House Buying

[jennythereader]

A couple of questions for my friends who own houses:

How long did it take you to go from "I'm (or we're) going to start looking" to "thank goodness, we're (or I'm) all moved in"?

How much of that time was spent finding the house, and how much of it was spent jumping through hoops for the bank?

Comments

[littleweeds]

Six months. It would have gone faster but we got the Federal Government involved.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

How much of that was finding and how much was arranging to buy?

[littleweeds]

We started looking in early April, found the house on June 20, made an offer on June 21, the offer was accepted June 25, we closed on September 18, and moved in from September 19 through... well.. there are still a few things at my brother's apartment but we've been living in the house since September 20.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

So about 3 months for each half of the process. Good to know. Thanks!

[nounsandverbs]

First house: started looking in October-November, moved in in late January/early February.

Current house: started looking January/February, moved in in late July.

Six months is a pretty good average. Negotiations and financial stuff ... the wheels grind slowly.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

What was the breakdown between finding/actually buying for you guys?

[nounsandverbs]

The house we're now living in happens to be the first house we looked at. We looked at a few others, but bid on this one fairly quickly.

Same with the Warwick house. Once we settled on Warwick as the place we wanted to live, we bid on maybe the third or fourth house we looked at.

In both cases it took approximately 4 months between bid and closing.

[dwarven-brewer.livejournal.com]

Took me about 3-4 months to buy, more than a year to find. from when I first started looking part-time/half-heartedly.

[jennythe-reader.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I suspect Tom & I will be more at that end of the spectrum, once we start looking for real.

[arathreel.livejournal.com]

Pretty much nine months. From the time we wanted to gt pregnant until Johann was born. We move in... two weeks before he was born.

[stefka.livejournal.com]

From the first time it crossed my mind, to the time I closed and moved in, was a year almost to the DAY.

I realized in February that this was something that maybe I could do, and I did some desultory looking on my own (and having a knowledgeable friend come along to give me advice). Eventually I hooked up with a real estate agent and got into the USDA first time homebuyers' program, which preapproved me for a mortgage, at which point things got serious because I knew what price to shoot for. In the middle of all this, my housemate got a new job and left the state. I couldn't afford to rent the house we were in by myself, but a colleague offered me her spare room on a long-term temporary basis. Turned out to be a little under six months.

At least one or two houses got bid-and-bought "out from under me" -- I had an appointment to go look at a house, and the house got sold. But I looked at several, and closed on a Friday before work. I took over a ceremonial first load of stuff in my car. The next day, with the help of several friends with large vehicles, I got everything out of the room in a friend's house where I'd been staying and out of my storage unit, and slept in my own house that night.

[caersidi.livejournal.com]

Our experience was unusual and it took about 2 months from start to finish.

That was because no chain was involved and the sellers already had bought another home and were keen to sell quickly. The first house we looked at was perfect for us in location and price and size.

So finding took almost no time at all and then about 6 weeks for the legal aspects: securing mortgage (though we'd already approached our bank about what we could get etc prior to looking), title searches and the like with solicitors.

I even have the dates (from paperwork in my desk).

Our offer accepted 26 March
Sale went thorugh 13 May (ish)
Moved in 23 May

[purpura.livejournal.com]

And there was the fateful moment when in the middle of the various negotiations between lawyers and owners and realtors when the phone rang from across the kitchen K screamed "You don't talk! I talk! Marty doesn't talk, only ALEX TALKS!!!!!"

Between quoting Madagascar, rolling on the floor in laughter and the shock of the initial screamed quote, the phone was answered and we moved on (no pun intended) with the process.

It's long, painful, but ultimately rewarding when one buys a house.