Ok so yes, I have been sucking at my restart of the 30 day Shred program, but trust me I have good news. Are you ready?
We're starting our house hunting on Thursday!! We want to take advantage of the low prices and the $8,000 tax credit this year. I'm excited and nervous, at the same time. I'm tired of paying $1,150 a month in rent and have nothing. I'm so happy, just wanted to share with you all!
Congrats and good luck in the hunt. I spent the last year helping my youngest brother & his fiancee find a house. You'll see a lot of frogs before you find your "one", but it's out there somewhere!
oh yay!! how exciting! it is an EXCELLENT time to buy. it's unbelievable what you can get for your money right now!
As you know, I've been scouring the listings myself... I visit the 3 following sites:
~ realtor.com - good for general listings. good pictures, and good search fields
~ trulia.com - good for finding out sale history for a property (what the sellers bought it for and when)
~ zillow.com - good for finding recent sale history (price/sq. foot, etc.) for a specific area, so you can better gauge an offer
realtor.com is usually where I go first, then use the others for additional information if I see something I like. sometimes, there are houses on one that another site didn't have, but those are few.
there are also map features where you can do an aerial/birds-eye walk-around on the property.
trulia has a lot of foreclosure/short sale listings, and sometimes it's hard to get any info on them. an offer can take months to process, but you have time on your side if you want to be patient for a steal. I never click through to ReatyTrack (a pay-for foreclosure list service) but I will hit "more info" and that may take you to a more descriptive listing.
anyway - what are you hoping to find? bedrooms, baths, square footage, area, ect?
-- Edited by D on Tuesday 21st of April 2009 02:38:27 PM
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"Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess." ~ Edna Woolman Chase
D, thanks for all of the info. We're really hoping to find something with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. Preferably something built after 1990. Square footage, anything over 1,300 would be nice. My MIL's house is 3bd/1ba and is 1,200 sq feet, so we'd like something a little bigger than that. Our max purchase price is 130,000 and we would be putting 3.4% down. I'm feeling so clueless right now, almost moronic. Let me clean up a little and I'll take a look at those websites and send you a pm.
don't feel stupid, it's a big thing, and there's a lot of stuff that's good to know.
keep in mind you can low-ball offers right now. I would start looking at properties listed at $150,000. sometimes, if they have been on the market for a long time, you can offer low, and they'll accept it out of desperation. sucks for them, but that's the environment. I have 2 houses on the market, but I desperately want to buy too...
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"Fashion can be bought. Style one must possess." ~ Edna Woolman Chase
Good luck! Can't wait to hear about what you find! DH and I must have looked at 100 houses when we decided to buy, but we ended up fiding the perfect house for us so be picky and don't get frustrated! It's so much fun so have a good time with it!
I offered on, and ended up buyin, the first place I looked at. Good luck! It's a fun, but scary, process, but I am really starting to enjoy having my own place.
good luck, rosie! house hunting is fun. i remember i used to drive around in really cute neighborhoods where i wanted to live and look for "for sale" signs! every time we got in the car to go somewhere, we were looking out the window for "for sale" signs.
my advice: look on your own AND get your friends to be on the lookout for you. That's what we did - even though we had a realtor also pulling stuff off of mrs listings for us. the very first house we bought, which we loved, was one that a friend (not our realtor) saw and told us about.
let us know how it goes!
oh also, i would highly recommend the book "Home Buying for Dummies." it was invaluable to us when we purchased our first home.
Congrats! DH and I bought our first house back in October. Let me tell you, having an awesome real estate agent really helped. She had a lot of experience working with first time home buyers and explained everything to us well before we put an offer on a place. I don't know where you live, but if redfin.com covers your area, it's a great research tool!
You're going to have so much fun once you find a place! Now is a great time to buy!