Home Improvement Thread 2: Electric Redo the Loo

wokeupnew said:
This is the year. I'm planning on buying a house this year. My current lease is up on June 1. I know that buying a house is a process and there's no way that the timeline will be perfect where I can move out and move in on the exact date. Also, my landlord always asks if we want to renew the lease by March 30th every year. So, ideally I have found something by March 30th. They're actually good landlords as far as landlords go (I know) and hope that if we cannot find something that they'd let us go month-to-month or we just break the lease early. I know for a fact they can get an extra $150/month if they got a new tenant instead of us with what the going rate for our place is.

My friend recommended a realtor they worked with two years ago when they bought a house. Is it too early to reach out to them and ask if they would be our realtor/willing to help? I am not approved for a mortgage loan yet because I know that approval only lasts a limited time, so I'd get approved prior to seriously looking at houses. How did the process go for your home buying experience? Is there anything else important to know for someone who's never done this before?
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just saw this. first of all congrats! buying a house is exciting. and stressful. and all the other emotions. we bought a house last april and it was a roller coaster. our apartment landlords were very nice and let us break the lease early when we told them the situation. we told them we were moving as soon as we had our accepted offer and signed a contract. we did give them 2 months notice though and ended up moving a few days before we had to move out of the apartment. the timing was getting a little hairy for us though haha.

i don't think it's ever too late to start talking to a realtor. when we started seriously looking, we had a mortgage prequalification, but not preapproval. most places were asking for preapproval to even show houses because the market was really competitive. we were able to get preapproval fairly quickly because my wife works for a bank and they already had all of her paperwork on file, but i'd definitely start looking into that and getting all the paperwork together. you'll want that all done to move quickly once you see a house you like. you'll probably get a 60-90 day commitment letter. we ended up closing 1 week past when our mortgage commitment letter was expiring, but the bank kindly extended the rate by a week to accomodate us because they knew everything was taking long to get done.

my wife and i sat down and made a huge list of what was important for us in a house, what we wanted but could live without and what was an absolute deal-breaker. this was really helpful for us and luckily we were aligned on a lot. those things may change as you see more houses but i think it helped us make quick decisions when we saw the house we liked. we also spent nearly 8 months getting familiar with towns and what was available for what kinds of prices near us.

as @Corycm said, stuff is taking a LONG time now to get done. we had to get a survey done and that took 3 weeks. getting all of your paperwork to send to the bank takes a bit and it takes time to get the commitment letter. real estate lawyers were busy, title companies are backed up, etc. i believe we found our house at the end of january and had an accepted offer early feb. we didn't close until mid april.

make sure you find a good broker and a real estate lawyer that is communicative. sounds like you have a recommendation for broker already which is great. we went with a family friend as our lawyer and i think it was probably a mistake. if your broker has a lawyer they recommend, it may be worth going with that lawyer because they already have a working relationship with each other and probably get shit done quicker and work well together.

don't be heartbroken if you love a house and it doesn't work out for one reason or another.

lastly, make sure you have some kind of rainy day fund. something unexpected ALWAYS comes up that you have to fix once you buy your house.

feel free to PM me if you have any questions!
 
MikeH said:
just saw this. first of all congrats! buying a house is exciting. and stressful. and all the other emotions. we bought a house last april and it was a roller coaster. our apartment landlords were very nice and let us break the lease early when we told them the situation. we told them we were moving as soon as we had our accepted offer and signed a contract. we did give them 2 months notice though and ended up moving a few days before we had to move out of the apartment. the timing was getting a little hairy for us though haha.

i don't think it's ever too late to start talking to a realtor. when we started seriously looking, we had a mortgage prequalification, but not preapproval. most places were asking for preapproval to even show houses because the market was really competitive. we were able to get preapproval fairly quickly because my wife works for a bank and they already had all of her paperwork on file, but i'd definitely start looking into that and getting all the paperwork together. you'll want that all done to move quickly once you see a house you like. you'll probably get a 60-90 day commitment letter. we ended up closing 1 week past when our mortgage commitment letter was expiring, but the bank kindly extended the rate by a week to accomodate us because they knew everything was taking long to get done.

my wife and i sat down and made a huge list of what was important for us in a house, what we wanted but could live without and what was an absolute deal-breaker. this was really helpful for us and luckily we were aligned on a lot. those things may change as you see more houses but i think it helped us make quick decisions when we saw the house we liked. we also spent nearly 8 months getting familiar with towns and what was available for what kinds of prices near us.

as @Corycm said, stuff is taking a LONG time now to get done. we had to get a survey done and that took 3 weeks. getting all of your paperwork to send to the bank takes a bit and it takes time to get the commitment letter. real estate lawyers were busy, title companies are backed up, etc. i believe we found our house at the end of january and had an accepted offer early feb. we didn't close until mid april.

make sure you find a good broker and a real estate lawyer that is communicative. sounds like you have a recommendation for broker already which is great. we went with a family friend as our lawyer and i think it was probably a mistake. if your broker has a lawyer they recommend, it may be worth going with that lawyer because they already have a working relationship with each other and probably get shit done quicker and work well together.

don't be heartbroken if you love a house and it doesn't work out for one reason or another.

lastly, make sure you have some kind of rainy day fund. something unexpected ALWAYS comes up that you have to fix once you buy your house.

feel free to PM me if you have any questions!
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Thank you for this!! I saw this yesterday but I completely forgot to reply.

We met with a realtor two weeks ago, and a mortgage advisor a day later that week. We thought we were pre-approved from our Mortgage Advisor but all they sent us were pricing estimates in PDFs. I don't recall them mentioning a "commitment letter". Is that something that we should ask to get drafted for us?

Our realtor also seemed to want to take us on as a client, and mentioned needing us to sign a disclosure document to take us on as a client. I believe each state is different, but he cannot get to know us or get into specifics, like a confidentiality agreement until we sign that. Since we met two weeks ago, I emailed a day later to look at a place, we made plans -- however -- a day after coordinating to look at the place someone put an offer in and it moved to "pending" so we could no longer view it. Throughout the whole small ordeal I thought that he'd have sent over that document and has not. I probably should reach back out and ask for that, right? It doesn't feel like he's ignored us, there's just been very scarce inventory right now with it being January and very cold. Not many people are wanting to sell their houses right now.

The problem right now is that there's little to no inventory in our price range. It's either extreme fixer uppers that we don't want to buy if there's serious issues or need repairs other than just paint or cosmetics. And houses that were going in our price range a year or two ago are now 100k more and outside of our budget. One of the houses we were going to look at was actually smaller than our apartment. It was a tiny 4 room house with an unfinished basement and detached garage. They wanted $290k for it, which is insane. I think we're content waiting it out a little bit, if that means more inventory comes on the market as it warms up. We also don't hate where we live, we've been here since 2018.

I've also heard that prices could reset back to "normal". Our mortgage advisor mentioned something about rates getting better, or something like that. But the problem is that maybe they wont because Vermont looks to be a good spot for the upcoming global climate crisis so unless something like 2008 happens again, we might have to overpay for something smaller. Which, I don't know if I want to do. If that were the case, I'd probably sacrifice location for something bigger and better further away,
 
wokeupnew said:
Thank you for this!! I saw this yesterday but I completely forgot to reply.

We met with a realtor two weeks ago, and a mortgage advisor a day later that week. We thought we were pre-approved from our Mortgage Advisor but all they sent us were pricing estimates in PDFs. I don't recall them mentioning a "commitment letter". Is that something that we should ask to get drafted for us?

Our realtor also seemed to want to take us on as a client, and mentioned needing us to sign a disclosure document to take us on as a client. I believe each state is different, but he cannot get to know us or get into specifics, like a confidentiality agreement until we sign that. Since we met two weeks ago, I emailed a day later to look at a place, we made plans -- however -- a day after coordinating to look at the place someone put an offer in and it moved to "pending" so we could no longer view it. Throughout the whole small ordeal I thought that he'd have sent over that document and has not. I probably should reach back out and ask for that, right? It doesn't feel like he's ignored us, there's just been very scarce inventory right now with it being January and very cold. Not many people are wanting to sell their houses right now.
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some things will be different in different states...so some of what we went through may be different to you.

For the mortgage, you probably got a prequalification letter and not preapproval. it's annoying, but they are different and there are 3 stages of it. prequalification is an estimate of what the bank thinks you might be able to borrow based on whatever financial info you gave them. that's usually your first step. preapproval is the next step. you'll complete an entire application with a bunch of documents, they do a credit check and should give you a letter thats an offer (not commitment) to lend you up to x amount. that is usually good for 90 days. the commitment letter is the last step. it's official proof that you are getting the loan from a specific lender for a specific house. you'll need that to close. in NY, that usually happens after the house appraisal has been done (which is after the offer is accepted). I'm guessing its similar in VT. Most places like a preapproval when you're looking since it shows that you're serious and more likely to get a mortgage and can afford the house you're looking at.

you can ask the realtor to send over the disclosure document. I don't think we had to sign one (could be wrong because we had to sign TONS of stuff), but definitely look it over before you sign and ask any questions for anything that seems confusing. one realtor we had wanted us to sign an exclusivity agreement that we would only let her show us homes. we said no thanks and found someone else.

you seem to have already experienced how quickly houses are selling/getting taken off the market. if there's something you see that you like, i'd recommend going to see it ASAP. even if you may not love pictures of the house. it REALLY helped us to put an image to how big certain square footage is, what size yards were, etc and get a grasp on what things we liked and didn't like. we almost didn't bother showing up to see one house because we weren't sure that we would like it. it ended up being the one we bought.

i hear ya on inventory being low. winter doesn't seem to be the best time to look (but it didn't stop us and we found ours in january last year). less people selling/moving but also potentially less people looking to buy/less competition.

wokeupnew said:
I've also heard that prices could reset back to "normal". Our mortgage advisor mentioned something about rates getting better, or something like that. But the problem is that maybe they wont because Vermont looks to be a good spot for the upcoming global climate crisis so unless something like 2008 happens again, we might have to overpay for something smaller. Which, I don't know if I want to do. If that were the case, I'd probably sacrifice location for something bigger and better further away,
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i did notice, at least near me, quite a few houses near us have just gone up for sale. i wonder if it is because people are trying to cash in on the high prices and demand before it drops. mortgage rates were really good the past year or two but are now jumping back up to pre-pandemic levels. you may be right about housing prices coming back down a little. i'd still do the preapproval mortgage letter and look around! and do lots of research for sold homes in the area you're looking at. see what price per sq foot usually is in homes that have sold in the past 2 years or so. once you look at enough houses you can tell what seems like a decent price and what's a rip off (and even better...what seems like a deal!).

it can be disappointing to see the prices of houses with what you get for the money. so it may be worth widening your scope on location. Just remember -- you can change a lot about a house but can't change the location!
 
MikeH said:
some things will be different in different states...so some of what we went through may be different to you.

For the mortgage, you probably got a prequalification letter and not preapproval. it's annoying, but they are different and there are 3 stages of it. prequalification is an estimate of what the bank thinks you might be able to borrow based on whatever financial info you gave them. that's usually your first step. preapproval is the next step. you'll complete an entire application with a bunch of documents, they do a credit check and should give you a letter thats an offer (not commitment) to lend you up to x amount. that is usually good for 90 days. the commitment letter is the last step. it's official proof that you are getting the loan from a specific lender for a specific house. you'll need that to close. in NY, that usually happens after the house appraisal has been done (which is after the offer is accepted). I'm guessing its similar in VT. Most places like a preapproval when you're looking since it shows that you're serious and more likely to get a mortgage and can afford the house you're looking at.

you can ask the realtor to send over the disclosure document. I don't think we had to sign one (could be wrong because we had to sign TONS of stuff), but definitely look it over before you sign and ask any questions for anything that seems confusing. one realtor we had wanted us to sign an exclusivity agreement that we would only let her show us homes. we said no thanks and found someone else.

you seem to have already experienced how quickly houses are selling/getting taken off the market. if there's something you see that you like, i'd recommend going to see it ASAP. even if you may not love pictures of the house. it REALLY helped us to put an image to how big certain square footage is, what size yards were, etc and get a grasp on what things we liked and didn't like. we almost didn't bother showing up to see one house because we weren't sure that we would like it. it ended up being the one we bought.

i hear ya on inventory being low. winter doesn't seem to be the best time to look (but it didn't stop us and we found ours in january last year). less people selling/moving but also potentially less people looking to buy/less competition.
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This is what we already did with W2's, tax returns, bank statements, ID Cards, etc. The mortgage advisor met with us virtually and walked through the estimates based on the info provided. Maybe I need to reach back out and ask.

MikeH said:
i did notice, at least near me, quite a few houses near us have just gone up for sale. i wonder if it is because people are trying to cash in on the high prices and demand before it drops. mortgage rates were really good the past year or two but are now jumping back up to pre-pandemic levels. you may be right about housing prices coming back down a little. i'd still do the preapproval mortgage letter and look around! and do lots of research for sold homes in the area you're looking at. see what price per sq foot usually is in homes that have sold in the past 2 years or so. once you look at enough houses you can tell what seems like a decent price and what's a rip off (and even better...what seems like a deal!).

it can be disappointing to see the prices of houses with what you get for the money. so it may be worth widening your scope on location. Just remember -- you can change a lot about a house but can't change the location!
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I really hope so! We started looking seriously 2 years ago and didn't want to buy at that time because we wanted to save more (and hopefully have a lower monthly payment). I've revisited houses that I've saved on Zillow 2 years ago in summer 2020 to see them sold for very reasonable prices. However, the Zestimates (take it with a grain of salt) on those same houses and/or comps that have been listed lately they'd easily be $100k or more above closing so I worry it's getting worse.
 
wokeupnew said:
This is what we already did with W2's, tax returns, bank statements, ID Cards, etc. The mortgage advisor met with us virtually and walked through the estimates based on the info provided. Maybe I need to reach back out and ask.


I really hope so! We started looking seriously 2 years ago and didn't want to buy at that time because we wanted to save more (and hopefully have a lower monthly payment). I've revisited houses that I've saved on Zillow 2 years ago in summer 2020 to see them sold for very reasonable prices. However, the Zestimates (take it with a grain of salt) on those same houses and/or comps that have been listed lately they'd easily be $100k or more above closing so I worry it's getting worse.
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If you did all that paperwork, then I'd reach out and ask them if that's a preapproval or a prequalification. I learned that there are no stupid questions when it comes to buying your first house. I'm sure everyone working in that industry has heard/seen it all before haha. We did our mortgage directly though a bank since my wife works for one, so we had a little bit of a different situation. We didn't go through a traditional mortgage broker like some of our friends did.

And yea...the prices have gone a bit mental. One of our neighbors that we befriended near us bought their house 2 years ago. The zillow estimate has gone up almost $150k. Again, not that it means much, but...crazy to think about. I sort of think that houses outside of bigger cities will drop in price once the pandemic is over and people are forced to go back into work. It's happening around my brother-in-law's place in the UK--tons of people who sold their places in London to get more space and are now selling again because they don't want to commute. Hoping prices go down a bit (or at least stabilize) because it's getting harder and harder for younger people to actually become homeowners.

looking on the bright side, it's nice that you at least enjoy where you live now so it's not like you're desperate to move!
 
Question for all of you who are clearly way smarter than me when it comes to home improvement. Do any of you use garage storage shelving? If so, can you link me what you use? I am about to re-do my garage and want to get some kind of restaurant-style steel/wire shelving in there.
 
scotthilk said:
Question for all of you who are clearly way smarter than me when it comes to home improvement. Do any of you use garage storage shelving? If so, can you link me what you use? I am about to re-do my garage and want to get some kind of restaurant-style steel/wire shelving in there.
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We literally got the steel wire restaurant style shelving along with casters. So we are able to move the shelves anywhere we need to. We have a very small house so space is a premium.

I think this is what we got:
www.homedepot.com

HDX 5-Tier Steel Wire Shelving Unit with Casters in Chrome (48 in. W x 72 in. H x 18 in. D) HD1848-5LHCCPS - The Home Depot

This easy-to-assemble 5-Shelf Decorative Wire Chrome Finish Commercial Shelving Unit from HDX provides storage space for any room and purpose including commercial, industrial and residential use. The 5-tier shelving unit is made of tubular steel and wires coated with a durable chrome finish. All...
www.homedepot.com

www.homedepot.com

HDX 4 in. Industrial Casters with Bumper (4-Pack) 30260PS-YOW - The Home Depot

The HDX 4 in. Industrial Casters are designed to hold up to 150 lbs. each, fitting units with 1 in. Dia. posts and 3/8 in. inserts. Featuring a swivel design for easy mobility, the pack of 4 includes brakes on 2 of the wheels for control and safety. Supporting up to 600 lbs. for a variety of...
www.homedepot.com
 
scotthilk said:
Question for all of you who are clearly way smarter than me when it comes to home improvement. Do any of you use garage storage shelving? If so, can you link me what you use? I am about to re-do my garage and want to get some kind of restaurant-style steel/wire shelving in there.
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I was going to throw out the option of what I bought but the price is now 3x higher. Here's the brand and I can say they are very well made. You just might need to cut some plywood to keep smaller stuff from falling through the cracks.

www.homedepot.com

Muscle Rack 5-Tier Z-Beam Boltless Steel Garage Storage Shelving Unit in Blue (30 in. W x 12 in. D x 60 in. H) UR301260WD5-BL - The Home Depot

The Muscle Rack heavy-duty steel shelving with it's patented Z-beam design is the perfect storage solution for getting any room or area organized. Ideal for the home, office, warehouse or anywhere storage
www.homedepot.com
 
nolalady said:
Ugh, not fun. We did that a few years back, but they had 0% financing on it which was a life saver.
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We have friends that run an hvac company, so we’re saving quite a bit. My wife just paid off her car and the roof and the hvac will be paid off next month. I don’t deserve her.
 
MikeH said:
glad you finally figured it out!
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so last electrician guy came out. Wanted appliance guy to come out with him. Appliance guy made that difficult. I was like screw it, come back replace the lines. Meanwhile during the ensuing three weeks, lights start to flicker in the house. Electrician guy comes out to tell me how much replacing lines would cost. I tell him about flickering lights. He determines it’s the ac.

Call my buddy mentioned above. Compressor is shot, need a new unit.

He and I play around with the stove. He calls an appliance buddy. He has us switch out the plug from the dryer to the stove and plug the stove into that outlet. Stove works fine. FOR SURE AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.

My buddy calls his electrician buddy. He comes out today. Looks at the box and says the one doohickey isn’t hooked up to the other doohickey. There’s supposed to be some bar. He makes some weird science experiment thing and moves the neutral line (been my favorite for culprit since day one) to the actual fucking neutral line. Viola! Working stove.
 
Put in an offer on Friday for a really nice house house about 2 minutes away from where we rent now for 25k over asking. Heard back today that the seller went with another offer. I was kind of expecting it, disappointed, but not surprised. The offer we submitted was literally at the top of our budget. With interest rates rising, I don't know if we'll be able to afford many houses popping on the market right now. Loose estimates our Mortgage advisor ran for us 3 months ago were like $200 less per month compared to the mortgage pre-approval we got just last week. So... something has to give. Will people want to buy these expensive houses with 5%+ interest rates? Will house prices decrease? Will people want to sell at maybe a lower rate just to catch the boom before it declines? Will it even decline at all?
 
wokeupnew said:
Put in an offer on Friday for a really nice house house about 2 minutes away from where we rent now for 25k over asking. Heard back today that the seller went with another offer. I was kind of expecting it, disappointed, but not surprised. The offer we submitted was literally at the top of our budget. With interest rates rising, I don't know if we'll be able to afford many houses popping on the market right now. Loose estimates our Mortgage advisor ran for us 3 months ago were like $200 less per month compared to the mortgage pre-approval we got just last week. So... something has to give. Will people want to buy these expensive houses with 5%+ interest rates? Will house prices decrease? Will people want to sell at maybe a lower rate just to catch the boom before it declines? Will it even decline at all?
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As long as people continue to be able to borrow mass amounts of money, it will likely hover around where it is for the next few years, if not go up. Eventually, depending on how strong or weak the economy is, we may see people defaulting on their loans which then will open up the market a bit. Of course, a mass defaulting exodus will lead us to the next 2008 housing crisis.

It's all a gamble. My recommendation is try to get in on something, anything, so you can start building up that equity. Then if the market goes up or down you can at least watch comfortably knowing you have some skin in the game and don't have to worry about it shooting to the moon (because if it does, that means your property is mooning as well).
 
folsom_lives said:
My only advice is don't be house-poor. If getting the house means you can do nothing else financially, maybe owning a home right now isn't the wisest choice.
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it wouldn't be personally, we'd be paying about $600 more per month in rent/utilities/etc. But it'd be substantially more for the money and based on the fact we're DINKs it wouldn't break the bank. Our current spend on housing is lower than we can afford.
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
As long as people continue to be able to borrow mass amounts of money, it will likely hover around where it is for the next few years, if not go up. Eventually, depending on how strong or weak the economy is, we may see people defaulting on their loans which then will open up the market a bit. Of course, a mass defaulting exodus will lead us to the next 2008 housing crisis.

It's all a gamble. My recommendation is try to get in on something, anything, so you can start building up that equity. Then if the market goes up or down you can at least watch comfortably knowing you have some skin in the game and don't have to worry about it shooting to the moon (because if it does, that means your property is mooning as well).
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We've been thinking about even condos or apartments, since they might actually be less than we pay for rent but we really, really want our own space, no HOAs, a nice yard, our own laundry, privacy, etc. Maybe live in a condo for a couple of years, if it still goes up in price, sell, make a little profit and then try and buy later. Idk...
 
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