Jun 5, 2023·edited Jun 5, 2023Liked by Addison Del Mastro
It is absolutely fascinating how the bigger the purchase, the seemingly less leverage and information you get. That continues post-home purchase when you need to replace your roof or siding, for example. There's a big sense of "trust us" without a whole lot of anything to back that up. Also agreed on the poor state of homes in NoVA. Lack of maintenance or upkeep is rampant in older homes (wonder if that will change now that we're all working from home) and on those new developments you're referencing, everything is vinyl even in a $2M home.
For further reading, I recommend the book A Nation Of Realtors: A Cultural History Of The Twentieth-century American Middle Class. The book examines how realtors transformed their occupation into a profession ("professional entrepreneurs"), and influenced zoning and housing policy.
Interesting book, will check it out. Yeah, for the price these houses are not in good shape. Although maybe it's *because* of the price - there's no incentive to keep them nice at these prices beyond making them okay to live in (we all put up with things in our homes we would object to viewing a home for sale haha)
I went through the buying process a few years ago. It seems like one of those life events like funerals or weddings where the buyer is at a huge disadvantage. Knowledge only gets you so far.
I was struck by the fact that you end up buying a house with less due diligence than a fridge or washing machine. How much can you really learn in a one hour visit? And I bet most people don’t even use most of the visit...
I was truly disappointed when we scheduled a 2 hour home inspection and showed up 45 minutes into it. The inspector was already done and chatting happily with the selling agent. All they really tell you is that the house is structurally sound. They specifically don’t tell you about what you’ll need to fix.
One note: it’s legally better for all involved not to know too much. If they do know it, they could be sued for non-disclosure.
My wife told me at the beginning two things: 1) don’t believe the real estate crash predictors, we just need to buy something; 2) expect to spend $100k on home upgrades in the first few years. Both were correct.
Yep. Luckily we were very observant and spent the full time looking at everything up close. My dad hasn't hired anyone to do work on his house in ages, he's learned to do it himself (except the roof). I don't know how to do all that stuff but I've learned ore than the average person about how it all works. But there will always be little things you miss.
I would be much better at purchasing a home today, but I know enough not to move if I don’t have to. We had a couple of unwelcome surprises upon moving in. The drier made noise but didn’t really dry anything. And roof tiles just started falling off a few months later. Not much you can do about it.
Rule of thumb: everything starts breaking down after 15 years and you have to decide whether to repair or replace.
My experience was not nearly as harrowing, granted the legal landscape in Mass. is very different (you don't sign a contract with your buyer's agent, which I'm sure has *other* failure modes, for instance they're paid *by the seller based on sale price* so their incentives are to get to you buy at the highest possible price to maximize their commission). Also I guess maybe my expectations were a bit different since I was pretty much exclusively shopping for 100+ year old homes so uhhh the bar was pretty low for "workable" heh.
But still, yeah, I can't really understand how any of this can be considered "healthy" and oof does the market seem to show. My pet theory remains that it's ultimately an artifact of the way we take the land's inherent value from the public and let it be taken by individuals, so instead of buying *a house* you're ultimately appropriating a share of the community's inherent common worth for your own ends, which just so happens to include a house. But since the former is much more scarce, there's little reason to put too much into the latter since you'll find *someone* willing to buy it to get the former. If the bulk of a home sale ended up actually depending on the value *of the house* I think the incentives to quality would increase.
I'll also note that I was ultimately satisfied with my realtor, as he *didn't* pressure us to waive financing or inspection contingencies even when going up against cash offers, and instead worked with us to make our offers more appealing without giving up that protection. But both my realtor and my mortgage broker *did* advise various forms of "casual" fraud (of the typical "borrow money from parents but lie and say it's a gift" sort) in order to be able to bid higher, which of course is precisely what their incentives would be aligned with.....
It is absolutely fascinating how the bigger the purchase, the seemingly less leverage and information you get. That continues post-home purchase when you need to replace your roof or siding, for example. There's a big sense of "trust us" without a whole lot of anything to back that up. Also agreed on the poor state of homes in NoVA. Lack of maintenance or upkeep is rampant in older homes (wonder if that will change now that we're all working from home) and on those new developments you're referencing, everything is vinyl even in a $2M home.
For further reading, I recommend the book A Nation Of Realtors: A Cultural History Of The Twentieth-century American Middle Class. The book examines how realtors transformed their occupation into a profession ("professional entrepreneurs"), and influenced zoning and housing policy.
Interesting book, will check it out. Yeah, for the price these houses are not in good shape. Although maybe it's *because* of the price - there's no incentive to keep them nice at these prices beyond making them okay to live in (we all put up with things in our homes we would object to viewing a home for sale haha)
I went through the buying process a few years ago. It seems like one of those life events like funerals or weddings where the buyer is at a huge disadvantage. Knowledge only gets you so far.
I was struck by the fact that you end up buying a house with less due diligence than a fridge or washing machine. How much can you really learn in a one hour visit? And I bet most people don’t even use most of the visit...
I was truly disappointed when we scheduled a 2 hour home inspection and showed up 45 minutes into it. The inspector was already done and chatting happily with the selling agent. All they really tell you is that the house is structurally sound. They specifically don’t tell you about what you’ll need to fix.
One note: it’s legally better for all involved not to know too much. If they do know it, they could be sued for non-disclosure.
My wife told me at the beginning two things: 1) don’t believe the real estate crash predictors, we just need to buy something; 2) expect to spend $100k on home upgrades in the first few years. Both were correct.
Yep. Luckily we were very observant and spent the full time looking at everything up close. My dad hasn't hired anyone to do work on his house in ages, he's learned to do it himself (except the roof). I don't know how to do all that stuff but I've learned ore than the average person about how it all works. But there will always be little things you miss.
I would be much better at purchasing a home today, but I know enough not to move if I don’t have to. We had a couple of unwelcome surprises upon moving in. The drier made noise but didn’t really dry anything. And roof tiles just started falling off a few months later. Not much you can do about it.
Rule of thumb: everything starts breaking down after 15 years and you have to decide whether to repair or replace.
Great post, opened my eyes to a lot of stuff as I’m going through the process for southern Maryland
90% of realtors give the others a bad name
My experience was not nearly as harrowing, granted the legal landscape in Mass. is very different (you don't sign a contract with your buyer's agent, which I'm sure has *other* failure modes, for instance they're paid *by the seller based on sale price* so their incentives are to get to you buy at the highest possible price to maximize their commission). Also I guess maybe my expectations were a bit different since I was pretty much exclusively shopping for 100+ year old homes so uhhh the bar was pretty low for "workable" heh.
But still, yeah, I can't really understand how any of this can be considered "healthy" and oof does the market seem to show. My pet theory remains that it's ultimately an artifact of the way we take the land's inherent value from the public and let it be taken by individuals, so instead of buying *a house* you're ultimately appropriating a share of the community's inherent common worth for your own ends, which just so happens to include a house. But since the former is much more scarce, there's little reason to put too much into the latter since you'll find *someone* willing to buy it to get the former. If the bulk of a home sale ended up actually depending on the value *of the house* I think the incentives to quality would increase.
I'll also note that I was ultimately satisfied with my realtor, as he *didn't* pressure us to waive financing or inspection contingencies even when going up against cash offers, and instead worked with us to make our offers more appealing without giving up that protection. But both my realtor and my mortgage broker *did* advise various forms of "casual" fraud (of the typical "borrow money from parents but lie and say it's a gift" sort) in order to be able to bid higher, which of course is precisely what their incentives would be aligned with.....