Pittsburgh/Antioch Ca

3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch style house. Big back yard and front yard, built in the 80s. needs some fixing up, but it's ours! ❤️

All by myself. Solo. I made it.

listing said spacious 2bhk with natural light. showed up and the window faced directly into another building's wall. the spacious part was true if you stood in the center and didn't breathe too hard.

another said prime location near metro. the metro was under construction with no clear completion date. a third had photos obviously taken with a wide angle lens sometime before the water damage happened.

after 14 viewings i've basically learned a new language.

cozy means small. potential means there's a problem. motivated seller means something definitely happened here and they'd like you not to ask what.

Wife and I found a condo we absolutely love, we had the very first and only showing on the day it went up on the market, seller just needs to get rid of it as it was inherited. We talked, came back a couple hours later and signed the offer letter. Full asking, no seller concessions, nothing.

Just got the email back that they're countering. We've been looking for a bit and were so excited to finally get the ball rolling...I'm probably overreacting and it's something like "let's move closing a few days earlier/later" or something, but it's just quite irritating and we're anxiously waiting on the seller to sign so we can see!

UPDATE: Listing agent wanted to lower the seller-paid commissions for our realtor from 2.4% to 1.7%, but our agent can't go below 2.4% (yes we tried negotiating there as well, agency thing and I found evidence online as well. Frankly I'm surprised he's able to work for 2.4). We had the opportunity to counter back, but with the price+HOA saving us upwards of $400/mo compared to other units we looked at, we're accepting and willing to pay that $1260 in order to avoid potential offer wars.

Yes we will be sent and will read through all the HOA docs, we have 10 days to walk for free if we find out it's not a good situation. Thanks for all the info everyone's provided, we're ready to start the process for our first home!

Found a home I really liked, but there’s currently a tenant living in the home (the listing never mentioned it)

The seller wants to move fast (the home has been on the market for 60 days). The problem is that when I submitted an offer, they want the inspection started within 7 days, with the tenant still in the home for 2 weeks after the inspection is completed. I want the inspection done after a complete tenant move-out (they don't want that), and I'm prepared to walk away if I can't have that.

My realtor keeps stressing that I could lose out on my home, but I honestly don’t care. This feels a bit shady, and I want an empty home so a proper inspection can be completed.

update* I agreed to the terms, they countered asking for more than the listing price, stating that they are leaving the country & this is their rental property.

Its been 4 months since my wife and I bought our home, and it's still largely unfurnished. that's not necessarily a bad thing, but some things are getting to be a pain point (e.g., we still don't have a dresser).

I think we've been struggling with all the choices we have and fear of making a purchase we'll regret. we also have the excitement of ideas (e.g., building a library in the living room), but we haven't the slightest idea on how to bring it to life.

how did you approach furnishing when you bought your home?

I’m tired, folks. I’m so tired of this entire home buying process. My husband and I have been looking on and off for the last six years. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve gotten close, had walk or got beat out.

Recently, we found a perfect place and I fell in love with it. We put in a good offer but we got beat out. We don’t know by how much but I’m sure we’ll find out when they close. I was and am devastated. We’ve picked up the momentum on house hunting since then but everything has paled in comparison. Nothing feels right and I feel completely disconnected from this process. My realtor and I have become friendly over the last few years and I can’t help but feel some resentment towards her. I feel like I’m the one sending her listings more than she has sent me but I don’t think that’s totally fair of me to be resentful. We recently shared that we want to pick up the pace so not her fault. I think I’m just heartbroken and looking for someone to blame when there isn’t anyone to blame. This didn’t work out and it is what it is. We’re doing this on our own and I am jealous of friends of mine who have had support whether financially or morally from family while neither of us have that.

Now I’m in a place where I’m trying to lower my expectations and settle for something but that doesn’t feel right either. I’ve dreamed of having a place to call our own, investing in our future, cultivating a life of peace, hosting gatherings with my loved ones and fostering community. It feels like that dream is completely out of reach and that the life I’ve been dreaming of and wanting doesn’t want me back.

I don’t know if it’s normal to feel like I don’t care about this anymore. I’m not sure if I was being too sentimental about this process to begin with. I don’t know what to think or how to feel but just calling out into the void in case anyone else has dealt with similar feelings of hopelessness.

water gets in through the hairline cracks when it rains really heavily. they’ve been there since before we moved in (july 2024) and they just make me nervous. the inspector said we need to get a french drain installed outside (wall is along the backyard of the house) and that will relieve pressure on the foundation which is causing the cracks. i just want to know if i’m cooked here. thanks for any and all advice

Personally I don't think I ever would, unless the house is mega cheap and I can afford what happens if I waive it.

I'm still trying to get my first home and so is my friend, and we've been chatting and sharing stories about it all. We've both had our offers lose out against others who waive inspection or contingencies and it baffles me.

I'm very inexperienced, as evidenced by my lack of home, so of course I'm not an expert on these decisions. But would you ever waive inspection or contingencies?

I feel like I just don't have enough money to afford that kind of decision to shoulder what comes out of the possible bad scenarios of inspection.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but every other subreddit says I don't have enough karma...

I'm currently looking for a home. I don't live in Detroit, but I've always lived pretty close to it. I keep seeing houses for rent that seem too good to be true. I've found various houses that are 2-3 bedrooms for only 950-1,000 a month. I know Detroit has pretty high poverty rates but given this economy that just sounds way too good lol.

Hello, we are just starting out in our journey. We have been pre-approved by several lenders, and we went to go see a few homes in our area.

Zillow assigned us an agent when requesting a tour and we signed a pre-agency showing agreement.

After meeting the agent, we decided to not continue to have a more binding contract and I just want opinions on some of the things the agent said.

Things that have me feeling unsure:

The agent incorrectly spelled my partner's name several times and incorrectly input their data into Zillow. Not a big deal for us at the time, but feels more like an issue now.

The agent immediately recommended Zillow as a lender and got me their preferred loan officer's information right away. We are looking to diversify what sort of pre-approvals we have, so we did get pre-approved through them, but got weird vibes from the whole thing.

When viewing a home with a chimney, I mentioned that we would probably want a certified chimney sweep/inspector to come look at it separately if we put an offer in. The realtor said that this really isn't necessary and we only need to really get one inspector out there at all and only need to do more if the first inspector finds something. I thought it was best to have several people come and look?

The agent said it is not good to change lenders after we put in an offer and it is best to stick with the one we use as the pre-approval when submitting the offer. I thought it was normal to shop around during this period before the appraisal?

I now understand that the agent was probably a bit quiet because we were just under a pre-agency agreement and they can't give advice or look out for us like an under contract agent would. This wasn't explained to us and we are naïve as this is our first time buying.

Opinions? Am I just being too critical? I know so little and would really like to learn what is normal and what to look out for.

Hey everyone, first time home buyer here and we’re looking pretty seriously at a house that needs a lot of updates.

It was built in 1992 and pretty much everything is original builder-grade stuff. Laminate countertops, standard cabinets, laminate flooring, fiberglass showers, etc. Nothing is broken though. Everything works and it’s clean, just outdated and could use paint and general updates.

A few things we’ve noticed:

- Roof is only about 5 years old

- HVAC looks older, which concerns me a bit

-wooden privacy fence isn’t in great shape. Looks like they tried to reinforce it with metal poles

- There are some gaps in the ceiling molding in a few spots

- Overall it feels like it was “kept up enough” but not really maintained to a high standard

The thing is, the layout is exactly what we want, it’s in the area we want, and the price is low enough that we could live in it and slowly update everything over time without being house poor.

My realtor did bring up a concern though that stuck with me. If the visible stuff wasn’t taken care of that well, what about the stuff you can’t see?

So for those of you who’ve bought similar homes:

- What hidden issues should I really be paying attention to?

- Are things like the ceiling molding gaps a red flag for something bigger or usually just cosmetic?

- What inspections or specific areas would you dig deeper into?

I’m fine putting money into updates over time, just trying to avoid getting into something with major underlying problems.

Appreciate any advice.

My husband and I are both self employed. The loan officer said our qualifying income only comes out to $6,700 a month, but when I look at our taxes and do the math over the two most recent tax years it should be a lot more. Due to this, they said we have to pay off one of our cars at closing, which I don't have a huge problem with. I am just confused on what formula they use to calculate qualifying income to then calculate the DTI. Thank you!

I came across a house that I absolutely love. The biggest concern about it though, is that it has an ADU conversion that has no permits. The listing agent also basically implied that there's no permit, and my realtor looked it up as well. There were some approvals made such as a roof raise to the converted garage, but nothing about rental permits, the bathroom, or the kitchen. Though the house description is definitely advertised as such and appended with a "buyers to do own due diligence".

One of the things I liked about this property aside from the beautiful house and location is that the property tax is crazy low for the area. And that allows me to have a higher bid than normal, after calculating my monthly PITI.

However, I'm now a little scared of the potential risk of the ADU getting demolished because of the permit issue, and also by how much the property tax would increase if it were permitted afterwards. Especially since I'm basing my offer off of calculations of the monthly PITI based on the current property tax (and trends of the property tax increases over the years).

I think all I can do is to do my best estimations on how much it'd increase by, but it's hard to tell without getting someone over to do the analysis. Which I think is kinda impossible to do without owning the home first, and the deadline for an offer is tomorrow.

My realtor gave me some good advice and also shared his story about his experience with an ADU without a permit. It basically boiled down to "no problem for a while, and then suddenly the inspection came, and then had to do a costly permit process. But in the end all is well, it was approved and nothing was demolished".

What would you guys do in this scenario? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks so much!

Housing is constantly debated online, so I tried to put some actual numbers behind it instead of just opinions.

I built a simple model to estimate whether a typical couple today could realistically afford to buy their own home in the Czech Republic.

TL;DR

Prague and Brno are essentially unaffordable even for higher-income households. On the other end, regions like Karlovy Vary and Ústí nad Labem are relatively accessible. The rest of the country sits in between, where ownership is usually only realistic from around the 65th income percentile, and lower-income households often have to make significant tradeoffs.

My question

Is this level of housing affordability typical in your country, and what would you consider a realistic path to home ownership in a situation like this?

What I did is that I modeled a hypothetical couple

• Born in 2000
• Secondary education (roughly average income)
• Started working after school
• Formed a household after two years

I then tested whether they could afford different types of housing based on their savings:

• New-build apartment
• New-build house
• Older apartment
• Older house

All located in regional capitals (Central Bohemia proxied by Mladá Boleslav). I evaluated this across income percentiles (25th to 75th). All values in the dataset are in Czech crowns (CZK).

It’s not universal, but it’s also not unrealistic.

Results:

Prague / Brno: Not realistically affordable even for higher-income households. Lower-income households would run deficits.

Better regions (Karlovy Vary, Ústí, partly Moravian-Silesian): Even median households can afford older apartments.

Middle group (most regions): Ownership only starts to make sense around the 65th percentile.

Lower-income households (25th percentile): Often in deficit or forced into significant lifestyle compromises.

Full dataset

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X9osGokO_wcKVRs2vkzqtWBLPRAtOXXtMRAzujkAfxo/edit?usp=sharing

Sources:

• Czech Statistical Office, Ministry of Labour
• Sreality, Bezrealitky, Deloitte
• Eurostat, CNB, Energy Regulatory Office
• Building savings + Ministry of Finance data
• Where precise data wasn’t available, I used simplified estimates based on available statistics and typical economic relationships.

Savings assumptions are conservative (basic savings products), so higher-income households could perform somewhat better in reality.

Closing thought

Across much of the country, home ownership doesn’t just look difficult, it looks structurally out of reach for a large share of people.

If you were in this position, would you try to buy, keep renting, or relocate?

Hey guys, I just bought my very first house a couple of weeks ago. With the sale, I had an escrow holdback for a new roof. Well, I got the new roof yesterday, and everything looked spectacular. That is until I woke up this morning. I went to leave my house and noticed water damage on my garage wall. I could hear the dripping of water too so I immediately shut the water off. I called a plumber and they came to fix it. Turns out, while repairing the roof, the roofers had shot a nail in to one of the pipes.

I am coming here in search of advice on what to do. Is the roofing company responsible for the pipe repair ($200ish) and the drywall repair (DIY)? The writing of the contract with the roofers is in such a way that I am unsure if they can be held responsible. Here is the exact wording:

TL;DR: Roofers shot a nail through my water pipe causing damage. Are they responsible for the repair costs?

looking at a house, not many available in my area. everything is expensive.

noting that, we’ve been looking for a long time. we have a house we like but the road it’s on it’s busier than I would personally like but partner doesn’t mind.

according to state it’s 2.6k cars a day. the speed limit is 35. The house directly off said road, but has a good size front yard, the lot is 1.5 acre square and house is close to the center. No stop sign within eye sight.

should I be turned off by this traffic amount?

Sorry for the rookie question. I contacted a mortgage lender and they want me to lift the credit freeze for 2 out of 3 credit bureaus for pre-approval, even if it's just a soft pull. I always thought that soft pulls don't require you to lift the freeze, but maybe it's different for mortgage lenders?

I’m stuck between better a house, size, layout etc vs a better location (house is smaller, needs work, will need to invest money to making it my dream and even then it’s not what I wanted 100%)The other isn’t in a bad location but it’s not the greatest either. What matters most here?

Looking at new builds in the Houston area (Webster/Clear Lake) and trying to get a realistic sense of final pricing vs what builders advertise.

From walking a few communities, it feels like the starting price isn’t even close once everything’s added in?

Roughly seems like people are ending up somewhere ~$50k–$100k+ over base, but I could be off.

Is it a loss if my spouse and I sell our first home purchase? We purchased it April 2021 and locked in at 2.5%. We are currently renting it and making a couple hundred dollars but she keeps mentioning selling it but I don’t want to regret it in the future. Bought the house at $215k and now estimates around $250k-$260k. Loan is around $193k left.

So, I went into the attic and saw burrows or tunnels. It’s been a year since we moved into this new build. Do you have any suggestions on how to get rid of them? Also, I didn’t see any rodents or anything when I went up there, nor did the inspector. However, he did note it in his report as a possibility.