Buying a house?

[FourRingCircus]

Ok, sounds silly for someone that owns two houses to ask how to go about buying one, but for the first it was DH's ggma's and was cheap so it wasn't a huge deal... far cheaper than rent (paid for now). Second one was family land gifted to us, then we built. (PSA - hindsight is 20/20, don't build on family land... even if you think you will always live where you do. Life throws curveballs sometimes :roll: :lol: ). Backstory, we are unexpectedly going to be moving to WV late summer/early fall. It's a 6-7 hour drive so feasible to go check things out, but not really given DH's work schedule, classes he's taking, 4 kids in tow, and my gma is moving down to stay with us (camper out back - it was going to be "permanent," until she couldn't live on her own anymore... then we found out about the move, now it's just for the summer).

My parents had a horrendous "sight unseen" purchase 20 years ago, and it's still a lifetime regret (they still own it, gorgeous house my dad totally remodeled, town is going down the drain so they can't sell it). I just can't do it. I know I need to get preapproval for a loan, then see about inspections. He has two guys already up there that are so excited he's going to be their boss again that they are scoping places out for us :lol: . They did a video driveby on one, then one guy is going to go back later with his drone for a birds eye view :lol: . I am going to call the town office and see about zoning for chickens... it's so densely populated it seems like nearly every house we look at is tied to an HOA which could go either way. Slightly overwhelmed with the idea of moving in general... buying a house is going to be a difficult decision (what we want to live in for 3-5 years, then also thinking of the resale value later).

 

[Fernie]

Do you have anybody that can watch the kids so you can go up there on a weekend and look at places? Do you have anybody in the area that could go and tour houses for you? Some realtors will show to a third party and some will do a video tour of the houses. If I was closer I would take the kids for a weekend so you could go and look. Or I would go look at properties and do a personal video tour for you.

 

[FourRingCircus]

I talked with a very helpful lady at the city office who used to be in real estate lending... she was able to answer a number of questions and directed us toward a buyer agent (not sure that's the right term, too lazy to go get my notes). She said that someone like that would sort through the details, get the preapproval started, line up inspections, things like that... which would be very helpful given that we're not up there to be able to see a lot of things for ourselves, nor do we know the area at all. He does have two guys up there doing video drive bys for us That is a huge help. They are really excited that he might be coming up there, they worked for him at the NC plant and were bummed to leave him.

 

[Fernie]

I talked with a very helpful lady at the city office who used to be in real estate lending... she was able to answer a number of questions and directed us toward a buyer agent (not sure that's the right term, too lazy to go get my notes). She said that someone like that would sort through the details, get the preapproval started, line up inspections, things like that... which would be very helpful given that we're not up there to be able to see a lot of things for ourselves, nor do we know the area at all. He does have two guys up there doing video drive bys for us That is a huge help. They are really excited that he might be coming up there, they worked for him at the NC plant and were bummed to leave him.

Good and yes it is a Buyer Agent. They work for YOU not the seller. Maker sure you check them out first. Look for reviews on the agents. I forget the site but there is a site you can get ratings on Realtors (buyer agents work for the buyers but are real estate agents ) Been through this and had real estate agents in the family give me a crash course when I went to buy my first.

Look online but also google the addresses and check them out on google maps. Sometimes what looks good on paper and from pictures Google maps can show you the area from over head.

 

[FourRingCircus]

She gave me a (personal, not business) recommendation for a place up there to check into a Buyer Agent... that alone would take so much pressure off, and pretty much answer all the questions I had in the above post :lol: . Had no idea where to start, so I called the city office to check on city limits for one property and ended up with SO much more info needed!

 

[TheChad]

My wife and I are working our way towards moving. I visit Zillow and look at houses almost daily. Googling an address works good once you have one. Zillow will let you see a lot of interior pictures as well. You can set parameters to help find the right place. The first thing I do is set up a search that requires the property to have at least 5 acres. This will eliminate most of the properties that are in an HOA. You can also set it to look within a certain distance from his job. I also get daily updates of price changes made to houses in the area we are looking.

You also need to get pre-approved for a loan. A lot of agents won't take you out to look till you do. It is very easy and can be done on line. Usually if you are a part of a credit union they will offer good rates. Check your credit scores as well before starting the process so you are well informed.

If you will be selling your current home, go ahead and have an agent look it over and give you recommendations on what needs to be done to have it ready to sale. We have our master bath torn apart and have almost finished painting it. The toilet is right next to my bed. The wife has already told me not to get any ideas. I have been more worried I would wake up in a daze and try to go. LOL

Hope this helps. Good luck and hope you find exactly what you are looking for.

 

[FourRingCircus]

Zillow has been fun... although sometimes we get some crazy suggested properties that we REALLY like, only to find they are an hour away :roll: . Preapproval is what I need to do, but our current bank doesn't finance for that state so I need to go somewhere else. We're starting to label what we want/need to sell to get a little extra for the downpayment as well.

Unfortunately with it being family land, selling isn't much of an option. Legally? Yes, we could. But we're already on not-so-good terms just by suggesting a move. Thankfully SIL came back and said that she might move in for a little while - help us out, and get her out of her parents house. We will keep one room furnished and crash here when we visit, store the questionable items (aka, things we're not sure we want to take, but don't really want to part with just yet) in one corner of the basement, etc.

 

[hotzcatz]

Zillow isn't usually the most up to date real estate website. Try Trulia, Redfin, Realtor.com or some of the others. For our area, the MLS with the most listings is AlohaLiving.com but that one probably won't do you much good.

Can you rent for a bit in the area you're interested in? We get loads of folks trying to move over here without living here first and many times they end up somewhere they'd prefer not to be if they'd have been able to look around very much beforehand.

 

[FourRingCircus]

Zillow isn't usually the most up to date real estate website. Try Trulia, Redfin, Realtor.com or some of the others. For our area, the MLS with the most listings is AlohaLiving.com but that one probably won't do you much good.

Can you rent for a bit in the area you're interested in? We get loads of folks trying to move over here without living here first and many times they end up somewhere they'd prefer not to be if they'd have been able to look around very much beforehand.

Rent is about $1K/month :x I would rather not throw that money away, not to mention likely having to sign a lease for a determined number of months (usually a year). If nothing else we buy a cheap camper and live at the campground for a couple months until they shut down in November.

The realtor finally got back with us, evidently her emails with listings were getting pushed to DH's junk folder. She sent us several that haven't made it to Zillow yet. I'll check out the other websites as well. I know Realtor has given me a couple options that weren't coming up on Zillow, but my sllllloooooowwww computer doesn't handle it as well.

 

[Random Rabbit]

My only piece of advice would be : Check out the zoning limitations and/or HOA limitations FIRST.
Nothing is sadder than to find out that a large percentage of what a person wants to do, is restricted in that location.
Then people find themselves on the wrong side of the law for that area.

 

[akane]

Sadly you can check all the laws you want but it comes down to your neighbors. Around here at least it all depends on the amount of noise they want to cause as to how serious authority takes things and what laws they try to stuff it under or ignore it. If your neighbors want to cause hell you will never be without city checks, animal control, warnings to keep things cleaner/neater, move stupid stuff that is some law they never enforced or interpreted that way ever before... Our neighbor is in trouble for something that has been sitting in his yard for over 10 years because of an idiot on the block the reported EVERYONE. We went through everything in our yard in confusion of why we kept getting notices while tearing down all our laid out garden stuff and finally got a person answer that we'd stacked some limbs cut off a tree not entirely neat and even for a firewood pile so it got labelled a "brush pile" that could harbor pest animals. And possums live in the foundation of the neighboring house but you are complaining about a loose pile of stick only a few feet across and high. Rabbits are fully legal and I followed all requirements to have a guy not stop banging hard enough I wonder if he ever had to go to the hospital for damage to his fist over our rabbits outside in rain and winter with roofs, 2-3 solid sides, and enclosed areas of hay and solid floor until eventually a rabbit was stolen and I gave up.

By law I'm perfectly fine. By neighbors I've abandoned my double lot yard until I can get a privacy fence up at least but that won't block the people who sit higher than us. They can whine about my overgrown garden but if it's purposefully planted there is no maintenance requirement on it. Only that the weeds be kept under 1' high and the grass mowed to a certain height so my mulberry trees, berry vines, and herbals can run rampant if the weeds are choked out by the chocolate mint I planted which can look like weeds all it wants but it isn't on the list. I also stashed all the small animal waste in compostable real burlap and laid them out on weed barrier cloth so I can take what would fill a 4' cube of plywood box worth of bedding and poop every 6months and put it outside to compost without breaking the animal waste compost pile ordinance cause it's not a compost pile technically. It's contained bags of unknown material composting from the bottom up to make raised beds when I decide I want to expend the effort and risk on the outdoors again. The guy who hand edges his sidewalk for grass and weeds has learned poking me and threatening me with city ordinances does not get him what he wants cause I have always been good at not outright breaking the rules. Leave me alone and I'll maintain things a lot neater than if you make me do it underhanded and avoid you.

It's not stuff any walk through a house, video, realtor, city code, etc... can prepare you for. More you or a close friend need to meet your future neighbors and knock on some doors about your plans to see how people react as well as any people major up or who make the most noise in a HOA if you get stuck having to choose a house in one. Just talking to them ahead of time can often smooth things over when you do put something in your yard they don't like but mostly it helps weed out the places that are just going to be a waste of money unless you want to stand there and argue your rights and the law all the time. Personally I'd rather not join the weekly domestic disputes in the street that we've reached the point of going "There's police lights outside again." "Oh, wonder what someone is having issues about this time." and go back to the tv or indoor animal project. I've posted the minor vandalism we even had after moving in here and changing things around like padlocking people out of our yard and stuff. Slashed tires (since then we talked to our one neighbor and he said it's happened to him), cut up decorative trees that were outside the fence, stolen rabbit, and breaking into my truck in the backyard after they must have climbed the fence. Overall people have learned it's not going to make me do anything good so don't bother me and I've hidden away the biggest targets.

 

[Marinea]

First...Akane's post is why I will do anything to not live "in town" ever again. Out here, the biggest deal is when a car we don't recognize drives by.

When we were looking for our place, I did searches by googling "MLS real estate *city*". I would then send the MLS numbers of my favorites to the realtor for additional info (like days on the market, a good piece of info to have). The MLS database is always going to be the most up to date, but it does not include properties for sale by owner. On the other hand, larger rural properties being sold by owner are, in my experience, more rare. Around here, there is one main realtor who gets 75% of the listings.

 

[FourRingCircus]

Neighbors scare me a bit . I'll be honest...

I found the "perfect" home, at least if you're just going by description! :lol: (even an RV hookup for my gma or parents!) And looking at the pics that finally popped up... I'm in love. Oh boy that's a lot of money though! We thought it was 50 minutes, but it's only 35. More than we would like, but how cool is that house and property! But boy, that's a lot of money.

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/M ... &3col=true

We might end up renting for a couple/few months. I dread having to move once, much less twice! Ugh. Not to mention the "waste" of money that it would be. I had hoped the campground might be an option, but they shut down in November. But I also don't want to rush into buying something.

 

[akane]

I always thought renting an apartment to just be throwing money away. I could never understand renting except rent to own but my mom kept pushing me not to buy anything when I still listened to her. I learned never listen to my mom. It has never turned out to be the right choice. If you can find an open/monthly lease though it can be useful for moving a long distance. Have you tried looking at houses offering renting space instead of apartment buildings? Sometimes people will loosely rent out a house or sections to various people if they aren't using it anymore. We debated doing that if we move instead of selling our house. There's some land we could inherit or having learned even this area that isn't so far away much better we found the places you can be near town but not really part of town with barely incorporated old farms separated by trees or streams (lots of underground streams that erupt randomly around this town) so that no one expects it well maintained and neighbors aren't on top of you despite still only being maybe 200' away. There are barriers and being edge of town less care about looks.

I don't sun my snakes because the city rewrote laws to be so open the only thing fully legally safe that they cannot remove without obvious abuse/neglect is the domestic cat 5 generations or more from any wild ancestor. That's only because they were forced to add an amendment later to counter the overly strict law due to being loosely worded. Everything else is done so vague they can say anything is banned or a "dangerous animal" if they care to. Even state law though is a bit that way. You cannot collect native reptiles here so everything out of state I have to have a paper saying where I got it but while that's what the highest level state herpetologist says to do they also said there is no outright law saying what constitutes proof so it's up to the authority who investigates whether they feel like giving you trouble or ignoring you. It really really matters I don't give the neighbors any fuel. They say nothing and I am fine. They complain and there is no protective law here. Things have to be completely spotless 100% of the time to have a chance of being fully safe and we all know that is just not possible. A cage goes a few extra days, the sweeping gets delayed, someone spills a water.... It's still far less stress than having touching neighbors who could hear every animal and complain. Now they have to visibly be outside in some situation people would complain about for whatever reason. It's just that they can find a ton of reasons and the irrational fear of large snakes is why my 6-8' pituophis species are sadly not showing up in any pics using full sunlight and seeing what grass is. I plan to plant partridge pea for the little ones and dwarf bamboo for the heavier bruisers in their enclosures. I've been debating how to hide rabbits outside with like those wood sided open car shelters you can buy but I have to get a permit for even that. :roll:

I haven't been around because with a huge med change and entirely different treatment direction it uncovered allergies and set off my nervous system followed by immune system to the point I can't keep mammals of any kind very easily. The cat appears on the bed and my nose starts to stuff up. The only med that stops it without the side effects of the type of stuff I was on causes headaches. Rodents came on so suddenly I almost ended up in ER for asthma attack. I sold all but my giant peruvian cuy project and low urine production species like gerbils and switching to african soft furred rats from norway rats for the snakes. Sadly last time I held baby chinchillas I itched the lumps back open and swelling to return for 3 weeks. I can only touch them while they run on surfaces and my husband gets them in and out. Respiratory masks have become my friends despite my hate of things over my face. I might get a pair of rabbits again, thinking finally those tans, to see if they are better than the rodents and I am greatly improved at custom indoor enclosure building with a few more years practice to contain urine better if necessary.

 

[Marinea]

FRC, noticed that property is in VA. One thing to keep in mind when figuring your budget is that VA has a personal property tax on vehicles each year, due at the same time the real estate property tax is due.

 

[Nymphadora]

I found the "perfect" home, at least if you're just going by description! :lol: (even an RV hookup for my gma or parents!) And looking at the pics that finally popped up... I'm in love. Oh boy that's a lot of money though! We thought it was 50 minutes, but it's only 35. More than we would like, but how cool is that house and property! But boy, that's a lot of money.

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/M ... &3col=true

Wow!

Gorgeous home, I completely agree with you. And the property looks great, too! If only we could find something like that in our area (we'll be lucky if we can find a home on a half acre for $450k)...

 

[FourRingCircus]

FRC, noticed that property is in VA. One thing to keep in mind when figuring your budget is that VA has a personal property tax on vehicles each year, due at the same time the real estate property tax is due.

We drive cheap, old vehicles :lol: I know we had it in our NC budget for what the taxes were here and DH most likely transferred it over. This past year was $5 for our 1990 Nissan - worth about $800 , each Suburban was around $40. Ours is due at registration renewal time now. I just assumed most everyone had property taxes like that, but I know it does vary from state to state. My dad has residency established in Montana and has permanent plates on his vehicles and RV so I don't think he has the taxes there.