First home

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Galaril

As noted in my old thread on moving to the Denver area my wife, kids, and I have been looking to buy our first home and relocate out in the Denver area since June of 2006. I had n't realized it was that long till I lloked my old thread on the topic here (lol)..........Anyways, my wife and I went out to Denver on Monday and today we just got the word that the home put an offer on was accpeted by the seller so we are new first time home owners. I can't complain since we got the larger home we wanted in the area we wanted for a price about 70-80k below market price and about 30k less than we expecting to spend. The house we got was only on the market for 17 days including today and we were the first and only ones to look at it. We came with an offer at full asking price since the price already was discounted due to the seller having to relocate for work ASAP. We also wanted and got 3% closing costs which was great. In the end, the seller was happy because he gets a 30k bonus from his company for selling the home within 2 months of going on the market. Otherwise, the company would be obligated, due to the relocation, to buy the home from their guy and then resell the it.

For anyone who knows the Colorado area, we bought our home out in Castle Rock up the hill in Castle Woods Ranch at 6600' with a nice open space behind us. Anyways, since it is our first home and hopefully the home our kids grow up in for the next twenty years it is pretty exciting. It has been a good two weeks between this anad the new job so I will have to consider not jinxing us anymore.

First congrats to all the folks and their first homes, great felling isn't. We have relocated out here in Co and the fam and I are REALLY loving the quiet peaceful beauty of the area. Someone who visited us the other day compared our street in a good way to a modern Mayberry (ice cream truck man included). I would highly encourage anyone looking to move to the Denver area or those in the area to look at the Castle Rock areas. I don't have a photo to link to but do have the online tour of the home that is still online if anyone is interested. It sure beats the apartment back in Boston.
http://tour.circlepix.com/tour.htm?id=644713&mls_tour=1

[Raiders Army]

Originally Posted by Galaril

First congrats to all the folks and their first homes, great felling isn't. We have relocated out here in Co and the fam and I are REALLY loving the quiet peaceful beauty of the area. Someone who visited us the other day compared our street in a good way to a modern Mayberry (ice cream truck man included). I would highly encourage anyone looking to move to the Denver area or those in the area to look at the Castle Rock areas. I don't have a photo to link to but do have the online tour of the home that is still online if anyone is interested. It sure beats the apartment back in Boston.
http://tour.circlepix.com/tour.htm?id=644713&mls_tour=1

Had difficulty in getting the website come up, but when I did, wow! That's a huge house. Going from an apartment to that must've been something. I like all the recessed lighting. Our house will have that as well. Your deck is great too!

[JeeberD]

Originally Posted by dacman

Jeebs -- did using USAA as a lender complicate things any? How did their process work? Did they actually have someone at closing? Just wondering since my dad got me a USAA membership last year and I currently use them for car insurance.

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

We used USAA. My wife did the whole deal, but from what I understand it was pretty painless and easy. The only thing she had a minor complaint about was the time on the telephone. They won't have anyone there at closing. Their main office is in San Antonio so unless you're buying your house there, I'd really doubt anyone shows up.

I had zero problems using USAA (like RA said, the only issue might be that you have to call if you have any questions, you never talk to anyone face to face) and the folks from the title company said that USAA was a pleasure to work with. There won't be anyone there at closing, but the title company said that they had the paperwork in hand much earlier than they usually do.

One of the things I liked best about USAA was that once my loan application was accepted, I could go to a page on the USAA website which showed exactly what needed to be done (both by me and USAA), what had been completed, the terms of the loan, etc. And the lady who processed us (Marilyn Rodriguez) was extremely helpful and courteous, though 99% of the USAA reps that I've dealt with have been as well.

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

Had difficulty in getting the website come up, but when I did, wow! That's a huge house. Going from an apartment to that must've been something. I like all the recessed lighting. Our house will have that as well. Your deck is great too!

thanks and yes the house is quite step up size wise. We don't even have that much furniture so it is fairly empty. Though my wife and money have future plans I am sure.

[flere-imsaho]

Congrats to everyone on their new houses and good luck to those who are looking, buying or selling!

My wife & I just moved to a rental for 2 months while we're getting our house renovated in time for the arrival of the baby. We're re-doing the entire kitchen, creating a study, replacing carpet with hardwood floors (my wife has asthma) and doing a lot of "environmental" upgrades (i.e. insulation, HVAC & proper venting). All with the idea that we won't have to do major work on the house for another decade or so.

It's pretty exciting, but I can't wait until it's done. I'll have to post pics when I get a chance.

[lordscarlet]

Um. 1 Acre is BIG.

[Mustang]

Well, our house has been on the market 2 days and I'm already miffed at our realtor. Mainly because the pictures represented on their site pretty much suck.. they don't even show any of our bedrooms nor does it even showcase our remodeled bathroom. Instead, we get a picture of the staircase.

Not to mention these pictures now populate all other realty companies and it is a mixed bag. One site has the staircase as the main picture (not the outside). One site has pixelated pictures and the other has really small thumbnails. When I asked our realtor to look into it he was going to email us back Saturday afternoon to tell us what he found out and nothing..

Gee.. I'm going to have great success selling. Internet is our primary search method and if I saw these pics, I wouldn't bother because I'd be wondering why the rest of it isn't shown.

[Lathum]

I would change realtors

[dacman]

I can't believe I'm considering a house in a flood plain that needs a new roof -- but the house is gold in every other way.

[Lathum]

So Mrs. Lincoln how did you like the play?

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I would change realtors

++

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I would change realtors

There is a listing contract. (hxxp://www.wra.org/legal/pdf/WB-1_final.pdf)

I have to stick until November 30th with them unless we mutually decide to terminate it or they breach the contract or we decide to go our separate ways. So, basically, if I can't get out of it I'll just have to be a complete pain in the ass to try to make them want to get out of it.

I brought my concerns up to him on the phone this morning and he said 'Nothing I can do about it'. I asked him why his website was capped at 6 pics on his page for our listing and he said 'Hmmm.. don't know. Guess I should pay attention to that more than I do. You know more about this than me.'

Uhh... seriously??? We thought we did our due dilligence in looking for a realtor, but guess not.

[Mustang]

Amazing.. actually have a showing tomorrow.

Maybe I'm overestimating the internet knowledge of the average buyer.

[JeeberD]

We lucked out with the house we bought. My wife found it on Realtor.com, but it only had one pic, from the outside. Now, this house isn't much to look at from outside, but inside it had been updated like crazy and is very nice. The house had been on the market for three weeks, and I think we were only the second or third people to view it.

Apparently there were interior pics on the realtor's website or something, but not on one of the most popular sites out there. Crappy for the seller, lucky for us...

[Raiders Army]

Well, we're in a hotel right now and close on Thursday. Some really bad things have collaborated to get us. First, transportation messed up and we barely got out of El Paso on time. As it is, we won't get our household goods until July 11th.

Next, I'm missing my end of month paycheck from the Army as well as my cashed in leave for a total of about $13k. The hotel we're staying at (Hampton Inn and Suites) double charged my checking account $913 so we had to get that straightened out. We're cutting it close on money at this point, but have made arrangements so that we may get some money tomorrow.

Tomorrow we'll have somewhere between $2k and $19k in our checking account. If nothing works out, we'll be fine and have $2k left. If everything hits we'll have $19k in our checking account.

[Mustang]

Odd. We've had 3 showings.

Reports back

1. Nothing

2. House was 3 bedroom, needed more bedrooms for 3 kids. (Umm... well, it is listed as 3 so, either you were expecting to turn something into a bedroom or you didn't pay attention or the realtor didn't pay attention)

3. House was same size as current house. (Square footage is listed. You didn't see this?)

So, basically 2 out of the 3 so far have been a waste of time really.

[Passacaglia]

Was looking for this thread earlier -- we had an offer accepted yesterday! Now we just have to get financing, go through all the crap until closing, then hope we can afford the place!

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Was looking for this thread earlier -- we had an offer accepted yesterday! Now we just have to get financing, go through all the crap until closing, then hope we can afford the place!

+1

offer accepted on a nice condo. Pre aproved for the mortage so hopefully all goes well.

Either way we are stuck in the extended stay suites for another month which is basicly a hotel room with a kitchen.

Add in a cat and very large dog and it's not really fun.

[JeeberD]

You didn't get pre-approved before you made the offer?

[Mustang]

Well, my home sale is evolving into a joke.

Realtor calls me at 8:30 Sunday morning about a showing at 11:15 that was scheduled. I was unsure what she was talking about and she said she left a message and we had no messages and I asked for the showing to be a few hours later. (Come to find out, she called me at work Saturday afternoon and left a message.)

She calls back and says the realtor can't do it because she has 14 showings. Ok, are they going to reschedule I ask. *click* She hangs up. WTF? I call back. No, nothing scheduled.

Fast forward to this morning and I call up to remind them not to call my work # and just home. Well, do you have a cell? Yes, but we are home 90% of the time so, just call at home. "Well, you really need to have the cell on you.." (Sounded like he was trying to play this as my fault. Well, you know what, you didn't call the cell anyways). He then says there was alot of activity and interest this weekend. Uh.. really? Like what? Anything scheduled because we didn't have any showings this weekend. No, nothing scheduled and he didn't know what the interest was.

So, at 12:30, wife gets a call. The 1:00 PM showing was cancelled. Uhhhh.. What????

Now I have to start figuring out how I get out of this contract. If they aren't letting us know, how do I know that they are calling realtors back and even doing anything to assist in selling our home?

[Mustang]

Well, we got out of our listing easy enough at the end of July and took 3 weeks off before deciding on another realtor. (The bad experience took the steam out of us so, we weren't excited to find someone else).

We relisted and everything has been going good so far the first 2 weeks. (This weekend we had 5 showings)

The good thing is we found the house we want and are going to be putting in an offer tomorrow night. It is a 4 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, 2300 square foot home (our current home is 1400) with 2 1/2 acres. Fireplace, pool, huge ass wood playset, shed.. new roof, furnace... no major negatives and it is at $235K and property taxes are $3200 so, really seems like a deal. The big contigency that I need to write in is to have the cable company come out to do a site survey on if cable can be run to the house. I need connectivity for work (can't use satellite or dial up really)

All I know is that 2 1/2 acres is ALOT of f'n grass.

[Flasch186]

1 & .5 baths? Jeez, ability to make that into another full later?

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

1 & .5 baths? Jeez, ability to make that into another full later?

Yes, I suppose if we wanted to.

Having 2 full bathrooms wasn't at the top of our wish list. Ask me 12 years from now if I have 2 teenage daughters.

[Lathum]

Jesus Mustang. That sounds awesome.

Our 2 bedroom 2 bath condo was 400K.

Seattle is so freaking expensive.

[JeeberD]

If you had stayed in Texas you could have had a HUGE house for 400k...

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by JeeberD

If you had stayed in Texas you could have had a HUGE house for 400k...

I would rather live in a hut in Qatar

[Mustang]

Son of a....

Well, put an offer (which was accepted) on what we thought was our dream home. After a bit of research before we put the offer in, we wanted to know what options were available going into the house (utilities, phone, cable, etc). Found that there was no DSL or Cable service, but the owner said the cable line ran down the road and all you had to do was run it from the street to the house. They never did it because they had satellite.

Turns out, the line isn't there so, there is absolutely no broadband connection that I can find going into the house. Which means - Satellite, Dial Up or AT&T/Verizon wireless, but not even that is in the area.. just the 60-90K connections. It is like that commercial.. the house is just in a complete dead zone.

Luckily, we did write a contigency in the offer based on the fact that there was indeed cable access going down the street.

Ugh.. figures. I was researching satellite and that doesn't look too promising.

[Raiders Army]

Originally Posted by Mustang

Son of a....

Well, put an offer (which was accepted) on what we thought was our dream home. After a bit of research before we put the offer in, we wanted to know what options were available going into the house (utilities, phone, cable, etc). Found that there was no DSL or Cable service, but the owner said the cable line ran down the road and all you had to do was run it from the street to the house. They never did it because they had satellite.

Turns out, the line isn't there so, there is absolutely no broadband connection that I can find going into the house. Which means - Satellite, Dial Up or AT&T/Verizon wireless, but not even that is in the area.. just the 60-90K connections. It is like that commercial.. the house is just in a complete dead zone.

Luckily, we did write a contigency in the offer based on the fact that there was indeed cable access going down the street.

Ugh.. figures. I was researching satellite and that doesn't look too promising.

Yeah, good luck with that. Supposedly I'm able to get a (can't remember what but I'm thinking Class B) signal in my area to pick up our local television stations. I can't pick up squat here. Fortunately, I'm two for four as of yesterday. I sent the waiver request through DirecTV to get distant stations and CBS was granted and the rest were denied. I sent another request through DirecTV and yesterday FOX was granted and the remainder were denied. Maybe two more requests and I'll get NBC and ABC.

Technically, I'm 2 for 8 since I put in the request for HD channels as well and all were denied.

For those requesting waivers, the standard definition and high definition broadcasts are two separate requests.

[dacman]

Welp, I think it finally hit me -- I close on my first house tomorrow. I'm vascilating between "what the hell am I doing" and "YES! I'm buying a house!"

[sterlingice]

Congrats

SI

[MikeVic]

grats

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by dacman

Welp, I think it finally hit me -- I close on my first house tomorrow. I'm vascilating between "what the hell am I doing" and "YES! I'm buying a house!"

Hehe, I remember that feeling. I also remember not telling people I was closing on a house until I jumped through most of the hoops, in the hopes of not jinxing it. Some people at work didn't know until the week before I closed that I was buying. Congrats. I just sent in my first mortgage check. I feel poor now.

/tk

[flere-imsaho]

Congrats! We just passed into year four of being homeowners, and continue to enjoy it.

[Flasch186]

4.5 yrs for me and refied out of my ARM in April (got 5.75 fixed for 30) so I feel stable now as my ARM was tied to LIBOR and who the hell knows what that's going to do. Yesterday my Water Softener system broke somehow causing a mini flood in the garage. I bypassed it and theyre coming out tomorrow to fix it.

Congrats to you!!

[Mustang]

The first night I was in my new home, it was the beginning on January in Wisconsin and my oil furnace filter clogged up and shut off in the middle of the night. I woke up at it was like 50 in the house.

So, ya.. enjoy.

[lordscarlet]

I'm at almost exactly four years, and I started with a 5.65% fixed rate, so I feel good about that. But this is my second home, so I'm coming up on 7 years of home ownership. yikes.