Orange County Nesties
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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.
home owners/home buyers help pls. ;)
Soo.. we're officially looking into buying a home. We're literally at the VERY beginning stages of looking and getting our feet wet in this process.
We've calculated how much we could afford to pay on a mortgage.
We've checked our credit.
Met with an agent to get an idea on areas and types of homes we'd be interested in. We're not pre-approved yet but we'll get there once we have a few more things aligned.
We've never purchased a home so we're totally clueless.
So I'm begging for tips, advice, and any lessons learned you experienced your first buy.
Thank you soooooooo much in advance.
xoxoxo,
fiddy
Re: home owners/home buyers help pls. ;)
hmmm...I'd say get pre-approved first, it will make it easier down the line.
do you want a single-family home or condo/townhouse? the former will (usually) be pricier, but you won't have any HOA fees. you'll also pay higher property taxes on a SF home so it depends on what you can do. just be aware HOA fees can go up (mine have gone up $50 in 5 years, grrr), but our complex has pools, the main garden areas are taken care of, we have a "security" guard, etc.
also, I know south county has mello roos in certain areas which blows IMHO.
I'm jealous, it's a great time to be a buyer - GL!
Hubs and I are in the same boat. I've found the "Buying a Home" board to be very helpful.
As lame as it sounds, I got a lot of good, basic info by reading "Buying a Home for Dummies." It gives you a good overview of what you need to know before buying and explains key terms, etc.
Good luck!
BFP#1 - 11/13/11, Natural MC - 12/24/11 at 12 weeks
BFP#2 - 10/2/12, Please be our rainbow.
Yay, how exciting!!
When we were buying, I made a spreadsheet and put in all our money going in and out, and really figured out how much we could afford. This really helped us out.
Also, we looked on and off for over a year. Take your time. Seriously. The market isnt going up anytime soon (boo for us who have already bought), but yay for you!
YES! Nestie commune! lol.
Thanks for all the imput ladies.. I'm trying to figure out what "closing costs and points" and all that crap means. I have a lot to read up on I guess.
We went and checked out Rancho Santa Margarita today. We REALLY like it.. But we're not in a hurry to buy so we're going to look around some more.
Congrats! That is so exciting!
When we bought our house, we had a real estate agent that we had been working with for over a year and we really trusted. We were clueless too. My family friend is a realtor as well so we ran everything by her just for our satisfaction. It helps having a great real estate team.
When we bought our house, we ended up need flood insurance b/c our house is next to this little creek (if you can call it that, there's never any water in it). That was something I didn't know when we were looking.
If you know what you can afford payment wise and what that translates into purchase price, then that's a good starting point. Also consider expenses if you're going to buy a fixer upper.
Good luck!
Yay!
The book that we used intimately to familiarize ourselves with everything, especially during the buying process itself, was How to Buy a House in California. It was recommended to us from a lawyer friend and we've passed it on to many folks since. It's in plain language and breaks down a lot of complicated stuff, e.g. points, APR, etc. The book was really helpful and I can't recommend it enough!
In terms of actually looking at places, we did a lot of trolling online. We mainly used ZipRealty, a free site that had most of the homes for sale in our desired communities listed. This may be different for OC, but it's another place to check out.
Get a realtor that you feel comfortable with. We actually retracted an offer early in our home buying process and our realtor never made us feel bad or like we were wasting his time. This is important as it's a big decision you're making and a realtor that wants to add extra pressure to the mix is far from helpful.
One last thing - more important as it gets closer to buying - don't trust everything the mortgage broker and/or your realtor tells you. We were told during the buying process that we could write off several things, that would make the terms of the deal more favorable to us. This is true for some people, but we knew in advance that we didn't qualify for said deductions. If we had blindly followed everything we were told, we'd have been in trouble. If something sounds funny or too good to be true, check it out for yourself and get additional opinions.
Oh yeah, and try to have fun!
Shop around for a good realtor, and do your homework on the comparables. Know your limits, and research the area that you want to live in. We probably visited 100 homes, and maybe 3 or 2 were worth putting a bid on. I loved that we did not buy a short sale or foreclosure home...that entire process would be nerve-wracking. Be prepared to check your loan paperwork to the finest detail...they make errors all the time, and read what you're signing and make sure you make them fix their mistakes.
Good luck with buying a home, there are plenty of good homes out there, and there is one out there waiting for you to call home!
Yay!! I'm so happy for you and it's a great time to buy.
H and I bought our townhome in Mission Viejo (no mello roos) a year ago and we love it.
Like pp said get a good realtor, we went with the same realtor that APK used and were extremely happy with her. Also we had a great mortage broker who was always giving us updates on interest rates and shopped around for us trying to get best loan for us.
We looked in north, central and south oc and to be honest we thought the deals were better in south oc. Since the schools were good quality, access to different amenities and nice and newer communities. We were pretty close to purchasing homes in RSM and AV, but decided on our townhome since it was great deal for a foreclosure and we also have a membership to lake MV. The home was also more than twice worth what we purchased it for only two years prior. Also don't be afraid to negotiate even on foreclosures, we did with the bank and got them to pay up to $6k of our closing costs.
Short sales can be a pain the a$$, but foreclosures can be a great deal if you do your research. We had been looking at homes for almost two years (did a ton of research) when we finally bought ours. But if you're able to buy your home before the end of the year I believe you will receive an $8k tax credit that does not have to be paid back. This may help a lot with the closing costs and downpayment.
GL!
I'm printing this out
Thanks for all the book recs I'm hitting the library today. Seriously if you can think of ANY other advice please continue to post or page me. Or if you have my email.
Ya'll are the best.
You've received some fabulous advice here.
I just wanted to say that COMPROMISE was the hardest part of finding a house. There were so many things that I wanted that DH could care less about and vice versa. It caused a lot of grief when we were looking at homes. Start making a list of the must haves for each of you but BE FLEXIBLE.
For example, our biggest fight was over the fact that I wanted a dining room and hubs wanted a HUGE driveway. My argument was that what's the point of all the parking spaces if you have no where to seat the guests?
Ultimately this was the first big purchase of our lives and I wanted us BOTH to be happy. On the list of wants, Donny won with the house we ended up with but I wouldn't have it any other way. We walked into the house and KNEW it was perfect for us. Even though I didn't have my dining room......the backyard scratched my entertaining itch.
I would say consider who much work you are willing to put into a house.
DH can handle all types of construction, so we bought a dump on a large chunk of property for cheap, which we have been demo-ing and adding on, every aspect of the place. which is nice because it will ultimatley be a custom home...however, I dont know many people up for any type of remodel on their home.
And if you can't do it yourself, it is costly. So, I would be sure to price all remodels and add that into the house cost.