April 2013 Weddings
lch0708
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Buying a house
Is anyone going through this right now? We're currently bouncing counter offers back and forth. Hopefully we can settle on something within the next couple of days. This house has been on the market for six months and apparently DH and the owner both really enjoy negotiating. Anyone in the same boat?
Re: Buying a house
We're not quite there yet. Right now we're still renting, but are planning to buy a house within the next year. So right now we're trying to figure out how much we can spend and trying to save for a down payment.
Good luck, let us know what happens!
RSVP Deadline: March 23
April 2013 Siggy Challenge: Bridesmaids Dresses
I bought my house before I met my H.
It was the worst! The home buying process is difficult, time consuming and terribly stressful. But, owning your own home is totally worth it in my opinion.
I will say I highly recommend shelling out the additional money for a plumbing inspection, even if they tell you it's not "necessary"... just my own personal experience speaking here....
So our purchase price was finally accepted after a few rounds of counter offers. We plan on getting a second inspection in addition to the realtor's inspector just so we know our guy isn't "in league" with anyone other than us. We also have to go through a VA inspection/appraisal. I will mention the plumbing inspection to DH and see if the original inspector goes over that stuff.
I'm so glad they finally agreed to a purchase price!
We bought our house in November, and thankfully we had a very smooth process. I kept asking our finance guy "where's the catch?" after every part of the process because there was no way it could get that easy. We got very lucky.
That is awesome that they accepted, such a great feeling!
Congrats! I hope the rest of your inspections go well and the paperwork process goes as smoothly as possible.
We're nowhere near ready to buy right now. It's SO expensive to live where we do (we're talking $300k for a STARTER home) so it will take a while to save for a big enough down payment to make the mortgage reasonable plus still have a nest egg. I despise renting with every ounce of my being but it's what has to be for now.
Let us know how things go so we can all live vicariously through you. :-)
58 invited
20 can't make it
RSVP Deadline: March 8th
The only reason we can actually afford a house is because we're using our VA loan benefit. We definitely couldn't afford a solid down payment on anything right now! Our mortgage and property taxes are equivalent to what we're paying in rent right now but it's looking like we'll have to pay an extra $250-300/month just for homeowner's insurance and flood insurance "because we live in Florida."
According to the current owner, the house has never flooded, which is good and explains the low flood insurance. However, the age and size of the house are the reason why the homeowner's insurance is so high. Ugh. Tomorrow is the inspection so hopefully the newer roof and hurricane shutters will work towards our benefit. Unfortunately there aren't hurricane shutters on the front door and I'm not sure if we can put one up for it but we'll definitely look into it if it means it'll lower that insurance!
I will keep y'all updated!
I can see why flood insurance would be necessary in Florida.
It is becoming necessary here in Chicago as well, unfortunately. We've had FEMA-involved floods the last 5 summers in a row. Two years ago, we had a flood when we were living in a basement apartment and lost pretty much everything we owned - which caused us to have to postpone our wedding. Again. I never thought we'd need flood insurance, and I never knew that not only was it a rider, it was a rider not covered under standard flood insurance. There is a special "Act of God" type of flood insurance that covers rainwater floods, whereas regular flood insurance only covers things like broken pipes and such. They get you coming and going. UGH!
There was actually a MAJOR rain storm and flood while we were in Savannah getting married. I felt so helpless, not knowing if our cars were safe, our friends were safe, etc. A lot of people we knew lost a LOT. Thankfully, after the last flood, we moved to higher ground and we were OK. We were watching the Chicago news via our cell phones and they were showing pictures of people kayaking through the first floor of the local mall - it was crazy!
Good luck with the inspection!
58 invited
20 can't make it
RSVP Deadline: March 8th
Oh yes, I certainly know we NEED flood insurance. The funny part is that the flood insurance isn't even that expensive. $50 a month because we can sign on to the current owner's policy. It's the homeowner's insurance which will probably be between $200-$250/month or even higher until we can get some things fixed/updated and get some discounts.
Our home inspector was very thorough. I made a voice recording of everything he told me and clicked through the 138 pictures he took as the voice recording was playing so that DH could hear/see what we went over, since he was in Alaska during the inspection. There were definitely some unexpected things that popped up like roofing issues and some dry rot here and there. We've asked the current owners to fix about three or four things and to pay for a year long home warranty just in case the air conditioners fail within the first year. There are a few things that we feel confident that we can fix when our parents come down to help us with some renovation stuff. Once all of that is done, we should score a higher rating from the home inspector and be able to decrease our homeowner's insurance monthly payment.
We signed and sent in a bunch of mortgage paperwork over the last couple of days and the appraisal was last Wednesday. Hopefully we'll hear back about that soon so we know how much the house is actually worth and if we have anymore bargaining power with the owners.
We just got the appraisal back and the house appraised for a thousand under the agreed upon sales price. Also, the VA wants the owners to fix the roof on the back porch before they'll agree to give us the loan. Not sure if this means that they have to hire someone to rebuild that portion of the roof or if it just means that the VA wants the shingle material replaced. I'm sort of hoping they want the whole thing rebuilt so we have one less thing to do.
Getting there!!