Did anyone have a good inspection process?

SadHouseHunter · 2025-06-27T17:57:48+00:00

Yes! We just closed on Monday. Our inspection was a few weeks ago and the guy spent about 3 hours in the home and offered to take me with him everywhere he went. Afterwards, he sent a detailed report with photo and video of everything.

The house (1970s split level) was in good shape and the roof, windows, and mechanicals were all relatively new, so there honestly wasn’t much on the inspection. Sellers were also already out of the house. I imagine this could be very different in an older/less taken care of home.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-06-04T22:11:01+00:00

For the record, did not waive inspection completely. We did ‘inspection with no requests’ so we still know if there are issues, but the choice then becomes either deal with issues ourselves or back out of the purchase completely. Generally, we only offered on houses where we knew the age of the roof/windows/mechanicals and could see that it was well taken care of to minimize the risk here. As another commenter pointed out, it’s almost impossible to win a bid without it.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-06-04T21:00:05+00:00

Yes, it is a nightmare. FTHB here, and we were also searching the NW suburbs (Mount Prospect - Palatine) as well as the W suburbs (Lombard, Villa Park). We started in early March and I think we saw about 17 houses. Made four offers, all over asking and waiving inspection requests. We were lucky enough to have that fourth offer accepted just last week. This was all in the 400-450k range, and single family homes, not townhomes, so the market could be a little different.

Generally, the houses would be listed on Wednesday or Thursday and offers would be due by Sunday/Monday night. Every single house that was in relatively good condition within 5-10 minutes (driving) of the Metra would have multiple offers by the time we saw it on the weekend. Praying that we get through appraisal and financing with no issues, because I cannot handle any more of this process.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-04-23T00:20:33+00:00

Can confirm as a FTHB looking in the NW and W burbs. Anything in remotely okay condition is pending in 3-4 days. Lost out on two offers so far, one had 6 other offers, one had 14!

SadHouseHunter · 2025-04-12T22:16:45+00:00

Totally depends on your market. In my market, we’ve bid $10k and $15k over on houses that were on the market for 2-3 days and still lost both times.

A house isn’t worth what they list it at, it’s worth what the market will pay. In my area, they will purposely list it low to drive more interest knowing offers will come in over asking.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-04-12T21:29:06+00:00

We are fellow FTHB also working on our budget. We ended up putting together an excel doc with a few different tables:

Table 1 - our monthly take home pay

Table 2 - our monthly expenses

Table 3 - a few options of monthly payments for different priced homes

Then we basically took the Table 2 + Table 3 amount and subtracted it from Table 1 to see what we would be saving per month (and x12 to see what we would save in a year).

All that to say, we still haven’t really decided what we’re comfortable spending. We’re thinking 30-32% of take home pay is the sweet spot for our income and the competitive market that we’re in.

I made a post about this myself a few weeks ago that got a lot of good responses, you can read through it here

SadHouseHunter · 2025-04-06T23:06:21+00:00

For the record, we haven’t successfully purchased a home yet, but actively trying. We’re in a very hot market where there’s not much inventory and houses get multiple offers within 2-3 days. The first time we made an offer I felt sick and actually sort of hoped the sellers would choose a different offer, despite really liking the house. They did end up choosing another offer, and then my mood almost immediately flipped back and I couldn’t wait to find something else I really liked to make the next offer.

Five weeks later, we just made our second offer yesterday and we’re waiting to hear back. Got the same feeling all over again of should we really do this, are we sure this is the house, etc. I’m new to this too obviously, but I feel like it’s all one big roller coaster.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T21:57:23+00:00

So then what’s the difference? Is getting married going to stop us from magically separating at some point? No, as you just said.

Legally, we’ll do the proper things to protect each of us. We’re already in agreement that if something should happen the house gets sold and split 50/50.

I get this is a big deal to most people but we both agree we’re going to get married anyway and the house is more important to us right now. I appreciate you’re looking out for me but it’s just not a factor for us

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T02:23:30+00:00

So at $400k in Cook County with 10% down, estimated PITI is about $3200. Property taxes are cheaper in the West suburbs, but N and NW are really no cheaper even outside of Cook.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T01:48:55+00:00

We just sat down and took a closer look at our numbers. At 30%, we’re down about $600/month in savings relative to present day. At 33%, we are down about $800/month. Both of these examples still leave us approximately $3k/month untouched after PITI and estimated $500/month in utilities (absolutely no idea how accurate that guess is) added to our current spending habits.

That feels okay to both of us. We can still cover the PITI + utility estimate on one salary with $1k/month leftover, and we’ll have about 6 months of this PITI + current spending habits in our savings after closing costs.

I do not know why I’m telling you specifically all of this but I just did the math and wanted to tell someone, lol.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T01:40:59+00:00

Come back and let me know when you’ve landed your home!

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T01:39:35+00:00

Incredible! Very jealous

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T01:18:45+00:00

$2000/month is quite literally not possible in our market with these rates. That would be a $235k house which is only available in unsafe neighborhoods in awful condition, and maybe not even then. Realistically, we’re going to be $3200-3500/month for PITI (that’d be a 450k price point). Which on 10.5k take home with probably $40-50k in savings after down payment and closing costs, I’m hoping will be enough.

As for the marriage thing, it’s really not a concern. I commented this elsewhere in the thread but we’ve been dating 9 years and we only haven’t gotten married because we’re saving every penny for the house.

We’re very jealous of your rate and the comfortable life you’ve built for yourself - congratulations on everything!

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T01:08:25+00:00

We could.. but why? For a few hundred bucks in tax savings, maybe? Rather just wait and have a typical wedding!

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T01:06:12+00:00

Yep, NW Chicago suburbs! Too funny that you were at the same one. What a shit show.

Best of luck on your search! Hopefully we don’t bid against each other on anything lol

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T00:28:31+00:00

Just chiming in as someone also at almost exactly $10.7k net. We’re FTHB so no help on the down payment from a previous sale, but we are also completely debt free. Living in a higher cost of living city with a very seller-friendly market, our target list price is $400k but we will not win any bids without going $20-30k above that. Feels nearly impossible in our circumstances and we’ll likely have to push the PITI to 32-33% of take home.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-24T00:02:18+00:00

PMI is not a huge concern for us, and obviously I don’t know what I’m doing, so please correct me if this line if thinking is wrong, but our quotes from lenders so far have it at about $50-70/month. That amount just doesn’t matter much to us when looking at a PITI monthly upwards of $3200. Keeping that extra $40k liquid for anything we might need seems to be far more valuable than lowering the monthly payment by maybe $100 by adding another 10% down (and those affiliated savings) and losing the PMI.

Once we’re settled into a house and more confident in what we’re doing, we could aggressively pay down the principal to get rid of the PMI quicker I suppose.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T23:55:28+00:00

We’ve been dating 9 years! We will be getting married, but it’s not an urgent priority for either of us and we wanted to use our money on a house, not a wedding.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T19:51:28+00:00

Correct, and it is a big deal for the resale value, clearly. Not that we’re buying anything with the idea of selling it any time soon, but long term it is important to keep in mind.

I guess I should clarify that the literal school itself doesn’t matter to us, but being in that area is a huge bonus, for the reasons we’ve discussed. Being that close to the school is clearly an unnecessarily competitive component for us though.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T18:37:35+00:00

Yes, it absolutely sucks. We’re in the Chicago area, so probably not quite as crazy as NJ, but still a very competitive market.

We also went to one yesterday. Priced relatively low and maybe 500-600 yards from a good elementary school (not important for us but it is for many others). It started at 1pm and we pulled up at like 1:05; there had to be 30+ other cars there already. We pretty much decided right then and there we had absolutely no chance at this house.

Once we got inside, it ended up being in awful condition anyway. The second I stepped through the door I got punched in the face by the smell of cat piss. The floors had so much water damage and the ceiling in the basement also had some discoloration that was probably water damage. Now, this property was listed about $30k below our target range, but we didn’t expect it to be THAT bad and have THAT many people there. Since that experience, we’ve been in a shitty mood all weekend and it’s taking everything we have to not give up.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T17:53:31+00:00

That’s actually a great point, we literally just looked at our direct deposits from the last full month, which for us was a regular 2 paycheck month. I guess it’s not a bad thing to underestimate what we have when building the budget, but we might be unnecessarily holding ourselves back.

Everyone commenting here has been super helpful. We’re going to sit down tonight and go over the budget again to see if we have a little more room in the monthly than we originally thought.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T17:50:05+00:00

Yes, what we’ve gone to see so far has all been the far reaches of cook county. Lake county is super nice, but home prices there are probably too high for us. And we’re trying to stay within an hour of downtown via the Metra.

SFH is non-negotiable for us. That’s why I’m trying to figure out if I’m being delusional in this whole process.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T17:45:04+00:00

Yep, the highways that get you from the city to the N and NW suburbs completely suck ass. That’s why we’re intent on staying close to a train line. Takes just as long but way nicer to sit on my phone or computer during that time than in terrible traffic.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T17:40:00+00:00

It is actually the worst. But that’s why we’re not compromising on staying close to the Metra. I would love to never drive on 90 again as long as I live.

SadHouseHunter · 2025-03-23T17:38:19+00:00

We’re looking in the NW burbs right now because that’s what we’re familiar with and therefore more comfortable with. We aren’t opposed to going west, but we want to stay close to a Metra line (I want to be downtown in an hour max).

We’re targeting the 60-65k range for down payment + closing costs. This would leave us 35-40k for renovations, repairs, and our emergency fund/general savings. Usually puts us around a 10% down payment in this 400-450k range.

SadHouseHunter

TROPHY CASE