Adventures in Home Buying

We used a realtor that was very new to the business. What she lacked in experience, she more than made up for in effort.

We asked to see houses well below our means, didn't like them, and moved up in price. We came in on a whirlwind tour of job interview and house shopping with a very tight schedule. She worked with us, found the home of our dreams, then handled all of the administrative crap that we could not while we were 1000 miles away.

 

The only solid advice I have is to never compromise your privacy. Trees. Trees and more trees. Find a secluded property with a fence, a couple acres or even grassy knoll. Anything to keep them at bay. Privacy is numero uno on my list. Home is where you should go to release and regroup. Prying eyes and drops-ins are not welcome.

 

We bought our house over 11 years ago.
We were moving 5 hours away, already had our new jobs, with a mortgage pre-approval. We were coming to town in mid-winter. A time when RE is completely dead in this area, and the brokers are none too busy.
I think that would make it very clear we were serious about buying.
I called 5 or 6 local realtors. Told them the weekend we would be coming. Most responses were along the lines of "Call me when you get to town, we'll see what we can do".
I was thinking "Holy crap, I'm driving 5 hours across upstate NY in the dead of winter, I want something a little more firm".
Of all the realtors, ONE could be bothered to take the time to copy some listings, go to the post office, and spend $2 postage to send the listings, and schedule a time and place to meet us on the desired weekend.
We met her, spent a day and a subsequent morning looking, and found what we want.
So a few months later, we go to closing, and for very little work, she pulled down a nice fat payday. She literally ate the other guys lunch by investing 10 minutes and $2 postage when I first called.

Moral of the story: Keep looking. You will find the right one.

 

i have purchased 2 homes, the first was a fantastic experience, despite being young, naive, and of littel income. My then wife and i were scared shitless, and relied on our realtor heavily. someone at work, suggested a name, so we looked her up, she was part of the Remax office, which concerned us as they have a bad rep, but she was awesome, even did some "help" with the interim interest deposit. Additionally, the home we selected was a HUD Foreclosure, which increased her commission form 3% to 5% by law. this was cool, because she provided this info to us, and promptly split the additional earnings to the tune of a new fridge, since the house didnt include one.

Second house i bought on my own (divorced). moved to a new town, didnt know a sole. Coworkers all rent. did some shopping around for agents, didnt find jack. found a local office that seemed to ahve a good grip on the town, so i gave them a call, and set up an appt. Whn i meet the agent im blown away, she's georgeous. this instantly concerns me, if for no other reason the inability to tell her no. i stay on my tip-toes all the way through the first meeting, lookking for a reason to find a new realtor. ALl in all though, she knows her shit. i stick with her, and things go well for a little while, until i start to think thistown doesnt have a house for me. everything she shows me is too big, and too pricey. i tell her this, and she suggests building. i look at some floor plans, and some pricing, and it seems like a good deal, plus i can make it what i want. This is where the ride begins. we break ground, and things are going good, i find out about halfway through that the construction firm is also owned by the real estate agency. all of a sudden, work is getting done different than i requested. garage door has squre corners instead of curved, floorplan is mirrored form what i wanted (asked about this early on, and got lied to) brick is wrong color, back door is french, instead of sliding... etc... as soon as she had me committed, she quit giving a shit. totally used her tits and a fake agreeable nature to reel me in. later i fond out, its her MO, and she ahs taken many down this road.

Long story short, be patient, and talk to multiple realtors. find someone to reccomend a good one. be warey of conflicts of interest...

 

My realtor sucked. Kept trying to push the new builds on me, and never bothered to see them himself first. In the long run, I did the house hunting and made that tool just burn his gas driving me around to look at them all. In the long run, it all depends on what you're looking for in a realtor. Odds are, even if I had found a good one, I'm too nosy and involved with big purchases to just sit back and let them do the work anyways. Ultimately, I used him for exactly what I needed - someone to file the paperwork.

Oddly enough, I did end up finding a good realtor - the one who was selling the house I bought. If I ever have to sell or hunt for another, I'll use her.

 

Freakenomics has a fantastic section regarding Realtors.... And the author concludes that they really have no incentive to work for you.

It is difficult to escape using a Realtor in the US market, but here is what we did: We shopped around on our own and then contacted the sellers realtor for each property we wanted to see.

This kept us from getting tied into a 'contract' with an incompetent realtor who simply wanted to close another sale. We lost *some* of the protections that having your own realtor would have provided, in theory, but in practice that was not a problem since we aggressively negotiated to OUR TERMS rather than the realtors.

If you rely on a realtor to find a house for you, you will never know what he is passing over. There is really no way around combing the listings yourself... Since you are going that far why introduce another person into the mix?

 

Always stressful buying a new home and trying to sell the other and make all work on the same day.

Now what happened to the valium dispenser I nailed up on the livingroom wall to make the house look more attractive?
Oh yeah, I riped it down and put it in my cube at work.

Good luck and don't settle for anything that you don't like.

 

Currently having my own battle. My realtor is great, the selling agent has been causing no end of problems. The 45 day escrow was up 3 weeks ago and it sounds like we are still a week or 2 from closing. Our first set of loan docs has expired because the idiot wasn't familiar with the real estate laws in the city he was selling. Our realtor, who is very familiar with the city, has been telling this guy what needs to happen and it has been going in one ear and out the other. The big obstacle has been a city required pre-sale inspection, this should have happened once the offer was accepted and he didn't do it until a couple days before the original close date. The inspection found all sorts of issues that needed to be corrected, most pretty minor and a few that I would have rather not had corrected. But this guy fought the findings and dragged things out. Supposedly everything has been fixed at this point, but we are still waiting a final inspection. Except now we have to go through and process all the loan documents again.

I was about to say fuck it and pull out of the deal, but unfortunately there is nothing else in the area that fits my needs or in the same price range. Also prices in the area have started to go up. Because of my location in Los Angeles, I've got a pretty narrow range of options. Five miles west of me and I add 20 minutes onto my 30 minute drive home from work, 3 blocks east and I am in an area where I would rather not live. North adds drive time and south goes into a rough area.

I'm also having to deal with the house I am currently in being on the market. It's my parents house and we had planned on being out by the end of February. So I had my parents at the house for 2 weeks getting it ready for sale and on the market. Working around open house's and appointments to show the house. I had a block of vacation set at the end of February so I could move, that got canceled. I had another block set this week, that was for upgrades and working with contractors, couldn't cancel it, so it's wasted. (I did my vacation picks in January based on escrow close date.)

I started zoloft 3 weeks ago because the stress of this and some other health issues that happened right at the same time.

 

Sounds like the whole thing sucks so far.
That can really sap your enthusiasm.
Don't give up. If you really want to buy a home, and it's right for you, it will happen.