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I hate moving! Or buying a house is fucking weird.


Lily Valley

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So I have to move.  It SUCKS.  IT SUCKS for reasons I don't even to have SUCK time to talk about.  Seriously.  The moving part just is a whole SUCK.  

Anyway, I am buying a new house.  It is so fucking weird.  The range of things that people have on the market is absolutely hilarious.  I'm losing my mind a little.  I'm also sick of being told, "Not a good idea" about neighborhoods I LIKE.  Everyone who is "helping" me in town (aside from my agent and my gf) on this needs to just SHUT UP.   The people I know giving advice either are renting, already bought in a really expensive area or they just had a baby.  I love babies.  I do NOT have one right now.  I do NOT need to think about school districts.  Also, there aren't any in New Orleans anyway.  This is the most $ I will have ever spent on something in my whole life.  I'm kind of puking / hitting my head on the floor.

Anyway, who bought a house recently?  I kinda hate everything in my price range.  How did you find something?

 

 

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sheer dumb luck on our part. the previous owners were selling without an agent, so the listing wasn't getting any visibility, and after a few months on the market (absolutely insane in boston) they dropped the price. mrs rrl saw it, we took a look and fell in love (it was bigger, nicer and pretty much cheaper (lol) than anything we had looked at previously.

lol, actually she is now on a kick trying to talk me into buying a place in N.O. lol

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I got mine just as the bubble was bursting and got a short sale.  It was a HUGE pain in the ass as it took 6 months from offer to closing.  It was one of the first houses I saw and fit the bill perfectly for what I wanted at the time.  Looking back, it was a terrible mistake, but I've grown into the house, my wife adores it, and now that we're refinishing the kitchen and bathrooms, it's actually becoming a nice home that will be easy to start a family in.

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Bought a house March 2016. Found the place on Zillow took my realtor to it and then made offer same day. Fairly easy process. The nerve racking part for me is the appraisal since I was buying a flipped house. Lucky for me the offer the accepted from me turned out to be 15k less than the appraised value.

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I am in the process right now (hopefully will close in 2 weeks) and it's insane. I'm only buying a condo so it's much less expensive but the whole thing has been frustrating from start to finish. I wouldn't bother if it didn't make a lot more sense than renting in my situation. Now I'm just fingers crossing that the thing goes through because it seems like at every step it threatens to fall apart at the seams.

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Bought second house in November last year via tender then negotiation after about three months of looking. First and only place we put an offer in on, although we were originally rebuffed when they wanted $270,000 more than we tendered :wacko: . Eventually after a month they dropped $200k and we went up $70k.

When buying my first house it took about 2 years putting in about 10 offers and getting close several times. Big difference second time around I had a partner who didn't want to mess around. I hate the process to be honest.

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Quote

 

Built mine from the ground up back in 2000 - on the proceeds of running pizza's in rectangles.  Did most of the work myself, save for some things - slab, furnace, hanging sheetrock - that required either pro's or more energy than I had to give.  Contemplating building a small cabin - 400-500 square feet on a remote parcel. 

 

Area I'm in has a lot of 'Habitat for Humanity' homes.  Might be something for Miss Valley to look into.

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I bought my first home in the wrong neighborhood. Was zoned for the wrong schools, wrong demographics, etc. It was a new neighborhood and we were new to the area and boy did we make a mistake. We ended up having to sell a few years after we bought it and we lost some, but not as much as had we rented for the years we owned that home. 

We bought our current home 8 years ago and this time we knew about buying in the right school district, right demographics, etc. 

Also: Always buy the cheapest house in the nicest neighborhood, not the nicest house in the cheapest neighborhood. 

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On 8/1/2017 at 0:18 PM, r'hllor's red lobster said:

sheer dumb luck on our part. the previous owners were selling without an agent, so the listing wasn't getting any visibility, and after a few months on the market (absolutely insane in boston) they dropped the price. mrs rrl saw it, we took a look and fell in love (it was bigger, nicer and pretty much cheaper (lol) than anything we had looked at previously.

lol, actually she is now on a kick trying to talk me into buying a place in N.O. lol

DO IT!  I'll give you my agent.  Or buy my house.  Ask her to send some of that mojo down here.  I could use it.  

 

On 8/1/2017 at 2:41 PM, Swordfish said:

We are actually also looking at the moment.  It's fun for the first 5 houses or so...  Then, not so much.  Especially in the Portland market....

I didn't know you were in Portland!  The brutal market there is why I left 20+ years  ago.  I still go home every few years, let's meet up next time!  Luck in that tough market.

I am looking at some habitat and foreclosed homes.  The foreclosures are fun for me because they are all overextended contractor places and not heartbroken homeowners.  Yes, still sucks for the contractors, but not the same punch to the gut as family home.   I'm skeptical of some of the new construction, prefer something that survived Katrina.

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Trust your gut, I got an amazing house on the cheap ages ago. Seriously I had a choice between two (weird) houses within one week before being homeless. I chose wisely because, much later. hello, Welcome to the new Seattle, (17 years later) nothing is below half a million now. (!!) I'm selling next year if you want to work for Amazon, Google or Microsoft. 

Also to be serious, the "bad" neighborhoods aren't bad unless you are in a place were the whole area(city) is definitely going "down". All of Portland, like Seattle, is no longer bad,  just an "up and coming" neighborhood. Get your foot in while you still can.

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2 hours ago, Houndred said:

Trust your gut, I got an amazing house on the cheap ages ago. Seriously I had a choice between two (weird) houses within one week before being homeless. I chose wisely because, much later. hello, Welcome to the new Seattle, (17 years later) nothing is below half a million now. (!!) I'm selling next year if you want to work for Amazon, Google or Microsoft. 

Also to be serious, the "bad" neighborhoods aren't bad unless you are in a place were the whole area(city) is definitely going "down". All of Portland, like Seattle, is no longer bad,  just an "up and coming" neighborhood. Get your foot in while you still can.

New Orleans is NOT Portland or Seattle.  I've lived downtown my whole adult life.  I'm in my fourth gentrifying neighborhood.  I could do the next gentrifying neighborhood, but it gets really exhausting.   Crime spikes, then taxes go up, then you have neighbors who don't say hello properly.  

I really won't know for sure what to look for until I get an offer, so right now I'm trying to keep an open mind.  The fiancee will be here this weekend to start actually looking and there will be .... compromise happening.

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17 hours ago, Lily Valley said:

DO IT!  I'll give you my agent.  Or buy my house.  Ask her to send some of that mojo down here.  I could use it.  

 

I didn't know you were in Portland!  The brutal market there is why I left 20+ years  ago.  I still go home every few years, let's meet up next time!  Luck in that tough market.

Definitely!  I bought the house I'm in in 2003, so before it got too bad.  It's a whole different ballgame out there now.

We are not super motivated to buy, since we both already own houses, which makes the process both better and worse at the same time.  We have the luxury of taking our time, but also, it's taking our time.

 

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Gah, This has already been a rollercoaster.  Have an investor who put in 3 separate offers within an hour.   Got 4 showings today from 5-7 and a totally uncooperative tenant.  Fiancee is here and we're going looking tomorrow.

So tempted to take the last offer from the investor and say FUCK IT.  

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On 8/2/2017 at 2:44 PM, Frog Eater said:

I bought my first home in the wrong neighborhood. Was zoned for the wrong schools, wrong demographics, etc. It was a new neighborhood and we were new to the area and boy did we make a mistake. We ended up having to sell a few years after we bought it and we lost some, but not as much as had we rented for the years we owned that home. 

We bought our current home 8 years ago and this time we knew about buying in the right school district, right demographics, etc. 

Also: Always buy the cheapest house in the nicest neighborhood, not the nicest house in the cheapest neighborhood. 

"Wrong demographics"

"Right demographics"

wrong neighborhood, wrong school WRONG WRONG WRONG

yuck

*puke*

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Good luck with everything!  I bought my first house almost 2 years ago... but it was relatively simple for me because I bought the house I'd been renting/living in the previous 5 years (so no moving was involved... I LOATHE moving).  It was just price negotiation and getting the loan finalized for me, only took about a month.

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Thanks!  I've seen a few places that I like.   Going to look at a couple more if I can get my students to nail down a schedule.   Nothing that's perfect so far, but several that would do nicely.

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