House Buying Thread

Postby **NTP66** » Fri Apr 08, 2022 8:28 am

I also think it's got more Mustangs per capita than anywhere else in the country.

Maui would like a word...

Postby **Dickie Dunn** » Fri Apr 08, 2022 8:54 am

Traffic in the Charlotte area has really grown since I’ve been going on a fairly regular basis over the past 10+ years. My FIL’s commute from just over the SC line to downtown (uptown?) has increased from 20 min to 45 mins.

I think similar things are happening in Austin, Nashville, Charleston. Prices and traffic going up.

I'm aware. When I was stationed in Charleston about 11 years ago and my now wife lived in Charlotte the traffic in and around Charlotte was generally not a big deal. It's gotten consistently worse over the years. Last time I was there was about 3 years ago with a 3 year gap between visits and the situation was pretty brutal. The area has definitely overpopulated the infrastructure.

Austin has been that way for a while. Nashville can get ****. Sad to hear that about Charleston though. Loved living there and the more moderate size of the city, though traffic to the beach on any given weekend was always a shitshow.

Postby **Dickie Dunn** » Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:07 am

@AuthorTony

The 5 States Everyone Is Moving to (and 5 States Everyone Is Leaving

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/states ... g-37060512

Tennessee

With no state income tax and pleasant weather, the Volunteer State is an appealing place to live. Plus, it’s got the Smoky Mountains, mid-sized and large cities like Memphis and Nashville, and a low cost of living.

Nothing entices me to move to a city like the best chance of being involved in a crime and the second best chance of being murdered in the country.

Postby **dodint** » Fri Apr 08, 2022 9:37 am

I loved living in Coastal NC but being three hours from the nearest interstate was bonkers. It felt like every trip anywhere took forever to get started. I moved from there to Wisconsin and lived less than two miles from an I-90 exit and it was heaven.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Mon Apr 25, 2022 10:54 am

Our current house went on the market early this morning. Already 5 showings booked in 2 hours. Zillow views over 300 and 22 saves (to look at later?)

Our realtor is accepting any offers until Saturday, then we'll decide Sunday which to accept. Should be interesting.

Very creeped out at people in my house though. Ugh.

Postby **mac5155** » Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:10 pm

I'm amazed that demand is still that high even with insane interest rates. However, good for you!

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:16 pm

I don't think the demand will drop substantially yet, especially in our area. There are many more people wanting into our neighborhood than there have been available houses. However, I won't celebrate until the offers start to come in. First showing in 15 minutes FWIW!

Postby **MrKennethTKangaroo** » Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:25 pm

I'm amazed that demand is still that high even with insane interest rates. However, good for you!

Supply is even crappier than it was a year ago at this time.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Sat Apr 30, 2022 9:21 pm

After what seems like a long week, we have the first of hopefully several offers coming in for our house.

This offer is a VA loan. Very fast closing date - end of May. Does anyone have any experience with VA lenders as a seller or even as a buyer? My realtor thinks that's WAY too fast to close on a VA loan.

Postby **LITT** » Sat Apr 30, 2022 9:47 pm

Might also be marginally cheap r/e tax wise to stay out of Allegheny County.

Wexford is full of big suvs driven by dad's in under armour polo shirts

As someone who lives adjacent to Wexford i take umbrage with this statement

Postby **dodint** » Sun May 01, 2022 11:13 am

After what seems like a long week, we have the first of hopefully several offers coming in for our house.

This offer is a VA loan. Very fast closing date - end of May. Does anyone have any experience with VA lenders as a seller or even as a buyer? My realtor thinks that's WAY too fast to close on a VA loan.

The inspection is more stringent. The government wants to ensure that the collateral is able to be liquidated if there is a default, so anything found in the inspection will have to be fixed. The defects can't be assumed by the buyers even if they would want them to be.

Most of the procedural red tape with VA loans is on the buyer side and they get approved to participate in the VA Home Loan program before submitting an offer, so that shouldn't really be a hold-up in the post-offer stage.

Postby **NTP66** » Sun May 01, 2022 11:34 am

Source of the post The inspection is more stringent.

Is it anything like an FHA loan? My cousin has to scrape the garage door on the house he was buying (before he bought it, from an older lady) and repaint it to pass their inspection.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Sun May 01, 2022 11:59 am

I'm not sure if it's different from state to state, but in SC we (buyers) are required to repair structural, electrical, plumbing, and roofing issues that crop up in the home inspection. The VA appraiser can be above and beyond that, but normal appraisers don't have a repair component. Like @dodint , the gubmint needs to make sure the house is relatively sound so they can sell if the loan defaults.

Also, as this is a sellers market, we don't have to do anything with cosmetic repairs - painting, missing/cracked grout, door stop holes in interior doors, etc. When we sold our house in 2007 to move here, it was the beginnings of a buyers market. We had to do some additional cosmetic stuff to get to closing. Annoying, but I get it.

Postby **dodint** » Sun May 01, 2022 12:06 pm

Source of the post The inspection is more stringent.
Is it anything like an FHA loan? My cousin has to scrape the garage door on the house he was buying (before he bought it, from an older lady) and repaint it to pass their inspection.

Yeah, they look for some tedious stuff like railing heights and fire doors leading to garages.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Sun May 01, 2022 6:42 pm

Got the pre-approval letter back from our buyer. 5.75% interest rate. Oof.

Postby **NTP66** » Sun May 01, 2022 6:52 pm

JFC, that’s insane.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Sun May 01, 2022 6:55 pm

We locked in at 4.375% in early April, which is high for right now, but exactly the interest rate we're paying now for our refinance in 2010.

Postby **meow** » Sun May 01, 2022 6:58 pm

Whoa. Looks like we won’t be refinancing anytime soon. We have a 2.75% rate

Postby **count2infinity** » Sun May 01, 2022 7:02 pm

We bought in spring 2020 just before prices started soaring and the interest rates were changing almost daily between 2.75 and 3.75. We locked at 3.35. I’m good with it for a while.

I also have a coworker that was preapproved at 3.75 in November. He’s paying 5 now as they didn’t find a house and his pre approval ran up.

Postby **NTP66** » Sun May 01, 2022 7:02 pm

I’m gonna go upstairs and kiss my 1.75% refi paperwork later.

Postby **Dickie Dunn** » Sun May 01, 2022 7:08 pm

I’d do more than that to it.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Mon May 02, 2022 12:33 pm

Evidently, the buyer is 100% financing a VA loan, hence the higher APR. No PMI, so you'll pay more in interest? OK, I guess.

Postby **skullman80** » Mon May 02, 2022 12:54 pm

Yeah I looked up the 30 year interest rates this morning for houses...yeesh. I'm happy with our 3.25% at the moment that we got in June of 2020.

Postby **Dickie Dunn** » Mon May 02, 2022 1:29 pm

Evidently, the buyer is 100% financing a VA loan, hence the higher APR. No PMI, so you'll pay more in interest? OK, I guess.

Probably dogshit credit score. 90% of VA loans are 100% financed. Essentially, the VA guarantees 25% of the mortgage to the lender before a payment is ever made, so they’re already dealing with a situation better than getting 20% down. There’s a program funding fee that varies based on the amount of your down payment. Anything less than 5% down has the max funding fee of 2.3% of the loan amount, so if you can’t do 5% you might as well do 0%.

Our 100% financed mortgage and both VA IRRL refinances with all fees rolled into the new mortgage were well below market rate for conventional loans, with the last refinance coming in at 2.25%.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Wed May 04, 2022 1:15 pm

Probably setting myself up for a shadjinx here, but when our realtor countered the sales offer, he had to clean up the sales contract sent over by the buyer's realtor (as the other guy was out on a boat and completed the 9 page doc on his iPhone lol). He left the Repair procedure section mostly the same - with the home inspection report due back to us on May 10th, a week after the contract was signed. This made sense when the original closing date was May 30 (which really meant the 27th, as that's memorial day. We also in the listing that we couldn't close before mid-June because the new house wouldn't be ready. So he doesn't read well).

Of course, with the real estate market absolutely bonkers everywhere, our realtor knew it would be tough to get an inspector on the books and over to our house in a week, nevermind writing up a comprehensive report and these guys don't work weekends.

If they don't get us the report by 6 PM on Monday, the house is sold as-is. Of course, the VA appraiser might find things that have to get fixed. But unless it's something really weird, we should be OK.

I'm wondering if the other realtor will realize tomorrow or early Friday that he can't get an inspector in time and want to extend the amount of time to get the report done? Is that even possible?