Torn on Prospective House! Help!

[rhbgirl24]

I also posted this in hangout, b/c I wasn''t sure was the best location.........
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Advice, dust, and maybe a little rant....

So my husband and I have been house hunting. We live in a very small one bedroom apartment and just need a bigger place. I''ve worked in real estate for 8 years previously, and currently foreclosure real estate and NOW is the time to buy, esp with the 8K break.....

Some background - we''re looking for a 3 Bedroom, at least one and a half bath on AT LEAST half an acre, with a garage and preferably a basement for hubby to have some work space. Not the easiest thing to find in our price range, but we''ve looked at 12, and maybe 2 we would consider, the rest HELL NO. I like bigger rooms, more lofty and it doesn''t all come in our price range, unfortunately.

So my agent calls me and he found this house outside of where we were looking, in another county all together. Its a bank foreclosure. A 2 story colonial built in 1982, 3 nice size bedrooms, a large master suite, a 2 car attached garage, AND a 2 car detached garage, 2 full bathrooms upstairs and a half bath downstairs. Large formal living room 14x18 (which we dont need, but...), dining room, nice size kitchen, a completely open room with a brick fireplace, and a HUGE family room 16x24. Its on an acre of land. All pergo flooring, skylights in fam room, the works. Its about 1000 Square feet bigger than what we were looking at within our budget. I fell in love with the house....

BUT.... and this seems to be all DH sees. 45 min commute to work for us (we have 15 and 30 min), the inground pool needs a new liner, the kitchen eventually needs to be redone (the most horrid cabs I''ve ever seen, but they are new and they do work), the upstairs master bath needs to be ripped out and completely redone (it has an old fashion stall shower that DH doesn''t fit in he is so tall, and a tub that needs to be replaced. But there is the other full bath to use upstairs while we do it which is newly redone) Plus b/c its a foreclosure there are no appliances, so we would have to buy them straight off..... besides that all it needs is paint, all flooring, walls, everything are in great shape and we''d have the 8K to work with.

I would jump at it, I see the potential for making some money here (we could be getting it for about 200K less than it sold for a few years back, but that still would be the upper end of our budget) and having a house that I love. He just sees a lot of work as soon as we get it, as opposed to some of the others which is work we could do over time.

In this market I''m scared to not take it b/c it will be gone and we prob wont see this opportunity again, but I''m scared to take it because of how the economy is as well. I''m just completely torn, and a little upset that he can''t see the positive. I also dont want to push him into something that is a lot of work if he doesn''t want to, but I dont think he wants to tell me no if I love it.... urg! I''m just plain confused.

Thanks for letting me rant.... anyone who has done this have any insight?

 

[Aloros]

I don''t think that the real estate market is going to go rocketing up anytime soon, so you and your DH still have some time to look around. I remember hating renting and really wanting to get into a larger space, so just be careful that you''re not letting that affect your judgment. Almost anything would have been better right then, but I really had to consider if I would be happy living in the house for another 5-10 years.

You can probably ignore the kitchen cabinets for now if they work, unless they are super super horrible and you can''t stand them. I don''t like my cabinets either - I think they look cheap, but they''re functional. Re-doing bathrooms can be a chore. My parents re-did one of our bathrooms when I was a kid. I can''t remember how much they spent on it, but they did all the work themselves except for the plumbing. It took some time, but was very nice when finished. I have no idea the time, effort, or money that goes into replacing pool liner.

Appliances won''t run you too much $, and they''ll often install them for you too, so no worries on that.

But how do you and your DH feel about the location? How important is commute time to the both of you? This sounds like the biggest sticking point to me, since the other things can be changed and/or fixed. You can''t change your commute time, and 45 minutes is a long commute. If you plan on staying with the house long enough for it to become profitable, you''ll be doing that commute for a while.

 

[rhbgirl24]

You''re completely right. I wouldn''t be buying this just to make a profit. I''d be buying it because I''d LOVE to make it a home, and then possibly, IF we decide to move way down the line, we may come out on top, instead of even.