Buying your first home in US. Headache or super fun time?

[silvana.toma 15]

Ok, so we lost the home we put an offer on. The other couple offered to pay in cash the full amount of the closing costs and also closing in march 1st. We could not close so soon even if we wanted to..

So, it wasn;t ment to be i guess, and to be honest i wasn't looking forward to all the work that had to be put in just to be able to move in that house...just trying to find that silver lining

SO, now there are 2 other homes just like the one we liked(same builder, same house)only that these are a bit more expensive(one is 177k, and one is 169k), but it's in ready to move in condition, just a power wash, and steam clean the carpets, that's all.

One is short sale, valued at 382k, and it's on the market for 169k. I know i know....i know about short sales...they are a head ache, BUT the realtors (the mother daughter team)we talked to yesterday told us the home already had a contract on it, but the people could not come up with the money. So the bank knows and agrees with the price, so our realtors are very happy with that. Today we will go see it, and hopefully it will be worth the extra money(compared to the other one for 154k)

Our realtors are NOT the listing agent.

I will let you know, as i am dying to barbeque on my back yard this summer!

I never had a house, my parents lived in an apartment(like most people in romania)so to me this is like a dream come true!

[Mithra 1,185]

Like others have said - you definitely want to get pre-approved so you know how much home you can afford. It's frustrating to look at houses that are out of your price range. I would also recommend getting in touch with a trusted realitor who can do the searching for you. Most places won't get too excited to show you anything if you haven't been pre-approved since it's basically wasting their time. Ask around to friends, family and co-workers to get in touch with a good realitor who then can get you in touch with a mortgage person to do the pre-approving. My husband and I just bought our first house together last year. It was a little daunting at first but once we were pre-approved it was actually fun.

[silvana.toma 15]

Like others have said - you definitely want to get pre-approved so you know how much home you can afford. It's frustrating to look at houses that are out of your price range. I would also recommend getting in touch with a trusted realitor who can do the searching for you. Most places won't get too excited to show you anything if you haven't been pre-approved since it's basically wasting their time. Ask around to friends, family and co-workers to get in touch with a good realitor who then can get you in touch with a mortgage person to do the pre-approving. My husband and I just bought our first house together last year. It was a little daunting at first but once we were pre-approved it was actually fun.

Tx for the concern, but we have been pre-aproved a month ago, we have the letter from the bank saying for how much we are beeing pre-aproved.We are also going to call the mtg person again today just to make sure we are good for this other house.

Also, we are working with a realtor right now that was reacomended by my huby's assistant, and she seems very good(she and her mom make a team so it's two brains in action)

[Mithra 1,185]

Oh this thread is older than I thought. My bad. Well good luck on the house hunting.

[silvana.toma 15]

Oh this thread is older than I thought. My bad. Well good luck on the house hunting.

Tx!!!!

[silvana.toma 15]

Just a short update on my house hunting..

We put an offer on that short sale on monday(it sounds an easy short sale as the bank agrees with the listed price)even though we saw the house at night and there was no electricity. So we told the realtors(mom and daughter team) we would also like to see the home in day light as it is normal, right?

So they told us on sunday we can meet at 11. Sunday came around and me and my hubby we woke up early as we were so excited that we could not even sleep. So around 9:30 as we were having breakfast, my hubby says:let me text the realtors to make sure we are good to go. The realtors texted us back that she is sick, and she can not go, so my hubby asked if there was someone else that can take us as next week my hubby has drill, and works late everyday because he lost his assistaant, and obviously we would like to see the house before the bank comes back with a counteroffer, as we would like to see how much money we will have to put into it. The realtor texted us back saying her mother is at her grandmother as her grandma is also sick. When we met with them they said they have an open house on sunday from 12 to 4.

We have been waiting a whole week to see this home in day light, and it was such a bummer that last minute she told us we can not go. At least it's good my hubby texted her, maybe she would not even remember us.

I am sorry, I can understand beeing sick, but to me this sounds like: we already got you, you put an offer in, we know you like the house enough to buy it, so we are not worried that we will loose you, so right now we are chasing other clients, as this is our bussiest day.

You know...i am so dissapointed, that i just want to get this home, and i hope we stay there forever so we never hear the word realtor ever again.

I know there are some amazing realtors out there, i am just sad we were not lucky enough to meet them, and what is worse there are some people who ruin the reputation for everone.

[Krikit 1,164]

We put an offer on that short sale on monday(it sounds an easy short sale as the bank agrees with the listed price)

One thing to keep in mind...... Even though the bank agrees with the listed price, it doesn't mean the mortgage insurance company will. The bank doesn't care..... they're getting their $$. It's the mortgage insurance company which has to cover the shortfall so they generally balk and stall the sale while trying to get the owners to cough up the rest. At some point the bank will lose patience and foreclose, which forces the mortgage insurance company into paying out anyway. This can go on for months on end. See if you can get any history of the short sale. Have there been other offers accepted which fell through? This will give you an indication of whether there are problems behind the scenes. Anyway.... Just wanted to give you a heads up. Good luck.

[silvana.toma 15]

One thing to keep in mind...... Even though the bank agrees with the listed price, it doesn't mean the mortgage insurance company will. The bank doesn't care..... they're getting their $$. It's the mortgage insurance company which has to cover the shortfall so they generally balk and stall the sale while trying to get the owners to cough up the rest. At some point the bank will lose patience and foreclose, which forces the mortgage insurance company into paying out anyway. This can go on for months on end. See if you can get any history of the short sale. Have there been other offers accepted which fell through? This will give you an indication of whether there are problems behind the scenes. Anyway.... Just wanted to give you a heads up. Good luck.

hey tx for the info, Yes this home had a contract on it, but the problem was the buyers couldn't come up with the financing, and right after that they dropped the price another 10k. we offered 6k more anyway, because we had someone else put an offer on this house, so we wanted to make sure we get it. we'll see how it goes.

[Fandango 1,439]

Just a short update on my house hunting..

We put an offer on that short sale on monday(it sounds an easy short sale as the bank agrees with the listed price)even though we saw the house at night and there was no electricity. So we told the realtors(mom and daughter team) we would also like to see the home in day light as it is normal, right?

So they told us on sunday we can meet at 11. Sunday came around and me and my hubby we woke up early as we were so excited that we could not even sleep. So around 9:30 as we were having breakfast, my hubby says:let me text the realtors to make sure we are good to go. The realtors texted us back that she is sick, and she can not go, so my hubby asked if there was someone else that can take us as next week my hubby has drill, and works late everyday because he lost his assistaant, and obviously we would like to see the house before the bank comes back with a counteroffer, as we would like to see how much money we will have to put into it. The realtor texted us back saying her mother is at her grandmother as her grandma is also sick. When we met with them they said they have an open house on sunday from 12 to 4.

We have been waiting a whole week to see this home in day light, and it was such a bummer that last minute she told us we can not go. At least it's good my hubby texted her, maybe she would not even remember us.

I am sorry, I can understand beeing sick, but to me this sounds like: we already got you, you put an offer in, we know you like the house enough to buy it, so we are not worried that we will loose you, so right now we are chasing other clients, as this is our bussiest day.

You know...i am so dissapointed, that i just want to get this home, and i hope we stay there forever so we never hear the word realtor ever again.

I know there are some amazing realtors out there, i am just sad we were not lucky enough to meet them, and what is worse there are some people who ruin the reputation for everone.

What a fkin nightmare!

As an aside, if someone - especially a first time homebuyer - wanted to put in an offer on a house they only saw in the dark, I'd urge them to hold off until they could see it during the day. It's kinda like bringing home a stranger at night for a ne night stand, lol...it might not look so good in the morning light.

At the very least, I would have shown up sick just to open the door. If I was on my deathbed, I'd find a colleague to open it up for you.

When I was in labor with my son, I was still dealing with customers and answering my calls, lol. (of course, that's before it became excruciating,)

I'm so sorry we as a profession have disappointed you...it certainly sounds like they've lost the 'fire' for you, and that's sad. What if your hubby hadn't texted her? Would you have been sitting at the house waiting for them?? Ugh, this makes me angry.

Did you see the house yet? Is someone living in it? Can you walk around the property and at least look in the windows?

If I were you, I'd actually tell/email this team that you are disappointed and WHY you are so...maybe that will make them pick up the huge ball they dropped with you.

[Fandango 1,439]

One thing to keep in mind...... Even though the bank agrees with the listed price, it doesn't mean the mortgage insurance company will. The bank doesn't care..... they're getting their $. It's the mortgage insurance company which has to cover the shortfall so they generally balk and stall the sale while trying to get the owners to cough up the rest. At some point the bank will lose patience and foreclose, which forces the mortgage insurance company into paying out anyway. This can go on for months on end. See if you can get any history of the short sale. Have there been other offers accepted which fell through? This will give you an indication of whether there are problems behind the scenes. Anyway.... Just wanted to give you a heads up. Good luck.

Usually (in this area) if the bank already has a price, they're good to go. I've personally never run into or heard of a scenario like this one.

The LA might not be able to disclose the history of the sale further than 'there was a contract, BPO was done, price agreed to, buyers lost interest/backed out/couldn't get their loan/etc' which is usually what happened when the bank has an already agreed upon sale price.

hey tx for the info, Yes this home had a contract on it, but the problem was the buyers couldn't come up with the financing, and right after that they dropped the price another 10k. we offered 6k more anyway, because we had someone else put an offer on this house, so we wanted to make sure we get it. we'll see how it goes.

damn, I need to read a thread through before commenting. lol, I was right.

[silvana.toma 15]

Thanks a lot for suporting me, this gives me peace of mind we are not the crazy ones here.

WE did saw the house in day light, it truly is an amazing house....in 2005 the previous owner bought it for 300k, now we offered 175k for it(it was on the market for 169k, but offered more cause we had competition), so if we get it ...we truly got ourselves a steal.

All in all if we get this house i would be really happy, now we are waiting on the bank to say yes to our offer and we are good to go! But short sales are soo slow...they should not be called short sales. We have been waiting to hear back from the bank for 2 weeks now...and the realtors told us it will probably take another week...

It's sad we had this bad experience with realtors, but in the same time i know there are some amazing realtors out there!

[Krikit 1,164]

Usually (in this area) if the bank already has a price, they're good to go. I've personally never run into or heard of a scenario like this one.

Meet the scenario! That's exactly what happened to our short sale purchase.

[Krikit 1,164]

The LA might not be able to disclose the history of the sale further than 'there was a contract, BPO was done, price agreed to, buyers lost interest/backed out/couldn't get their loan/etc' which is usually what happened when the bank has an already agreed upon sale price.

There were two other offers during the year leading up to the purchase of our home. Both of them were accepted by the bank, and both of them were lost because the mortgage insurance company wanted the sellers to cough up more money. Both purchasers walked away because it was taking too long to resolve. The same thing happened with our offer.

[silvana.toma 15]

Aparently they are getting an appraiser to apraise the house, and the real estate agent told us it's a really good sign for us. Also before us they already had a contract going with some other buyer but they could not come up with the financing so they had to backed out. We were told that is another very good sign. we will see i guess.

We are going into our 3rd week and we hope we hear something back this week.

Why everything has to be so complicated in life?

[Krikit 1,164]

Buying a house in the US is the worst process ever. They really know how to take the fun out of it. lol