I am have been for months. First house and I am going nuts.

Buy as much as you can, the prices are only going up.

Good luck

heh heh...

You don't know nuts until you try to sell one AND buy one.

It's almost a done deal though.

Hang in there.

Worse. We are BUILDING a house.
If I'da known what a complete pain in the Arse this was I'da saved myself alot of time and trouble and just went out and shot myself.
Good Luck.
Pit

I too am building a house. We just got our closing date, June 19th, and what a pain in the ass it has been.

This is going to be our first house. As much as it's been dificult, once it's done I'm looking forward to moving in.

Av.

closing on my first the 7th!

I was a loan officer for a short time and did loans for new construction.  I had an associate that was a custom builder and involved in a national home builders association.   He would give talks about the subject and point to research that show the stress level involved in building a new house can exceed that of divorce.  (and has led to that many times in the past :-).  

None the less, once you get through it, you'll likely be very happy you did it.

Mike

We are closing on the 7th for our new house also. Luckily I work in the construction industry, so I was able to anticipte many things that would have cost me money later on. Thankfully I have only had three change orders, and they were for pretty minor stuff. I had the builder agree to giving me the first three change orders without any additional fees, so now I am set. When we close, we will get back over $4k!


Chris

I don't think I'll ever build another house. It was so goddamned frustrating! The schedule fell way behind because the absence of brick was holding the rest of construction up. And there's the fact that most of the garbage from construction was buried in the front yard. [:(!]

Closing on our house here in Montgomery on the 30th.  Have been looking for one in Ruston, Louisiana for over a month and we're losing our minds.  I think that the interest rates will stay low until this fall, but I'd get locked in with a lender if you anticipate buying soon.  Buying and building a home is a stressful thing, but is a FAR better option than throwing your money away by renting.

oooh com now Waldo,

i am a former real estate sales person & i never screwed any one......

when someone gets screwed in a real estate deal..., that person didn't do their home work !

im trying to figure out how to steal one :D

It's kind of a double edged sword!  While the interest rates are so low, the housing prices are going to be higher.  When the rates go up the prices will go down.  When it comes to money in your pocket or a net-net situation, paying slightly higher prices with low interest rates is the way to go.  The time is now for any of you prospective new home buyers.  

I just fired my second realtor on Friday. Never show someone a house they can't afford. This last guy was like a jeweler that hauls out the big rock when you wanted a "love ring". The first guy tried to steal our cash on a HUD deal.

as a newly licensed salesperson, i've been saying the same thing, [b]CactusJack[/b], but i guess some people think when you pay someone to do something for you or help you with something, it absolves you of all responsibility in CYA.  i'll admit that most agents aren't worth the paper their licensed is printed on, but it's not because they are [i]trying[/i] to screw you.  most just don't know what the hell customer service is anymore.  and a lot of the young people can only think of making the sale and bringing home the check.  all of the hard work in between has fallen by the wayside.

we're just starting to look here in indy area, well surrounding counties.  supposed to close on the house in phoenix tomorrow (keep your fingers crossed).  sucks having a house you're trying to sell 1800 miles away.

I've made an offer that was accepted by seller for a little white farmhouse on 10ac near Boise. Neat thing is it borders on BLM land, so my new range is just over the fence, along with miles of trails for the horses & maybe a new atv.  

House in the PRK has been on the market for a week, I have an offer that's not perfect but I'm working on it.  If anybody needs an outstanding and ethical realtor on the SF peninsula, shoot me an email.

Pray for patience.

-hanko

I buy 5 to 7 houses a year then rehab them and resell. I've got it down to a science.The first couple deals were kinda scary when I first started 7 years ago, but now its pretty simple. Good Luck[:D]
CAPITALIST

You ought to read up on what some analysts are saying about a "housing bubble"--lots and lots of people jumped into real estate after the dot com fallout and now the housing prices are totally outrageous and many fear that much of it is due to HUD money and banks making too many risky loans to first time home buyers.  The Clinton Administration is to blame--they pushed very hard to get lots more people into homes they couldn't really afford and if the economy doesn't turn around for real soon, there will be a lot of defaults on mortgages.  Sort of an Enron involving the mortgage lending industry.  It's all built on government backed welfare money again...


If you look at the cost of a new home, where is the value?  Much of that cost is due to regulation (building codes, inspections, permits, attorneys, the real estate agents, etc.), taxes (on mortgages and on property, and on all the other associated details you can think of), and labor, which is actually being held artificially low by the ready supply of illegal immigrants all over the place (which is why our federal government will never put into action any kind of real border security or crack down on illegals--if they did, our economy would collapse).  

Building materials are another scam--scarcity of wood and brick is highly suspicious, even during a building boom.  Someone is manipulating the supply someplace along the line.  Probably the contractors lie about it to make extra $$$ for themselves.

Bottom line--the real value of the property and the home is not anywhere near what you are going to pay for it, especially in a new home.  Building your own is probably a good way to go, but you still could lose.

Also, real estate agents are the biggest schmucks in the world--lower than whaleshit, yeah, that's about perfect.  No wonder so many of them go into politics.  It's all corrupt.  I spent one afternoon with a real estate agent, and thought "holy christ, maybe buying a home isn't really for me."

Hell, buying was the easy part.  I've been painting for alomost a solid week and I'm only half done!   Primer, paint, paint again...AAgggghhgghg.  Jeff

They claim my house will be completed/closing by this Friday (2 months earlier than originally projected). Tomorrow morning: pre-final walk through... They have a lot left to do-- they better finish.

We just closed on our house(new construction) a month ago. My writing hand is just starting to regain feeling, numb from all the signatures.
It was one of the biggest headaches I've dealt with yet, but leaning back right now and looking around, [b]It's worth it!![/b] I spent 12 years or so paying rent to line someone else's pockets. Now I'm finally putting $$ into something that's MINE.[:)]

What is this "stucco" you speak of????

hehe :) I grew up in stucco homes in CA-- we rarely see that stuff here in good ole Texas...

I have a Campbell- Hausfield commercial sprayer, but I vinyl side all the houses I rehab. Nobody wants to look forward to painting a house in the future. Vinyl is final. No more painting or scraping and on average it only costs me around $2000 in materials to vinyl side the average house I do. That includes all the trim coil to wrap all the windows, doorframes and facias. Its alot easier to put up vinyl than scrape and paint for me. It gets you out of the whole Lead based paint clean up whereas you have to get rid of all the lead chips from scraping. Its all encapculated under the vinyl.
CAPITALIST

I am gettin ready to BUILD a house.......

I saw the few posts on painting.

I just got back from Sears. My fiance and I just bought enough paint for every room in the house, and several gallons of primer.

When we close on the house, I'm taking a week off work. To bad I'll be the one that has to paint and move stuff into the house. My fiance is going to help at night after she gets off work though.

Luckily, we both live with our parents right now, so there is no hurry to get stuff into the house. Should make painting pretty easy when there is nothing to move of of my way!

Av.

Bought mine in May of '99.  Now I am looking for some land to buy and build a new house.  To hell with living in a subdivision!!!

My wife and I looked for several months at buying an existing house, but we could never find one that was what we wanted. There was always "This could be great, but we'll have to change this and that....." We finally decided to build one. We lucked into a 14K square foot lot with a beautifal view of the mountains, and modified a floor plan to suit our needs. We close the 7th, and I can't think of anything I would want different for our budget.

Chris

I'm in it now! Sold my California house and bought Nevada land to build on. We were hoping to have a dry shell up by this winter but I'm just breaking in my naivete' here. It's gonna suck going till next year in temp housing but worth it to get out of  the craphole this place is becoming.

The wife and I have been trying to buy our house for a little over 6 years now. 280 more payments and it's ours. [;)]

Seriously, we had a real estate agent who specializes in helping veterans buy homes aid and represent us as buyers. He was a great guy and very helpful. I actually couldn't believe how fast our home closed. We made the initial offer at the very end of December, closed at the end of January, and moved in the first day of February. The key is getting pre-approved and taking care of any foreseeable or potential problems well before you actually make an offer and start the closing process.

Stress???

I close on my first house tomorrow WOO HOO. I can't wait.  I have experienced 0 stress, then again i'm a pretty easygoing person, I owe no one a penny, and got preapproved so I didn't look at stuff i couldn't afford.  Took my almost 5 months to find what i really wanted, but i love it.  2.5 acres bordering about a 10 square mile chunk or prime Virginia deer woods. There's already a tree stand in the back yard (visable from the house lol) and i found an antler in the basement, it was a sigh.  The neighbor and the guy that used to live there used to shoot off my back deck into the woods.  There's a bass filled resuivor about 5 minutes away. Man, i'm in heaven. One of the rooms used to be the garage, so it has about a 3 foot crawl space under it, only accesable from inside thru a trapdoor under the carpet, perfect conditions for storing ammo, dry and cool.  And no wife to tell me what to do/not do.  Only 2 downsides, no garage, yet, I have money saved to build one (a 3-car+shop area) and it has pink carpet (yuck) not real pink, but girly mauve on the first floor and on the stairs. I'm guessing the guy picked the house and his wife got to decorate it.  Anyways enough bragging.  $500 a month in someones pocket, or $1000 in my own. It's an easy choice if you ask me.

What I find to be one of the more satisfying aspects of having purchased a home is now realizing that even after buying my home with only $700 down, I could not rent a similar home for what my mortgage payments are and I'm already sitting on $60K of equity. I can understand short term renting or leasing, but over time it's just a waste of money.

I have my pre-"final" walk-through in an hour... [bounce]

I'm buying one in Montgomery as well. Where ya movin?