Buy
Posted by Chris
Looking back, the price I paid for my house was too high considering that I ended up completely gutting it. However, you can’t even get a shell of a house in my neighborhood these days for under $200,000, and the newest built homes are selling over over half a million dollars. I could have bought a place for half of what I paid in a neighborhood I didn’t like, and I’d be constantly regretting it. Make sure you have your finances in order, and be persistent. Eventually you will find the house you are looking for.
When I bought my house, I inherited a tenant. The tenant was paying $550 a month (less than I now charge to rent my spare bedroom). I couldn’t legally kick the tenant out, and I didn’t want to since the house would be vacant while I was away at training. A few more months of rent helped out with the new mortgage payments, and I was able to save up more money for the renovation (which I was about to walk into blindly).
Originally posted in May 2004:
(Sorry, I have excluded details on pricing… e-mail me if you want to know specifics.) I knew that every day that passed that I did not own a house, the property values would be rising, and I would be less likely to get one. I began looking at houses almost every week, and put in my first offer in December. I got lightheaded while signing a paper that said I would pay someone that kind of money, and I waited two days only to find out that the seller had decided not to sell the house (they were asking $135k, and could have easily gotten $180k for this very large house on Fort Ave.) I was let down, but now I knew the process, and was less stressed out when I would undertake it again.
I knew from perusing the online listings that homes were selling in Locust Point at lightning speeds. I checked them literally every few hours waiting for something in my price range that I could live in while I fixed it up. I would gripe every day, but I kept at it, and lost another house in January to a higher bidder.
Online listing hint: Homesdatabase will show you the houses by zip code, but it will not tell you addresses. Most of the listings are posted by big-name national realty agencies, like Long and Foster and ReMax. You can usually find the exact address of a house on Homesdatabase by searching on the listing agency’s web site.
My house was literally sold in hours. On a morning in January at 7:30 am, I saw it online, and immediately called my realtor to schedule a visit. I was in the house at 2:00 p.m. that day, and learned that there were already 2 bids on it, and someone else was also viewing it when I got there! They asked $140k… I bid, expecting another letdown. I found out the next afternoon that my bid was accepted, and it blew my mind. Homeownership meant a whole new set of stresses and responsibilities… I figured I would just place a few harmless bids on houses I could not afford before realizing that I was just a stupid kid and I would never be able to actually do it. Now I had to find a loan and get ready to stop my frivolous spending!
My real estate agent was with ReMax Exclusive, a Baltimore agency. They have a partnership with Baltimore American Mortgage, and if you use both of them, they eliminate a major portion of your closing costs. I shopped around a bit for my loan, but my realtor’s deal worked out best for me because I did not have much to put down. They ended up saving me almost $5,000 dollars on the total amount I had to spend to close.
I wanted to be able to get a lot of demolition done before I left for Missouri (The Army was going to send me to Engineer Officer Basic Course for 4 months) but I was not able to. I was only able to move in a few things, and then I had to go.
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