We just bought a house almost two months ago. Not the first house for either of us, but our first house together. It went remarkably smoothly, even the part with the mortgage broker, who managed to fund the loan a week early. Imagine that! The biggest drama was the offer/contract phase where we made an offer, and we had a competing offer, and had to make a second offer since both offers were so similar. It was a couple days of stress as we awaited responses to our offers, but in the end they accepted our second offer.

As far as finding a house, that was interesting. The market here in Denver is very hot, and on a Thursday we'd have 6 or 8 houses we'd want to look at, but by Friday only 2 would be still available, and one would have an offer. It took about a month to find the home we eventually purchased. It was interesting, we both knew within minutes of looking at a house if we would be interested or not, without even talking to each other about it. We've only been married a year, so it's not like we have a long history of unspoken communication. In the end, we found a home we both love, and we are really spoiled with it's location. Now to sell the old house. If anyone is interested in a small house with a Denver address in the 200k range, we're motivated sellers...

It was funny to see some of the houses. Some were completely horrific to us, and yet the seller obviously thought it was a gold mine. Homeowners pride or something. Plus, looking at houses and seeing people's taste in furniture etc. Some people had exactly the same taste as I, and others really couldn't be further from my own taste. You have to step back, and imagine the places with your own furniture and life in them. Sometimes that could be a real challenge considering the people's taste...

The market was on the downward swing in '08. It only took a couple weeks to find a house and put in the contract. I don't remember much about the search other than I was looking in a pretty limited area and not finding much in my price range that I liked. If I hadn't put that contract in, I would have had to look in some different areas.

The seller was a horror -- he was a retired lawyer doing it himself. He was an ass to my real estate lady so in the end we had the lawyer deal with him. The appraisal part and closing part went surprisingly smoothly.

Sometimes I wish I had waited until 09 or 10 to buy but I do like my house and the location. And given I have no interest at all in moving, it'll work out in the long term.

Plus, looking at houses and seeing people's taste in furniture etc. Some people had exactly the same taste as I, and others really couldn't be further from my own taste. You have to step back, and imagine the places with your own furniture and life in them. Sometimes that could be a real challenge considering the people's taste...

That's what I love about watching shows about people buying homes- seeing how other people decorate and/or clutter their homes! The mind boggles sometimes!

I'm extremely fortunate in that I married into a wonderful housing situation, in a neighborhood in Boulder that I wouldn't have a prayer of affording in a million years if I hadn't been very lucky with the mister. So I know jack for house hunting on my own. and you can just stick your freaking apartment searches where the sun don't shine thankyouverymuch; prior to living with the mister, yours truly moved 12 times in 7 years

Remodeling, tho... omg. Be warned, o ye new homeowners, cos that's what comes next apparently. We just finished a MAJOR remodel of the entire interior of this place.

to be fair, the mister admitted he'd been planning the re-do ever since he bought the place in '07, so I had at least some kind of notice. Having to move out with our cat to live out of a suitcase in a friends' spare bedroom for a month was challenging, to say the least. And I won't have spare new bike money for quite awhile either, which is fine cos quite frankly I have all the bikes I need atm. Not all the bikes I necessarily **want**, but that's life, and having a new state-of-the-art kitchen is much more rewarding, really.

We bought a house in 2006, almost at the top of the market, but it's fine, as we like it a lot and it didn't need much work doing to it and we can afford the mortgage. There is a house across the street, though, which is identical except it has an extra bedroom and a garage and an outhouse and a bigger south-facing garden... and it's for sale... so we're waiting to see if the price comes down.

Does it make sense to move across the street? I have no idea. But it's a nice street, and the bigger house is tempting...

alto: no, no it does not. the mister and I also played with the idea of moving up the block, to be closer to the park and further from the loud undergrad rental next door. but in all honesty they aren't THAT loud and we like our other neighbors so we decided to just renovate and stick tight for now.

We looked for three or four months and saw a minimum of 70 houses (I quit counting). Some of those were just drive up to the curb and then keep on driving, but it wasn't many. The worst thing was how exhausting it was. And we were shopping in the summer which made it worse.

I bought this place 15 years ago with my ex-husband. It was the first place we saw after sifting out many, many unsuitable properties from the details sent to us, and it ticked every box on our wish list. We also sold our old house pretty quickly to people who wanted to use it for a student rental, and this place was a probate sale so there was no long chain of people moving to make things difficult. I know I was lucky.

We spent 6 months riding around the neighborhoods we wanted to live in (which were all adjacent to the neighborhood we rented a house in for 6 years). We were mostly looking for a house close to transit and with a backyard either fenced in or that we could fence in, for our dog who was young at the time (but gone now). I think we looked at (as in, went inside) about 8 houses. We bought this house on Halloween, 1995, for less than some people paid for SUVs at the time because the owners REALLY needed to sell, and I hope to live here the rest of my life unless we manage to retire to the Florida Keys.

Oh yeah: while we were house-hunting, I ran into a homophobic situation that I'd never encountered before. There's an area outside Atlanta called Pine Lake, which used to be a little resort town in the country, but has long since been swallowed up by the city. It's a little town of small 1950s houses, which used to be considered cabins, around a hilly area with a lake (Pine Lake) at the bottom. We had some friends, a straight couple, who rented a home out there and we really liked the area, so that was one of the first places we looked when we thought about buying.

We found a couple of empty places out there with signs in the yard, and called the realtor on the sign. We met him on a weekend and looked at two of them. Towards the end of the 2nd tour he asked, "Who would be living in the house?" We were like, that would be us. Both of us. We didn't understand what was happening until we asked him about other houses in the area, and he told us these two houses were it. There were absolutely no more empty houses in Pine Lake. Nope. None.

That was in 1995... in the early-2000's, Pine Lake passed an ordinance giving same-sex couples who worked for the city medical benefits.* So you know, fuck that guy.

*This was undone when Georgia voters amended the state constitution in 2004 to make any contract that gave "the benefits of marriage" to a same-sex couple illegal, but at least the point was made. Briefly.

The worst thing was how exhausting it was. And we were shopping in the summer which made it worse.

deborah, I feel your pain. :(

A few interesting stories:

* A guy was apparently trying to get into house flipping; it was for sale by owner when we looked at it, and he was finishing off a few improvements. Now, he *said* that he'd bought it for his parents, and that they couldn't come live there after all, so he just wanted to get it off his hands without losing any money. He had a fairly reasonable asking price--but he also kept saying, "I'm just trying to make my money back, you can go look up what I paid for it, it's public record" and listed for us the improvements he had made.

Well. So I *did* go look up what he paid for it. He bought it CHEAP, obviously foreclosure sale. So. I called him and offered him 15% over what he paid for it, to cover his labor and materials. He was furious. Furious that I had looked it up. Furious that I knew the value of the work he had done. So, clearly, he was just trying to make himself seem trustworthy; he was in reality trying to pull a fast one.

That house got listed with a realtor, and he apparently pulled out of actively trying to sell it. I guess he realized that he screwed up, and that he should just let it stand as what it was: a very nice house for sale in move-in condition. And accept the sting of a realtor's commission. Poor man (snerk); he wasn't expecting people to take him literally.


* We bought a house that was being sold by an owner-realtor. She tried to assure us that we didn't need to do a title search, that it was a waste of time and money; they owned it outright and everything was fine. Yeah...ah. Turns out that when they paid off the mortgage, no one informed the bank. The title was NOT free and clear, and no one could find the elderly, possibly dead, previous owner (a privately held mortgage). They had to hire a private detective to find SOMEone who was legally capable of clearing that up.


* We bought a house that had tenants when we initially looked at it. We made an offer contingent on the tenant eviction going through, and the house still being in the same condition afterwards.

The tenants were angry, and uncooperative. The seller's realtor lied to us multiple times about how the eviction was going. We thought the sale was going to fall through: the tenants wouldn't be out by the contracted date, or they'd trash the place, or something else would go wrong. Finally, the seller went to the tenants, dropped his suit for back rent, and offered them $3000 in addition, to just quietly leave. Which worked, but wasn't exactly great for him.

We're never even *looking* at a place with tenants in residence again. That was a fairly miserable transaction. We loved the house--what if we HADn't gotten the house? (And we'd already given our own notice before we learned about the seller's realtor's first lie; we thought it was going smoothly until then. Where would we have lived while we went through the housing search AGAIN?) Nah, it wasn't worth the hassle and uncertainty. We could have found another house to fall in love with, and not had the stress.

deborah, I feel your pain. :(

Finally woke up after crashing on the couch for the past 3 hours, at least... had a really, Really, REALLY long day house hunting today... but it was with a good friend of my fathers who is in the same line of work, so knew the ins and outs pretty well, along with the area, as that's where he lived. Got to know of all the little tidbits which we other wise would not have--very educational and informative. And he showed us his house as well, a house which he had designed and built with his sons, and I haven't seen a house as good as that since we'd started looking. Big, spacious, well decorated--and everything where it was supposed to be.

Mortgage brokers are wankers on the whole. The two prior house I bought to this one, the mortgage broker couldn't fund the loan on time even though I was approved. Also, real estate agents can be lying asshole wankers too. The seller's broker for the current house said he had an offer already, but no details were forthcoming, nor did they ever. Our agent hit him up several times for details. It's my guess he was being a liar, but I have no way of knowing that. I do know that he got a few more thousand dollars for his client, so maybe he justifies it that way. It was also strange that they simply accepted our second offer rather than countering. I don't see us moving for a long time barring any unforeseen circumstances.

The way we went about searching for our current house is we made a checklist of things that we wanted. The house we bought doesn't have a couple of those things, but I was willing to compromise with the idea of a long term change to the property to add them. We live in exactly the right place for us right now in terms of neighborhood since we love the urban setting, and it really is a nice neighborhood. It's not a place with potential since the potential is already here. I can see retiring here, which is closer than I could imagine it being.

We were never able to find a house that suited us, because my SO refused to buy a house that needed to be changed in any way, so we ended up building our first home. The house was easy, but buying the land was difficult because the area we chose was selling so fast that we had trouble getting to the sales office when blocks were available (and prices were going up by $1,000 a week) - people were putting deposits on land that hadn't even been developed. We called the sales office one Saturday morning and they said that a block had come back on the market that morning because of a collapsed contract, so we went over and had a look. There were several other couples looking at it when we got there and, as it seemed pretty good, we looked at one another, said 'let's go!' and ran to the car. I drove to the sales office like a lunatic with most of the other couples in hot pursuit. We managed to get there first, I sprinted into the office ahead of the others and said we'd take it without even asking the price. Kind of a bizarre experience really, but I'm glad we built when we did, because prices sky-rocketed shortly after and I don't think we could get started in the housing market even at today's slightly softer prices.

I've been meaning to do a post about my buying Swan's End for over five years now. It's quite the story... but it was such an awful experience I have been avoiding having to relive it by writing about it.