My wife and I are about 3 weeks from closing on our first house and I am losing my god damn mind. All of our finances/budget work out while still having savings for emergency repairs, our inspection went well after having to back out on the first we offered on (tree fell on the house after offer was accepted, thought we could fix but it was a wash) and we really like the area and first impressions of our neighbors.
I know buying a house is a top “most stressful thing” an average person can go through, but this is a lot harder than I thought and I didn’t downplay it in my head. I am guessing I will feel like this for the first year or two and progressively it will become normal right? We have a lot of support from our families (financially, emotionally and labor/handypeople) so I am still optimistic about the whole thing, but my appetite is non existent and insomnia seems to be working in overdrive.
The timeframe all depends on the house. Over the last 30 years, we’ve bought three homes. The first one was an absolute breeze and never caused us heartache. The second one, was a bit of a troublemaker but we just worked our way from room to room, rehabbing the entire house a little bit at a time.
This last one has been a nightmare for the 4 years we’ve owned it. We’ve blown through our savings and still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Without going into needless detail, on top of a qualified home inspector, I would suggest going to the city/county permitting office to make sure permits were pulled for anything that’s been recently done. In our case, the the biggest issue with this property was that apartment over garage was done illegally and we had to completely gut and start over. Unfortunately, the entire reason we picked this house was for that apartment as it was for our daughter to live in.
My intention isn’t to scare you but just be sure to perform due diligence and don’t be afraid to further investigate potential issues.
The thing that pisses me off about this, is how the previous owner who illegally modified the house isn’t instantly on the hook for the amount it elevated the house price, and you would have to proactively litigate them in civil court (if that’s even legal).
I agree, we had the option to sue the seller but the reality is, even if we spend a ton of money to take him to court, there’s no guaranteed payment at the end. We decided to focus on fixing the problem rather than try to get compensation from them.
There is absolutely no system in place to protect people from something like this. The inspector didn’t find it, the realty attorneys didn’t find it, the realtors didn’t find it. We only found out about it when pulling a permit for a deck.
Yep. Just another example of how the system is designed to protect the existing capital and landowners over what is fair or just.
Your latest house is pretty much what I am expecting as a FTHB. Permits have been my main concern after some quick searches. There’s not a lot of updates made in recent years to the place that would require them, but who knows what was done that wasn’t visible during inspection. I know it should be ok, but I never had to deal with this before so it’s just another thing added to the list.