Buying my first house

[Revalos]

Tomorrow, I will be putting an offer on my first home after I give an inspector $200 to look around.

It is unbelievably small, unbelievably expensive for being so small, and unbelievably far from where I work.

But...it is 5 blocks from the Greenbelt metro station in College Park, MD, in a nice neighborhood, and its in really nice condition.

Here's to hoping we actually get this damn thing and I can stop worrying about the agony of home buying.

Woe be unto others in this market...its a jungle out there...I've seen $300k rat holes and $250k palaces with 30 offers on them both, minutes after they show up on homesdatabase.com. Nucking Futs.

Wish me luck!

[Soulpieced]

That's what you get for wanting to live in College Park. Granted my area is probably even more expensive. Oh well.

[Soulpieced]

Also, where do you work? I'm assuming somewhere in DC since you want to be close to Greenbelt Metro.

[DeV]

Hope all goes well for you. I know how draining the entire process can be.

[Jorddyn]

Congratulations! I hope you get it.

Oh, and my area is much less expensive.

Jorddyn, loves her l'il condo and random comments

[AnticorRifling]

Good luck man. I built my first house seems like forever ago(it's been like six months) and the process did wear me out. You'll never sign your name so much again. Unless you join the military heh.

Getting keys and walking into YOUR place is cool though, so is doing it on the stairs before the roof and walls are on :cool:

MD has some very expensive areas as does VA. On one hand it makes me glad to live in Indiana but on the other hand.....I live in Indiana.

[Revalos]

I work in Anacostia at the Naval Station/Air Force Base down there. They've finally got a shuttle going from the metro station to the building I work in, so I don't have to take my life into my own hands walking anymore.

I wanted to build a place from scratch...but I decided for a first house that'd be too daunting. I do plan on adding on at least a deck to this one though.

College Park was the most reasonable priced area with walkable metro access in neighborhoods with a crime rate less than that of ghetto DC (I live in Suitland currently...I don't want to raise kids here). Only other option was Rockville...and that would have been one HELL of a commute.

[Back]

Good luck on the purchase. Hope you get a reasonable interest rate. Congrats!

[Edaarin]

I hope you have a written contract with the inspector.

[Revalos]

5.75 on a 30 year conventional. It'll do.

Inspector is bonded and insured, and this place is pretty much WYSIWYG anyway, I'm just paying the $200 to take that verbage out of the contract so my deal looks sweeter.

[Edited on 3-22-2005 by Revalos]

[Vitruvian]

WHOA WHOA WHOA, Slow down there turbo, write the offer first my friend, do some good comps, and make a decent offer. If the offer is accepted. You should have 7- 10 to do an inspection. A clause should be in the contract stating a contingency , that if the inspection finds damages over 1.5% of the total value of said home, then you may walk away. Do no waste 200 before your offer is accepted.

Again , from what Im reading you seam to have a sellers market on your hands, meaning the sellers are getting what they are asking due to a low inventory in your area, so make the offer as close to asking price as possible. I see my own clients lose out on homes due to lowballing. Wouldnt want to see it happen to ya bud. Good Luck

[Edited on 3-22-2005 by Vitruvian]

[Revalos]

I'm offering $235k escalatable to $254k. And I've done my homework on this one, contracts are due tommorrow and I don't have the economic clout to keep the inspection clause. I want my deal to be the cream of the crop for the seller. I want this god damn search to end.

EDIT: They are asking for $235k.

[Edited on 3-22-2005 by Revalos]

[Vitruvian]

No clout? Is the market that nuts? 19k over asking price? That insane. Do you have a realtor?

[Edited on 3-22-2005 by Vitruvian]

[Revalos]

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. and Yes.

Last house I was looking at was asking at $284k sold for $340k after 5 offers went to auction. My realtor said he thought $284k for that was overvalued too.

[Back]

Yeah, I was out bid on two other places where the bids went 50k+ over asking. The place I’m in now only went 4k over so I just lucked out. Its rough out there.

PS. This happened last December here in DC.

[Edited on 3-22-2005 by Backlash]

[Vitruvian]

As hard as it is to find a place that you actually like, then to be outbid on it is so frustrating.

[Killer Kitten]

Just make sure the basement doesn't leak. If it's a beautifully finished basement, check carefully around the baseboards and maybe pull a corner of the carpeting up in a closet to check the actual floor.

I didn't know to do that when we bought our first house and it led to a 14 year long nightmare of moisture, mold, mildew and water damage in the basement. We even paid a couple thousand to waterproof it, the first big storm we had after that the place flooded anyway.

When we bought the house we live in now I did everything but lick the floor in the basement to satisfy myself that it had never flooded. I crawled over every inch, sniffing and sticking my hands into every corner of both basement and crawl space.

Congratulations on the house! There are very few feelings that can compare to that of owning your own home. I wish you and your family a great deal of happiness.

[Revalos]

I did one better Killer Kitten. No Basement. Every damn basement I saw leaked, so I said...give me a wee house with 1 bedroom, 1 office, a fairly big kitchen, and a main room. And behold, I got just that.

Well...the big day is here. I'll let y'all know what happens this evening.

[AnticorRifling]

Originally posted by Revalos
I did one better Killer Kitten. No Basement. Every damn basement I saw leaked, so I said...give me a wee house with 1 bedroom, 1 office, a fairly big kitchen, and a main room. And behold, I got just that.

Well...the big day is here. I'll let y'all know what happens this evening.

How many sq ft?

[HarmNone]

Good luck, Revalos. :)

[The Korean]

You work in that big white building in the middle of the base, don't you?

[Jadewolff]

The market in this area is crazy which is good since we're going to be selling our house! We live in Prince William county and our house is going for over 150k more than we bought it for. But if we ever decide to move back, we'll be SOL.

[Amaron]

Yeah Revalos! Good luck

We had a dinky apartment when we got married. But I live in a poor rural area. (Central PA... an amish area)

Our first apartment had a bath nice sized bedroom, nice kitchen and a huge living room $325 a month all uiliities included.


When we both had a stable job we started looking at land in the school district we wanted to live in.

We found a land auction and decided to check it out.

We ended up with 2.5 acres in the country for 11k... worth about 40k now.

We built a house and love it. Cows to one side and a menonite church to the other.

Anyway having your own home is the best... Good luck Rev.

Katee

[CrystalTears]

Good luck, hon. As much as I'm looking forward to us owning our own home, I'm terrified of how it's going to sink us financially. We's so poor!

Let us know when it's finalized so that I can give you the official "Congrats!". :D

[Revalos]

The inspection went well. The inspector was literally shocked to see a home in this area in as good a condition as this one is. Only moderate problems are the detached garage needs some electrical and structural work and there's some galvanized piping that needs some plumbing fixes. Other than that...the sucker is solid as a rock and has some nice recent updates in the kitchen and other new things, like the new roof, a tankless water heater and a newly installed furnace.

Apparently the two folks who lived there (who have the same last name as me...karmic wierdness) were planning on staying there a lot longer, but one of their jobs was transferred to Nevada, so my wife and I are reaping the benefits of the updates they put in 4 years ago.

Only one other serious offer to contend with, and I think with my deleted verbage, my contract is looking to be the best. Should know late tomorrow. Had three others drop at the end because they decided it was too small (I think its about 1500 sq feet with the garage and attic, 1150 without) and one guy didn't get his offer in on time.

Now I have to wait. Best $200 I ever spent though, learned a lot about what things I'll be working on if we get it. I'll let y'all know

[Wezas]

Originally posted by Vitruvian
No clout? Is the market that nuts? 19k over asking price?

In the DC Metro area bidding wars are a given.

I put offers down on at least four houses (for asking price) and all four were outbid. Usually by anywhere from $10k-40k.

My current place had only been on the market 3 days and I snatched it up before anyone else could.

[AnticorRifling]

Just to put it in perspective how much different the market is here compared to there. I built my house for 139.5k it's 2020 sq ft. My next house I build will probably be alittle bigger but with alot more land I'm looking at a 5 acre plot from a farmer friend of mine and I can probably get it for 20k w00t.

Congrats man you're gonna love and hate being a home owner all at the same time heh.

[theotherjohn]

Originally posted by AnticorRifling
Just to put it in perspective how much different the market is here compared to there. .

I bought a 2875 sq ft home with 2 car attached garage, enclosed backyard with deck and 2 story treehouse for 159k.

[AnticorRifling]

Gotta love it. Yeah I got a 2 car attached as well. I'm building a deck this summer. w00t

[Revalos]

Well...it is official. I am the proud contacted owner of my first home. I have the contract in my hot little hands as well as the escalation clause from the other offer.

The other guy was named Abdul Gaffar, and he had a crappy realtor...he only bid 250k on the nose...but my Ebay sense told me to throw a 1 on the end of my bid, I win. So that's right...our "insane" escalation meant we're paying 15k more than the original price.

Here's a picture of the 'cottage' (as its too small to be called a house...heh).

http://photos.mris.com/nfs/photos01/1/0/3/2/0/6/10320617917_1_M.jpg

[HarmNone]

It looks lovely, Revalos, and as though it's been well-cared-for. I'm really very happy for you! :up:

[AnticorRifling]

How much did you pay for that total?!

[Back]

Party at Revs!

[Jazuela]

It's an adorable home Revalos, congrats! Don't feel too bad about it being small. You can -always- build up, even if you can't build out. When you're ready for it, add a second floor loft with a bathroom or something, it'll be just fine. If you have a huge back yard you can always build back there.

As far as cost goes - my house is just a tad bigger than that one, if my perception is right. We paid $167,900 for it. That was 3 years ago. Today, you can't touch a house in this neighborhood for under $200,000. And ours is one of the nicer (but smaller) ones, and we have a 1/2 acre wooded fenced-in corner lot.

Yeah we'll be building on ours eventually. Master bedroom with a second bathroom. SOME DAY, HONEST!

Congrats again - it looks sweet.

[Amaron]

Yeah Revalos!

hugs
Katee