Househunting. Again.

[almeda]

So after our last set of 'put offers on houses' activity crashed and burned in spectacular, weeks-long slow motion (short answer: none of those sellers would take FHA loans, and nobody wants to make us a conventional), we kind of burned out on the entire concept for months

Comments

[agent_dani]

Oooh! Good luck! We did the house buying thing in April and lucked into a motivated seller (a couple who was divorcing) and were under contract within two days.

[ladymondegreen]

Good luck! I just went through this process and know how hard it is.

[tigertoy]

It's been a long time since I've been actively involved in the house-buying process, but I thought I mostly understood it, and my believed understanding leaves me nonplussed over "none of those sellers would take FHA loans". I thought it was often hard to get the FHA to go for a loan on a particular house, but I was unaware that sellers would not want them.

May you soon succeed in buying your perfect house!

[almeda]

The trick is thus: FHA will not let you buy a house that does not pass their inspection. If you make an offer on a house, with your FHA loan, and the seller accepts, the seller has ALSO signed paperwork (attached to contract) that says that any inspection-not-passing problems with the house will be fixed, signed off on, and re-inspected to their satisfaction before the closing date.

Usually (and in our case) the buyers (us) agree to up the purchase price of the house to cover the cost of said repairs, in effect paying for them, but a lot of sellers do not want to deal with the PITA; they want cash on the barrelhead and done and out.

Therefore, some sellers take one look at your offer paperwork with an FHA loan attached and say, "No thanks, I think I'll wait."

[shadefell]

Ba ha ha ha ha ha ha! That's MY neighborhood (or near enough)!

Good luck with this, there's some effing BEAUTIFUL houses around here. And the regional gifted school is pretty close as well (Thomas Edison), about a mile from us.

[almeda]

THat would be why I said

several people I know and would love to visit more often

:->

It's one of the fairly standard Sears bungalows; I know I've walked houses with that exact floor plan eight or ten times in this process.

[shadefell]

If you're looking in that area, do you want to hear our school plans for Niko? They might be helpful for your school plans for Bekka, unless you decide to just go with the neighborhood school. (Our neighborhood school is fairly mediocre, and while I've heard good things about the principal and parental involvement, it also has stagnant test scores.)

[almeda]

John is deeply offended by selective-enrollment 'public' schools, and refuses to send our kid to one on principle (the principle being that by sucking off the good kids and shoving out the bad kids, they harm true neighborhood take-everyone-in-the-catchment schools to death).

However, there are one or two nonselective elementaries within a mile or so of the house we're looking at that do not appear to be utterly dire, and seem to have an upward trajectory, such that he was willing to consider buying property near them and thinking about sending her there.

If all else fails and they're dire the year she's ready for kindergarten, we DO have an option to send her to the elementary school attached to her preschool -- it's a public charter, and selective, but their 'selective' enrollment criteria is 'attended our daycare for at least a year'. For some reason this doesn't bother him as much.

[ashnistrike]

Good luck!