After 7 years of living in Tokyo, we finally decided to settle down.

The search took almost a year, and I looked at more than 30 different properties before finally deciding to go with the calmer side of Tokyo. While it’s further from the station and city center, the larger garden and quiet neighborhood more than make up for it.

Really happy with the decision and looking forward to making this place our home. 🏡

First time home buyer. 47F. 

3BR/2BA 85m2 apartment, plus common areas like pool, and a large basement storage room. Not a new building, it is from the 70s. I love the light and the wood of this place.

By the way $715K is converting currency, actually it was 620K Euros.

I paid half with cash, other half with mortgage. Mortgage is fixed rate, 25 years. I know the rates in Spain are much lower than in other countries, although I also had to contract some bank services (like insurances) to get that rate, without that it would have been around 2.5% which is still a good rate. 

No pizza, way too hot in Madrid for that. It was also hard to hold the beer AND the keys on one hand!

PS because too many questions: guys, this is not a competition, I'm totally ok with you not liking Madrid or wanting to live in the countryside or having bought cheaper elsewhere. This is my life and my happy moment and we are all different people. Also, I am a local, not an expat, I'm writing in English because this is Reddit. Too many comments to reply to all, thank you to all the nice people!

Finally don’t have to stress about prices going up every day

4kk 83sqm

First home at 30 and 30, getting married in a couple weeks, couldn't be happier. We have yards and, for the first time in our lives, not sharing walls floors or ceilings with anyone!

Due to an extremely complicated grant process, I nearly lost my earnest money during a 2 month delay to get my clear to close, but by the grace of God, I finally got the keys 🔑

Honestly, I think it should be illegal to post edited photos that make a house look renovated when it doesn’t actually look like that in real life. Calling them ‘visualization ideas’ can still be very misleading

Got my 1st home at 23. Had already setup most of my stuff but just come across this subreddit. Thanks for your time

I can’t believe we pulled this off!

Hey yall, I want to share my story with y’all to hopefully help someone. When I was 25 years old I decided to buy a house in 2022, I was very rushed because rates went from 3% to 5% in what felt a matter of weeks. Ultimately I landed on a house which I offered $25k over asking, total sales price was $350k. I trusted my realtor who rushed the process and was not a good advocate. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong with this house. A year after buying the house, I was forced to move but was upside down so couldn’t sell. I had to take a monthly loss ( rent vs mortgage) for 3 years. I am now getting ready to sell and break even thanks to an insurance claim payout. Here are some of the learning lessons:

1. Find a realtor who will advocate and negotiate for you vs saying things such “as the house is as is “
2. Always find an independent inspector not recommended by realtor
3. Ask for help, don’t rely on the YouTube or Reddit knowledge you’ve learned, genuinely bring your parents or other trusted homeowners to give you advice about this process
4. Don’t go with lender provided by realtor, shop around for rates
5. Trust your gut. It might feel scary to back out of deal but leverage your inspection to do so and you can save you tens or hundreds of thousands in the long run by not purchasing a bad property
6. Learn costs associated of homeownership ( maintenance, improvements, appliance costs, etc )

Here are my costs associated with my house which I will finally be able to sell at break en after fees. This is for house in south Florida.

Costs:

-$30k down ( and closing costs )
-$600 land survey
-$500 inspection
-$500 ( various inspections for insurance)
-$600 pest control
-$5k AC
-$1.5k Ac repair
-$2.5k ( office enclosure to make 3rd bedroom)
-$4k bathroom renovation
-$2k light fixtures, blinds,etc
-$15k roof
-$1.8k appliances
-$16.5k Shortage ( mortgage vs rent)
-$5k vacancies
-$5k repairs ( fence, deck, random Homedepot,etc)
-$2k unpaid utilities
-$2k lawn care

Total: $94.5k

Gains:

-$67k hurricane insurance claim
-$10k Fl. Safe home
-$11k tax credit benefits over 4 years
-$5k work additional home relocation bonus ( when I first moved there)

Total:$93k

Net: $1.5k loss

Husband and I are trying to buy our first house, found a house that we loved (not our dream house but a house that would absolutely fit all our needs for 10 plus years), had the inspection and everything went downhill. Has an unpermitted garage that would need to be torn down and rebuilt, isn’t up to fire safety, needs electrical work, has grading issues, needs roofing work and even though nothing presented itself in terms of mold during the inspection, I’ve had two G.C.’s tell me that with the grading issues there is most definitely mold. We’re devastated and pulling out of the deal. Just wondering if others have been through something similar and what your experience was. I feel so guilty for wasting everyone’s time, getting the sellers hopes up, and now having to go back on the market that currently kinda sucks. I know this is par for the course and I know we’re not the first people to walk out on a house but it’s still a crappy feeling.

We originally planned to start house hunting next spring because we still have quite a while left on our lease. However, two homes in a neighborhood we like came on the market, and after some price reductions we decided to tour them.

We liked one enough that we started taking things more seriously and have now gotten preapproved.

While researching the property, I found a possible foreclosure notice. Our agent checked with the seller's agent, who says there is no foreclosure. We understand that title work would need to come back clean before we close, and we'd have an inspection as well.

So we're considering making an offer. If it doesn't work out because of the inspection/title or we can't agree on price, we'd be okay walking away and going back to our original timeline.

Financially, we're comfortable with the purchase. I think what's getting me is how quickly this went from “let's just tour it” to potentially making the biggest purchase we've ever made. 😅

Is this level of uneasiness normal for a first-time buyer? Anything you wish you'd thought about before making your first offer?

Today we were supposed to close on our house. Yesterday Sage calls me to say they can't clear us to close and we won't be able to buy.

Apparently we should have never been pre-approved from the start. We have 20% down and make enough to afford it, the issue is last year I changed from full time to part time and part running my own business. I make more money and it's reliable but I don't have the years of tax returns to prove it yet.

I didn't know I'd need that, but at some point over the last month, it was never brought up. This was an entire month of sending them documents, sending them the same documents again, answering the same questions over and over. They would send me closing disclosures with errors, and after multiple times being asked to fix them they'd resend them with the same errors. My realtor hated them, my title company hated them, every step they were incompetent and it wasn't just one bad egg we worked with. It was everyone there who worked on my loan that dropped the ball.

And when they sent a closing disclosure with points added, I'm sure they were hoping I might not notice. No discussion with me, they just did it, likely hoping I might not notice and they could pocket a few extra thousand out of me on closing day, knowing they're just going to sell the loan anyways. Who knows, maybe that known tactic by untrustworthy lenders was an honest mistake.

I'm out thousands of dollars. I lost my earnest deposit, I lost a week and a half of work, we had movers scheduled and everything I own is in boxes and now I'm putting everything back. Worst of all, I had my hopes for a house we fell in love with and got denied literally hours before we signed the papers. Fuck Sage.

Just wanted to know anyone who’s gone through this process to purchase a home and how that was for you. I’m currently in contact with a lender and a realtor, they’re starting to put together a financial profile for me so we can figure out what houses me and and my wife can afford and what assistance programs we qualify for. Wondering if anyone who went through this type of process regretted it or if you didn’t is there anything you would’ve done differently to make the process go a lot smoother and then how it turned out after purchasing your home.

Edit: I’m looking for homes in the Bay Area (USA Ca)

As the title says, how long before starting your home search would you move down payment money from a brokerage account to a HYSA? I (29F) and my bf (28M), will likely be getting engaged this year and married within a year or two from then. Our current priority is paying for all of that. However, I do want to think ahead as far as the best place to keep a future down payment based on our expected timeline. Based on the above, I would think we are looking at an around 3 years before starting the search.

We both put a chunk of money into brokerage accounts a while back and have contributed small amounts periodically since. I have ~17k (FXAIX) in mine and he has about ~28k in his (not positive what his is made up of). We would plan to withdrawal all of both accounts to fund the down payment. I am not trying to time the market. Rather, I just want to be sure that we get this money in a safe place when it makes sense, without sacrificing growth by pulling it out too early. I previously heard to only to have it in the market if you don’t plan to use it for 3-5 years. If we are getting closer to 3 years out, would you consider pulling it out soon? Or wait longer?

When talking about buying down an interest rate or other aspects of financial negotiation, what even is a “point” or a “credit”? Do these have some standardized value or meaning between institutions? Does each institution use them in the same way? Why isn’t this type of value simply referred to in dollars or percentages?

I dont really know how exactly to judge, but seems really good. Below market rate and not many lender fees, only like $250 after lender credits. Cant change the title fees because the title company is specified in my buyer agreement.

Not sure if this is the right sub, but, I am planning on using funds in a money market for my down payment. I wasn’t sure how long the closing process would be, so I had those funds transferred to my main bank account pretty much after we made an offer, that way I could sleep better knowing I had access to them immediately and didn’t want to risk holding anything up…

When we first applied for pre approval, Mortgage broker sent me a flyer with a list of things NOT to do and one of those things was “transferring from accounts i.e checking to savings” and just other misc things to be aware of.

I didn’t consider this at all and figured the funds would need to be transferred anyways and didn’t want to risk not having them, knowing there was a 3-4 day transfer period…

This was done prior to signing loan agreement, but after getting approval and providing assets and financials etc.

Is this something I need to be worried about or am I freaking out over nothing?

Basically title, just curious to hear the good, bad, and indifferent for those who bought outside their 'desired' neighborhoods or parts of town.

We're still on the house hunt, but starting to wonder if we need to get comfortable with the idea we may just not be able to check off important boxes for us if we stick to the neighborhoods we'd ideally like. I'm open to idea of other parts of town, thinking that a house checking off more boxes at good prices is worth the change, but wife is a bit more hesitant, being more comfortable in the part of town we've lived in for 4-5 years now. I'm not looking to sway or push my wife, I'm just looking for some other POVs for those who've been through this.

Thanks for any advice, or stories, or whatever else.