Hey hey everyone! My husband and I are finally trying to get out of New York City. After many months of deciding where we’d move to we finally settled on Rochester, NY.
Why did we pick Rochester, NY? Well, we used to live in Watertown and we liked the small town of it but wished there were more people. So we looked into cities like that and Rochester topped the list.
Little did we know that Rochester is going through a renaissance of sorts right now. The Rochester market is a highly competitive market which brings us to the first item I wish my real estate agent told me.
1st thing: Rochester is a HOT HOT market. Which means a few things:
1: That listings come and go VERY quickly.
2: That homes are selling way above asking (which can be a challenge when using a VA home loan with little to no down payment) which means that the price you see isn’t what you pay at all. We just saw a house that we liked that was priced at $129,900 but are going to put in an offer of up to $175,000 if we really want to get it (which we do).
2nd thing: The sellers want LOCAL mortgage companies.
This means that even though we are preapproved with Rocket Mortgage & USAA FSB they want some local bank so they feel “comfortable”… AND we didn’t find this out until we’d ALREADY put in an offer. Geez lou-fucking-uise! We had to do the ENTIRE prequal thing all over again! WTF!
They say “help a Veteran out” in the town center but I don’t they mean it to be honest.
3rd thing: Cash is King
Part 1 of this is people are buying these homes cash and the sellers are gobbling it up. I don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting around to buy a home. I want this place to live in right now.
Part 2 is that even though we don’t have to put anything down with a VA home loan, these sellers want “earnest money” deposits. In our case we can afford $1000 for now but I wish I’d known this before getting on the train to come up here! Speaking of money… that brings us to the 4th thing I wish I’d known
4th thing: We need to pay closing costs out of our pockets
Although we don’t have to put anything down for the mortgage right now we still need to pay closing costs out of our pocket!
And it can be anywhere up to 6% of the mortgage price. Which in our case may be up to $10,500! That’s not a little bit of money. Buying a home isn’t something I am well versed in or very experienced in. My mother has never owned a home nor has my grandmother. We are NYCites. So going through this process is VERY frustrating.
Underlying current in all of this is my belief that moving to the City is a TRAP. You need to prepare more than a year out if you want to move. If you don’t make enough you might be stuck for good.
Buying a home can be the first step to building lasting wealth… but it’s only if you can get through the process.
