I've Lost It!
 

Hey all just wanted to let you all know that I officially lost it!

The wife and I bought our first house, well we at least started the process to purchasing the place... Should be closing around April 8th with Keys in hand.

Ironically too, since 2010 was a bad year. But, we are starting 2011 with a bang!

I am equally freaking out as much as I am excited.

Good news is the garage is mine, as long as she can park her car in there she says!

We have the inspection coming up next week... It is all going so quickly.

Any ways wish me luck!!!

Oh and any advice and comments is welcomed!

Buying a house is always a bit stressful. Deadlines and financing can be a real pain. Try to keep your cool, and make sure you go thru the inspection results. Until you sign the papers you can always negotitate price. Hope you have a decent realtor, that helps more than you can imagine.

I have go thru 2 sales, 1st was a piece of cake, the second was a nightmare, took 7 weeks and I went thru 3 loan originators. It all worked out, but talk about high stress levels.

Glad to hear you are going to do it, nice to have a place of your own.

Good luck, the first time purchase is always stressful.. Make sure you put as much as you can into the mortgage each year... But good luck, she will tell you that you have the garage, but then slowly.... She will move you somewhere else.. LOL, I'm gettin' moved to under the deck.. But, I had to negotiate for spray foam insulation...

Good luck with your new house.and beer usually helps with stress...

I have definitely taken up the beer side of this ordeal. That and the wife brought home a bottle of Grey Goose the night we sent over the signed offer.

The loan officer says that they are uber good a closing on time. So this is going to be a short roller coaster ride.

Wow,a wife that brings home grey goose...definately jealous...

Best of luck with your home purchase. It is stress full for sure, but well worth it. My wife and I have been in our house since 99'. Only one draw back to owning your own home....the incidentals that come up when you REALLY don't have any money. At times it will drive you nuts.

Good luck with the purchase process, can be a hand wringing exercise first time around although I'm sure it will all go smoothly for you

I'd be interested to understand more about the process since the sub prime issue put the industry on its head. The lending criteria must be a lot stricter now so if you've achieved conditional approval or similar then you must be a good risk in their view...that's very good for now & the future!

Good luck, and have fun with the seemingly never ending list of things to do/fix/remodel/etc. :wink: Unless of course you had the pleasure of getting a brand new house.

Good luck but..."Good news is the garage is mine, as long as she can park her car in there she says!"

My harley takes ours up. My deal was the back seat is yours as long as the bike goes in the garage honey! Look left and that is how it went.She got the finger.JK. Good luck on the house, and many years of no surprises!

Congratulations!!!!
 

Great to hear. I bought my first house in Hawaii when I was 21. I have owned several homes now along with some in different countries. I have never lost any money on selling a house YET. Advice, well let me see.

First: thing I would say is try to get your real estate agent to include as part of the sale that the seller provide a home warranty for at least one year. If anything goes wrong it will be covered(minus a $60 deductable fee for each incident). I believe we have AA warranty services and they use Sears to cover most calls. It can really save you some money when your moving into a house you know very little about. There are always hidden surprizes to deal with, even if it is a new home.

Second: Make sure when your setting up financing that you include taxes and insurance with your monthly mortgage payment. It sucks when you have huge tax or insurance payments due one time each year. That is what escrow is for.

Third: Make sure that the house is protected by a termite bond, if not make the seller do it. In some states it is required by law. I have seen and had serious termite damage and it is no laughing matter. With out treatment and a bond it can litterally cost you thousands of $$$$$$$$

Fourth: make sure you have some emergency cash stowed away for when something unexpected comes up. At least one or two months mortgage is a good place to start.

Fifth: Make sure when you have to do any improvements of any kind that you do not try to go the cheap way just to save a few bucks. It will kill you later when you finally do decide to sell the house. Do it once, and do it right the first time.

If you share some details about the house we might be able to inform you better on what to look for and what not to do. Slab, siding, Paint, roofing,windows, plumming, electrical, Etc. Etc. Etc....

I hope this info helps you out, and good luck with your life investment.

Have to diagree with you Jerry on pont #2.

My latest purchase required me to take out a loan and I went thru all of the available options. The 2 that came up were FHA and conventional. With a conventional loan if you put down 20% you do not have to escrow your tax and ins payments. What does this mean? Well it means that you do not have to put a large sum of money in escrow to cover a full year of tax and ins. And you do not run the risk of the mortgage company upping this amunt if your ins goes up. With a FHA loan you have a variety of hidden costs such as mortgage insurance and other fees, that can add quite a bit to your loan amount over the years.

Yes, you do need to budget to pay your taxes and ins. But you save alot of money doing it yourself, and most importantly you have control over your insurance. My method is not for everyone, but it saved me about 200 bucks a month over a FHA loan, and I do not have to worry about my monthly note changing due to rising ins costs. I am also fee to shop around for a better deal on ins.

And not everyone can put down 20%, but i think it is a good idea to have some equity in the house at the beginning, plus you only finance 80%, saving a bunch of money in interest. I also double pay my note, which will save me a considerable amount of money in interest. Like 80k or so.

Given the housing market now is a great time to buy, but you want to think about the grand total you will pay, not just the monthly note. Still better than renting, no matter how you look at it.

Agree
 

I do agree with you James, but if he is a first time buyer he surely wants to keep things simple and not get caught up with too many differnet payments to worry about. That was my point. Even with using the escrow you get to chose who your insurance company is, so that is totally up to you to do the research and make the right choices. You can also change insurance companies any time you like with most mortgage companies. You do not want the bank choosing your insurance. They will snake you big time.

True, simple is better sometimes, but he needs to do some homework. We are talking big money here, and a little each month adds up to alot. I am planning on retirement eventually and if I can save 180k by figuring out the house thing I think it is worth it.

I have some friends who have the mortgage co do thier ins and she had to spend days sorting it out when someone made a clerical mistake. I could have made 11 call to my ins co and got that sorted out, but she had to make 20 and still had to pay an increased mortgage payment for a few months till it got sorted. Lesson learned by me, I even told her thanks!

I personally like the escrow route. One check to write (or rather, one e-bill to pay) and it's done. Yeah, the payment can increase as taxes go up and/or insurance changes. You can't do much about taxes, but you can still easily shop for other insurance. Whenever a rate hike has come about in the past, I've always gotten a letter prior to the fact (from various ins companies) which gives me a bit of time to shop around if I so chose (and have). I've never had a "surprise increase" in the last 10 years of owning my home.

Looking back, I personally don't think I want to ever own my own place again. Yes, it's nice to have equity and all, but to me, the disadvantages of home ownership outweigh the benefits. Something always seems to be coming up that needs repair. I can do small things, particularly electrical, but any larger projects, not so much. In my situation, my property became part of the flood plain a few years after I bought it. You can imagine that isn't a really nice selling point, so I think I'm gonna have a hard time offloading it when it comes time, especially in this market which is flooded with cheaper foreclosure opportunities. Really, my property's real selling value went down even though the tax appraisal value keeps climbing. So basically I feel "stuck" here until I've paid enough down to compensate for the market and crappy location, yet still get some kind of profit from it.

Not disagreeing with ya.
 

Brian I am not disagreeing with ya at all, but nearly everyone who owns a house at this moment is up-sidedown with their loans because of the real estate crash. Normally things are not like this. The way I look at it is if I purchase a home sure I would like to think that there is going to be some level of profit on the other end, BUT I do not focus on that point. I figured if we can invest into our own home and get out from under it without losing the clothes off of our backs we are golden. We get the pleasure of owning our very own living space and can do whatever we like to it, and pretty much tell others to stick it if they don't like the way we live. Unless you have a homeowners ass. Then you can get screwed.

I have always come out on top, until now. Once again this is because of the housing crash over the last few years. Oh well what are you gonna do, right? In fact we just invested even more money (about $40K) into our remodel this past year just so we could get the place rented out for a decent monthly income $$$$$. There are pros and cons in every sales deal, and you really have to be careful just like buying a car. Do your homework and if anything looks even slightly suspicious or out of sorts, walk away. There will always be a better deal somewhere down the road. There is no one house that is made perfect just for you unless you had it built. You have to buy what you want and make it yours.

I watched my mom & dad struggle and fight there way though home ownership, foreclosier, and did not know how to fix anything on their own. So I made it a point to learn everything I could about home building and repair as I was growing up so I would not have to depend on anyone else to take care of our house, nor would we have to spend enormous amounts of money paying someone else to make those repairs. That is just how things worked out for me. We saved over $100K on that remodel just in contractor fees, because I did 90% of the work myself. I busted my butt for 6 weeks straight, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we are very pleased with how it turned out. It was tough work and I paid for it physically, but it was worth every minute and cent spent. I learned a lot and got so hone my skills even more.

Now we finally have it rented out for nearly what the monthly mortgage is, and the house looks beautiful. If we end up selling the place and break even I will be happy. Because I learned a ton owning and working on it, and we had taken out money on the house 5 years ago. I look at it this way. Now we are paying back that equity by fixing the place up. We used the equity to buy new cars for all of our older kids, and paying off credit card debt all around. Not every deal is perfect, but you have to take chances sometimes. Life is a gamble.

Lots of good reading here thanks.

I know only enough to stay sane my wife is the number person.

We went with an FHA loan so a lot is included in the mortgage. Only a few exterior payments will be necessary. That and we can save more of our cash, since an extra thousand or two on a loan equates to little added to your monthly.

We financed for roughly 1/4 our monthly income, and that is a total finance which includes the HOA and utilities on the very moderate side. We would rather overshoot our finance goals than undershoot, always safe to give it a little jiggle room.

I am in between on the owning vs renting, both have their benefits and their disadvantages.

My main goal in this was to get something with everything needed to be comfortable. Things that the wife and I have never had. Gas furnace, hot water recycler, garage, huge tub with jets, etc etc. To get some of these features with a rental in good condition is scarce, or twice the amount you can be paying on a mortgage.

Jerry, I appreciate the advice and trust me I will be following those even if you had said nothing.

Brian, the good thing about buying now, is everything is set at that low price tag and value, so as things progress, hopefully in a better direction, the value can go back up as well as my sell price.

Seriously though, no one with dark furniture?

Oh and Jerry, seeing as your in the East, know of any good place to get lacquer furniture?

East?
 

Have you noticed my location on my RCM sig. We own a house in San Francisco, but we live in Prague, Czech Republic Europe, after spending nearly three years in Seoul, Korea. I guess you could say we live in eastern Europe if that is what you meant? The best furniture over here is in Germany. Great construction.

I forgot. You moved, I was thinking Korea still. My wife has some Korean in her and we love Asian influences.

Her grandmother passed and her crazy aunt took all of her antique black lacquer Asian furniture.

I have been looking to find something for her for that reason.

We already have a nice platform bed, but I want something nice to compliment it in our new home.

Anyway maybe I'll get with you later than in regards to fine distilled potato juice.

Anytime
 

Anyway maybe I'll get with you later than in regards to fine distilled potato juice.[/QUOTE]

ha ha ha ha:lol:. Funny:rofl:.

Man we should have talked before I left Korea. I am sure that we could have worked something out. We do have some of their fine furniture pieces in our collection. We had a special locking 5' DVD cabinet/chest made last year that holds about 400 DVD's. We keep all of our "R" rated movies in it so the kids cannot get to them. Parental control at its best.

You can go online to order directly from Korea. Try googling korean.furniture.KR. All of their websites end in KR. I know for sure that they do international shipping, and if you connect with the right place they will give you a good price. We had the DVD chest made for about $600, and we received a very nice 5 foot Korean (ambient lighting) lamp as a gift after waiting three months for the chest to be made, shipped, and recieved. It took a while for them to build the piece by hand and there is hand carvings in the two front doors, and it looks fabulous.

We also shipped ten pieces to one of our daughters for her birthday. Sorry you missed out on us being there for nearly three years, and that was our second time posted there. 2001-2005, & 2008-2011. We were in Brussels, Belgium between that from 2005-2008. Its tough moving all over the darnned place, but someone has to do it.:intello:

So we sat down with the loan officer last night to finish that part of the deal and it turns out that since we kept adding more and more to the buffer zone, we are going to be very well financed for this. We had been on the more conservative side of the financing portion, basically financing for the worst case scenario. After last night I am feeling really good about this purchase, we over shot by a lot, we will be paying a lot less a month than we planned for, which is awesome. Locked in a good rate 5.00% and everything is going smoothly.

I hope I can get some pictures for you all next week as the inspection will happen this Saturday.

Oh and Jerry there is a really good one from that part of the woods, it comes in a container that looks like a fire extinguisher. Or maybe that one was from Moldova I can not remember, but it has a slight honey accent to it and it is good!

I think babacki is Czech best, get it for cheap?

I was in harbor freight today and saw this. For the price I could get two side by side and call it a day.
http://www.harborfreight.com/media/c...image_4273.jpg

Oh and has anyone painted their concrete in their garage?

What product did you use?

Ball park?
 

So what is the ballpark figure on that bench?

When I did my garage in Orlando I used epoxy paint black & White, and did a checkered flag creating a winners circle. After it dried I placed driver logos and #'s around it, and finished up with a winners circle banner at the entrance. It turned out pretty cool. Make sure whatever you put on the concrete that you epoxy over it. If you do not and you park a car on it the tires will pull it up every time. I have also seen guys do this with lenoleum tiles and then coat it with epoxy. Of course I am a huge racing fan so this was my choice for a grage/workshop floor. I have also seen football and other sporting event floors as well.

Online they are a bit more but in store they are around 125 a piece, which in my eyes is an awesome price, and worth it to buy over building my own.

I like the idea of a sporting field or checkered flag. Maybe a soccer field would be cool, or maybe a small drift/onroad coarse in black and the rest in epoxy white. I was looking around online yesterday and there are quite a few different ways to go about this. I think I may just go with a solid color Epoxy and use those little flakes for some extra styling. Simple and clean. Thankfully the prior owner was nothing of a mechanic nor had anything leaking, just guessing my the cleanliness of the floor in the garage...


On another note I guess I can give you all some info on the house itself. Single owner prior defaulted on his loan in early 2010 and walked away from the house. An investor bought it off of the Court House steps for fairly cheap and has been holding onto it since October of 2010. We technically will be the second owner on the house.

Built in 2004, 2x6 construction on a poured foundation. Granite counter tops, 2 1/2 bath, 2 master beds. 1800 square feet two story. Bull nosed walls, and many other nice custom feeling features. My fave is the water heater recycling unit, this will be a nice one to have.

Any way getting closer and closer... Getting excited.

Oh: http://www.idxcentral.com/snar/idxse...hunting&rows=5

Sounds good
 

Yea the bullnose is a great feature. I hope you got some kind of termite protection. Trust me you do not want to see the wrong side of that feasco. When I was selling my home in Orlando I ended up opening six walls in my home to replace about 75% of the stud work just to bring it up to par so I could get rid of it. It took me several weeks to get it all done, and ended up replacing about half of the siding as well due to the damage. It was an awful lot of work and if I had to have it done by a contractor it would have cost me a small fortune. About $1000 to $2000 per wall just to repare the framework. Plus the shetrock work and siding replacement. I had three contractors bid on the job and the lowest one was trying not to kill me with a heavy debt at about $23k to fix it all. I ended up doing the frame work, sheetrock and installed the siding all by myself, and then had a painter come in to cover it all up. It cost me less than $10K altogether, but I busted my a$$ for weeks trying to get out of there. All because I did not have the house treated and bonded for $2000. It was a nightmare that I never want to live through again, nor do I want to see anyone else go through it if it can be avoided. Just my advice.

Good advise. Always good to be preventative rather than the reactive.

I was shopping around for homeowners insurance and I was looking at pest protection as well, I pray that I will never have this problem, thankfully we really do not have termites in our area. Though they do exist, so I still have a concern.

Dont be fooled
 

Do not be fooled my friend. Where is this house located? About the only state that does not have too much termite issues related to housing is alaska, because it is too cold for them to come to the surface 90% of the year. There are termites just about everywhere on this Earth, but some places are better suited weather wise to keep them underground most of the time.

The problem arrises when you aquire an unseen leak somewhere in your home without you finding it. Usually a leaky pipe in the wall, or even a roof leak that drains into a wall and travels down into the structure that is invisible from anywhere outside the wall itself. Once they get a smell of wet wood in your home they begin tunneling up into your home from below. They never surface for you to see them either. They do not like the sunlight. They stay hidden deep in your walls and eat until there is nothing left to eat, or they are poisoned by pest control. Subteranian termites have to have water so they travel back and forth from the ground to your house as long as nothing stops them. They can bring water up from underground and wet your wood themselves as well. Then eat, and return underground. This can go on for many years undetected, and by the time they are found there is not much left holding the house up but paint and siding. This is why it is important to have your home treated up front. By the time I found the damage in my home I had owned it for about 15 years and it had not been treated since it was built, which was nearly 20 years.

Every state varies in cost, but what most of them do now is treat your foundation through the outside wall about 8 inches off the ground every 12 inches by drilling a 3/8" to 1/2" hole on a 30 degree angle through the footer and under the slab. Then they spray poison into each hole soaking under the slab, into the footer and the wall and if your lucky outside the wall as well. About 1 to 3 gallons per hole if they do it right. The more the better. The only problem these days is that the poison they use now is not near as storng as it once was, nor does it last as long either. They used to use "Dursban", which was an oil based chemical that lasted for many years
(20 to 30 years or more). This chemical was outlawed a few years back by the Federal Gov because it was deemed responsible for causing cancer by traveling into our drinking water. It was some pretty nasty stuff. It is illegal now to use dursban at all, and there is a heavy fine if you get caught. They no longer produce it, but there are still some places that have it stored from years back. Its not even allowed to be sold any longer.

Anyway once treated they seal the holes and call it a day. The warranty now a days is that they will cover your structure as long as you pay them once a year to come out and inspect your home for infestation, and treat as needed. If any termite damage is discovered then they pay for the damaged area to be fully repared at no cost to you. Unless the damage is proved to be done prior to their treatment.

I had so much damage to my home I was totally amazed. I had window cills with triple 2 X 4's nailed together and I could crumble them with my bare hands like cardboard. Walls with 75% to 80% of the studs eaten away up to the six foot mark. The only wood that was not eaten was the 2X6 baseplate, and only because it was pressure treated. I never have understood why they just don't use pressure treated lumber for the entire structure. The termites would never touch it then.

Good reading there, I think once all settled in I will have treated for preventative reasons. The inspector is looking for signs of infestation so if needed we can always back out if noticeable problems exist.

Thanks a bunch Jerry!

No problem man
 

NO problem man. If you want to know anything else let us know. I myself have owned several homes in my lifetime, and have had to deal with all kinds of issues. I learned a lot and some of it the hard way. I was also a state ceritfied property appraiser in Florida, so I know the ins and outs about how and why some things are accountable in sales and and why some are not. Any time Brah.

Little update, the appraisal went well as did the inspection, everything is going smoothly, can not wait to get you all pictures of my workshop once completed!!!

Sounds good
 

Sounds good Reno. We look forward to seeing pics of your new pile of bricks/sticks. Enjoy the adventure. If this is your first house there is always a lot to learn and you will have experiences that you will carry with you for the rest of your life. My first was at age 21 and it was a townhouse in Makakilo Hawaii. I was scared to death about having that level of responsibility so young, but it all works out. I even sold it myself without a realtor and saved on the sellers fees. I owned it for about five years and made about $20K when I left beautiful Oahu back in 1985. Good luck buddy.