Mis-Adventures in Homebuying Pt 2

Here's a quickie, when looking at homes that are foreclosed you'll eventually run into some unusual choices in home construction. Some of the unusual things we've run into so far:

• Wood paneling in the closet, only in the closet. This was faux wood-paneling that was peeling off.
• Random tile, in all colors of the spectrum, on a closet floor and no where else. With no grout.
• Brick fireplace with ugly orange marble framing out the mantle.
• Storage unit with a door built three feet inside of the unit, door ends at the start of the door way. At first it looked like it was a sliding door, even had a handy-dandy (don't say notebook) handle to slid it out with. No cause that would be practical, and it's a lot more fun to install a standard door complete with hinges that can't actually be used. At all. All of those above are from the same house.
• Mirrored, floor to ceiling closet doors used as a master bathroom door. Seriously, double doors at that. Wish I'd taken a picture cause it was he-larious.
• Bedrooms or random rooms built into the garage, illegally, and with various stages of professionalism. Usually the walls are unfinished and unpainted sheet rock.

The list goes on. That's not even including the stuff left behind, the walls scrawled with angry sentiments against the banks, random mattresses on things like pergolas, improperly installed shower units, missing cabinet doors, missing toilet seats, warped wood floors, seriously outdated kitchens and etc... It's enough to make you lose ten pounds from laughing at it all. Anyone want to share their experiences searching for a house?

Misadventures in Home Buying Part 1

I know that my husband and I are not the only ones out there in the great U S of A that fell for the line “It’s a BUYERS market!” for some people this rings very true. For others, us in particular, it’s a bit of a misleading statement. Along with all the news of massive foreclosure’s hitting the market, it’s easy for one to believe that all they need to do is get pre-approved and a house normally out of their price range would be handed to them. Ok, so maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, as even the most naïve know that there is a little bit more to it than that.

To me what a “buyers market” combined with foreclosures implies is an inventory larger than the demand, and prices that are low if not rock-bottom along with a little to zero chance of getting stuck in a bidding war. What we’re finding is the opposite. Out of the eight houses we’ve seen, we were advised that two were priced low to create a bidding war and would go for well over the listing price (ie:$20,000 over). One got bought out twenty minutes after we saw it, right before we could put our bid in, and four days after being listed. Another lender wouldn’t deal with our lender, we’re going FHA. On two of the houses the listing agents were expecting bids with large amounts of cash down to back up the offer. Those are only the houses we’ve been able to see so far, at least fifteen that I was interested in went into Escrow before we could check them out. One literally went contingent, an offer was accepted, an hour and a half before we went to view it.

We’ve been looking since middle of June, and it’s becoming frustrating. Neither of us thought it would be this hard. What we’re finding is that the supply is actually decreasing due to the moratorium placed on banks from foreclosing and likely in part due to homeowners not selling at this time. The demand is also increasing, specifically in our price range and in our area which is admittedly in higher demand then other parts of the country. Our price range is clearly the target price for most people within our area, it’s what I’d dub the “thanks greedy banks! Now even I can afford a house on a Wal-Mart Salary!!” budget. Note, I do not work at Wal-Mart and I do not know how much they make there it’s a metaphor.

We are checking out more houses tonight, my fingers are crossed that we can get in a bid before the house sells under our feet. Lastly, I am praying that the meth lab moved to another neighborhood than the ones we’re looking into… Anyone else out there having problems trying to buy their first house?