u/GROU11

We sent an offer at list price for a 275k house in a historic neighborhood (LCOL city). This offer also included seller covering agent fees and closing costs, as well as the seller paying for a new roof (roof is 15 years old which is pretty ancient in my area due to hailstorms and other bad weather).

We sent the offer and they accepted in maybe 3 hours max. Is this sketchy? We will obv have an inspection done but this was a lot faster than we expected lol. Seller is elderly whose wife passed last year so maybe he just wants the money and to be done with it?

Offered list for a few reasons:
Very picky about location and we only have about a mile radius where we want to actually purchase in

Loved the house more than any we had seen in the area that was less than like 400k

Owners had lived there for 15 years and were handyman and artist so a lot of the original character remains + newer additions that look nice. In other words weren’t flippers

Price had just been lowered by $24k 2 weeks ago and it was getting more buzz on Zillow

My wife (in a week) and I are looking to buy a house in an area where we currently rent. It’s a LCOL city but this area is more expensive than the most parts of the city due to its close proximity to downtown

We are expecting baby #1 in December, baby #2 would ideally be 2-3 years after that

House A: $365k, 4 bed, 2050 sq ft. Would likely live here at least 10 years unless we ever decided to move cities. Checks every box for us. Would be $2800 per month for interest, principal, pmi (temporary as downpayment is $50k), insurance, and taxes

House B: $250k, 3 bed, 2150 sq feet. Only a few blocks down from house A, but has some stuff we are not crazy about and would very likely move out within the next 5-7 years. Would be about $1900 per month.

Gross household income: $200k. Wife makes $80k, she is confident she wants to return to work after her maternity leave (12 weeks) bc she loves her job but you never know for sure.

I do 4% + 4% match to Roth 401k, she does 5% + 10% match to traditional 401k

Avg monthly expenses:
Rent: $1500 but can’t rent this house again, possibly another option for $2000 per month
All other expenses: $5000-5500 with room to drop those about $500 per month without changing lifestyle too much. This includes $500 per month in student loans

No current car payments, but will trade in her smaller car and buy a used car shortly after the baby is born (shooting for a car price that will put us <$350 per month)

Travel: one big trip outside the US <$10k
One small trip within US <$3-4k
Next year will only be small trip

Savings goal is $25k per year NOT including 401k and AFTER travel

Estimated daycare expense is $1000-1500 per month

Our main question is it smarter to buy House A that we love or the short term House B that we like. We want more kids so will outgrow the starter home bedroom wise, wouldn’t outgrow House A. The numbers work on House A as long as she returns to work and I don’t get laid off (common in my industry if economy crashes).

I know no one can predict this but I am Worried about housing market crash that could hurt us if we want to sell in 5 years. I am also worried that if we rent for one more year and then buy that rates are going to be 7+ % and we still may not find one we love. If market crashes I’m not worried about the value to home A, ONLY IF we keep our jobs which you also cannot predict

I’ve lived in OK my whole life and don’t really understand why Tulsa is so trendy on social media/this subreddit. With the gains okc has made in the last 10-15 years it’s mostly caught up to Tulsa for the culture scene (food, art, music, etc) while also being more urban, slightly younger population, more things to do, thunder basketball, faster growing, etc. Even the politics are more progressive in OKC than Tulsa (neither are truly progressive but). Tulsa has much much better nature and the gathering place is really cool but I struggle to find much appeal over Okc these days so what am I missing

We were looking at a house on Zillow and reached out for a tour. We had not hired a realtor anything yet. The guy who gave us a tour seemed alright and we agreed for him to start sending us houses through the agency that he works with, and we’ve toured other homes with him. It wasn’t really any realtor interview process like people recommend, and we didn’t think anything of it until we started hearing people say that these realtors who pay for leads on Zillow aren’t usually good options, so now we are wondering if we should find someone else. Can’t find any reviews online of him specifically, but the agency he works with at least has 4.9 star reviews.

Is there any reason to be wary of these realtors? We have a very short time horizon from when we started vs when we need to close so we don’t have a whole lot of time but will do if it is the best route

We (26 and 24) have a gross household income of $200k in a LCOL city. Looking at buying a house where our total all-in monthly payment will come out at about $2700 per month. We don’t live a very expensive lifestyle and have about $500 in monthly debt from student loans, but we also have a baby on the way in November. This comes out to roughly 22% of our take home pay after taxes, retirement, insurance. I know this is below conventional wisdom of 25% of take home pay for housing, but if we value traveling globally and would like to retire somewhat early (mid-late 50s), is this just too much with a baby?

Getting married in a few weeks, but our honeymoon is in July. We still wanted to do something for a few days immediately after our wedding though. Ideally wanted to keep the drive under 6 hours from okc or from ft smith (depends on where we stay the night after wedding). But would be open to doing 8-10 hours depending on location.

Other than New Orleans (which I personally love) where would you guys recommend? Open to any type of vibe, just not Dallas

My fiance and I are looking at a house in a LCOL city (though it’s a more expensive part of the city) that is $375k. 4 bed 3 bath 2000 sq ft and was built over 100 years ago (obv with a lot of work done since). 2 car garage separate, no HOA, also has a hot tub which is big for me

House sold for $320k in 2018, 433k in 2023, and was listed at $450k a few months ago before price lowering.

Our household income is $200k-230k depending on bonuses. Fiance has no debt, I have $30k in student loans ($500/month), and we have about $70k in total in NON-Retirement savings

We (26 and 24) were 50/50 on buying vs renting and even if we bought we wanted to stay under $320k given our savings amounts, but we have since found out that we will have a baby on the way late November so strongly preferring to buy now and this is probably our favorite one we’ve seen. But don’t know if we can ACTUALLY smartly afford this

Edit: one thing I didn’t mention was that this city has some of the highest homeowner insurance rates in the US despite being LCOL. Not sure how much that changes the math but worth noting

Anyone stayed here? Will be staying here in mid July for honeymoon/babymoon for a week before we hit Lisbon for a week. We aren’t very picky and just wanted something $400-600 per night (for an ocean view room) for July that was on a nice beach with low effort involved and a nice vibe for us to rest up at before the next leg of our trip. But wanted to hear yalls thoughts