House buying questions

[MushyMushy]

Thanks, all for the great advice! I called the realtor today and found out that the house is under contract, but they just hadn't removed it from the "available" list yet. I have to admit that I was really looking forward to checking this house out -- aside from the size, it had everything we wanted.

Anyway, we'll keep up the search!

Tazicket, in a small town like this, we do have our good areas and bad areas. There are probably only a couple of places where we would absolutely not live, and I don't think there are any livable (for us anyway) houses in those areas to begin with.

It might interest some of you to know the house prices around here. The one I was looking at was $69K, and I found some below $20K, if you can believe it. Nothing we'd be interested in for ourselves, but definite rental possibilities there. The prices seem to jump around a bit -- you can find them in the 20K area, then 40-60K, then it jumps to 100K and above. I have a friend who bought a nice little ranch style 2 bedroom home for less than 50K. This town does have one or two developments, but the houses are really expensive there (for this area). Most people here really want to live in the older established neighborhoods, which is what we're looking for.

 

[ducklite]

Also watch for lead paint.

Oh boy is this true!

My neice was lead poisoned because the contractor hired to remove the lead paint from my sisters house didn't do it right. She has some delays because of it.

They spent close to $100,000 to remove and remediate the paint, and then the soil around the house that had been contaminated by the improper removal.

Anne

 

[Tazicket]

It might interest some of you to know the house prices around here. The one I was looking at was $69K, and I found some below $20K, if you can believe it. Nothing we'd be interested in for ourselves, but definite rental possibilities there. The prices seem to jump around a bit -- you can find them in the 20K area, then 40-60K, then it jumps to 100K and above. I have a friend who bought a nice little ranch style 2 bedroom home for less than 50K. This town does have one or two developments, but the houses are really expensive there (for this area). Most people here really want to live in the older established neighborhoods, which is what we're looking for.

Good grief! That's amazing! The house we're getting is 145K (and that's towards the lower end of the housing market here- well, the lower end of houses available that don't come with bullet holes. )...that's what we get for living in a big city, I suppose. lol

 

[MushyMushy]

Good grief! That's amazing! The house we're getting is 145K (and that's towards the lower end of the housing market here- well, the lower end of houses available that don't come with bullet holes. )...that's what we get for living in a big city, I suppose. lol

Check out this big old house for 75K: Big House

DH fell in love with it, but it's in a different school district and we can't move DS during his junior year. There was one on there for 17K, but it's gone now. It sold pretty fast. I posted houses like this before and people thought they were really crappy -- I know people like living in the new houses in developments, but that's just not the thing here.

 

[Tazicket]

Check out this big old house for 75K: Big House

DH fell in love with it, but it's in a different school district and we can't move DS during his junior year. There was one on there for 17K, but it's gone now. It sold pretty fast. I posted houses like this before and people thought they were really crappy -- I know people like living in the new houses in developments, but that's just not the thing here.

That's amazing! Do you know how many square feet it is?

 

[MushyMushy]

That's amazing! Do you know how many square feet it is?

I know it sounds stupid, but around here nobody talks about square feet. I wouldn't know a home's square footage if it hit me in the head.

 

[Tazicket]

I know it sounds stupid, but around here nobody talks about square feet. I wouldn't know a home's square footage if it hit me in the head.

I totally understand! This is our first house, so I'm a little giddy on the new knowledge that I've picked up. Square feet, GFI outlets, home inspections, and various mortgage terminology have all been chasing each other around in my head for the last month or so.

 

[cristit14]

Good grief! That's amazing! The house we're getting is 145K (and that's towards the lower end of the housing market here- well, the lower end of houses available that don't come with bullet holes. )...that's what we get for living in a big city, I suppose. lol

Around here I don't think you could get one without bullet holes for 145K.

 

[Tazicket]

Around here I don't think you could get one without bullet holes for 145K.

Geez. One of the houses we went to look at with our realtor had 4 or 5 bullet holes in one of the bedroom windows.....to give you an idea what kind of people we are: we took pictures, posted them on our blog, and jumped right back into the house search.

It seriously blows my mind how much the price of a home fluctuates depending on where you are.

 

[MushyMushy]

All this talk about bullet holes has me cracking up.

Anyway, I went to talk to a buyers agent today and I'm scheduled to look at 3 houses on Monday. We started looking at houses that were priced a tad bit higher, but still would allow us to have a very small mortgage.

One is a smaller house about a mile out of town, but still in our school district. It's kind of small, but has a big 2-car garage and a decent back yard. It's not high on my list. Another is a HUGE older house with 5 bedrooms, on a big lot with a 2-car garage. It looks really nice on the outside, but I'm a little iffy on how much it would take to heat that thing in the winter.

The third and highest on my list is the nicest house, but I'm not 100% thrilled about the location. First of all, there's no yard! It has a deck and a 1-car garage. Also, it's on a main road. We've lived on main roads before, but I'd kind of prefer not to. The house itself has 4 bedrooms and 2 full baths (not too common around here!), a den, living room, full basement, and finished attic. The kicker here is that my DS is friends with the boy who lives there now. Apparently the mother is divorced and can't keep up with the mortgage.

You want to hear something stupid? Don't flame me for it. When I told DH the situation, his response, all businesslike was "Well, it sounds like she's desperate for the money and maybe we can talk her down a good bit." My response was, "It sounds like she's desperate for the money and she probably needs the asking price." Good thing he's handling the finances and not me, right???