All Forum Posts by: Carl C.

Update: We finally closed on the house on Friday..... sort of. The closing ended up being described by everyone at the table as "the worst closing I have ever attended". It was exhausting. In the end it took 5 hours to get it done, there was a bank lawyer who was 3 hours late, incorrect docs from the bank, yelling by everyone, crying sellers, getting kicked out of the seller's attorney's office, an attorney who still used a type writer, a wonderful title rep who canceled her dinner plans and had us shift the closing to her dining room (sans sellers), final check exchange on Monday, and pizza. Oh and did I mention the sellers attorney isn't a real estate attorney? 

If this was my first deal, I might never buy a house again. Holy moley. The house is now ours but the sellers are staying until the weekend to have time to move their stuff out. They close on their new house today so fingers crossed that it all goes well. As far as work goes, I have three doors I need to install then this house is ready to go. It needs nothing unlike our first place that needed everything. 

We will be putting it up for rent immediately but since we rent to college kids I don't expect that we will have tenants for the upcoming semester. In the meantime my parents will be moving in while they renovate their house. With any luck we will get renters for the second semester. I'll keep you all posted how that goes. 

If there is an easement  the county should be responsible for repairing all damage. My guess would be they will do it the cheapest way possible and take their time but they have a responsibility for their infrastructure that passes through your property. As for the tree.... I could see them saying they would take care of it if it is in their easement and clearly obstructing or damaging their pipes, however I could also see them saying it's your problem if it isn't causing any obvious interference for them. Good luck!

We are about to close on out second SFR and it has a relatively new well working oil burner for heat. We have the tenants pay their own utilities but when it comes to getting oil delivered I'm wondering how we should handle that. I think they won't be happy to have to lay out 1500 bucks to fill the tank when the time comes. Also what, if anything can we do about charging for the oil that is currently in the tank that won't be used for a few months. Anyone dealt with this before? Our other house has gas so it's very easy to send the bill and have it taken care of. This is for a student rental by the way not for a family. Thanks for any thoughts.

@Leann W. if we didn't have a lawyer in this process we would be going nowhere right now!

@Jayson Greenblatt this is upstate in Poughkeepsie.

Oh and in the meantime the house on the other side of us just went FSBO. Now I'm scrambling to figure out where I can get some more money.... I have a few ideas once I get this house done.

Thought I'd provide a quick update on this house. This is a deal where anything that could go wrong has gone wrong. We initially set closing for July 15th. Our bank sent over the mortgage application docs and literally every piece of paper had something incorrect on it. We sent everything back with corrections to be made and heard nothing from them for three weeks. When we were finally able to get a hold of them and asked what the hold up was they responded with "whats the rush? your closing is scheduled for Sept 3rd." So we have learned a lot about incompetent employees at this bank. They have been horrendous to work with. 

The next issue was asbestos on pipes in the basement. The bank refused to provide a loan before the asbestos was removed. We had an agreement with the seller that we would take care of the asbestos after closing and they would reduce the selling price so we could deal with it. Now we had to renegotiate who would pay for it and when it could be completed. We scrambled to find a contractor and got it done within a week for less that I thought. But what a pain.

The next issue was the title search. The house has been in the same family for over 70 years. We thought there should be no issue. When the search came back, however the dates didn't make any sense. The search was ordered on June 22 but the records for the county were only current as of May 15th. So the bank said that wouldn't be acceptable because it needed to be current within 60 days of closing. A special call to the county by our lawyer got that straightened out, but once again it was a struggle. 

Now in theory we have everything settled though the bank had verbally said we are clear to close, their checklist on their website still says things are under review. I'm a little worried about that. We had agreed with all parties that closing would now be Aug 7th. Yesterday our lawyer calls to say that the sellers lawyer wants to push it back to sometime next week because "there won't be enough time for two closings in one afternoon" and "having the closing in his office will disturb his secretary". What?? 

So we are theoretically closing sometime next week but i have no idea when and all this nonsense makes me wonder if we should be buying this house at all. There's been a problem at every step of the process so my fingers are crossed that this place isn't cursed. Stay tuned for next week. I'll let you all know how it goes. 

Congrats @Adam Spencer we look forward to hearing more about it! Good luck!

Sounds like a roommate issue to me. The guy has a right to be angry but if the lease is up at the end of the month what is he expecting you do? 

I don't think that fee is that out of line. My parents are getting ready for a serious remodel and addition to their house and the fee is 11k. If the architect is well experienced he will have a rough idea of what the project will cost before creating any drawings. You should really be telling him what you budget is and make sure that he doesn't go wild with features that you can't afford. I disagree with hiring a draft person for work like this. Architects are licensed and insured to protect you and they know how to navigate building departments, codes and contractors. This is coming from me, a landscape architect. 

We rent to college kids and we make all the parents co-sign with the students. Rent is paid directly by the parents. We do 12 month leases, renters pay utilities, house is unfurnished. We have found that the kids just tend to do stupid things every now and then but we always get our rent on time. Rents are a bit higher than if we rented to non-students. We like it enough that we would like to expand and get more student housing. As far as the yard goes, I take care of mowing the lawn and I pay to have snow cleared.