House hunting
 

Okay...need some advice from all you committed or married folks out there.

DH and I are in the process of looking for a house. We've just started, and it hasn't helped that we found the perfect house, then lost it in a bidding war. Completely sucks..

So here's the question...was buying a house one of the most stressful parts of your relationship/marriage? What did you do to ease the stress?

Re: House hunting
 

Ease the stress?? Concocting fantasies of killing the builder worked for us :mad:

What a miserable way to spend a LOT of hard earned money. Sigh.

My advice would be NOT to build your first home. Buy the first one, live in it for several years to see what works for you & what doesn't. Spend a few years nailing down exactly what you want in a home. Cut out pictures. Visit new home developments and then watch how those homes age for a few years. Gather ideas.

Then build the house of your dreams :) Good luck!

Re: House hunting
 

Stressful? Are you kidding? That's an understatement!!

I can remember the nights where my DH and I would go back and forth...

How could we afford it?
What can we afford after buying the house?
Are we making a mistake?

Oh...the arguing...the panic...yeah....it was stressful...but we survived and now realize we could've afforded a lot more...

In the scheme of things, it's just a bump in the road...

.

To say buying our house was "stressful" would be an understatement! (warning: long post ahead)

Spring 2000: We found a development of new houses, nice-looking, not too expensive, and not too far from our offices. We chose our model and lot, and put down a deposit. We were promised a closing date of fall 2000.

Summer 2000: About once a week, we visited the site. We had to sneak in, as we weren't supposed to visit the site unaccompanied, and they "couldn't spare anyone" to accompany us. The official reason was liability, the real reason was that they wanted to hide the fact that they hadn't poured the foundation yet! :rolleyes:

Late summer 2000: They finally poured the foundation. As it dried, it cracked. Builder claimed he can reinforce the foundation. City wanted him to tear it out and re-pour it (= $$$ that the builder wouldn't be able to recoup from us). Deadlock.

Fall 2000: Independent engineer examined the foundation and said it had to come out. Builder still won't budge.

Winter 2000: Now it was too cold to work with cement, so nothing would happen until spring. There was a clause in our contract that said we could back out and get our deposit back if the house can't be delivered by 6 months from the promised closing date. It was obvious that the house wouldn't be ready by then. We exercised the clause and got our deposit back.

We contacted a realtor. She showed us several houses, ranging from very nice to "don't sneeze or the house will fall apart". We fell in love with the first house we saw. Our parents came up to see it and also loved it. That night we had a bid on the house. Home inspection turned up some problems, seller tried to play hardball, but he was desperate to sell, so we got a reasonably good deal. We closed on our house and moved in a few days later (between snowstorms).

So, long story short, it took us ten months to figure out that we could buy a house in one month. :p

Footnotes: Falling interest rates worked in our favor for the mortgage... and we saw the inside of one of the other houses of the same model we had chosen, and the rooms are TINY! We are so much better off :) That house did eventually get built (I think the foundation was ripped out and re-poured).

My advice: Don't jump at the first thing you see. Don't let yourself get sucked into a bidding war to the point where you far exceed what you're willing to pay... let the house go and look for something else. Go over your finances with a fine toothed comb (your mortgage lender will!), and think about getting pre-approved for your mortgage. And I'm with thetalady, don't build your first house! The builder will try to pull the wool over your eyes if he even suspects you don't know what you're doing.

Good luck! :)

ETA: Can't believe I forgot to mention this: Use a realtor. Not contacting a realtor from the start was the biggest mistake my husband and I made. As the buyer, you don't pay a dime for the realtor's services (the commission is paid by the seller). And all listings are shared, so going with realtor X doesn't mean you'll only see houses listed by realtor X - you'll see them all regardless of who the seller's realtor is.

I didn't find buying a condo to be very stressful at all. Of course, when I bought, it was a vintage building (not new construction -- I'd never buy new construction in a million years) and it was also for sale by owner. The sellers had an open house, we made an offer and then filled out the contract ourselves (of course, being an attorney helps, lol).

Re: House hunting
 

One thing to ease the stress is just to understand a lot of things that happen during the process are beyond your control, so it doesn't make much sense to get all worked up over the contracting stage, or especially the underwriting stage for the mortgage.

Get a good real estate agent, and a good mortgage professional working FOR you. It should be there job to handle all the stress, and to come for you for decisions or documents as needed.

I do mortgages for a living, and one thing I do counsel my clients on are the things that can go wrong. My job is to keep things from going wrong wherever possible, but just keep in mind it's not just the realtor involved. They have the most visibility, but the least amount of control. You'll have a mortgage company involved, appraiser, title company and/or attorneys, and potential even land surveyors thrown into the mix. Each portion has it's potential problems. I have a list of "88 Types of Turbulence" as I call it for my customers to look over, just so if anything goes wrong, it isn't as if we didn't know it could, but, we always find a way to fix problems.

My 2 situations of buying a house were very stressful but we made it through them.
The first house was about to close escrow and my husband was laid off. I stressed. I knew that we were paying more in rent on our 2 apartments than the mortgage would be but for some reason I just stressed.
The second house we put on offer in before we had received an offer on our house and we didn't put it contingent on the sale of our house. We closed escrow on the selling house 2 days before the buying house...just enough time to fund. I was a wreck. With this house I was also really scared that we could afford it. I have found that the loan agents always over estimate the amount of the payment which is nice because it usually ends up less than you expected.

My advise....don't sweat the small stuff (yes I don't know how to take my own advice). Focus on the good things and what you plan to do once you close.

Does one have to have realtor for a newly constructed house in a new development? I am not talking about foreclosures--I am talking about going to the project model home and purchasing the house...

No...the salespeople at the project model can take care of it for you. Sometimes, they are realtors themselves, othertimes, just commissioned salespeople....

But be careful...sometimes they give "enticements" to buy now, such as throwing in certain "freebies" for buying through them. Just remember, nothing is for free, so you DO end up paying for the freebie somehow, either in hidden junk fees or a higher interest rate.

Isn't the housing market in Maryland INSANE??? It's definitely a good time to own, though, since the values are climbing every day.

Try housing in California. The market is absolutely crazy. My sister bought a house for 190,000 back in 1998 & is now selling it for 600,000!
The cost of living here is getting out of control. I think I need to move when I graduate. I'm thinking maybe Colorado.

I have family in Colorado in the Arvada area. My cousin and his wife bought a condo about 2 years ago after they got married...not saying that the price was inflated but they paid like $150,000 for a condo!!!

Grandmother's house that she and Papa had built in the late 1960's cost them about $40,000...now the house and property would go for around $350,000. A house down the street recently went for $400K.

$150,000 for a condo isn't a lot, in my opinion.

I have to say that after living in Chicago, I'm amazed by how reasonable housing prices are in the Denver area. Of course, Boulder is another story, as are the mountains, but Denver and the suburbs really aren't bad at all.

Of course it's really, really cold and snows every day, so people shouldn't move here. ;)

Yes, the housing market in Maryland is insane. The house next door to ours just sold for $15,000 more than what we paid...so we're already making some money! (This house wasn't in nearly as good of condition as ours!)