Lessons on Buying a House: The Latest Update, and Even Better–A Mortgage Calculator!

This is going to be short; it’s past bedtime, but here’s where everything stands.  Last Thursday, the offer contract finally got the buyers’ signatures and my final signature on one point that I finally caved in on–the number of days on the termination option.  I wanted 14, but they only would go for 10.  As one of my friends said, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”  It really wasn’t such a big deal, anyway so far.

Fortunately, I was able to get an inspector, who had been recommended by a colleague, to do that job on Saturday.  Also, fortunately, unlike the first agent I had, who had also been recommended by a friend, the inspector turned out to be great.  I went out and pretty much stayed by his side for most of the 3-hour inspection.  He was both informative and helpful, showing me not only problem areas, but also making suggestions for various types of maintenance to keep up the house.  He had no problem answering my questions, even, I suppose, as naive as some of them probably were.

There weren’t too many surprises because most of the problem areas I or my agent had spotted on two previous visits to the house.  A number of problems relate to electrical aspects, because the current owners seemed to have done a lot of jerry-rigging of various electrical lines and connections, especially in the garage and to some “ambient” lighting outside, but there inside electrical problems as well.  There were quite a variety of other issues, maybe the biggest one being the roof, which is getting toward the end of its life.  Even so, the inspector told me it wasn’t going to leak.  That means it’s something that I won’t have to do right away.

I was pretty beat (and feeling kind of beat up too) Saturday after the inspection; there was a lot of information to take in, and I seemed to be able to think about just the problems, even though there are so many things about this house that I really like, especially, the upstairs bedrooms and the 2 and 1/2 baths.  Yeah, one guy with 2 and 1/2 baths!  What a deal!

Today my agent called and wanted to talk about the inspection.  I thought, “Oh, no, there’s some problem.”  However, when I got to his office, he told me that the sellers’ agent had been pretty amenable to some of the things that we had previously wanted, so we made a list of repairs that I want to be done, and we made an addendum to the original paperwork.  Hopefully, the owners will agree to repair or pay for the repair of some of these, and that will be just that much less I will have to worry about doing or paying someone to do.

My agent recommended also doing a termite inspection, but he is also going to ask the other agent about what has been done previously.  Then the “biggie”–the appraisal.  The finance company has to get a VA-approved appraiser to do it, and, of course, that’s something I have to pay for.  If the appraisal all works out OK–meaning the house is valued at more or at least the amount of money I am borrowing to buy the house–then basically, everything will be a go.  The last thing will be a survey, something else I have to pay for, but which is required by the title company.

Sometime soon, my finance company will give me a “good faith estimate” of what my total loan will be, what remaining closing costs I’ll have, and what my monthly payment will be.  I’ve already got a quote for the homeowner’s insurance and it’s less than I had expected, so that will make my monthly payment a bit lower than I had thought.

If you’re new to this as I am, here’s what’s included in monthly payment:  payment on the actual loan (principal and interest), taxes on the property, including any Homeowners Association fees; homeowner’s insurance, and PMI (which is a type of loan insurance that lenders require).  However, with a VA loan, there is no PMI, because that is actually what the VA is doing–insuring your loan to the lender.  On the other hand, there is a VA funding fee, which is paid to the government and now is at 2 percent.

Here’s is the mortgage calculator that I have been using.  It has really come in handy!

Sorry I haven’t been posting much on here, but there’s too much mental and emotional energy being expended in all this to have much left over for blogging.

OK, so maybe that wasn’t so short.

Lessons in Buying a House: The Process Continues . . .

Acquiring a house takes up a lot of energy–mental energy that is.  There are emotional highs when you find a place that you really like, lows when barriers get in the way, and there’s lots of waiting, which gives you time to think even m0re, which can be almost all-consuming.

This coming week will be a big one I think.  We’ve agreed on a price and most everything else.  If the offer comes back signed from the sellers, then the finance company must give their first OK and let me know all the details of my closing costs and what my monthly payment will be.  The sellers also have to get the utilities turned back on, so I can get the inspector. They had someone in the house when I first looked at it, but they moved out and now the utilities are off.  The inspection is one of the biggies.  To the inexperienced eye, there doesn’t look to be many problems, but that is why you have an inspector check it all out.  Then if there are no major problems with the inspection, and I still want the house, there will have to be an appraisal done to ascertain if the place is worth what the finance company will be loaning me.  Also, the sellers don’t have a survey, so that will have to be done.  Finally, I have to get hazard insurance (home owners insurance) as the finance company requires that you pay for a year of insurance in advance.  That’s four fairly good chunks of money to pay.  Fortunately, the second one won’t have to be done and paid unless the first works out OK, and, of course, the third and fourth won’t need to be done unless the first two work out.

I hope it all works out.  I think the house makes “a good fit” for me.  It has all the main features that I was looking for: nice, but not too big outdoor space, a big, very usable kitchen, and a shower in the master bath.  Even though it’s located out just a bit further than I would have liked, I’m hoping the drive won’t be too bad, and the neighborhood has a nice feel to it.  It’s also close to stores and necessities: a Walgreen’s, a dry cleaners, and a vet, just up the street, barely a quarter mile away, and two of my other favorite destinations, Barnes and Noble and Petsmart are just a mile down the road.  I went to check out the Barnes and Noble yesterday, and, yes, it’s definitely out in suburbia: they have row after row of books relating to religion and tons of educational materials that make it look like there must be a lot of home schooling going on out there, but they have only two shelves of gay and lesbian books.  Oh, well, I’m sure that they can order anything I might want.

I guess now I’ll have to pay less attention to “House Hunters” and “My First Place” on HGTV and take a better look at the decorating shows.  In fact, I’ve already found several paint companies’ sites where you can play around with different paint colors in various rooms.  The master in this house feels like someone loved pumpkin pie; that’s the first one that is going to have to be changed.  Oh, well, that can happen after all the papers have been signed and I actually have the keys in my hand.

So if anyone who reads my blog has wondered what has happened to me, all I can say is this house-buying process is such a big thing that it outweighs almost everything else right at the moment.  I just haven’t had the energy to care much to write about politics, history, or even the weather.  I know that all that will come back, and there will be many other things about which to give my two cents.

Lessons in Buying a House: An Update on What’s Happening, Sort of . . .

Since it’s been so long since I’ve posted, I guess I had better put something.  I haven’t been jazzed enough to write, but life otherwise hasn’t slowed down.  Work pulls me along, and I enjoy the routine of the days even though what happens moment by moment is only routine in that something similar has happened before.

The house hunting/buying continues.  I put in an offer on one that was good in price and commute, but not great in neighborhood, and definitely weak in kitchen.  (I might mention that this kitchen had only two drawers, one of which won’t open unless you open the oven door first.  I have a small, but better kitchen in my apartment.)  Actually, the bottom line was that the houses are going for a good price (good meaning low) in this neighborhood, but this seller wouldn’t go down to the range of the comps.  In the end, I was worried that even though I could afford the house, that the finance company’s appraisers wouldn’t appraise it high enough for me to be able to finance it.  I guess too the neighborhood and the house just didn’t feel right for me.

After I had put the offer in on that place, and while the seller wasn’t going down but baby steps in price, I found another place in a neighborhood that I like a lot.  Yeah, it’s out in the “burbs”, but it has a great kitchen.  The appliances do need updating (Do I sound like those first-time homebuyers from HGTV?), but the work space is great!  And I think I might even have to use even my toes to help count all the drawers!  It’s going to mean getting up earlier to get on the road to work, but did I mention the great backyard with even a pergula?  I’m not even sure I know how to spell it.  It’s one of those backyards that won’t take a lot of mowing–just enough to say you did it–and will make a great place for a little papillon dog to play and sniff and human folks to sit and drink ice tea, or whatever, and enjoy the evenings.

My new realtor has been great through all of this, helpful but not pushy, and I will soon add another post to follow up the previous one about what makes him good.  But for the moment, this isn’t over because we still have to put in an offer, negotiate, do the inspection and appraisal, finish the paperwork on the financing (My finance people have been great from the beginning; I guess that should be another post too.), and hopefully do the closing close to Trick ‘r Treat time.

If this all works out, there will be pictures!  And, of course, a PayPal link for donations for new furniture.  Just kidding, folks!

Oh, yeah . . . dig the new banner.  There are lots of toadstools, or mushrooms, whatever you want to call them, now that we finally have had some rain.  They are popping up in many places and seem to be big!  I guess they were just waiting to get through all that dry weather we had for so long.

Lessons in Buying a House: Choosing a Real Estate Agent

There hasn’t been much activity on this site for awhile, I mean on my part as far as writing anything new.  I’ve had a break from work, which rather than energize me, somewhat put me in a state of lethargy (deservedly so or not),  a slovenliness,  which, among other things, folded itself into a kind of writer’s block.

What’s been causing all this I already know: when I have a big decision to make, I also get stuck accomplishing other things.

Anyway, if you’ve read some of my earlier posts, you know that I’m in the process of buying a house, my first house.  It’s been an ongoing challenge for awhile now because I’ve been so methodical about it all, trying to be smart and make the best decisions.  I’ve already got my financing, with help from the VA and the expectancy of the $8,000 tax rebate to boot.

After I had secured my financing, I found a house that I really liked through har.com, and I wanted to check it out,but I didn’t have an agent, so I contacted one, based on a friend’s recommendation.  Even though I put in offers on two different houses with this agent, I never felt really comfortable working with her, and for a number of reasons, just didn’t trust her.  She didn’t help much with checking out the condition or value of the houses; instead, she advised me to offer the limit of my financing, and, in fact, told the seller’s agent what my limit was.  In the end, she seemed only to be pushing me to buy so that she could get her commission.

After that experience, I just have held off for awhile, knowing that I had to find another agent, but I felt like I had a block, just like writer’s block.  After hearing about my experience with this first agent, several friends and acquaintances told me about agents who they thought could help me, but I haven’t wanted to do that because now I have an uneasy situation with the friend who recommended the first agent, because he knows that I had problems with her but she is also his friend too.

So I did what I should have done in the first place.  As part of my whole process of buying a house, almost a year ago, I took a couple of Leisure Learning classes about financing and buying a house.  All of the instructors were good, but I felt one guy was really knowledgeable and down-to-earth.

Just a few days ago, I broke out of my lethargy and called him, and he was just as informative and helpful on the phone as he had been in the class.

Yesterday we met to look at a place.  It isn’t going to be “my first place”, but I realized that I had made the right decision in contacting him.  He’s much more of a “people person” than the first agent, and I feel that he understands someone like me, who’s buying for the first time.  Even when we got to the property, he didn’t rush me into looking at the house, but chatted first about other interests that we both had.  We looked at the place together, discussing the pluses and minuses.  And there was no push to buy or not buy.  Then we agreed to look at some other places that I’m interested in sometime next week.

So how do you find a good realtor?  I still don’t have an easy answer.  Here’s a site that gives some good questions that a buyer should ask a prospective agent.  I have read through them and even printed them out to put with all my “house buying stuff”, but I’m not sure whether most new buyers would just pop into a real estate agency and start interviewing an agent.

One thing I’ve learned is that some agents may have you sign an exclusivity agreement, which is a sort of contract.  However, in that case, you can put a time limit, so if I were unsure about how well I liked this agent, I wouldn’t make the agreement for more than like three weeks or a month.  If you don’t get a house in that time, but you decide you like the agent, you can always extend the agreement, or if you don’t like the agent, you can find another.

I think buyers, especially first-timers, are really at a disadvantage in the home-buying process.  After all, both agents get a larger commission the more the house sells for.  The seller too has already been through the same process at least once, when he bought the house, and he wants to get as much money as he can.

So I think the best buyer’s agent has to be someone that you can feel some connection with, some rapport.  Probably, a guy will have better luck with a male agent, and any other similarities, like age, and like in my case, sexuality.  (Yeah, I thought he might be gay when I took the Leisure Learning class, but I think I have probably the worst gaydar in the world.)  The more the buyer and the agent have in common, the more likelihood that they will look at a property in a similar way.

I’m still not to the end of making a determination about real estate agents.  In fact, I haven’t veered far yet from my initial impression that they are not much less greasy than car salemen.  Likewise, though you know they have to drive around a lot in their line of work, you also get another question mark sprouting out of the top of your head when they drive up in big black European cars.