r/RealEstateAdvice

Good morning Reddit Users.

I recently had assigned contract on what I thought would be my dream home. She needed lots of renovations and several things were inoperable such as all the appliances and the AC however, the seller and myself agreed on a sale and we were all set to close after secured loan funds were sent to the closing title office in Marion County Florida. On the day of the closing, the seller did not show up so in reality the contract to purchase is Null and Void, unless an extension has been signed. Had myself or the sellers agent or my agent Seller I would’ve gladly given them an extension to make it to closing. However, he’s still after two weeks nowhere to be found or heard from. Seeing no end on my dream home garage I decided to cancel my offer and get my money back rather than let them just sit title agency and I didn’t own a home. I didn’t know a house. And I no longer had my own money. Long story short and I guess the question I’m asking is how long can a Florida title company hold onto your initial escrow deposit in this case $5000. The escrow company title agency said that they can’t the escrow monies until the seller signs off on it. Well he’s nowhere to be found. He has ghosted everyone how long in this title company hold onto my money. I know what a lot of you were thinking I should contact a real estate lawyer well I’d rather not go that route since I’m out $5000 inspections surveys more inspections, termite the cost of acquiring the loan. And my initial $5000 escrow deposit I’d rather not spend any more money if I don’t have to.

Has anyone else ever experienced disappointing sale on a real estate purchase at the last minute and it seems like the escrow company is hanging escrow deposit without . To me if the seller did not show for the closing date and has not Communicating with anyone regarding the after numerous attempts to contact them, then I have no contract on this property give me my money back.

How did you know it was your time to sell? My partner and I keep going back and forth on selling our house. It truly is lovely with so much natural light and a beautiful view which makes leaving so hard.
Our options would be:

1. Build on family land
2. Buy land next to our house and continue investing into our house and then build a garage and shed.

We thought our current house would be our forever house but after living in it we aren’t quite sure. For reference it requires a ton of work. The people who built the house ended up moving away and selling it before it was finished. We have finished the upstairs. Downstairs is not finished and there’s so much landscaping to be done we don’t know where to start.

If we buy we will want at least an acre of land. We have almost that with this house now but doing all of this work and the house still not being exactly what we want is overwhelming. We don’t want to keep investing in this place and end up not making our money back. And we don’t know what to do first. We want it all done like now but that’s just not possible and I don’t think we’ve come to terms with that yet.

I think building would be our top pick if we could afford it but we aren’t sure about that right now. It would definitely be a self build.
One other thing that makes leaving is we currently don’t have a town council so we can do what we want on our land. The family land is 5 mins down the road but does have a council which is something we hate the thought of.
In saying that, by the time we get this property, house finished and land purchased, we will likely be over the price of building another house.

I’m open to hearing anyone’s experience while contemplating moving or staying at your house.

Long story short. Listed for 519k, home is 5 years old, cash buyer offers 510k so we agreed. This was our first showing and first offer. Yes I could have waited but I jumped the gun. Inspection comes, inspector find recommendations for fixes like new gutter due to hail dings, a broken exterior vent cover, water heater exhaust is 10in of clearance not 12. He labeled 4 things as red and needed repairs and major

1. Attic needs an additional 6in of insulation to help with efficiency
2. 2 small gaps where vinyl siding meets stone veneer
3. Small window in living room has thermo seal failure
4. Half wall in garage to basement wobbled and needs adjusting

Buyer came back and asked for $30k off the list price for these items. I am baffled. I’m told to fix those items or drop price. I got estimates and it came to $3000. I offered another 5k off. Buyer backed out after wanting 30k

Here it is back on market and my realtor had me disclose that there are “minor items from inspection that seller has agreed to provide $5k in closing cost”. Now I am so worried I’ll never get offers. Those items don’t seem like major structural defects or safety hazards to me and how the heck they got $30k is really bothering me. Any advise on getting new buyers in? Thank you

Just closed on our house last week. During the final walkthrough we got talking with the sellers and realized our agent had been telling us they were pushing for a faster inspection timeline- meanwhile she was telling them that we were the ones requesting everything urgently. Neither side was actually in a rush. She manufactured pressure on both ends, probably just to keep the deal moving and close her commission faster.

We signed everything so it's done. But now I'm wondering if this is worth reporting or if it just gets swept under the rug. Does anyone actually file complaints with the state licensing board and does anything come of it?

We are selling our house. We will make enough to pay off all of our debt and have some savings. I am concerned that there could be some small liens on the house - will that just be paid out of the proceeds or how does that work? No nasty comments - we are doing this to get out of this situation. Thanks in advance!

bought my place 4 years ago. fixed stuff up. painted. made it nice. and now i dont even want to be here lol

nothing bad happened. just tired of the maintenance. every weekend theres something. last month it was the gutters. this month the fence is leaning. next month probably the water heater cause thats how it works right

i mentioned selling to my mom and she looked at me like i grew a second head. -but its yours she said. like yeah and its also draining my bank account and my free time

i was looking online at options cause i dont wanna deal with agents and showings.

like am i supposed to tough it out cause thats what adults do. or can i just admit i made a mistake and move on

curious if anyone else felt this way. did you sell and regret it or sell and feel relief

My parent owns 3 Texas gulf coast condos currently worth $750k combined, no debt. What might be a conservative % increase in value over a decade?

Buying a house, when do you pop the bottle?

We’re buying a house. Offer’s accepted, inspection done and satisfied. Appraisal was today but we haven’t heard anything back yet and won’t for a few days. When should we have our celebratory bubbles? This weekend? Wait until close and we’re sitting in the floor in an empty house?

We bought our house in Upstate South Carolina in March 2022 for $195,000 with a 2.5% interest rate. It’s a 2 bed / 2 bath built in 2020, and we’ve lived in it since buying it.

We’re thinking about putting it on the market soon and trying to figure out the smartest way to sell it. I keep going back and forth between using a realtor or trying FSBO.

For people who have sold recently:
- Was FSBO worth it?
- What surprised you most during the selling process?
- What should we start doing now before listing?
- Is staging really necessary for a smaller/newer home?
- Did you regret using or not using an agent?
- Any mistakes you would avoid if you sold again?

We still owe around $159k if that matters. We’re mainly trying to make the process smooth and not leave money on the table.

Any advice appreciated.

Quickly looking for advice, my realitor just recently put our mobile home on the market for 80k. He texted today saying some one is interested, but they dont have an agent. He would like to step in to become a transaction broker, is there any downsides to this? I understand he will become a nutral party and no longer in our best interest, but it would lower closing costs. What advice or warnings do you have?

My brokerage let me go today because they felt like I wasn’t understanding the important concepts of taking care of clients. I have been working my butt off. I asked for one on one training, but didn’t get that. Was only told to watch videos. I’m really hurt and starting to feel discouraged. What brokerage firms in Memphis that would help me? Do one on one training? Actually be there to help me. I learned from them. I felt like i was doing okay.

Curious if anyone here has dealt with something similar.

I bought an older home in Illinois from a corporate flipper late last year. They bought it cash, did no improvements and sold it for market value (love the house btw). A few months after closing, I discovered there are actually two recorded easements on the property, including an “exclusive easement” over part of a strip of land connected directly to my house/property access (1,750 sq ft).

The weird part is:
- The title company clearly knew about them because they appear in Schedule B of the final owner’s title policy
- But I was never verbally told about the easements
- Never shown Schedule B
- Never given a Title Commitment before closing
- And I cannot find a Title Commitment anywhere in my closing packet, emails, or even the title portal

The final owner’s policy itself wasn’t even emailed to me until weeks after closing.

What’s also strange is the seller signed a Warranty Deed, and there’s another later utility easement that appears to have been granted on the same strip years after the “exclusive easement,” which makes the whole thing even more confusing.

I only found all of this by digging through county records myself after noticing on Google Maps that the neighbors second driveway and garage extension were over my property line.

I’m mainly wondering:
- Is it normal for buyers to never actually receive or review Schedule B before closing?
- Has anyone dealt with title companies missing/disclosing easements poorly?
- How big of a deal are exclusive easements typically for resale/value?
- Is this the kind of thing people usually just live with, or fight?

Not looking for official legal advice here — just honestly curious if others have experienced something similar because this has been a pretty wild rabbit hole.

My husband and I put an offer on a home that was accepted. Our offer was list price with a 7k credit in closing costs plus the seller pays the realtor fees. We’ve spoken with our loan agent before and after putting the offer in and we decided on a FHA loan. Yesterday after the roof inspection (which went well, roof is only a year old) our realtor agent called us asking if our loan agent spoke with us about a a conventional loan. Our realtor kept on prefacing that shes “not a loan agent” but that a conventional 5% loan would give us more equity and we would be bringing roughly the same amount to closing but we could pay more towards the principal. We told her we would think about it but it just strikes me as odd. Part of why we liked the FHA loan is because of the health and safety walkthrough which I do not think is required with a conventional loan. Does anyone here have any inkling as to why our realtor would suddenly suggest a new loan type after our offer had been accepted with the FHA loan type?

How on earth do I get a good valuation on landlocked land?
I’m in southern New Hampshire. I have an acre and the neighbor across the river has 5 landlocked heavily wooded acres on my side. There are no rights of way or easements per multiple survey companies and tax maps. This is truly landlocked and only sellable to 4 other abutting neighbors - she can’t even access it unless she took a boat or swam across the river. She wants to sell it but wants $28k for 5 acres. That, plus a 10k survey and current use penalty will bring the total cost of absorbing the land to roughly $42,500. This seems very high for 5 acres that cannot be sold on the regular market. Additionally the FEMA flood maps show roughly 1/4 of this land is in a flood plane (I have witnessed some of these floods)
How can I get an idea of value other than “what an abutting neighbor is willing to pay”

We’re currently under contract on a home in St. Petersburg, Florida and had two questions come up during due diligence that we wanted a second opinion on regarding whether these are normal or something we should be concerned about.

HVAC:The MLS/Zillow listing advertises the HVAC system as a 2021 system, but we cannot find a permit for the HVAC replacement. Additionally, in the seller disclosure, the seller marked the HVAC age as “unknown.” The current owner purchased the home in 2023 and says they don’t have information on the install. Is this fairly common in St. Pete/older Florida homes, or is the lack of permit + conflicting information something we should view as a meaningful concern for insurance, appraisal, or future resale?

Base Semi-Finished (BSF) Room:The county appraiser sketch shows a 180 sqft room classified as “BSF” (Base Semi-Finished) rather than standard living area (BAS). The room appears enclosed and connected to the home, but we have not found a permit tied specifically to that room yet. Since the county already recognizes the room separately on the property sketch, should we mainly view this as a non-GLA classification issue, or could this create larger concerns around permitting, appraisal, insurance, or resale?

Just trying to understand whether these are fairly normal quirks for older St. Pete homes or actual red flags before moving further into inspections and closing costs.

I am in desperate need of selling my home. I bought it back in 2020 for 220k and now the “zestimate” is around 325K. I know I won’t be able to get nearly that much because everything is wrong with this house. I was rushed into this purchase because I was pregnant at the time and needed a home. Come to find out, my septic meter was ripped from the ground with live wires buried. The floor under my master bathroom was also rotted/rotting. And to top it all off, my hvac system was 15 years old and the systems were not the same brand so no one would work on them. Thats not even everything. ( I did get an inspection but none of this was disclosed)

Now, almost 6 years later and everything is just going to hell. Life has gotten on top of me and I can’t afford repairs on my home. It needs a new hvac system, new master bathroom remodel, kitchen floor needs redone and honestly the whole house needs to be repainted plus a lot more. To make matters worse, the back yard is so overgrown that I can’t handle it anymore.

I guess I’m looking for some advice on how to get rid of this house. Would listing “as is” on Zillow be better or selling to one of those “we buy ugly houses” businesses? Any advice is appreciated.

Side note- I know it’s my fault I’m in this situation but physically I couldn’t keep up with the home. I am a shooting victim and have a lot of physical problems.

We are selling an inherited home, the closing is in less than a week and a few days ago we were bcc’d on an email from the closing atty back to the buyers lender.

The buyers lender was asking to move the closing date out 10 days, bringing the closing into June, and stated if we don’t accept, the buyer will back out stating they can’t get funding and the deal falls through.

There is a financing contingency so that part is completely understandable, what is odd to me is this request coming directly from the lender to the closing atty.

We’ve sold 3 different inherited homes plus our own home over the last 5 years and always used the same realtor and same closing atty and never had a lender reach out to directly to the closing atty to change a closing date.

We reached out to the realtor who reached out to the buyers broker and buyers, buyers were unaware of the request to change the closing date or the lenders statement that not accepting the date means they will back out of the sale.

They need to be out of their rental by end of this month, they absolutely want the house and were both furious and shocked by the request and that they were hearing about it from our realtor and not their lender and got on the phone with their lender immediately.

I’ve never seen a lender go direct to a closing atty with a request to move a closing this close to the date before, I know closing dates change, this feels deceitful in the way it was done.

My assumption is the lender dropped the ball and needs more time and had we accepted, they would have blamed the delay on us, making it seem we are the ones to cost the buyers to have no place to go and costing them thousands in storage and hotel fees.

We didn’t accept and we didn’t deny, the closing atty instead asked why the buyers needed an extra 10 days to close and after pushback from the closing atty and the buyers to the lender, the lender responded saying the buyers have a conditional approval and the closing remains on the original date. We don’t know what the conditions are and it’s not our business, we aren’t concerned about them getting financing, their finances are strong.

Is it odd for the lender to go behind the buyers back this way or is this normal and we’ve just never experienced it before?

We have absolutely no reason to believe the buyers knew about it, they have literally no place to go at end of month so extending the date doesn’t benefit them and they’ve been totally upfront about everything to date.

Is this most likely a lender dropped the ball and trying to manipulate everyone to cover their mistake?

Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of platforms connected to digital ownership and property innovation start blending together.

The messaging is usually huge promises about reshaping markets, opening access, streamlining transactions, and reinventing traditional systems. But after reading further, there often isn’t much explanation about the actual mechanics behind it all - legal coordination, user screening, operating expenses, implementation issues, partner onboarding, and everything else required to make something function outside of a pitch deck.

The overall impression felt much closer to infrastructure planning than trend-chasing.

Ironically, that made the idea itself feel more legitimate to me, because the challenges weren’t being ignored or oversimplified.

Has anyone else noticed more companies in this space moving toward a practical execution-first approach lately, or is this still pretty uncommon?