General

While I'm sure greed is also often involved... Note that, right now, everyone's property values are jumping hugely each year -- which often means increases in property taxes. As a landlord, our rents have gone up a bit each year -- but, the last couple of years, we're actually making LESS because our property taxes have gone up so much.

Increasing the value of a property means nothing until we sell one day. And, heck, things could be worth less then even. Right now, we're paying more in property taxes for "value" that we'll likely never realize.

Yea, my property tax went up $50/month... so I had to get an appraisal done to drop my MI lol. Pays for itself in a year!

Also have to consider inflation and labor rates have also increased. Landlords now need to pay more to maintain their properties. There are also landlords that might be trying to recoup any losses they might have had from not being able to evict tenants from unpaid rent. It could also be a very smart business move to increase rent to the current market value while you can in case there is a bubble that's about to burst. Home prices and rent could be driven down so that landlords are taking a loss.

I don't live in a super desirable, but not quite terrible, neighborhood in the California capital. For context, I bought my home in 2011 for 67K. The house on my street have been regularly selling for $350-400K depending on the condition and upgrades. Pre pandemic they were selling for around 225-250. I wouldn't be able to afford the prices today, let alone fight with the all cash offers.

Someone had mentioned the first time homebuyer status. The only thing I will say about the FHA backed loans is that if you don't put any money down on the house, you will be charged pmi (mortgage insurance), which, depending on the size of the loan can be hundreds of dollars a month in addition to your mortgage payment. For most mortgages, unless you refinance later on, this fee is there for the life of the loan. It does incrementally decrease with every monthly payment, but not by much.

@ChronoLe usually PMI is only until you have a LTV of 80% or less. Usually you just beed to call a bank and ask them to take a look. You shouldn't be paying PMI for the life of the loan

On an FHA loan you do.

@mcorrado As @Porksta mentioned, I'm not sure if it differs state to state, the original loan for the house I bought for my mom, FHA, did not allow for the auto dismissal of the PMI after it hit 80%. It actually explicitly stated in the terms that it would not. Same thing with my friend's FHA loan. It required a refinance, otherwise it would have extended for the life of the loan.

Right, with FHA, PMI lasts the lifetime of the loan or you can pay the full PMI upfront at the time of closing. Most people end up refinancing to get the PMI dropped once the LTV ratio is 80% or less.

@ChronoLe somehow missed the FHA part of your post. Makes sense then, but yes that can add a considerable amount of interest like you said if you never refinance.

Reviving this thread.

Curious to hear if any of y'all have had luck lately? We're still at it. The market has definitely slowed down around here. Pricing is slowly coming down, but options are also shrinking.

The one from awhile ago that we were stoked about, we ultimately passed on, and SO happy we did! The month after it sold, the person who owned the neighboring lot, cut down ALL the trees and the value of the land feels like it dramatically dropped. Definitely glad we dodged that bullet as that was such an appealing factor of that house. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/665-Medina-Line...

We've got a new one tomorrow that we're pretty excited about, but fearful it will go fast. That and it's a bit out of our comfort zone budget wise. Would require some decent lifestyle changes, but as of now feels like a really solid candidate. Checks many boxes, but lack of a woods, and the design of the basement/family room isn't my favorite: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/35329662_zpi...

Does this check any of your boxes? https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14955-Avenida-V...

Neighbor sold their home like a month ago. San Diego housing is crazy.

SwiftJAB wrote:

$665k for 1300sq ft!? Oh my god, that's just insane!!!

LA market is f'n bonkers right now, still.
987 Sq ft, dilapidated 2 bedroom, no lawn, with an ADU with shared driveway that's rented out. $1.1 Million.

Rental rates for comparable $3200 a mo +

This isn't sustainable.

I mean that's just insane! My buddy just left the Bay Area (went to San Diego) and was paying like $3,600 for a 1 bedroom apartment!

The income divide from West Coast to elsewhere, isn't as drastic as it used to be either, so the time old "well they make more in California" isn't as true these days. I don't know how people can afford that life style on most jobs.

Sadly, this one appears to be a bit out of range for us. Just got off the phone with a lender, and I doubt we'll be able to bid on this house ... not unless we dramatically change everything our life style, which sounds awful. Or, I could sell all of my entire video game collection, which would massively help, but my god that's so much work that I wouldn't even know where/how to begin.

This time around we signed a 1 1/2 year lease on the place we're renting. We just plain gave up trying to buy, and then gave up trying to rent a different place because it was far too competitive for places that really weren't all that great. We're just going to wait this out a bit more, it's so frustrating.

I mentioned earlier in the thread we put our house on the market in July which was probably the worst time to sell as the rate hike happened two weeks later. I was talked into putting it on the market for 650k by my realtor who said it would be snatched up immediately. This was my first house sale and I’ve now learned that realtors might be more useless than car salesman. It’s an occupation that should go away.

Anyways I basically forced her to bring the price down but we still weren’t getting any bites. We then got an offer for 425k around end of October, but at first we turned it down. It was a low ball offer (at the time) based on the market around us even in my opinion. Apparently the couple were paying cash and just sending lowball offers to a lot of houses. Thought about it for 2 weeks and decided to see if they would haggle. They agreed to 500k and we closed in November. I’m glad to have it off my plate and we made a bit of profit. I didn’t like selling to them because I guess they were investors who were gonna flip 2 years after living in it but the market literally went dead in that area (I haven’t seen a house sold in that area since mine sold).

We are seeing homes come down in the St Louis area... not in the ghetto, but nice suburbs. I've seen a lot of real nice condos I would love to buy and rent out, fully updated for 150k. I could see myself doing that down the road but not just yet.

we just had our house reassessed to see if the PMI can come off our mortgage.. turns out our house is valued $160k more than when we bought it!!!

shadyfozzie wrote:

That should definitely get it dropped and save you a chunk.

Now the question is -- how long until they can raise your property taxes to match the "new value"...

We were gonna do it... Go over budget and bid on the house. Haha... Yeah... We talked to the selling realtor, many bids over asking. There's such little inventory now and competition is aggressive. Super curios to see how much it goes for.

Probably best to wait until spring/summer regardless. Hopefully rates will come down a bit more too.

My house sold. I'm sitting on cash now trying to decide next thing to do with my life. I've been talking to banks and figuring out the process to buy investment properties.

Commercial and multi-family real estate is going nuts. For the longest time in WA you couldn't find better than a 4% cap rate anywhere decent, maybe a theoretical 7% cap in Aberdeen or Goldendale or somewhere out in the boonies.

Now you can find 7-10% with relative ease. Moving to commercial / industrial, there is storage facility that I bet is doing 18-20% cap for what they are asking.

sinnie wrote:

Right now St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Pittsburg have IMO the housing markets with the most opportunity. St. Louis has some amazing buildings, some needing a lot of TLC, some move in ready.

https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/6300-Minnesota-Ave...

I don't know the area at all, but that seems like an amazing wedding venue / rent out to boy scouts / rent out to a church, etc.

Not gonna lie, I feel like my rent is going to go up again this year since they did one of them appraisal things by a 3rd party company to assess repair costs, etc...

Surprisingly, while I was waiting on a job I applied for in Columbus, OH, I did some research and cost of living is similar, somewhat lower than where I am now... So far as I can tell it is safe to say I'm not considered for the job so I've decided to stop looking in that area. I was looking at possibly renting a studio apartment for the space.

Now that I'm going back to work at the same job I quit to focus on my education while I look for an IT job, I'm going to focus on getting my financials back in order, rebuild my savings to prepare for when I need to move for my IT job...

I bought a house and closed earlier this month. $325k. 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, living and family room, full basement that's custom height one extra block (I'm 6'8" and I don't hit my head), gas fireplace, all hardwood floors, deck, New appliances, New furnace, New roof, dry basement.

I was the only person who put an offer on it. My realtor used that to pressure the sellers to spend $20k to fix things before closing. That included steel basement wall stabilizing brackets (common in this area), chimney repairs and new hood, radon mitigation (also common to area), and some stone decorative replacement on the outside.

Lots of people toured the house but whined over dumb stuff. Things like Lot wasn't big enough (it's 0.75 acres wooded), garage wasn't big enough (it's 2.5 car), it's too close to the road (my backyard borders a busy 4 lane road. It's only busy from 10 am till 5pm and there's plenty of yard buffer), there's no shed, the cement drive needs mudjacking (two small spots outside my garage), it's too close to the school (I'm two houses away from a high school which is fancy as hell and super quiet). I have one neighbor bordering me that's super nice. Across the busy road my backyard borders is a golf course. Everyone on my block works 3rd shift so it's dark at night and pin drop quiet.

I plan on mudjacking the drive in spring, planting lots more trees, fencing in the backyard, finishing the basement, installing vinyl siding when prices drop.

If anyone wants to buy my house in northwest Milwaukee, mention this thread and get $2k off asking price.

Chad wrote:

The crime in a lot of these places is really bad and that's keeping a lot of investors out. Go there the wrong part of the day, get mugged, shot or carjacked. There's just some places you can't really easily go in STL and many other places.

sinnie wrote:
Before I bought my house I visited during the weekend especially Friday and Saturday night to see how the area was.. Of course this was in 2012 before this market.. We've had so many houses change hands the last 2 years it's crazy. One house in particular has been bought and sold 4x.. One house went pending in 8 hours and the other in 9. The guy who bought the house on the corner waived inspection and the house has foundation, roofing and drainage problems. Now he knows why they took his offer even though they had 2 higher offers.

Over here most realtors are being butt-holes. Either they ignore texts/calls or leave you hanging after an "appointment" to look at a house. Hoping the market gets better this year

kevolones wrote:

Fire your realtors. I went through five before I found a keeper.

I've had good experiences with realtors. The best was this couple that did it together. The wife was a super nice/helpful person. The husband (never actually met him) was the one who negotiated the price once we got an offer. I was shocked at how much more he got the buyer to pay. I almost felt bad for the buyer.

More recently, when my parents died, I had to sell their homes (out of state). The realtor helped me with all kinds of details (e.g. I had to clean the places out and do some minimal fix-ups). He even would meet people while I stayed remote in some cases too.

Indeed -- there are great realtors and horrible ones. It's a bit too easy to get a license here (and maybe everywhere). I see way too many people picking it up as a "side gig" who have no idea what they are doing.

The city I'm moving to, almost 20 percent of residents have real estate agent licenses. It's crazy.

ryanflucas wrote:

They are not really my realtors. Theyre just the people showing the houses on the market. I need to find a real realtor and stop dealing with these people.

My first realtor was awesome for me. He gave me tons of tips and was brutally honest with certain houses. Nothing we were seriously interested in, but he flat out told us on certain properties he would not be our agent if we tried tried to buy them. He wanted nothing to do with having to sell them later. Props for that honesty.

Due to moving out of state, I've had 4 other realtors. I dumped 2 of them quickly as it was all about their commission. The other 2 were decent, gave me some breaks.

Be weary of a realtor who struggles to find negatives about a property, especially if they consistently spin your concerns to non-issues. Also as soon as you know or suspect it won't work, cut ties.

I don't have nice things to say about the realtors I've dealt with. Some have been "ok" but at no point has anyone ever met the value of their commission. $20k+ for just fielding calls from other realtors is pretty insane.

I've sold 2 houses and both times the realtor said they could get $X and when the appraisal inspection came around everybody was nervous. And both times the appraisal was below the expectation, but at that point you're tied to the realtor to some degree even with their false promises.

For one of the houses we actually talked directly with the buyer to work some stuff out (without our reps ever knowing), as the song-and-dance BS through the realtors was so dumb. And they still got paid.

I went through realtors fast because I didn't buy a house fast enough. I had a few really good ones but they spent more time helping people that bought the first house they saw for quick money.

My sister in law is a realtor and she's really great at her job. Yet in the grand scheme, I find that realtors aren't needed. Feels like a a car salesman. A role that used to have a lot more value, but has proven to be far less needed and valuable as technology has taken over. The insane amount of money they can make for doing so little, is baffling. Sadly, still a bit of a necessary evil until things further change. We'll sell for sale by owner and buy a new house through her.

Indeed. Realtors have a large lobby group that basically makes it difficult for anyone to get access to MLS. If people had easier access to it, then they would be less and less needed.

Sure, this varies by house and location, of course. But, in general, in many areas and with average/normal homes, buying direct access to MLS to list your own house might make the most sense.

I thought my realtor was amazing selling my place. If I sold when stuff was hot I would have done Redfin. But when everything is going to crap? She was very good. Did like 15 open houses, helped arrange a whole lot of stuff.

Buying though, I think I might just use an attorney next time. Buying is no way worth 3% in most markets.

Generally 2% buyers fee and that's usually baked into the seller's realtor.