Comments | traceroo: The Quest For A House Begins

traceroo

The Quest For A House Begins

May 04, 2011 09:40

The homebuying bug has bit me!The alarm went off. It's time to gear up to buy a house! We don't think we can afford to buy a house in our current neighborhood, as we'd hoped, unless we find a short sale -- and they do fall out of the sky from time to time. It's certainly worth keeping an eye out. Meanwhile, we've identified another area in ( Read more... )

movies, colorado, personal finance reading, they have a sid vicious conference room

Comments 5

elena23 May 4 2011, 15:57:07 UTC

Do you intend to find a realtor? As the daughter of someone who owns a real estate company, I highly recommend it. When we bought a house, my father called down to the franchise office in Athens and we got an excellent realtor as a result. The mortgage company we ended up using was also attached to the real-estate company, which ended up being very convenient (and the mortgage broker willingly put up with and answered my eight billion questions).

Anyway, a good realtor can really make the process easier!

Totally. traceroo May 4 2011, 16:09:19 UTC

We have a couple local recommendations, but we'll probably go through someone we know through the LARP community who also lives near, and works specifically within the area we've chosen.

I'm leery of choosing a mortgage broker based exclusively on the realtor's recommendation because I'm suspicious of kickbacks driving that recommendation -- that said, I've got the one broker recommendation I like; the other slot is still wide open. Nobody else's recommendations have particularly moved me positively toward a specific second candidate. It certainly can't hurt to ask the realtor for his recommendation.

Trace

Re: Totally. elena23 May 4 2011, 16:41:50 UTC

We had a different broker originally, but it was about time the news story broke about about toxic mortgages and all sorts of other problems with Countrywide, who that broker happened to work for, and we opted to find someone else. So then I got two additional quotes, and ended up going with the company broker. The fact that the realtor and broker had a relationship made communication a whole lot easier, which almost would have been worth a fee...though there weren't any.

My agent was very wary of doing anything that could be construed as nepotistic or unethical, so any time she gave us recommendations (brokers, inspectors, etc) she would always give us three, in random order, with the pros of each of them. She was great.

I'm so excited to hear about the house hunt!

moosea1 May 5 2011, 13:54:56 UTC

Yay!!! House hunting!!!

flashbacks uprightsimian May 6 2011, 05:31:39 UTC

..i have no input on the house stuff except. YAY for you!

As for the "Top Gun" tidbit in your post, it brought to mind the time we went to see 2 movies together - well not together, but I was in attendance. Your ability to make me snarf diet coke AND popcorn is unmatched! 2 items flashed in my mind: 1) While seeing Jurassic Park - you yelled at Laura Dern: "Don't go in there you stupid bitch!" right at the moment she was entering that room with the dangerous teethy bad guys. 2)Sliver - at the end as the lights came up and there was much shuffling towards the end of isles and exits, you said very loudly: "Well THAT sucked." Entirely HIGH-LARIOUS moments in my younger years that still stick with me.

Much love to you T$ and good luck with the house hunting!