So many things can go wrong in process. You can be top bidder, be pre-qualified and still have financing issues. The house may appraise less than sales offer. Unless you are all cash, the bank can still say no at certain stages of process, even after pre-approval. In our situation, we put down 35%, had two mortgage pre-approvals and one pre-qualification. Still, the bank did two appraisals. It was not until two days before we were set to fund that we got final approval, and that is not atypical since new mortgage rules went into effect.
And hope you do not need a jumbo loan, either. Or are self-employed or commisioned sales with less than two years at your job. Or just retired from military or a job or countless other strange financing issues have recently heard first-hand from peeps in trenches. Even if you have cash on hand. Means nothing.
I think it is height of insanity to have no contingencies, unless you have extra money on-hand to deal with emergencies after sale closes. At our final walk through, found out the furnace had a major crack, rendering whole system dangerous. They replaced. Had they not, honestly, we probably would not have realized issue until CO2 detectors went off or we all felt sick. Major cost and safety issue. I would never buy a house without inspections. Ever.
Also, Zillow was sometimes on the money, sometimes not. Noticed in our listing how many things were wrong and had to fix. Definitely fluctuated based on comp selling in area for 90’days before. There was one beater house that sold for way below market value, but was going to need a ton of work. Impacted houses in neighborhood selling prices for months.
" At our final walk through, found out the furnace had a major crack, rendering whole system dangerous. They replaced. Had they not, honestly, we probably would not have realized issue until CO2 detectors went off or we all felt sick. Major cost and safety issue. I would never buy a house without inspections. Ever"
That is incredible. What if the detectors didn’t go off? Sometimes when people feel sick, they don’t realize the problem. An old neighbor of ours had to be carried out of a building, otherwise he would have died, it came on so quickly. That is an awful story, but so good they found the crack.
The building inspector said furnace was getting older, and we asked for seller to have the furnace serviced. We could have done that after moving in, but our agent pushed for a simple check to make sure it is working okay because it was wintertime.
It was during that walk through a few days before closing that we ran into the furnace repairmen who actually told us about the problem. They had already notified sellers (the flippers) the day before about this.
So, if the original building inspection as normally required through selling the home hadn’t happened, the regular servicing would not have happened where this flaw was discovered. .
I guess if I was a buyer who was in market where it was all cash, no inspections or contingencies of any kind I would highly recommend before taking occupancy to have everything checked by reputable HVAC repairmen and maybe a licensed electrician to check wiring before moving in. The plumbing could be a mess and you could survive. The other stuff could be far more risky and be a fire or carbon monoxide leak.
We had a phenomenal agent who pushed for things - it was a flipper situation, we were higly qualified buyer willing to pay full price so she said to ask for a list of safety issues to address which they did, without blinking. In SF, I guess we would have been out of luck. In LA, house we sold, had to fix a few things at last minute after buyer’s inspector found things - and we rushed to repair things we did realize were in issue. But they were to buyer’s lending institution.
And yes, busdriver, of that crack happened while we lived in it, the typical way you find out is usually after being carried out on a stretcher, if you do survive the CO2 poisoning.
We are making our fifth attempt to buy a house in southern CA. We were outbid on three; one was already under contract but the buyer missed some deadlines so the sellers were thinking of cancelling. In the end they stayed with that offer. The current house we’re bidding on is more expensive and smaller than we had planned but has other pluses. Apparently the sellers had escrow drop twice before so are concerned because we haven’t seen the house in person; otherwise probably would have already accepted our offer. They are about to make multiple counter-offers - I don’t know if we get a personalized counter or the same as other bidders!
Anyway, we did get to see the inspection report from one of the previous buyers who dropped out. There are already repairs done or scheduled for the bigger stuff, and the rest looks like a lot of handyman type of stuff. Those reports are huge! The part I liked best was where the inspector noticed there was water standing in the alley, and also saw it on google street view (which I also noticed) so assumed it was an ongoing problem. They suggested contacting the city to have the alley paved. Yeah, I’ll get right on that as soon as we move in.
California has the worst roads considering that we don’t have snow in most cities. It’s just not a priority. It may take years for the city to pave an alley. Good luck.
Someone posted a link on a thread yesterday about the median incomes in certain metro cities (I think) needed to buy a median house. I cant find it. Does anyone know where that is?
Samurai, you were so lucky to have that agent. I really learned something reading your post. We haven’t ever gotten the furnace inspected before purchase, and we have bought many houses over the years. In fact, I hope people are reading your post and thinking that maybe they should have a technician come over every now and then for an inspection, even if nothing is yet broken.
