Posted by Jim Pasquini on January 27, 2001 at 23:10:19:
With the addition of the baby boy to our family we are bursting at the seams in our current home. My office is now half office, half nursery. Time to find a new place!
Decided I probably ought to involve my wife in the search process so I asked her what I thought was a simple question, “Do you want to live at the beach, or back in the hills?”. Seemed like a pretty straight forward question to me. Her answer? I want to see the house. Even though we’ve been married for years, she still doesn’t understand what it is we do and how we do it in this real estate game. After some rephrasing, and assurances I wasn’t going to buy something and come home to tell her “Honey, start packing. We are moving because I bought OUR house.”, I got her to decide she’d rather live out in the country or back in the hills with some land. If I buy a house that is where we want to live she gets to look at it and give it the thumbs up/down as our new home. If she doesn’t want it, it goes to someone that does and it is a payday instead of a new home.
I’m still not at the point where I am going to let her call one of our realtor friends and start shopping. That would be blasphemy.
I am looking at buying a personal residence within the next few months and although I can buy in a conventional manner and pay retail, it seems foolhardy to do so.
I am looking at pre-foreclosures as a possibility.
What would you pros suggest for buying one for yourself?
The story told by Roger Dawson is that he successfuuly negotiated the price way down on a real nice house. But before signing a contract he said he wanted his wife to see it. When the wife came and the owner met them at the door she exclaimed how beautiful the entry was. On through the house she exuded delight with each feature. He goes on to say he ended up paying retail.
The first point is that your wife has something to say. The second point is that it becomes an emotional decision when picking your own house.
Don’t dismiss FSBO’s they may be a few months away from a preforclosure. Is taking over a low interest loan with nothing down on a nice house that bad even if it isn’t 50% of market value.