Hopefully a first time home buyer soon!

[bjorn_skurj]

I have no clue... Louie would know.

 

I was a member of the California teacher's union and it sure was expensive.

Too bad you did not get value for your money. A REAL teachers' union, like the one we have here in New York, would never have allowed Prop 13 to even get on a ballot, much less pass.

[RaspberryJam]

My husband always checks if there are any federal superfund sites in the area and google earths them to see if the house is downwind or downstream from them. You'd be surprised how many little ones there are around. Nerdy, I know, but considering your health, and less importantly, your resale value, it's worth the few minutes on the internet.

 

Also, if your radon is a little high, it is no big deal to get rid of AT ALL. But, you can use the information to get more from the seller.

[Party @ the Moontower]

My husband always checks if there are any federal superfund sites in the area and google earths them to see if the house is downwind or downstream from them. You'd be surprised how many little ones there are around. Nerdy, I know, but considering your health, and less importantly, your resale value, it's worth the few minutes on the internet.

 

Also, if your radon is a little high, it is no big deal to get rid of AT ALL. But, you can use the information to get more from the seller.

Not nerdy @ all.

[bobbob1313]

My mom's house has been on the market for like a year and a half. Want it?

[ih8music]

Just closed last week on a house out here in CA. my advice - avoid probate sales (unless you enjoy dealing with extra real estate agents, lawyers, conservators and judges). Our escrow was 60 days due to all the additional legal delays - and (at least here in CA) your sale isn't final until the probate court approves it, at which time someone else is allowed to offer the estate a better deal! thankfully, in this market, that almost never happens - but it's a nervewracking process regardless.

 

But the worst part about it is that probate sales are all "as-is" condition, so no matter what our inspector found, it was up to us to fix it (although they did take care of the big ticket items like termite fumigation & repairs). but it's been a major PITA.

 

Aside from that, assuming this is your first house, save much more cash than you anticipate for all the "homeowner" items that you'll need to buy that you probably didn't need as a renter (lawnmower, gardening tools, washer/dryer, fridge, etc.)

 

Once you pick a house, go to the neighborhood on a friday/saturday night and see how rowdy the neighbors are.

 

Try to plan for a 1-2 week gap between taking ownership and the actual move-in date... the best time to do stuff like painting/cleaning (esp. the garage) is before you move all your crap in.

 

Make a list, prioritize it, and don't get overwhelmed with all the crap you have to do now... I call mine the "Joy of Home Ownership List"

 

enjoy!

[theashtraysays]

Try to plan for a 1-2 week gap between taking ownership and the actual move-in date... the best time to do stuff like painting/cleaning (esp. the garage) is before you move all your crap in.

Yeah, that's a really good point. It's exciting to "move right in" as soon as you close, and that's probably what most people do on a first home. But having some time to paint, clean up, replace lights, etc, with an empty place is really really going to make it more livable when you do move in. DO IT!!!!!!!!!

[remphish1]

My current lease is up mid Feb. I am hoping to close by Jan the latest so I do have time to prep and buy furniture etc.

[bigshoulders]

Yeah, I'd say this is the only negative with my house. It's not that far of a drive from my work (18 miles) but it's down a main rd with lots of stop lights.. Not very happy about that, but that's literally the only thing wrong. Everything else, house, location, school district, neighborhood is perfect.

 

So in a nutshell, don't let one negative keep you from buying the house. It's not going to be perfect.

 

I agree that one thing shouldn't be enough to keep you from buying a house. But, and I can't stress it enough, be at peace with your commute. When I first bought my house I was 20 mi. from where I worked. When I upgraded my career, the commute doubled. Now... I didn't buy the house with with a 40 mi. commute in mind, but this is the one thing that is really impacting my quality of life: the hours spent wasted in traffic, or conversely, barreling down the highway at 75 mph.

 

It really is all about one thing: Location. Be at peace with it, wherever it is. That's about the only thing you can't change. That and junked-up neighbors' yards.

 

Best of luck,

Kevin

[cryptique]

I second the comments re: commuting. We put an offer in on a fantastic house and were all excited about it, but soon began to realize that we weren't too crazy about the neighborhood and that both of our commutes would suck. We were pretty relieved, then, when the sellers refused to budge on their (bullshit) price, because we were able to walk away pretty easily. We were still newbies at that point, and it taught us another important lesson: don't let the "perfect house" blind you to other equally important factors, such as the neighborhood and the commute.

[quarter23cd]

Governments could really benefit from a few Six Sigma black belts coming in and leaning out their processes.

Heh. This cracked me up because I just got out of a meeting here at work where we were all complaining that none of our processes ever improve around here because whenever a new idea gets proposed, somebody has to go and turn it into a Six Sigma project--and then the process goes and takes 3 years to implement and usually gets abandoned midway. Its like the black hole where good ideas go to die. Actually, that sounds perfect for a government bureaucracy!

 

 

As for the house, all I can say is definitely take into account the age of the house for many different reasons. Jersey probably isn't so different than where we bought our first house in CT. We had to go kind of far-ish out of the NYC market just to get something we could begin to afford and we fell in love with a quaint little 100 year old house. I loved that house to death and I hope the people who own it now have the time/money to upkeep it the way it deserves. We only lived there 3.5 years and I watched it rapidly turn into a money-hole. Before we bought, the inspections all came back good--but with the caveat of "Good....for an older home"--which we didn't pay any attention to, we only heard the "good" part. There was a lot of work to be done, and it kept increasing every year. Even after just a few years, we decided to get out before the whole thing just crumbled around us.

[alison the wilca]

Heh. This cracked me up because I just got out of a meeting here at work where we were all complaining that none of our processes ever improve around here because whenever a new idea gets proposed, somebody has to go and turn it into a Six Sigma project--and then the process goes and takes 3 years to implement and usually gets abandoned midway. Its like the black hole where good ideas go to die. Actually, that sounds perfect for a government bureaucracy!

Really?! Most of our greatest improvements have come from our Six Sigma teams. They are doing things left and right that work/get implemented. I guess it depends on the team!

 

Anyhow... what do you guys think of Redfin? I was pretty gung-ho on using them for a short period of time. Then I thought I would do a pretty crappy job of finding a house and changed my mind.

[quarter23cd]

Really?! Most of our greatest improvements have come from our Six Sigma teams. They are doing things left and right that work/get implemented. I guess it depends on the team!

I was at least partially kidding. The Sigma tools can definitely be useful if applied well, so I'm sure the blackbelt teams can get stuff done. I was making a joke of it because we have a company-wide initiative to train people, so we have people at various stages and it seems like whenever an idea comes up at a meeting, somebody will inevitably say "Oooh, this will make a great yellow/green/polka-dot/whatever belt project!" and then they go off to work on it and it may or may not ever actually get done, but in the meantime nobody else is allowed to make process changes because there is a Sigma project "in the works".

[farva]

Get an actual mortgage -- not just a pre-qualification -- before you look and begin to bargain. You'll have a much better position if you have cash in hand.

 

Is this possible? How many lending institutions would lend you such a large sum of money without specifics on the property to be used as collateral?

[JUDE]

Is this possible? How many lending institutions would lend you such a large sum of money without specifics on the property to be used as collateral?

There are different levels of

[LouieB]

Yeah, the home price I've got a grasp on. I also was recently able to find a listing of property tax ranges for all of the suburbs. Some are extremely high (Skokie comes to mind) and others and pretty low (Niles, for example). Ive seen places in the city with fairly low recent tax year property tax payouts and other spots that were totally nuts. I'll just have to make sure I do my homework!

Actually Skokie has pretty low taxes too. Both Niles and Skokie have a nice industrial tax base. Somewhere like Evanston is outrageously high because the taxing bodies don't have much in the way of commercial properties to tax (ie; Northwestern and other schools, lots of churches, few factories), so that makes Evanston (sadly) out of most reasonable peoples limits, unless you are pretty well off or willing to live in a poor neighborhood. If you want cheap in Chicago go south and mostly southwest. Or go to parts of Cook County that aren't as expensive or desirable. But places like DuPage and Lake County are even higher than Cook property tax wise.

I have no clue... Louie would know.

 

I was a member of the California teacher's union and it sure was expensive.

If you are talking property taxes and schools; it has nothing to do with the Teachers Unions, which are strong (IEA AND IFT), but both of which have been pushing for school funding reform for years. The majority of school funding is based on local property taxes (rather than state income tax, which is what all the reformers want), so those areas with really high quality and high expending schools have extremely high property tax. Of course on a percentage basis tax rates in some poor areas may be higher than in richer areas since the property is worth less. This is a complex issue, but one which gets discussed every year in IL and can never seem to get resolved. There seems to be no solution in the short term.

 

Frankly there seems to be little logic to how some property tax is figured in this part of the world; but the one constant is that location has everything to do with high taxes and having clout has to do with lower taxes and everyone else be damned.

 

I'll tell you a nice place to live, but somewhere no one wants to actually go since it is so far off the beaten track -Beverly, on the far south side. Great homes, integrated neighborhood, nice people, out in the middle of fucking nowhere. There are also some nice suburbs that don't include Evanston or Oak Park or Wilmette or the more hip places, Elmwood park, Forest Park out west are nice. It really all depends on what you can afford, what you can tolerate and where you want to be. There are tons of nice and fairly boring neighborhoods out on the northwest side (not necessarily Portage or Jefferson Park) that have nice houses lower property values and taxes, but if you want to be able to walk to hip clubs and nice restaurants, these aren't the places to live.

 

edit- One more thing about property taxes and schools (and really all taxing bodies); IL has way way way more school districts than anyone in their right mind would imagine (900 state wide) so that you can live in a suburb or town and have a district for the grade schools and an entirely different one for the high school(s) and there may be several grade school districts feeding into one high school district, all with separate taxing capacities and superintendents and all the bureaucracies associated with a school district. it is absolutely fucking nuts. In come cases there is a district of one school right next door to another district of one or several schools, all feeding into another high school district. Really it is indescribeable. A wholesale consolidation of districts is badly needed, but it is political suicide since everyone wants a piece of the pie. Even a state as large as IL could do with half the number of districts (or less) but everyone thinks local control is such a great thing. It is so great we get to pay higher taxes and have more inequity as a result.

 

LouieB

[bjorn_skurj]

In New York, the statewide teachers union really likes that school revenue is linked to property tax, which they see as a very stable base for their members to get paid from. There is some talk of a property tax cap here, but a fully income-tax-based solution seems off the table at this point. It is a big issue in the Hudson Valley where I am and on Long Island; not so much in other parts of the state, where people's homes aren't worth so much and people are mostly subsistence farmers or belong to roving gangs of bandits.

[alison the wilca]

I'll tell you a nice place to live, but somewhere no one wants to actually go since it is so far off the beaten track -Beverly, on the far south side. Great homes, integrated neighborhood, nice people, out in the middle of fucking nowhere. There are also some nice suburbs that don't include Evanston or Oak Park or Wilmette or the more hip places, Elmwood park, Forest Park out west are nice. It really all depends on what you can afford, what you can tolerate and where you want to be. There are tons of nice and fairly boring neighborhoods out on the northwest side (not necessarily Portage or Jefferson Park) that have nice houses lower property values and taxes, but if you want to be able to walk to hip clubs and nice restaurants, these aren't the places to live.

 

I wouldn't mind living off the beaten track, but I am trying to keep in mind the commute for both me (drive to Rosemont) and Kris (public trans to Lincoln Park). I don't want to go any further than I am now from Rosemont (about 13 miles). I am looking at Harwood Heights and Norridge, but don't want to go too far for Kris. I looove Elmwood Park, but I don't like that Kris would have to travel through iffy neighborhoods at night to get home from work. I really like parts of Mayfair, too, So, I guess we'll see.

[stooka]

One thing about having a house...something always needs to be fixed.

 

LouieB

 

 

Yes.

 

It also would help if you knew a little about plumbing...............and by a little, I mean a lot.

[H-Bomb Henry]

Get a home warranty. My inspector was terrible.....absolutely terrible. Just bought a house in July. The AC unit went out two weeks after the move. Warranty covered it however. Oh and State Farm dropped my insurance because they said the roof was in bad condition even though it passed an inspection. If you have any doubts on the roof get a roofing inspector to look at it. I dropped State Farm as my insurance agent.

 

Also my mother in law cried when she saw the place because she thought the house would be a chore. She was right. Way more than I thought it would be. I wish I would've bought a new home in a suburban subdivision.

 

Oh also my wife was 6 months pregnant when we closed. I don't reccommend this.

 

Life is good.

[aricandover]

I looove Elmwood Park, but I don't like that Kris would have to travel through iffy neighborhoods at night to get home from work.

 

 

I've lived in some pretty iffy spots before. I don't think passing through one would be that big a deal.

[Edie]

There are different levels of

[wheelco]

My wife and I are looking at houses in Northern NJ. We are eager and excited. We saw two we like and made an offer on one though it was a low offer. Any specific pointers you can share? I know it is very important to do a title search and inspection. Alrighty anyone have any stories to share?

good luck, it's a buyers market so that's nice

 

I do litigation but have handled many closings. Title search/insurance is necessary to close the deal, but you can offer and proceed pending getting the title policy. Make sure you get and read all their required disclosures - fraud is always lurking. Also, get an independent reputable inspection for yourselves ($250 approx). PM me for any specific advice bro, since I've alwayhs said I love both bands in your name. Plus, I grew up in Westfield in northern NJ - is this anywhere near there?

[LouieB]

REgarding the property/school funding issue; I suspect that the local bargaining units DO like the inequality of all of it since those more affluent districts pay their teachers insanely well and they get all sorts of perks and pension deals. The rest simply get fucked.

 

LouieB

[remphish1]

good luck, it's a buyers market so that's nice

 

I do litigation but have handled many closings. Title search/insurance is necessary to close the deal, but you can offer and proceed pending getting the title policy. Make sure you get and read all their required disclosures - fraud is always lurking. Also, get an independent reputable inspection for yourselves ($250 approx). PM me for any specific advice bro, since I've alwayhs said I love both bands in your name. Plus, I grew up in Westfield in northern NJ - is this anywhere near there?

 

Sure is! The house we like is about 1000 feet from the Westfield border in Scotch Plains! Small world. I love Westfield too! Great town! Thanks for the offer for help!

[tongue-tied lightning]

some great places to eat in Westfield

 

is the Trotteria still in town ?