Your first time home buying mistakes?

[NetWareHead]

Old houses suck IMO. You've already listed many of the reasons. People always say "craftsmen" built those houses back in the good ol' days, but in my limited experience much of that "craft" was aesthetics. Who cares if the stairwell is meticulously carved if the foundation is all rotted out and the basement has a 2" floor slab made of substandard concrete directly on dirt and that's all now cracking to sh!t, and the basement has a 6' ceiling height and is completely uninsulated? (I live in a city with tons of homes from the 1920-1950s eras. My home is technically from the 50s, but was gutted and rebuilt as a modern home.)

Furthermore, only some older homes are built well for that time period. A lot of homes in that time period were built like garbage. As with all things, there is the whole range of good vs. bad. However, my issue with "good" is that even the good building practices of the day won't even come close to meeting modern code.

Note that you can build new houses in the style of old houses, but of course it will be expensive. I know someone who moved in an old neighbourhood full of old Victorian homes. The city said that all homes in that area had to maintain that character. So, they still tore down the old home and built a brand new one in its place, but with a custom Victorian design. Looks great, but with all the modern amenities and none of the bazillion problems all their neighbours have. Furthermore, their ongoing heating and cooling expenses would be much lower, and they don't have the ongoing renovation costs that their neighbours have to implement after-the-fact solutions for the issues plaguing their neighbours. So yeah, their up front costs were higher, but their on-going costs are lower. You pay for it either way.

BTW, why do you even care if 2x4s are 2x4? If you want better stability, use modern 2x6, and so forth. 2x6 also gives you the potential for better insulation and gives you more room to work with in general. And yeah, you won't have to deal with those totally awful lath and plaster walls in a modern home. Those plaster walls are evil, esp. if you want to install Ethernet or something in the house, as you are probably well aware given your name.

I dunno, my experience has been a little different than yours it seems like. I will definitely admit that there are garbage homes and shoddy construction from every era. I didn't means to give the idea that older houses are always going to be better from a stability/construction standpoint. I've seen some pretty bad houses when shopping from 50-100 years ago that I wanted no part of, and the reason wasn't due to neglect or poor maintenance.

My reason for desiring old homes is that they are sometimes a bargain compared to new construction. My point about a home having good bones still stands. An old house can be solidly built but still require a ton of upgrades. I like to do alot of work myself and things like changing a boiler/furnace, electrical, plumbing etc... are actually fun for me and a great way to save on projects rather than paying somebody else.

Its like buying a new car vs an old car that you upgrade on your own time. For instance, if I buy a new house and a new furnace is installed that I don't like, well I'm probably going to have to live with it until it fails or becomes uneconomical to run, which is what? 10-20 years? And while we are talking about furnaces, the majority of new construction i've seen uses forced hot air which I cant stand. Radiant baseboard hot water or radiant floor all the way. Hell I would even install a steam system if I could but thats not going to happen. But I know enough about steam that an old house that has cast iron standup steam radiators would not deter me at all from buying it. Most of the time, builders add things to and build houses in ways I just dont like, which Im forced to pay new house prices for.

 

[jagec]

I like my old house, BUT it was a gut+refurb. Solid brick exterior, modern 2x4 framing inside with drywall, insulation, PVC, Romex. Best of both worlds.

VA loans don't have PMI. VA loans have a VA loan fee you pay all upfront if you don't have enough disability percentage rating.

Yeah, I was confusing them with FHA, which was discussed above.

 

[cbrsurfr]

Inspector and better negotiating.

Inspector on my first house was not thorough enough and missed a LOT. House needed a roof within a month, leakey basement, rotten wood in garage, poor flashing around the windows, etc... The house ended up a disaster and I've put so much into it that I'll never break even. It's a rental now.

My new house (~3500 sq ft) I made sure to get a good inspector. We spent 5 hours going over the house, yes 5 hours. He was awesome. It also helped that I knew alot more about what to look for.

My new house could have been negotiated better. It was a short sale which was a new process to me and my realtor wasn't too experienced with them (all her experiences were bad, lol). We had a price in mind, I was willing to go a little higher and the sellers agent told us the bank pre-approved a certain amount and if we went under that amount there was no guarantee that they would accept it and it would take longer. Long story short after closing an email accidently got forwarded to me showing the bank pre-approved price which was 10K less than I paid. Less learned, trust no one.

 

[HumblePie]

Ugh, I hate the proliferation of Romex and 3 way switches in my house. It's my OCD, but I HATE when I see a switched flipped up and a light is not on. My wife has no problem and tends to use the opposite and less visible switches a lot. Which makes the other more visible switch end up in the wrong configuration for me.

Really, we should also break this down for info for new home buyers based off the following categories.

Buying old and expecting to renovate
Buying old and not expecting to renovate *much
Buying new construction (this means designing the house with a builders plan from scratch)
Constructing your own

Most probably wouldn't do the last category as much nowadays. I bought my first house as a new construction, but it was an inventory home. Which means I didn't have any real input into it's features. Which is technically more like buying "old" without expecting to renovate any. I personally would have liked to have drops for everything in the whole house. Right now I have 3 cable drops. One for living room, one for master bed room, and one for game room. I have 3 more bedrooms and none have cable drops. So it will be a pain to add those later when I want them.

 

[Eug]

I dunno, my experience has been a little different than yours it seems like. I will definitely admit that there are garbage homes and shoddy construction from every era. I didn't means to give the idea that older houses are always going to be better from a stability/construction standpoint. I've seen some pretty bad houses when shopping from 50-100 years ago that I wanted no part of, and the reason wasn't due to neglect or poor maintenance.

My reason for desiring old homes is that they are sometimes a bargain compared to new construction. My point about a home having good bones still stands. An old house can be solidly built but still require a ton of upgrades. I like to do alot of work myself and things like changing a boiler/furnace, electrical, plumbing etc... are actually fun for me and a great way to save on projects rather than paying somebody else.

Yeah, if you can do the work yourself, that will save a LOT of money, but most people won't be able to do that, either because of the lack of skill and knowledge of how to do it, or else because of lack of time.

I've done a lot of DIY recently but in general don't do significant plumbing, HVAC, or electrical. About the only electrical I've done is put in an electrical baseboard heater in one room, and putting in a few switches and what not. Otherwise I leave it to the electricians.

I did do the entire RG6 and Ethernet install myself during my last reno though. It took a LOT of time, but technically it's not hard, and furthermore it's not going to kill me or wreck the house even if I did it wrong.

Its like buying a new car vs an old car that you upgrade on your own time. For instance, if I buy a new house and a new furnace is installed that I don't like, well I'm probably going to have to live with it until it fails or becomes uneconomical to run, which is what? 10-20 years?

That's one of the benefits of custom builds. You can specify the quality, and you can specify the types of things installed. It will be expensive though, so you have to know you're going to be living there a long time.

And while we are talking about furnaces, the majority of new construction i've seen uses forced hot air which I cant stand. Radiant baseboard hot water or radiant floor all the way. Hell I would even install a steam system if I could but thats not going to happen. But I know enough about steam that an old house that has cast iron standup steam radiators would not deter me at all from buying it. Most of the time, builders add things to and build houses in ways I just dont like, which Im forced to pay new house prices for.

I much, much prefer forced air (natural gas). Steam radiator-based heating would be an instant turn off for me. Plus, in many places you'd have to add a separate AC system anyway.

I like radiant floor heating, but in that case would prefer electrical, but that's a problem since electrical heating is expensive in general. I only put radiant in my bathroom.

More importantly though in the context of this thread, most people do not want to deal with steam-based radiators if they can help it. It would be considered a negative for most buyers.

Ugh, I hate the proliferation of Romex and 3 way switches in my house. It's my OCD, but I HATE when I see a switched flipped up and a light is not on. My wife has no problem and tends to use the opposite and less visible switches a lot. Which makes the other more visible switch end up in the wrong configuration for me.

That's pretty irrelevant to most people, but since you're OCD, you can buy switches that are neither up nor down.

 

[gorcorps]

I thought that was only true of VA loans?

As of April 2013, FHA loans have PMI the life of the loan. As has been stated in greater detail it used to be that the PMI would go away after 5 years AND you had 20% equity. Now you have to refinance to a conventional loan to get rid of PMI, and hope that the rates don't increase too much during that time to the point that you'd be the same (or possibly even worse off).

For this reason I jumped on an FHA loan before the April change because I didn't want to piss money away on an apartment anymore, and I was worried the rates would rise so much by the time I saved up 20% that I'd be even worse off.

 

[mmntech]

Marked. I'll probably be buying a condo late this year or early next.

 

[NetWareHead]

I also sold my house without a realtor at the same time that I was buying the aforementioned house. The buyers' agent said I had to pay him 3% and I told him to go fuck himself right in my driveway. The buyers were first timers and looked totally confused because they thought I 'had' to pay him. I said no, actually I don't. We've signed nothing and I didn't hire him. I apologized to them for being a buzz kill, but I was in no hurry to move because I knew what my house was worth and I wasn't going to accept less. I reiterated that they made a good offer and I would gladly accept it as long as I didn't have to pay for their optional use of a realtor. Once they understood the situation, they negotiated his rate down to 2% and he begrudgingly agreed. The buyers and the agent came over to my house (I invited them over for dinner so we could work through the whole deal in a night) and it went absolutely fantastic. I brought the papers to a real estate lawyer ahead of time for review so I knew the ins and outs of my contract. The cost of that was $400 versus $9000 for a realtor and it was probably a higher quality contract to be honest.

Yep I see this alot where agents try to insert themselves into a transaction where their presence is optional. Alot of times it is pure balls on their part and hope that the buyer/seller does not know enough about the process.

I was renting a house out and contacted an agent I used in the past. She said she would screen potential tenants, credit,income, criminal check the whole 9 yards etc.... She finally find a nice tenant and after an interview, I agreed to rent to him. So I am reading the final paperwork with the realtor at closing and she inserted a clause into the contract that said something like "If Tenant elects to renew their Lease with Landlord and stays for a new Term, the Listing Agent shall be paid a fee equal to one month's Rent"

I calmly explained to the agent that while I appreciated the work she had done for me in finding me a tenant, anything I do with that tenant after this transaction is strictly my business from here on. Neither I or my tenant will pay another fee if he renews with me. She removed it from the contract.

 

[poofyhairguy]

What I have learned:

-In the south/west don't buy homes where the master bedroom faces west. That was the biggest mistake with my current place, it is very hard to cool the bedroom for sleeping.

-Don't buy the biggest or smallest house on the block

-Be careful buying boom houses (built 2004-2008). Many are slapped together crap.

-Check out what internet connection and utility options you have before you buy. For example my current house has crazy water rates.

-Look for flooding or leakage, especially if there is two floors or a hot water heater in the attic.

 

[Eug]

-Don't buy the biggest or smallest house on the block

Buying the smallest house on the block is a common practice around here actually, and for good reason, as long as it has a decent lot.

Why? Cuz they immediately tear it down and build a brand new house. Why pay for a bigger house if you're just going to tear it down?

In my area, we are on set of bluffs. The ones that immediately face the water have kind of a morbid death watch. Many of those homes are owned by very elderly people, and the homes are tiny bungalows. Contractors are champing at their bits waiting for those seniors to die off or move into nursing homes so they can snap them up and build cliff-top modern homes.

 

[HumblePie]

What I have learned:

-In the south/west don't buy homes where the master bedroom faces west. That was the biggest mistake with my current place, it is very hard to cool the bedroom for sleeping.

-Don't buy the biggest or smallest house on the block

-Be careful buying boom houses (built 2004-2008). Many are slapped together crap.

-Check out what internet connection and utility options you have before you buy. For example my current house has crazy water rates.

-Look for flooding or leakage, especially if there is two floors or a hot water heater in the attic.

Depends on area and time frame. Some places in the Southeast are horrible for that. Especially the "Chinese" dry wall crap where the dry wall imported from China at the time was made with and releasing all kinds of toxic crap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall

Regulations cracked down hard on this later, but a lot of the problem happened mostly in quick rebuilt houses after hurricanes came through and demolished areas.

 

[FallenHero]

I'm assuming you mean elaborate on the other options. Try credit unions. See if other banks will offer non-FHA loans with less than 20% down. Shop around to see what you can find. I know in other threads people have mentioned various ways of doing it.

The housing bubble bursting dried up many of those options. FHA was the only way me and wife could have gotten our current home. Of course we are under the old 5 years/20% deal, so it really isn't that bad for us. Plus we bought as the market bottomed out in our area, so we will be well above the threshold when the time comes.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Turns out the previous own had freshly painted everything (youd think no big deal right).

Fresh paint is always a red flag. Often is covering up something, maybe something big (like leakage).

My reason for desiring old homes is that they are sometimes a bargain compared to new construction. My point about a home having good bones still stands. An old house can be solidly built but still require a ton of upgrades. I like to do alot of work myself and things like changing a boiler/furnace, electrical, plumbing etc... are actually fun for me and a great way to save on projects rather than paying somebody else.

That is all true. My main beef with many old homes is the layout- rooms are small, storage is lacking or in weird spaces. And in many cases renovations to fix these problems simply aren't worth it.

Buying the smallest house on the block is a common practice around here actually, and for good reason, as long as it has a decent lot.

Why? Cuz they immediately tear it down and build a brand new house. Why pay for a bigger house if you're just going to tear it down?

Sure if you are just hunting for a lot then who cares about the house on it.

 

[Eug]

My main beef with many old homes is the layout- rooms are small, storage is lacking or in weird spaces. And in many cases renovations to fix these problems simply aren't worth it.

Indeed. A friend has a century home that's in the same ballpark size as mine, but it has roughly twice as many rooms as mine. Tons of small rooms, a large formal dining room (which I have no use for), and not very much closet space.

As for renovations, as I said earlier my house was originally from the 50s and then gutted and rebuilt. It was a bungalow. They removed the roof and added a second floor, and added length to the basement as well, adding bedrooms beyond where the original foundation was located. Because of this my basement reno was an extreme PITA, and expensive. In order to expand certain areas to better utilize the space and to expand the bathroom, I had to knock down a couple of support pillars and knock down part of a solid cinderblock wall (which was the old foundation), which was located between one existing bedroom and the existing bathroom, just so I could expand the bathroom.

Obviously, this meant lots of architectural and engineering approvals with the city, and required the installation of some massive support beams. I now have a huge steel beam holding up much of the main floor. I wasn't there, but apparently it took 8 guys just to lift it into place. The other problem is my basement is only 6'6" or so from floor to ceiling. It does meet code, and it's not absolutely terrible for us since my wife and I aren't tall, but I would have preferred 7' minimum, or more like 7.5' to 8'. In a new build, as I undertand it, ~7.5' basements (after finishing) are standard.

 

[snoozing]

marking this for later

we are looking to buy a house in the maspeth, ny area as first time buyers as well

 

[Eug]

This may not be an issue in your area, but it's a big issue in my neighbourhood (which is mostly 50-60 year-old homes).

We all had to get new water meters installed, and I was surprised by what the water meter installer told me when he saw my main water supply pipe.

He said in my area, most people still had 1/2" water supply pipes, with some more having 5/8", and even a few with 3/8". That's basically the equivalent of a small garden hose supplying a whole house. Only some homes in the area had people had 3/4" (which is actually a minimum code requirement now), presumably the new ones, and mine was the only one in recent memory that had 1". (The previous owner had put in a huge in-ground sprinkler system, so the city approved the 1" supply.)

To upsize the existing 1/2" pipe from the city to the house costs something like $1200 here. However, that doesn't include any costs for fixing the landscaping or pavement or whatever that may have been overlying the pipe. It also doesn't change anything inside the house so if the main pipe after the water meter is still 1/2", there still may be significant flow issues, esp. if they're really old pipes that are partially clogged.

P.S. The new water meters have wireless transmitters so they no longer have to send water meter readers to the house. To my surprise the power is supplied by an integrated battery, with a supposed 20-year operating life.

 

[bignateyk]

Location, lot size, and house size should be more important than the interior.

You can renovate much more easily than you can add square footage, and you can't really change your location and lot.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Subbed and bookmarked.

 

[nickbits]

Fresh paint is always a red flag. Often is covering up something, maybe something big (like leakage).

I don't agree. Most advice is to paint everything neutral when you sell.

 

[Leyawiin]

Don't rush - even if the market is "hot" and your real estate agent is pressuring you to avoid bidding wars and multiple offers. Visit the neighborhood at various times of the day/evening to get a feel for what's going on there. Walk around the front of the house (and yards if you can) to see how many neighbor's dogs you set off and how loud they are.

 

[NetWareHead]

I don't agree. Most advice is to paint everything neutral when you sell.

Agreed. if the walls are painted neutral, that could possibly one less thing that I have to do after I purchase the place. There is nothign worse than a recent house I saw and I swear a family of clowns must have lived there. Every room was ridiculous shades of purple, pink, blue, green even the kitchen was a disgusting color. The first thing I thought when I saw it was that this will require at least $2000 in just paint and maybe 4-6K in paint labor.

 

[vi edit]

On the topic of painting. Beware of wallpaper. A lot of that stuff does NOT come off well at all. Even using the removing solvents and scrapers you'll still take chunks out of the drywall/plaster trying to remove it. It's such a miserable task that I've almost completely ruled out any home that has wallpaper.

It's really sad actually. There are a lot of homes that have potential, but then you see the inside and it's got this god awful flower or "country style" wallpaper slathered in every room. Shit should be outlawed.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, wallpaper is evil.

BTW, one condo I looked at for my mom had a huge mural of the Simpsons filling up most of one wall a bedroom. Good quality mural too. Looked just like the original. Made me laugh. The background was an ugly baby blue too. Ugh.

Luckily for the seller, it was just paint, but for some reason the seller didn't paint over it. I think a lot of people passed on this place partially because of the mural and ugly paint colour, and because of the poor condition of the carpet. We ended up not buying it, but it would have been a good deal for a prospective buyer, since both the carpet and the paint would have been reasonably easy and not too expensive fixes. In fact, if I were buying I would have ripped out the carpet anyway regardless of the condition, and put in engineered hardwood.

 

[highland145]

marking this for later

we are looking to buy a house in the maspeth, ny area as first time buyers as well

snap...mine.

 

[NetWareHead]

It's really sad actually. There are a lot of homes that have potential, but then you see the inside and it's got this god awful flower or "country style" wallpaper slathered in every room. Shit should be outlawed.

*vomit* My dad bought his house and the bathrooms were covered floor to ceiling in that same kind of wallpaper. I mean there was even wall paper behind the toilet tank, behind the vanity and even on the door!