r/FirstTimeHomeBuying

I’m a first time home buyer and finally found one that fits our budget and checks most of our boxes. It was built in 2006, and the disclosure reports are pretty much perfect except for a leak stain on the ceiling.That said, my husband wants to see if we can offer below asking price and waive the inspection contingency to show how bad we want the place. I know there are no visible issues inside, but it’s still a nearly 20-year-old home, and from what I’ve been reading here on Reddit, inspections seem like a must.My husband’s logic is that if our offer gets accepted with no contingency, we could use the money saved for any repairs that might come up later. I think this is his approach to any house we think we want to get too. Does that sound reasonable?

I found a house that fit everything I was looking for as my first home. I put in an offer and it was accepted (asking price with seller covering 2% closing costs). Inspection was completed and it came back with a laundry list of items that will likely need to be addressed within several months.

-Roof replacement due to moss and issues with insurance offering a quote

-Nearly all mechanical items are at the end of their life

-Gutter issues

-Some electrical areas that are highly recommended to be changed

New offer on the table is seller continues cover 2% of closing and will pay 1 year on a home warranty. Home warranty does not cover a roof and it is hard getting a home owner's insurance quote with limited/no information on appliance or roof instillation.

Cons are outweighing pros at this point but wanted thoughts.

Home warranties- are they good?

Moss on roofs- experience with this and insurance?

I am looking to buy my first home but I am worried about by the price per sqft. For context I am looking at a New Construction that is $330000 at 1787 sqft. Is that a lot of money for that amount of sqft? It's sits on .4 acres but that doesn't seem like a lot of land for the money either. I am worried if I buy this house that I will have trouble when I go to sell bc it's only 1787 sqft. I could be very much over thinking this but I do not know. The house is located in Fayetteville North Carolina and the builder is offering 15k in concessions. Any insight would help.

Our offer was accepted early May. The whole process thus far has been surprisingly chill.

This was our third offer. I loved the house but didn’t let myself truly fall for it until after our offer was accepted.

Inspections went smoothly, appraisal came in 15k over asking. Submitted all my docs and whatnot easily and got conditionally approved.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I keep using chatGPT to visualize every room in my home with the things I want in it and the changes I want to make. I check my email multiple times a day hoping for something I can do, some more news, any requests for me to resolve….I’m going crazy waiting. Is it June 18 yet? What do you do to pass the time? I’m dreading the actual move but I can’t wait to be living in our new home 🏠

We went under contract with a contingency clause that the sellers would have 2 additional weeks to go under contract with a new house for them, and the closing date for both of us would be 30 days from the signing of that contract.

The sellers went under contract within that time frame and our contingency was removed via us and the seller signing an addendum stating that.

We just got word that the sellers are now backing out of their contract, as their new house failed inspection, and asked if we are going to back out of our contract, and if not, could we push the closing date back to whatever their new closing date will be.

We have no intention of backing out, as we love this house, but are hesitant to push the closing date further out, as we will have to extend the lease on our apartment to month to month, and our contract has language that states the seller will have to pay us a daily fee if they occupy the house after our closing date, which will cancel out our extra rent payment.

Our realtor is telling us that this is difficult to enforce, and our only options are to either back out or push back the closing date. We feel like we should stand our ground, pay for an extra month of rent, and be lenient on the move-out day knowing that the daily fees will cover that cost. We don't want to be jerks, but we also don't want to lose additional money when we had language in our contract to cover this exact situation. Are we correct in our reasoning/interpretation?

HI, I’m a 25 and single and want to purchase a home. I’m curious to know if that’s even possible to do alone in Cobb county, I make about 60k a year. I have decent credit in the range of 680-720. If you were in a similar situation and were able to purchase a home. How much were you able to get a loan for approx.? How much did you put down? adid you have to pay closing cost?

TIA, a girl yearning for a place of her own :)

Hi everyone! I’m just looking for advice for purchasing a home in Philadelphia or the surrounding areas. What should
I do/don’t do? How much should I save? Any programs or grants available?

It’s pretty expensive out here and I’m nervous looking at the market. I just want to make the best decisions possible. I’m not looking to move right away but hopefully by next year sometime.

Thanks in advance!

Recent client, renting a unit in a complex sold to new owners. New owners would not fix crack from exterior permitting mold to develop in son's room.

Client could not get approved with Builder's lender. Was using a co applicant, business owner, who had not filed taxes in 3 years! After weeks of submitting docs to in house lender they finally declined her.

I was given opportunity and closed her in 3.5 weeks. My 25 years experience gets you solutions and approvals.

I (36F) and my partner (38M) recently purchased our first house in Austin, TX (yay!). During the options period, we had a home inspection which indicated some issues with the electrical wiring and advised to have a licensed and certified electrician assess everything further. Our realtor offered to have an electrician he had worked with previously come out and inspect the electrical for the house as we were in a position of being able to negotiation concessions with the seller. We agreed and the realtor came back to us saying the only work that needed done was replacing the electrical outlets/plates as they were all loose but otherwise wiring was “in good condition”. Realtor also said the electrician our realtor claimed he worked with would be able to do the work after we closed. Realtor estimated total concessions to be around $2k which we agreed to and closed shortly afterward.

After closing, our realtor stopped responding to us at all for a week after we attempted to contact him several times to schedule the electrician to come out and do the work quoted. He finally responded with a flimsy apology over text saying he had COVID and was sick all week (last I checked you can still send a text message from bed but I digress). Since we hadn’t heard from him for several days, we ended up calling a different electrician to do the work however after this electrician checked everything, he informed us that our main panel and utility meter can had been hot swapped and was entirely unpermitted, nor up to city code. Plus several other issues with the grounding for the entire house. He estimated the cost to fix everything with the correct permits would be around $10k. We told our realtor about this to see why we weren’t made aware of the unpermitted electrical work before closing and why there was such a discrepancy between his electrician and the one we had quote. After much prodding, realtor finally admitted he never had an electrician come out to the property to assess the electrical and he just based our concessions on what our home inspection report indicated needing fixed.

We have since gotten several other quotes from electricians and it looks like the final cost will be around $7k. My question is, knowing that our realtor made false representations that we relied on, in order to what appears to have been an effort to have us close faster, what recourse do we have? We are attempting to contact the seller as this unpermitted electrical was never disclosed either but the fault really seems to lie with our realtor not doing his job. We’re contacting a real estate attorney to help us navigate next steps but while we wait for that, is there any chance we can hold the realtor responsible aside from filing a civil claim? Should we contact our title or mortgage broker for assistance? Or are we pretty much SOL since we took the realtor at his word?

I purchased my home in 2020 and am selling it now. The gain I'm about to pocket sounds AMAZING, but I wanted to break down the numbers on what the actual cost was over my years of ownership, to determine the true "gain" (if it was even still net positive). I hope this is helpful for anyone considering buying a house. I always say, you have to want to be a homeowner. It comes with a lot of work, a lot of out of pocket costs, and if you don't love it, then renting is probably more beneficial for you.

I'll sum up the numbers up front, and then add a little more detail later on.

Purchase price : $150,000

Sold for: $360,000

$210,000 profit sounds amazing - but what have I paid during my years of ownership? (I'll be rounding to the whole $1000 to make it easy)

Closing costs: $14,000

Sale cost: $25,000

Total paid principle mortgage: $45,000

Total paid interest (2.6% 😭😭): $16,000

Total paid Escrow (PMI, insurance, taxes): $30,000

Sum: $130,000

Renovation costs over the years (I'll break this down later): $65,000

Total paid: $195,000

Remaining on mortgage: $97,000

Sum: $292,000

$360,000 sale - $292,000 = $68,000 gain

This $68k gain does not include any utility costs spent.

Overall, I'm very happy with this number, but I do want to add some more details.

The $65,000 renovation costs is probably closer to $100k if you include labor. I did a lot of the labor myself, which helps a lot. Renovations included roof, added bathroom, mini splits, windows, water heater, appliances, landscaping/hardscaping, and redone kitchen. This does not include a few thousands worth of paint. I did one major project each of the 6 years living here, meaning I had to come up with anywhere from $10k - $25k worth of cash each year.

Inflation has also helped. A higher interest rate, lower inflation, and labor costs would most likely overcome my $68k gain.

I repeat, own a home for the love of the game, not some amazing financial investment.

What I am gaining now is going towards a down payment of our next home. The next home is in much better condition than the first one I purchased (when I bought it) and the interest rates now suck. Because of this, I wonder if I will get nearly the amount of gain out of this next house. But we do plan to stay much longer. Only time will tell!

Good luck to you all, and I hope this helps!

Married couple, business owner /self employed husband and w2 wife
Tax return shows taxable income at $90k
Wife has 20k in student debt in good standing credit score at 680
Husband has 20k in debt for his vehicle also in good standing credit score at 725 and business last year grossed 127k
We have 14k in savings, I have 17k in a 401k

How much more would we realistically need to save if we want to purchase up to 350k mortgage with FHA?
Living in Colorado

We settled on our first home four months ago. The kitchen needed a full appliance fit-out. I assumed this would take a weekend of browsing and then some purchases. It took considerably longer and involved several mistakes.

The things I didn't know going in:

rangehood sizing matters more than most guides suggest. It should be wider than your cooktop, not the same width. I bought the same size and had to return it.

oven and cooktop don't have to come from the same brand, but the dimensions need to be checked against your cabinetry before you buy anything, not after.

dishwasher installation involves plumbing, which means if you're buying from somewhere that doesn't understand the trade side, the advice stops at the product and doesn't extend to the install.

We ended up at a showroom on the recommendation of our plumber and found their kitchen appliances range covered everything we needed in one place, plus the people there understood the installation context, not just the spec sheet.

The two-week delivery window that several big retailers quoted us also didn't apply, which mattered because we were working around a tradesperson's schedule.

There's a lot of content online about which brands to buy and not much about the actual process.

Trying to buy my first home and wanted to know what people are getting for interest rates right now. I was quoted 7.75% with points. The house is 165k and I’m doing a FHA loan. I’m also thinking about doing no points just so I can put down less during closing.

My husband (24) and I (25) are going to be moving to NOLA in August for 3 years because of my work. I’m getting per diem so I am not having to pay for housing. We were looking on Zillow and saw the housing prices to buy are much cheaper than in Atlanta, where we are currently. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen houses in the 100-200k that are in good areas and not in flood zones. We also saw houses that are for rent at prices that we see in Atlanta, high 1k-2k for a 2 bed.

We plan on moving back to Atlanta after these three years so we originally thought about renting. But after seeing the owning prices, it seemed like not a terrible idea. We could start the owning process then after the three years we could have the home pay for itself with a rental tenants.

What would yall say about renting vs owning in NOLA? Thanks!

What a journey from start to finish.