First Time Home Buyer - Looking for Insight
Debra Hoff
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
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Debra Hoff
3 years agosushipup1
3 years agoRelated Discussions
First time home buyer, advice needed finding realtor
Comments (18)I disagree with the above two statements. You don't have to show your max, but in a competitive market where there are more buyers than available properties, if you put in an offer showing you are only approved for the amount of your offer, you are very likely to get passed over in favor of a stronger buyer. This does not mean showing $300k on a pre-approval for a $250k offer. It means showing more than $250k. If you come in exactly at the offer price, as an agent, we know that any bump along the way could very well derail your loan. Bump would be an increase in the payment due to property taxes being higher than anticipated or actual insurance premium costs throwing you over your allowed DTI (this is especially relevant where I am in Florida). If you were to show $275k as an example on a $250k offer we would be less concerned about your approval turning into a denial. Note that the seller can not ever force you to pay more than you offer. They can counter offer - but then it is up to you to accept, reject or counter. It is a myth that showing you are a strong buyer means you pay more. In fact, I have seen sellers skip over a higher offer in order to accept the lower offer with the stronger buyer because they know it has a better chance of closing. What good does it do to accept an offer from a weak buyer? From the seller's POV - nothing but waste time. If you say that you are totally maxed out at the offer price, that makes you a weak buyer that is likely to not close. The reason I equate the two items; showing you are maxed out at the offer price equating to a weak buyer, is because in no instance in the financial world is being maxed out credit-wise a good thing....See MoreLooking for advice for First Time Home buyer
Comments (1)FHA is only 3.5% down plus closing costs. Your parents are allowed to gift you funds to purchase the property. There is a way to gift equity, but you will need to speak directly to your lender about the acceptable way to have that gift of equity on this purchase. Yes, it is a stumbling block that your parents own the house now. There are additional lending guidelines for this type of sale. This is in no way an arms length transaction and that is part of the difficulty with financing. The difficult part in this transaction, that I see, is that your parents just purchased the home less than a year ago (in addition to the fact that you are buying a flip from your parents) so the lender may have to use a lower valuation than the new value. Possibly even their purchase price last December. It is likely you will need to have two appraisals on this property to meet guidelines. However, having said that, the guidelines are loosening up from where they were a few years ago so if you are going to pursue this purchase, this is a good time to do it. You will need to discuss this with a very knowledgeable loan officer. Stay away from big box banks and go straight to a non-bank lender like Guaranteed Rate. I say that because you need someone that can underwrite, fund and close an FHA loan directly and has a knowledgeable experienced loan officer to help you negotiate this financing. I have an excellent LO if you need someone just pm me (no obligation). This will be critical to you in this purchase....See MoreLayout advice for first-time home buyers
Comments (8)decoenthusiaste Thank you for all your good advice and your time! Of course the baby is starting to crawl, so we’d like to have good space for him to move on 😊 but we also see the value in waiting and dreaming in the meantime. We also started ideabooks and figured that we’ll be able to do some things while we plan for others. That’s why we really appreciate the advice of the experienced Houzz-ers. Now about plans some of which we are ready to implement right away and some for the future: 1. Structural change #1 we need will be actually returning the hallway from Master Bedroom back to where it used to be. This will resolve the issue of obnoxious draft in the Laundry Room from the heater above. That in its turn will leave us with a tiny LR or we might even move LR elsewhere (garage is an option.) 2. Now about the access to as well as the size of master WIC. You noticed it right away! That's exactly a HUGE minus in the layout and the reason we are thinking about actually moving it into another space and dedicating this current space to the Bathroom #3 adjacent to the Baby's Room (bedroom #2) and the LR. That will resolve another issue of not enough Bathrooms. They can be connected. Yes, we know, there are pros and cons to having bedroom/ laundry room together, but in our case it might work. The sewer and water are already there! Or we can make it possibly separate- with a door from that Bedroom #2 right into the newly formed bathroom, but not sure about this because of different reasons. That's structural change #2. 3. Structural change #3 We also see an option of moving WIC into the part of the current Dining Area (the door from the Master Bedroom is already there) while dedicating another part of current Dining Area for the Pantry Room that is VERY needed. Below you can see hand made changes to the plan :). This will resolve four issues: we get a Pantry (1), which will resolve the small sized Kitchen issue (2) and a bigger WIC (3) which will also mean that we don't have to go through the Master Bathroom (Hooray!) every time you need to change. What do you think? That leaves us with two options of having either front room for entertainment/ dining or having the family/ dining room multi-purpose space. Both are good options with garden views and a lot of available daylight, but there'd be a better natural flow from the Kitchen into the Family/ Dining multi-functional area adjacent to it which is also close to the patio/ garden entertainment/ BBQ area. With big windows these areas are very much interconnected and kind form a General Dining Indoor/ Outdoor Zone, including the Kitchen, Family/ Dining Room, BBQ area, and Patio with Garden. Any ideas? There is still an issue with the entrance/ foyer area which right now is not organized at all. Should it be screened or zoned otherwise?...See MoreFirst time home buyers
Comments (12)Kind of multiple questions at once. I am pretty objective and when comparing the comps, their asking price didn't make much sense to me since it was an older house, but very nice. The additional expenses of replacing all the appliances and roof that were beyond their life expectancy made overpaying more absurd because of the imminent extra spending. This also leaves no room for updates. We did eventually offer them about 4% less than their asking, but the offer was rejected with no counter. Since we are first time buyers, we don't have much experience with offers but we are trying our best to be objective and fair. I think of comps as linear, with more updates commanding a higher price, especially when it's kitchens and bathrooms. Both that have been updated in the updated house that recently sold for the same price range per sq footage....See MoreDebra Hoff
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agomxk3 z5b_MI
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoUser
3 years agoDebra Hoff
3 years agomxk3 z5b_MI
3 years agoBruce in Northern Virginia
3 years agoDenita
3 years agoDebra Hoff
3 years ago
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