Home Advice

Fancy up your house. find out what its worth. Find a place you want to buy. Sell your house first and then buy the other place. Hopefully you can move into the new place before you have to move out of your old one.

You can purchase your second on contingency that your first home sells. Unless you are really, really rich the banks would never extend an additional mortgage for the 2nd home, so you are going to be forced to sell prior to or simultaneously with your new home.

First, you need to hook up with an RE agent that will represent you in the sale. I'm not sure of the strategy of using them also to buy the 2nd home... as they may have a conflict on getting you to sell the 1st (so they can make a commission), which will allow you to buy the 2nd (to make their 2nd commission).

contingency

I have definitely dumped a good amount of money into the home fixing it up, Hobo. New floors, new deck, new appliances, new water heater, finished basement - the whole nine. Here's hoping it all helped.

Maybe you can represent me.

Don't know about your neck of the woods,but around here,land is pretty cheap.Buddy of mine just got 9.5 acres for 12k.Ever think about getting some land in a location you would desire,then get a "used" modular home thrown on there?

My folks are in the process of moving down to Alabama and found a place that sells "used" modulars.2,000 sq. ft. modular house for 40k.They found a piece of property (10 acres),that had a basement that was already dug,but I guess the people fell on hard times and had to stop building.

When it's all said and done,they will have a 2000 sq. ft. house,with a basement,sitting on 10 acres of property.The house they own here will go for at least 200k.Minus the 55k for the property and house in Bama,they will be making out pretty good.

You should buy like 50 acres so LS can have it's own "burning man". :-}

/journal

Check with your tax guy too. There might be state tax advantages to one approach over another.

I wouldn't want to be under pressure to sell (thus incentivising you to lower asking price).

That being said, a successful real estate dude once told me that you don't want to sell your current house. You should wait it out until you can afford both mortgages (via refinancing to lower payment in addition to waiting for your income to increase), then rent out the home you don't want to live in (being able to afford both mortgages, even if only for a year of so, is good insurance for vacant rental).

This proves problematic insofar as raising capitol for down payment on new house, but it is a very conservative way to build a solid real estate portfolio.

Being a home owner and landlord are two completely different lives. Can you imagine renting your home to one of us meeptards? No? Then you don't want to be a landlord.

You are right insofar as I have any "emotional connection" to the house. Sever that, and any of you meeptards that can come up with the security deposit are more than welcome to pay my mortgage for me.