I would definitely not consider myself a real estate expert (I do want to learn and invest more) but we have bought two homes so I have become more familiar with the process. Right now, especially in our area, homes are in huge demand because of low interest rates + pandemic fears. If you are looking to buy a home, I wanted to share a few money saving tips we have used in the past when purchasing. Maybe there are a couple that can help you out!
Real Estate Rewards Programs
We used a real estate rewards program through our bank, and it looks like other banks and some real estate companies have similar options as well. Essentially how it works is you are recommended one or two real estate agents when purchasing a home. When you go with one of these recommended real estate agents, after closing you get a nice check in the mail (we got $1500!) How it works is, there is a lot of competition for real estate agents. Real estate agents give up part of their commission through this program in order to be referred and get your business, and you + the bank get to cash in on that.
Home Inspections
*Please listen to the advice of professionals, I am just sharing our experiences below*
On our first home purchase, we were sooo disappointed with our home inspection. He literally only flipped light switches and faucets. We literally could have done all this ourselves very easily! He did not go under the house or into the crawl spaces, which were our main concerns and something we couldn't do on our own. This costed a couple hundred bucks! On our second home we opted to not do a traditional home inspection (since we were remodeling everything anyway) and chose to do a roof and foundation inspection. If you do go with a traditional home inspection, I recommend talking with the inspector before hand to ensure they will be able to inspect all areas you are concerned about, as well as shopping around for cheaper prices. Home Warranties
For our second home, we had in our contract that the seller would purchase us a 1 year home warranty. This covers items that are not visible through an inspection and some appliances. Within a couple months the water heater died, and we called up the home warranty company. Turns out there is fine print about "codes" so we would have to pay out of pocket $800 for a new water heater WITH the warranty. We ended up buying a bigger, more efficient water heater for the same price and just installed it ourselves. For most services through the home warranty we had to pay out of pocket for something. Moral of this story, in the future I would ask for more credits at closing instead of a home warranty.
Loan Types
I think when most people consider a mortgage, they often look at 30 year loans. According to a lot of sources, most homebuyers do a 30 year mortgage. Especially for new home buyers, these can be more accessible. Your monthly payments are lower and you generally do not have to bring the traditional 20% down payment. For our first home, we did a 30 year loan but we told ourselves we would pay extra every month to save on interest. How many times did we actually pay extra money on our mortgage? ONCE. For our second home we did the math and discovered we would save $130,000 in interest by paying more monthly with a 15 year loan vs paying over an extra 15 years during a 30 year loan. Thats a G Wagon! We pay about $500 more every month, but in the long run save so much money in interest. Not only that, but 15 year loans have lower interest rates, and you also don't have to pay a PMI (an additional mortgage insurance cost you have to pay if you don't put down 20%) Considering how long you plan to live in the home and what you can pay every month, you may want to review different loan types.
Closing Costs + Credits
There is so much negotiating that goes into each escrow. If there is an issue that needs to be fixed with the house or the inspection turns up something unexpected, you can ask for the seller to either fix these issues or offer closing credits. Essentially they are giving up part of their cut of the house sale back to you to help with closing costs. When we sold our house, there were a few small fixes that showed up (like cracks in the pool) and the buyer requested a credit, which we were able to negotiate with them about. This way we are "crediting" some money from the sale back to them so they have to bring less closing costs. Closing costs cover a lot of things from the escrow company to title transfer and home insurance. Its generally a percentage of the home sale price. These credits help you pay less of this. Depending on the market and how long the house has sat, you can also request the seller pay all closing cost ( which are generally paid mostly by the buyer). Right now the market is a sellers market and homes are selling very quickly so closings costs and credits may be harder to come by.
If you are looking to purchase a home I hope a few of these tips were helpful for you! If you have your own tips for saving money buying a home, let me know down below. Tips for saving money *selling a home* coming soon!
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A LOT of time has passed since I last shared some updates on our home remodel. Since we were completely gutting and renovating the whole house, we were in the middle of a lot of projects across a couple rooms when covid hit. For some of our projects we had hired outside help, so that had to be put on pause. And with everything being so up in the air, we wanted to save as much money as possible just in case. Now that things are starting to get back to normal a bit in California we have been getting back to work. The room that is for the most part done (aside from being more decorated) is our living room, which really needed not much work compared to other rooms in the house. Keep scrolling to see the before and after!
BeforeAfter
This room was all us. We scraped wall paper, painted, put in new floors/baseboards, and upgraded the fixtures. I think the most noticeable change is the window behind the couch being closed up. The windows in this room were very old and inefficient. As well, the area behind the couch is where we moved out the wall to expand the bathroom (if you haven't seen our bathroom transformation you can check that out HERE) so instead of replacing it with a smaller window we decided to just close it up. The existing window we had replaced with a much more efficient upgrade.
The only new furniture we bought was the two piece coffee table, which we got from Ikea (HERE). The white couch is also Ikea, but not new. We got it barely used off Facebook Marketplace for $300! The tv console used to belong to my parents, and the green rolling cart is actually a family antique. My grandparents bought it in Korea in the 70s!
Most of the decor are knick knacks I picked up at thrift stores. I'm super proud of the rug, I also found it on Facebook Marketplace! I only paid $50 for it, and managed to squeeze this 9x12 ft rug into the back of a crossover suv all on my own! These rugs are regularly $300 so I couldn't pass it up. The one piece I did buy new for the room is the fake fiddle leaf fig tree. Many I found were pricey, but this one was only about $70!
These have been our coffee table books for years. The Mercedes Benz book was my husbands from Germany, and the Vogue is special to me because I bought it when I was in Paris back in 2011 (the trip where I met my now husband). I love the coasters I bought off Amazon, they have a marble design and are leather so they hold up really well. Plus they have over 1200 reviews and almost 5 stars!
As far as what we are working on now, our goal is to get this old toolshed off the living room transitioned into a bathroom (with shower!) by Thanksgiving. The door to this bathroom is next to the TV. If you look at the old pictures of the living room, the door into this bathroom had a bookshelf attached to it, so it didn't look like a door at all. There was actually a door to the backyard/outside that we closed up behind the toilet.
As far as the room I am most excited to share, the kitchen, we should be getting that room wrapped up very soon! We ordered our cabinets back in February, but one *single* cabinet was on backorder and was supposed to arrive by April. Due to covid, it got pushed back until August and there was actually a lot our contractor couldn't build because of this one cabinet. But now that we have the cabinet our guy is coming back in to finish the kitchen very soon! I'll be sharing that hopefully at the end of this month :D
While other states have been open for weeks, the lovely state of California is still very much in shelter in place. I'm definitely bored, so what have I resorted to? Painting butts.
One of my favorite bloggers, Kathleen Barnes/Carrie Bradshaw Lied, shared on her instagram about this project she was doing to keep herself busy, and I loved it! I had been researching modern / abstract bathroom art, but redecorating is EXPENSIVE so I loved seeing a DIY project I could try. I definitely recommend practicing and drawing out a sketch butt with a sharpie before attacking a piece of paper with paint. Once you break down the picture into single lines, it's actually pretty easy! When it came time to paint I just traced my best sharpie practice butt. (I've never typed "butt" this many times and I'm loving it.) I think it makes for cool modern bathroom art!
The only paintbrushes we had were for walls and big paint projects, so I ordered this 10 piece set off Amazon for $7.99. I also got this frame set, 10 frames for only $33.99! Thats only $3.39 a frame, which is a killer deal. Great for a collage wall!
I had so much fun with the butt (lol) that I decided to get all artsy and take a stab at a few more paintings! A number of them went straight into the bin but I did like how two ended up! Hubs said we could hang them up in the garage (lol) but I convinced him to hang them in our living room. :)
Happy 2020! I've been MIA the past few months because we have just been up to our eyeballs in remodeling our new house. It's going slower than we expected, but it is slowly and surely coming together. I thought it would be fun to share the journey with you guys and maybe our experiences can be helpful to you! I wanted to start by showing you where we started from (wait until you see the color of the bathroom..!!) I'm also sharing some inspo photos to give you an idea of what we want to do with the space. Overall we are going for a simple, modern look with a simple mix of white, black, and wood. Keep scrolling! ExteriorInteriorSo pretty much through the entire house we are keeping the same flooring and paint for consistency. For flooring we went with a nice gray luxury vinyl plank, which I had never heard of before we started researching flooring. It's thick and waterproof, which means we can also run it through bathrooms and kitchen. I also had my heart set on a high base board, and we found a great moulding at Lowes that is 6" high. For walls we are going with a simple ultra pure white. For the kitchen we are actually going to be removing the wall behind the stove to open up the space into the dining room / front room. We will have an island where the stove is instead. For the bathroom, we have actually removed the wall with the window and moved it back a couple feet. We are in the process of building a walk in shower in the new space and will put a double vanity in beside it. This was previously utilized as a tool shed, however with an entry door into the living room (that looks like a bookshelf, how cool is that??) we have decided to convert it into a second bathroom! We'll just close up the exterior door. As far as design, we are going to just make into a mini version of the master bathroom. As you can see..we have a LOT of work ahead of us. It's already going slower than expected, but we still have hope one day we will have a nice house, just the way we want it. Have experience with home renovations? Leave some tips + words of encouragement (lol) below!
Hello lovelies! My husband and I had our 2nd annual end of the summer pool party this past weekend, and it was so so great to meet up with old friends we don't see as much now that we have moved outside of Los Angeles. Last year, we did the typical beer and wine refreshments, and this year I wanted to spice it up a bit! {C H A M P A G N E B A R} I saw this idea on buzzfeed, and decided I had to try for our party! I set up iced champagne, OJ, and a variety of fruits (I chose watermelon, raspberries, strawberries, and limes) I actually found this sign at Walmart under $2! (I would just like to say I am very rarely in Walmart...but I was so excited to find this little sign!) These glasses were 6/$4.99 at Ikea Overall it was a lot of fun, and I loved the idea! Next time, I plan on offering more juices (maybe watermelon, strawberry, etc.) Share your own fun party drink ideas in the comments below! I'm always looking for new cute ideas for acceptable day drinking. :D xo Sydney
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