Buying a House with Cash

[Beltzington]

Instead of paying up front, take out a 25 or 30 grand loan. Let the bank do all the legal work. After it's all said and done, pay it off.

This was my first thought but it costs about $2k to use the bank, so I am looking at alternate methods.

Appreciate all the good feedback, I did so more research and found Georgia requires an attorney to close the deal so that decision is already made. I will be contacting two or three local closing attorneys this week to determine the local rates and hopefully find one I feel good working with, I have found you can learn allot about a business by their customer service attitude. I already have a termite and HVAC guy I trust going to do those inspections. It is the title and survey and closing I need a professional involved.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

We bought a bank owned/foreclosure. Made a full price offer on Friday. Tuesday the bank effectively counter offered by dropping the price $15K. We said OK to lower price.

As Eric mentioned the taxes need to be paid up thru the closing date. Also check the utilities to make sure there are no back bills to be paid before you can get services turned on/over.

Home inspectors are hit or miss. Our RE agent is retired contractor. Learned more about the house from him then the home inspector.

Check if there is any special requirement for your area. Mass. has requirement for Fire dept inspection of working smoke & CO detectors before we could do closing. With as-is and no power on I had to go in take down hardwired detectors and mount battery powered units so FD could inspect.

I presume that the bank couldn't perform on some aspect of your offer, and countered by asking for less consideration and not agreeing to some aspect of your initial offer? On foreclosures, this can even be moving the time of closing sooner as banks must increasing reserve against non-performing assets and if you know those dates, writing a lower offer with a closing a day before the reserve date can work in your favor if the bank is under-captialised.

 

[turnkey4099]

I am in the process of buying a house without a realtor and have to do about the same. I asked a lawyer I had used in the past and he sent me to the guy he got to do his. Get someone to guide you when getting a lawyer, They can be great and not so great. Ed

Yeah! When I bought my first house I found out at closing that my lawyer was also representing the seller.

Harry K

 

[Howling]

I presume that the bank couldn't perform on some aspect of your offer, and countered by asking for less consideration and not agreeing to some aspect of your initial offer? On foreclosures, this can even be moving the time of closing sooner as banks must increasing reserve against non-performing assets and if you know those dates, writing a lower offer with a closing a day before the reserve date can work in your favor if the bank is under-captialised.

It was nothing about our offer. Just good timing. House was bank owned (taken in foreclosure), as-is. Someone as bank decided to drop asking price a day or two after we made the offer. The bank's RE agent called my agent, who called me. And we agreed to drop our offer price to match the bank's new asking price.

The bank's RE agent was interesting. He would not talk to anyone except another RE agent. I found the house thru online listing. The first agent I talked to could not get any information or ability to see the house and gave up after couple weeks. The second agent I talked to got us in to see the house and we made the offer within 24 hours. In 2009, with repairs, we paid less than half the price of 4 years before that.