Selling a house is worse than buying!!

[Hookup]

With the Mortgage rules changing Aug 1st in Canada there is likely going to be a rush to "close deals now"... meaning agreeing with the bank the terms before the 31st of July, not taking possession... .this might work in your favor. If the buyer was considering a 30year amortization period they'll have little choice but to take your house or risk having to get into something different at a 25 year term...

maybe something your agent can find out... it sure would affect the details of the sale.

[Greatwhite]

My understanding of the mortgage changes, from what I read a couple weeks back, was that the mortgage had to be not just pre-approved, but completely approved by July 9.  I think that these folks missed their window, and are now subject to the new rules.

From what I was told by my agent who heard from THEIR agent - they are doing a 20% downpayment on the mortgage anyway, so they are falling in line with the new rules on their own.  I am not sure what this means, but "they are not doing a GMAC mortgage, so the new rules shouldn't affect them"??  Perhaps that is why this is more complicated that "the average mortgage".

It seems they have until 11:59PM tomorrow to get everything sorted out.  They'll have "enough" time after the inspection to make a b*tch list of things they "demand that I fix" and I'll have time to respond with "no".   I'm already fixing/replacing a fence, so I hope they don't come after me for more fixes.  I have enough on my plate as it is with packing and planning the next house's reno!

Oh, cool thing I learned yesterday.  The assessed value of my current house is $384k.  We have the conditional sale at $430k.  The assessed value of the new house is $560k... We bought for $508k.  Seems we got the winning end of both deals.  Of course, I don't base a lot on the assessed value of a house.  I think they pull a number out of thin air, by the square footage of the house - not by the actual value of what the house is made of.  A solid gold 1900 sq foot house would probably have an assessed value of $384k...

I now have the goal to get the new house worth more than $560k, though!  Shouldn't be difficult since NOTHING has been done to it since it was built in 1989.

[Fishnut]

There is a couple of things I feel I need to correct.  It's not a GMAC mortgage, it's a CMHC Mortgage Insurance.  When someone has less than 20% down on a house, the inforces an extra percentage or partial percentage onto the mortgage as an insurance.  It's also a very simple mortgage and lenders tend to like approving clients with the 20% down.  Here's the info:

http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/co/moloin/moloin_005.cfm

You're right in not putting too much weight on the assessed value.  That means absolutely nothing when it comes to the resale value of the house.  That figure is strictly used for property tax estimation, nothing more.  Once every so often, the city will look at the re-sale value of houses in areas and adjust an asessment to match.  However, if you're selling higher than average in your neighbourhood and buying lower, that's the winning end of both deals!

Another thing that your agent should be preparing you for is the fact that inspections are used for home owners to have peace of mind that the house their buying is sound and there are no defects in the components that 99% of us are not able to determine.  Things that are obvious are kindof hard to come back with after the inspection because if you saw it as you were looking at the house, you should have offered accordingly.  BUT, if a 10 year old furnace (as an example)hasn't had a single bit of maintenance it's likely going to have problems and need repair. A buyer will likely ask that it be fixed and have every right to expect to buy a house with a properly working furnace.  It's only 10 years old, not 20.  Big stuff that only the home inspector can determine is what people should worry about.

[Greatwhite]

There is a couple of things I feel I need to correct.  It's not a GMAC mortgage, it's a CMHC Mortgage Insurance.

Interestingly, I was thinking CMHC, but wrote it and it didn't look right so I changed it to GMAC.  I think my wife is to blame because she clearly has been using both acronyms incorrectly.   Thanks for the clarification on why the CMHC thing is better to avoid with a bigger down payment.

I've been systematically going around the house looking for anything that might stand out during an inspection.  I followed my inspector guy around both houses we did an inspection on, so had an idea of what to look for.  There are NO cracks in the parging around the foundation, so that should mean there are no cracks "further down" to worry about.  The basement is mostly finished.. The areas that are not finished look perfect with no signs of moisture anywhere.  The furnace is 5 years old, maintained annually... We just shot more insulation in the attic last fall...  windows are all new. 

It'll be hard for an inspector to find anything that might come back at me -- i hope.   a house down the street sold for way under asking, and the following week, there was a foundation repair truck there, and they dug out all around the garage to fix the foundation there.....  I found that "unusual" so looked closely around my garage for warning signs!

I just wish it was possible to get a copy of the inspection here for my own records!!

[bt]

To be fair, Ally Financial (formerly GMAC) did operate a mortgage lending unit under the GMAC branding until it put the unit into bankruptcy in May.

But yeah, CMHC in this case.

[Greatwhite]

Yeah... so... Something I'm sure you guys have learned by now, is that if ANYTHING unusual can happen to me - it will.  Nothing goes smoothly, there is always some sort of unexpected hiccup.  Sometimes it works out for the better, like the bidding war fiasco I was involved in...

This time, I have a feeling that the sale of my house will fall apart because the buyer is Iranian -- and mysteriously, the day I had a deal, the Canadian government put the economic sanctions on Iran.  This guy "got the letter" from TD and moved all his money to CIBC to escape their closing his account and seizing his money.  CIBC is now "working with him" on getting the mortgage, but I'm not optimistic, since it's 2 days past the "5 days CIBC needs to process the application".

We also learned a whole lot of other interesting stuff about the guy, which is all innocent enough - but just enough to make it very hard to get a mortgage, I think.

ARGH.

[Greatwhite]

Sometimes it works out for the better, like the bidding war fiasco I was involved in...

Yeah, so we went back on the market on Friday.  Immediately when our status went back to Active, my agent started getting calls... "What happened? Why is it active again?"... So he explained the whole thing.  He phoned around to other agents who had previously been interested.

And on Saturday afternoon, we had 2 showings.  Saturday night, an offer came in.  And this afternoon, a second offer.  The first offer was "low" with some weird "first rejection" conditions.  Once they learned that there was a second offer, they revised things to make it much more appealing.

The offer we accepted was for full asking price.  The only thing that we were not fans of was an October closing date, to allow them time to sell their house.  Not a condition on sale of the house - so after the inspection and financing is sorted out, the conditions will all be met.  The contract indicates that "if they are able to sell sooner, they are willing to shift the closing date closer".  They initially had "or outward if it doesn't sell on time".... That part was scratched out.

We bought 2 weeks off their late closing date to get back to the end of September, and will have to bridge finance until then.  But the $$ offered is good enough to cover that.

The other offer was from a guy in australia....  the time it would take to come to a deal would have been too much to make it worthwhile, really.

[Greatwhite]

Flipped the sold sign yesterday. The inspection went well, in spite of the kitchen. Sink's drain deciding to rot out at the threads 10mins before we had to rush out the door to hide for 4 hrs while the inspection was done.

All I could do was leave a note asking them not to use the left sink, explaining that it started leaking at 1:30pm THAT DAY. I fixed it Friday night, replacing both drain baskets. What great timing!!!

The only thing they found was a little wood rot under the bay window in the master bedroom. So, no price reductions, and they are confident in the house being worth what they are paying.

[Severum]

Good to hear! Congratulations! What a saga.

[Greatwhite]

Thanks... Ya, a saga is right.  I'll be sure to put this all in my memoirs..

[Peekay]

Congrats on the sale! 
Wishing you smooth pack-and-move to compensate for the drama with this part!

[Greatwhite]

Congrats on the sale! 
Wishing you smooth pack-and-move to compensate for the drama with this part!

Hehe.. a world without drama would be BORING!  I always hope for smooth sailing, but try to find the humor and entertainment in the crap-storms that pop up along the way.  I figure that you need to find the humor in bad situations and laugh about it, or else you'll be dragged down. 

We just got a nice gift basket full of nice/useful/tasty items from Pilon/Hamilton congratulating us for the sale.  When we bought our current house, we had a painting dropped off at our doorstep one day of a bunch of kids playing street hockey in front of a house with a "Sold by <name removed for protection>" sign in front of it.  My friend owns a local real estate magazine and found the painting to be HILARIOUS and saved it from the garbage man... It's now hanging in his office as a prime example of the self-marketing that SOME arrogant realtors do.

[Fishnut]

When we bought our current house, we had a painting dropped off at our doorstep one day of a bunch of kids playing street hockey in front of a house with a "Sold by <name removed for protection>" sign in front of it.  My friend owns a local real estate magazine and found the painting to be HILARIOUS and saved it from the garbage man... It's now hanging in his office as a prime example of the self-marketing that SOME arrogant realtors do.

OMG...that IS hilarious!!  I give practical things like books, home depot gift cards, sometimes food baskets from  some specialty food store or some hand made chocolates from a local business.  It all depends on the client.  Nerine got a tree for their back yard!

Congratulations!!