Recent content by popak_IHB

I forgot to mention one of the primary reasons we went with Redfin. You can tour as many houses as you want with Redfin. Ultimately, if you don't think their services are a match for you, you're free to place an offer on a house with your own real estate agent (even if you originally saw the...

"Soylent Green is People" pretty much describes it well. We used Redfin and were very pleased with the service we received. - The field agents are not specialists. They are basically there to open doors and can answer some basic questions about the house and neighborhood. - The actual...

Once we discussed the seller's counteroffer with our agent, he explicitly recommended that we remove this condition in our counter. The best he can do is recommend - he can't decide for us :) We just wanted to ask the general forum here for our own education and to see if this particular...

Thank you, guys. We'll talk to our realtor about this today.

We are in negotiations on a house and the counter we received from the seller has a stipulation to have the escrow company disburse the earnest money to him as soon as all contingencies (loan, appraisal, inspection) are removed. According to the listing agent, the seller is short on liquid...

furious sugar, that sounds pretty draconian. I guess, personally, we do not have a problem with stringent HOA rules per se. In fact, I kinda like them because, for the most part, it keeps the community from deteriorating, I guess. As long as they are applied equally to all house owners and...

I'm a PenFed member through NMFA. It was $20 to join NMFA and you do not need to renew your membership with NMFA to stay a credit union member with PenFed. PenFed is a great credit union with some great CD, auto, and mortgage rates. More recently though, they seemed to have added some...

Thanks, Bling Bling. I guess we'll have to work out the noise levels around schools as we're looking. It's definitely a negative in our book, I think. MojoJD, we have looked at a few places in Northwood. It's just a little farther north that we want to be, but we're not avoiding the area...

Thank you all for the quick replies. We are certainly not in a rush to buy. One of the reasons we are considering buying now is because we are pre-approved based on my self-employed income and wife's W-2 income. My wife will likely be leaving her W-2 job in July (due to a newborn around...

First time home buyer here who has learned a lot from all the knowledge on the forum. We're hoping we get some advice from local experts here. We (family of 3) are looking to move to Irvine, primarily, for the great schools in Irvine. We have checked out many houses with our realtor from...