Buying A Home
MagPie 1986
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.
For those of you that bought a foreclosure....
How long did it take you to find "the" home? Did you get a chance to look at the home in person before putting in an offer? How many did you see before you found a home?
Any other pointers when looking for a foreclosure?
We are starting our home search and cannot decide whether or not to go month to month on our rental or sign a 6 month extension. I'm also nervous about potentially not being able to see a home in person before putting in an offer. Thanks!
Re: For those of you that bought a foreclosure....
I would never put an offer in on a house before seeing it, especially with foreclosures. You would be AMAZED by how fantastic pictures can make a house look online but then when you go and see it how awful it really is....
Our first home was a foreclosure. We looked for about 6 months, and over 100 houses, all of which were foreclosures, except for 2. But That was also 4 years ago...
I would also do a month to month lease, unless your rent goes up drastically.
*** My Bio *** For Sale ***
We just bought a foreclosure. We only saw three other houses besides it (1 wasn't a foreclosure but the rest were). From the beginning of our search to closing date was probably only 3 months.
I agree that I would not put an offer into a house without seeing it. One place we looked at looked great in pictures but once we saw the layout we didn't like it and it had a HUGE termite problem that had clearly been there for months if not over a year. They never show you a picture of that!
With foreclosures, it is important to know you will not get everything you want. For us, our dealbreakers came simply down to a good foundation, a good roof, a garage (DH has a motorcycle so important to us), a hot water heater, and no termites. Seems like so short of a list it is ridiculous but the price tag on it made it a great investment to us without door knobs (yes, the previous owners took all the interior door knobs...weird). We had to buy appliances and have to retile the showers so this adds a couple thousand to our after-move-in expenses so keep that in mind. Don't spend everything on the house. HTH
I'm obviously a little late on this one, but I thought I would chime in. My DH and I have been looking since July for our first home. It depends how you buy a foreclosure as to if you make an offer before seeing it. If you try to buy a foreclosure at the Sheriff's sale you normally can't go see it because the previous owners are still in it. I wouldn't recommend that route to anyone because you could also run in to taking legal action to get them out.
Anyway, we are currently in the process of getting our first home that we found as a foreclosure. We have seen probably close to 100 homes, some being foreclosures, and some not. The prices on foreclosures are best right now if you are looking to make a home your own. I recommend you use a realtor who sells foreclosures and isn't afraid of them. Our first realtor did not like showing them to us and said we couldn't get an FHA loan with them and that conventional was the only other way to buy one, or cash, and that you can't touch the house until you own it, etc. I am here to tell you that there are many ways to buy a foreclosure. The one we are buying we are getting through FHA. The basement flooded and ruined the furnance and hot water heater, but we are still able to get the house because the seller (bank) will add it to our loan before we close just as an addition. Also, don't think banks won't pay your closing costs. We put an offer in and asked for a specific amount of closing costs to be covered by the bank instead of a percentage, and they accepted. If anything else comes up in the appraisal our realtor said the seller may also cover some of those costs as well. So, don't be afraid of foreclosures. There are many different types of loans you can get, including a rehab loan to fix up a property before you move in. I hope this helps a little bit!