Buying a house...questions

[dakarimom5]

I apologize if this is long. We are possibly moving to Indiana. We live in Alabama now. How do we go about buying a house in another state? I'm not sure if I'm thinking this through correctly. My dh has been at his current job for over 11 years. So I'm thinking we need to start the process before he leaves this job for the other one.

 

Add to that, my current mortgage company will not speak to us and so we are in limbo with our current house. They will not speak to us because they consider our account closed but we are still paying on our house.

 

Thanks!

[Ottakee]

Would you consider renting for 3-6 months in the new area? That would give you time to get dh started in his new job and let you explore the new area to deterimine where you would like to live......once you find a church (if you go), homeschool group, shopping, etc. you will get a better idea of what area is best for you to live in.

[Momof3littles]

We had one long distance move where we made a trip in advance to get acquainted with the overall area. Then a few months later came back and had one week to find a house. We were relocating for DH to attend graduate school. It was stressful, but it worked out. We had one house fall through, but thankfully the 2nd house we put an offer on was perfect and we all remember it fondly :)

 

We relocated again several years later. We knew the area we were moving to, which helped. The economy had started tanking pretty badly, and real estate prices with it. We assumed it would take a few months to sell our house. I had a newborn in addition to my other children and we didn't want to risk carrying two mortgages long-term, so we decided to wait and put it on the market after we were out. As a result, we decided to rent for a few months to a year while househunting. Fortunately, our house sold after just 1-2 weeks on the market, but we were still locked into a lease in the new state. We ended up househunting part way through our lease a bit sooner than we had planned, as we were dealing with a terrible landlord. He was bad enough that we were able to end our lease legally a few months early.

 

If you don't know the area at all, I might try for two trips if you can swing it. I think it takes one visit to get even a little bit acquainted with the area, and it can be difficult to know what neighborhoods you like, etc. in just a few days. If you are going to rent, that's less of a concern since you wouldn't necessarily be locked in long term, but even then, you don't want to spend a year or two renting in an area you strongly dislike.

 

Best of luck. We've done major long distance moves twice with young kids.

[Momof3littles]

We had one long distance move where we made a trip in advance to get acquainted with the overall area. Then a few months later came back and had one week to find a house. We were relocating for DH to attend graduate school. It was stressful, but it worked out. We had one house fall through, but thankfully the 2nd house we put an offer on was perfect and we all remember it fondly :)

 

We relocated again several years later. We knew the area we were moving to, which helped. The economy had started tanking pretty badly, and real estate prices with it. We assumed it would take a few months to sell our house. I had a newborn in addition to my other children and we didn't want to risk carrying two mortgages long-term, so we decided to wait and put it on the market after we were out. As a result, we decided to rent for a few months to a year while househunting. Fortunately, our house sold after just 1-2 weeks on the market, but we were still locked into a lease in the new state. We ended up househunting part way through our lease a bit sooner than we had planned, as we were dealing with a terrible landlord. He was bad enough that we were able to end our lease legally a few months early.

 

If you don't know the area at all, I might try for two trips if you can swing it. I think it takes one visit to get even a little bit acquainted with the area, and it can be difficult to know what neighborhoods you like, etc. in just a few days. If you are going to rent, that's less of a concern since you wouldn't necessarily be locked in long term, but even then, you don't want to spend a year or two renting in an area you strongly dislike.

 

Best of luck. We've done major long distance moves twice with young kids.

 

eta: In order to find a rental, we hooked up with a real estate agent, who we also used when we ended up househunting (to buy). He was very helpful. I had just had a baby, so DH took my son and they checked the rentals in person. Realtor had a lot of places lined up that met our criteria. He even offered to put a few tours up on youtube for us to view prior to the rental house hunting trip so we could be more efficient with our time. DH only had a few days as he was about to defend his dissertation (we apparently like to pack a lot of stress into a short period of time ;) ) Your DH might be able to use tools like that if you can't make trips with him, or you might be able to find a realtor with experience in getting people into rentals.

[Ellie]

The Internet is your friend. :-)

 

When Mr. Ellie and I moved from San Jose to Round Rock, he knew where he'd be working, and he searched the MLS listings to find homes within a reasonable commute, at a reasonable price. Then we came out for a long weekend and drove around with a realtor (Mr. Ellie knew people here because he was transferring with the same company, and one of those people recommended a realtor). I think we must have looked at 30 homes in two days. We bought the first house we looked at, lol.