The Home Buying / Selling Thread

Marauder06

Marauder06

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I'm buying a house for the first time in... 15(?) years. I forgot what a pain in the ass it can be.

Starting this thread so people can share their stories about, and advice on, buying and selling a home.

I'll start by saying the housing market is CRAZY where we are buying. We made same-day offers on 3-4 houses and someone either got an offer in sooner than we did, or outbid us. There was one house that we really liked and thought was a bit underpriced, we offered $50k over asking, and *still* got outbid.

Like I said, CRAZY.
 
Just closed escrow this past week and I’m still ready to fight someone due to the stress and the seller’s behavior at time of close. Market (still in California) is nuts and I’m still crying because I turned down a job in Texas because this came through.
 
We are in the top 4/5 hottest markets; a few weeks ago there was a video that went national about a local house were there were dozens of people out front waiting to tour (A North Carolina house was swarmed with interested shoppers just hours after hitting the market for $260,000). We bought our house for $209K almost 16 years ago; three years ago the valuation was $275K, now it's $450K. We know someone who put her house on the market as-is, sold same day, for $75K over asking. It's a crazy market.

Our problem is, if we did sell, there's no where to buy because everything is like this. We'd have to move an hour or more away. We're hunkering down until our youngest (11) is out of the house, then we'll sell.
 
LimaPanther said:
Here in my area of TN, we are being overrun with those moving from NY. House prices have now jumped from the 100K/200k to 300/400K.
20 years ago, I bought 20 acres and a house for less than 100K, Now been offered 400K. Not selling
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So I live in NY and can absolutely empathize with the flight back down south. One day...

In the place we wanted to live, just north of West Point, folks fleeing NYC are buying up the property at an astonishing rate. The last house we bid on was $750,000. Now I'm from the South. $750,000, especially back when I last bought a house, would have bought me my own fief back home. Here, it bought me would have bought me a very nice, but not super-fancy, house on a piece of land that's just big enough for me to justify a riding lawnmower.

We ended up buying in the town immediately to the south of West Point, for the low, low price of ~$525,000. With what we're putting down the mortgage and associated costs will still be less than BAH (that's how expensive it is to live around here) but damn.
 
Marauder- For that price you could get a lake side house plus in my area get all 4 seasons. Saturday, I had 5in of snow and Sunday it was gone. Today I am back in the 60s. Come on down. By the way, my daughter has a friend that was an instructor at WP. I think she is a LTC now.
 
Devildoc said:
We are in the top 4/5 hottest markets; a few weeks ago there was a video that went national about a local house were there were dozens of people out front waiting to tour (A North Carolina house was swarmed with interested shoppers just hours after hitting the market for $260,000). We bought our house for $209K almost 16 years ago; three years ago the valuation was $275K, now it's $450K. We know someone who put her house on the market as-is, sold same day, for $75K over asking. It's a crazy market.

Our problem is, if we did sell, there's no where to buy because everything is like this. We'd have to move an hour or more away. We're hunkering down until our youngest (11) is out of the house, then we'll sell.
Click to expand...

We paid 342 in southish durham(HVF…). Zillow says our house is worth 500+ today.
 
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TLDR20 said:
We paid 342 in southish durham(HVF…) paid 342. Zillow says our house is worth 500+ today.
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I know it well. We lived next door in Woodcroft when we got married. We're in north Durham now (about 6 miles north of 85). Your area is exploding in value.
 
LimaPanther said:
Marauder- For that price you could get a lake side house plus in my area get all 4 seasons. Saturday, I had 5in of snow and Sunday it was gone. Today I am back in the 60s. Come on down. By the way, my daughter has a friend that was an instructor at WP. I think she is a LTC now.
Click to expand...
I want to move back South, but there are some things here I still want to do and some contributions I still think I can make. One day we'll return home.
 
The family and I were able to move in August out of pure luck.

My wife was hanging out with some of her friends and mentioned that we want to move due to increasing crime in the area, poor schools, etc, but there's no way we'd survive a bidding war. It turns out that her friend was about to put their house on the market in June but didn't want to go through the selling process. It was only 6 years old so we agreed to buy it as-is for the appraisal price, which was only $3,000 more than we were hoping.

We listed our mediocre twin on a Friday, got about 8 bids, and ended up signing an offer on Sunday $53,000 over our asking.
 
Ex3 said:
Since you're back in the area, we should organize a link up with the NY crew!

I've been spending a lot of time at my place upstate. There are still some good deals up here: 30 Schillings Crossing Rd, Canaan, NY 12029 | MLS #140626 | Zillow
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I LOVE your place upstate. My girls still talk about how you let us stay there while we were awaiting housing the last time we were stationed at West Point. But I think I'm going to have to save a few more pennies before I can afford a place like that ;)

I would also welcome a linkup. West Point is open now and we could do it here. It's kind of between your place and the City, IIRC.
 
My son and DIL bought their first house in 2014 for 99k. Nice but small ranch. Fast forward to 2021 they were looking to get into a bigger house for the growing family. Same story. Everything in their price range in their preferred areas suddenly became over 100k out of their range due to bidding wars. February a house one block from their house came on the market. They were able to get in to see it the night before the open house. They made their offer on the spot but seller said that they would wait and see what happened the next day at the open house. Just so happened the next morning there was the mother of all blizzards that shut everything down for the weekend. The sellers accepted their offer that evening. My son closed on that house and moved in before putting the ranch house on the market. They were asking 149,900 for the ranch. The house sold in one day. Full cash (yes cash) $163,500 deal. Unbelievable for a cute but small 2 bed 1.5 bath ranch with a small galley kitchen. Sometimes luck happens.
 

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