models, similar size, the only difference was one had a slightly larger lot and a shitty little above-ground pool. Everything else was almost identical. One home cost $175k or thereabouts while the other was $315k. It blew my mind that there could be such a wild variation in price.

I'm not sure if it has anything to do with stricter regulation on housing here, or what... But it seems like Canada's market is just a lot more 'stable' in the sense that you just don't see those wide gaps in prices for homes that're similarly located/sized. It always annoyed me while I was living down there, though. I found I rented for most of my time as a result. I'd be interested to see a comparison of the housing markets between the two countries and compared to that of others as far as price ranging goes.

[Turaylon Soulshadow]

Look great, man! The kitchen is especially nice (I spend most of my time in the kitchen cooking, so it was a major concern of mine to make sure the place we got had a nice kitchen).

[Taxious]

We already got the inspection resolution signed and I got every reasonable thing I asked for. I guess I just sit here and wait while the loan stuff processes now. My credit union said they are scheduling the appraisal soon, then it's just a month of downtime before I get the keys.

I'm mostly excited to geek out the basement's living room. I'm planning on putting a nice projector screen in there with our desktops, some couches, and the media PC.

[Taxious]

WOW I'm closing on this BAMF house tomorrow! Time flies! I just went over final costs with my lender and I feel like I got a really good deal. The house appraised for more than what I'm paying and it's completely move-in condition.

[Ddrak]

Awesome, so we can expect off the net for 3 weeks while it gets connected in the new place?

Dd

[Taxious]

Neverrrr I had them open the line yesterday and just need to move my modem over and activate it at the new address now.

[Arathena]

Welp; my turn to buy a house. We've got a contract in progress on a former foreclosure, 1500 sq ft of house in the glorious highlands of Pennslyvania for $36k. The catch is that that really just buys me the walls and the floor joists - Needs a roof, flooring, appliances, window frames, and the hot water heating system is an amazing mess from being turned off with no winterization. So, there's a reno loan on it. Should get fun~

[Ddrak]

$36k... you guys make me cry.

Dd

[Minute]

Me too. There's nothing less than 800k out here and the houses are WAY too Damn big. They don't build them for anyone that doesn't have kids.

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[Arathena]

Just got our estimate in: Looking at $65,000 in renovations. Going to do what I can to trim it. Whee.

[Harlowe]

Congrats - that sounds exciting!!! Would love to see your work-in-progress pics, if you feel like sharing them when you get into it. It's just always fun to see massive fixer-upper progress pics.

[Arathena]

If we get the deal done, I'll post pics. The place is a wreck worthy of HGTV right now.

Our appraiser screwed the pooch. Rectally. With a hot poker. With a renovation mortgage, they're supposed to appraise the property as it will be after renovation; he ran it as is. He missed the presence of things like the driveway, and declared the basement "partial" when the last couple times it sold, it sold as full. He used an incipient parking lot as a comparable property. And so it came in about $10k less than needed to back the loan. We're challenging - and in parallel, trying to get the whole thing tossed out as being performed negligently. And once we have keys in our hand, we're taking the whole thing to the licensing board. Maybe if we can influence enough people that have been fucked by him to complain, we can get his cert yanked.

[Taxious]

Good luck with all that. What a pain in the ass though.