Any words of advice?? I will google and look up this very topic but am wondering if anyone here has anything to say.

Will tricky buy a money pit?

Don't settle on a house because it's "affordable"
Make sure you actually like it and can see yourself living there for quite a bit of time.

Buy for less than the cost of building it would of been 5 years ago.

Don't get 100% value loan. Give yourself atleast 25% margin on interest repayments. ( rates go up, rates go down and so does the value of property.)

Don't reply of housemates to help pay off loans, use housemates to speed up repayments only.

Get more than one house inspection from insured inspectors.

Never sign anything an agent or broker gives you. ( some fuckers will try to charge you a fee for doing the internet searches you can do yourself. )

umm. theres nothing I can tell you that wont be at a decent consumer rights website. everything above should be online somewhere.

oh, look up any grants you may be entitled to, along with any first home buyers loans rates, read the fine print for interest rate honeymoon scams.

Cut me off if I'm giving too much advice here, I've spent a lot of time and effort studying real estate......

You need to decide what your long term goal (3-10 years) for this property is:

• Home
• Home (most important) and some income (less important)
• Income (most important) and a place to live yourself (less important)
• Income only, you want to make a cash flow profit on this and you're happy to live else where

What you want out of the property will (well, should) be the main decision factor in what or where you buy.

Firstly lets ignore property values, if they go up, they go up and it's a bonus, if they go down, they go down and it's a risk. With the state of the US economy nobody knows what will happen and it's dangerous to buy something on the assumption that they went up 10 years ago, that model is broken right now.

The theory would be that some day you're going to have a family and will probably want to live somewhere else, so you're going to have to do something with this place of yours. If it's a home or home + income and rentable at more than your mortgage costs then great, you can keep it and make money that way. If that wont cover your loan then you'll probably have to sell it at whatever the market is paying at that time.
If it's an income property then you will have bought it as an income generator, and you moving out and letting it to someone else wont affect you at all.

I don't know what your budget is, but my advice is to get something that is easily rentable at more than the mortgage costs. Whether you live in it yourself or not is a separate question, but you don't want to find yourself in a situation where having moved out you're making a loss on the monthly payments AND can't afford to sell it because the market is lower than today.

Make sure lawn gnomes are INCLUDED. 

Make sure it has a dungeon.

Preferably an oubliette.

hmmm.... It's a good way to meet cute real estate agents.

Nick has SOLID advice.

Homeless Joe.... are you daft?

Buy for less than the cost of building it would of been 5 years ago.

5 years ago, we were in a housing bubble. Houses worth (in reality) 100K were going for 300.
So, buy for less and end up still spending more.


BAD ADVICE.

Look into all the programs that are open to first time buyers. The Govt. has a lot of those.
Be warned about getting loans. Your credit needs to be solid, with no hanging shit to really get the loan these days.
Take a good, reliable (FRIEND) honest contractor with you to check out every place. he or she can tell if there's termites, foundation damage, and other not-worth-fixing shit.
Also, if the place smells like Killz, don't buy it. They are covering up water stains that will come RIGHT BACK in due time.

~shrug

I'm not american and I don't know much about entry level property over there. The 5 year rule works great here.

and I wasent including the land price anyway. I meant buy the whole thing, house and land, for the price of just building a house.

"Take a good, reliable (FRIEND) honest contractor with you to check out every place. he or she can tell if there's termites, foundation damage, and other not-worth-fixing shit."

and speaking of bad advice. never use friends. use somebody you can sue.

I forgot to mention that (thanks Mello) - get someone who you can trust to inspect the whole thing. I'm talking roof, joinery, plumbing, flooring, bathroom, kitchen... everything. Even if you have to pay for it, $500 spent up front could save you untold amounts of money down the road. Also get someone who knows what they're doing to help you look over the documents of the property title, the last thing you need is your neighbor whacking a driveway on your front lawn because whoops, it's actually theirs.

Case in point - there's been a raft of "leaky homes" appearing in NZ over the last 10 years. People have bought these without getting a professional inspection done and now they're on the hook for MORE than what they paid for the house in the first place. Google "leaky homes New Zealand" and if the results don't scare you into doing due diligence then you're better off sticking with renting.

Make sure lawn gnomes are INCLUDED. 

Absolutely!

my only advice is not to settle for something that you don't love.

me and the man just bought a condo because as soon as we walked in it, we said.. this is home.

I saw a place that I really really liked very much, was the first place I saw (I've only seen 4 places so far). My parents seem wary. It was built in the 1890's but it's been well maintained and is so beautiful but my parents don't seem thrilled. They are the ones who came up with this plan for me to buy a place afterall. Ok, it's more like they are buying it and giving it to me as a gift. What a loser.

The problem with old houses are hidden. Wiring, decay, most of the time it's just patched over and hidden.

Get a knowledgeable person to look over it. I had to pass on three houses I really wanted for those reasons.

I saw a place that I really really liked very much, was the first place I saw (I've only seen 4 places so far). My parents seem wary. It was built in the 1890's but it's been well maintained and is so beautiful but my parents don't seem thrilled. They are the ones who came up with this plan for me to buy a place afterall. Ok, it's more like they are buying it and giving it to me as a gift. What a loser.

The bodies are in the wall spaces, and it'll be like Amityville horror!

Just do it. The older the place, the more ghosts you have. And ghosts = awesome.

they are buying it and giving it to me as a gift.

Does this make all fiscial advice to tricky moot ?

yep. Next time please call this thread "advice for someone who hasn't put any money or thought into it but their parents are going to buy them a house anyway"


get the building inspection done still, you'll have to maintain the place someday

I'm sure the butler will remember to call building inspector.

Six words:

Fixed rate
Fixed rate
Fixed rate.

Even if it means you have to put an extra 5% down.

You'll thank me later.

If you'd fixed your rate when you bought, do you think you'd be better off now?

I mean, werent interest rates higher then? And, dont fixed rate mortgages usually have a fixed period before the rate changes?

And no, I'm not being an asshat, this is the one post in ten thats serious.

My payments went from $1428.00 to $2066.00 in two years. Of course I lost my job in there but I picked up enough free lance shit to hold it together for 7 months afterward. If the payments had been consistent I wouldn't be where I am now.

BTW auction is pending. Trying to negotiate a short sell.

Sorry to hear it dude. You put a bunch of work into that place, pity it has to go like that.

Was remortgaging to a lower rate an option? I'm guessing no since your unemployment...

Six words:

Fixed rate
Fixed rate
Fixed rate.

Agree with this completely.

I don't like giving people advice about houses.  Just because I own one, that doesn't mean I know anything about them.
Same way with people that have babies, or a relatively social love-life - personal experience rarely is a factor in situations with as many variables as these.

yep. Next time please call this thread "advice for someone who hasn't put any money or thought into it but their parents are going to buy them a house anyway"


get the building inspection done still, you'll have to maintain the place someday

Just because they are giving me the downpayment doesn't mean I should just buy whichever damn house I see. Thus the advice thread.

This will be the house that I'm looking for: multi-family so I can live in one level and rent out the other.

oh yeah and thanks for the advice all.

ok, so you need to decide if you're looking for a place you want to live in + income, or a place for income that you'll live in. I recommend the 2nd one, but I'm a flaming profiteer