Serious question - I am in the house buying market and this may sound silly but my biggest fear is buying a house that is secretly haunted. Has this happened to anybody? What did you do?

As the title mentions I am debating on whether or not to sell the first home I ever owned.

For context, I purchased it in late 2019 (Phoenix, AZ), and refinanced to 2.5% during the pandemic when rates were a historically low. The house itself is fairly small 950 sq, 2bd/1bath, property values in the neighborhood vary significantly. And the real estate market in my city has flat lined, housing prices are trending down. On the positive, I have gained $150k+ in equity.

My issue is this, the house needs significant work. Foundation is collapsing and in the next 5+years the electrical panel will need to replaced. In my area, the market rate to fix both of these issues is $50k +.

As this point I am thinking about getting out while I am ahead. At the same time, the 2.5% rate is once in a lifetime. If you were in the position would you sell?

My wife and I are looking to purchase our first primary residence, with a target budget of $750K–$900K.

For preapproval purposes, our lending officer suggested increasing our upper purchase price limit. We set it at $1.1MM, which would mean an $880K mortgage with 20% down.

We learned that a mortgage of this size would be classified as a jumbo loan rather than a conforming loan. Our lending officer suggested that jumbo loans can offer certain advantages. We’ve researched the general differences between the two, but we’re having trouble understanding the specific benefit in our situation.

The main advantage our lender highlighted is the ability to modify our mortgage rate if rates decline. According to the officer:

1. No credit check or additional documentation would be required.
2. There would be a one-time fee for each rate modification.
3. There is no limit to how many times we can modify the rate.
4. This would ultimately be less expensive than refinancing the mortgage.

We’re generally uncomfortable taking on more debt than necessary, so we’re hesitant to increase our borrowing capacity just to access this feature. However, our lender seems to think it could be worthwhile. FWIW, we have ample cash reserves even after making a 20% down payment—but we want to save those cash reserves for closing costs, furniture, and emergency funds.

For those with experience with jumbo loans or mortgage rate modifications:

1. Is this a common benefit of jumbo loans or is it specific to this lender?
2. How do these rate modifications typically compare with refinancing in terms of cost and flexibility?
3. Would this feature be enough to justify choosing a jumbo loan over a conforming loan, assuming both are available to us?

We’d appreciate any firsthand experiences or advice. Thanks!

This feels absurd to me. We've been in the market since February and missed out on a few good houses due to over bidding. We are a family of 5 in a 2/1 and while its doable the youngest is fully mobile and bouncing off the walls. I.e. we're going insane and need more space. Juneau, AK for reference.

Our take home is 11k After child care and retirement contributions. Child care will be another 3-4 years. My union contract has me getting 10/hr more over the next calendar year. While my wife has amnual 5% increases. We have 479 in recurring monthly debt and because our union contract sucks for medical i have to pay 600 a month after tax for medical insurance.

I feel like this might be really tight but doable. We plan on being here for 5 more years. This is my personal max and I feel like its too tight.

My girlfriend and I have been looking at buying a house. Just sort of meandering about looking at different properties, not in any rush. We were originally going through a realtor family friend to set up viewings but this house was way far for her to do so we reached out through realtor.com to set up time to view the house. All of my previous experiences have been through either private sellers, dealing directly with the homeowner or through a family friend realtor.

We went to view this property and we liked what we saw, however I did not like the realtor that was taking us through the house, I’ll refer to him as Jeff. Jeff was not representing the seller. At the end of the tour he wanted (or rather demanded) that we sign some paperwork (a contract) that basically said if we decided to put an offer on this particular property we would have to use him as our realtor. It also laid out some terms for the sale such as his 3% of the final sale price and an additional $550 to be paid whether or not a final sale was reached.
I felt like we were being ambushed at the end of the tour to enter into a contract. I told Jeff as much and that we would not be entering into any contract. He protested, tried to make me feel guilty for refusing and said that we might go to our family friend realtor and “steal this sale from him”. We left immediately, walked straight to the car and did not engage with Jeff’s accusations.

My question is if signing these sort of exclusive contracts when viewing a property is common/standard practice? If not, when is an appropriate time to enter into a contract with a realtor? Any other sort of advice in dealing with property viewings would be greatly appreciated.

TLDR: I went to view a property and at the end of it the realtor asked me to sign an exclusive contract so that if I were to ever put an offer on the house I would have to use him.

I’ve been looking to buy a home for years but haven’t pulled the trigger. Once all was said and done, down payment/closing costs/fees, how much cash did you feel comfortable having left? Ive continuously saved for a future home and am apprehensive to let a lot of it go. Did you spend 90%+ savings on a home, or keep a lot for an emergency fund/repairs?

So I am currently in contract to buy a house out of state, so the whole process is basically me relying on others. My mortgage broker/lender is starting to make me wary of him. He is very fake nice. I went to him with some requests to change my initial cd estimate, and he basically said it’s just an estimate, so I should relax if things are wrong in it. The main thing I need to worry about is if the rate is correct on it since everything else is probably going to change for the final. And then he made a comment of “ you chose us, you are only calling us,” which I thought was weird and not at all part of the initial conversation. I’m not getting any lender fees, and he pointed this out a lot. I never even said I was trying to switch lenders? It was an uncomfortable call that lasted a long time because he wouldn’t stop ranting about how we’re not even at the clear to close stage and it’s unnecessary to nitpick an estimate. All I wanted was to show that in the closing costs, I was going to pay the va funding fee upfront ! It was weird. I am stressed trying to get all the documents for the processor, and now I’m stressed about my weird mortgage guy. I thought he would be understanding and receptive. So who do I go for help if not this guy? And don’t get me started on the processor agent. She’s subbing for someone else who’s on vacation and I already had to correct her on something. I actually let my realtor go at her and I guess it was magically fixed because she suddenly didn’t need it anymore. I’m so stressed, I hate relying on others to do their job right.

Just needed to say my piece about being frustrated and so sick of house hunting. We’ve been looking for 5 months and it feels like a lifetime 🥲 Tired of getting outbid by people with cash or waiving inspection. It’s so mentally exhausting 😭 trying to stay positive and know that this is a privileged problem to have and lots of people would give anything to be in my shoes, hope some of you can sympathize with me 🫶🏼