The hazards of a long-distance home purchase
My wife and I just moved from one neighborhood to another in the same city. Eight miles total from one door to the other. Nearly killed me. But imagine moving from a Boston suburb to a small town in Texas. Or from California to Florida. Now you鈥檝e got a whole new set of challenges. Finding and buying a home in a city you know is one thing, but making a move thousands of miles away?
What could possibly go wrong?
鈥業 feared we would be sleeping in the bus station鈥�
A couple of years ago, Marilyn Santiesteban and her husband, Kent Portney, sold their suburban Boston home of 30 years and bought a home in College Station, Texas, for new jobs. Their Massachusetts home was in a desirable neighborhood and was under contract in less than three weeks. In the meantime, they flew to Texas, found a house and signed.
An inspection revealed that the Texas house needed a new roof.
鈥淣o big deal; that鈥榮 an easy negotiation,鈥� Santiesteban says. 鈥淓xcept with this seller. She didn鈥檛 want to pay for any of it and wanted the insurance company to cover the cost as there was some hail damage.鈥�
Meanwhile, with hopes fading for their new home in Texas, Santiesteban and Portney faced a deadline on the sale of their home in Boston.
鈥淪he kept dragging her heels, and we couldn鈥檛 close the deal. I feared we would be sleeping in the bus station,鈥� Santiesteban says.
Buying a home sight unseen
Back in Boston preparing for the move, Santiesteban and Portney faced a long-distance dilemma: move to Texas without a place to live or trust their Texas real estate agent and buy a home before even seeing it.
鈥淲e ended up buying another house sight unseen. We love it, by the way,鈥� she says. But Santiesteban is quick to add, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to move again for at least five years.鈥�
Making a long-distance move requires a good bit of timing, and perhaps luck. There are few shortcuts when buying a home, and skipping a proper inspection is probably not one you want to take. If they had rushed the process, Santiesteban and Portney would have been stuck owning a house with a run-down roof 鈥� an expensive repair.
The homebuying process has changed
Alessandro Miglio and his wife, Eileen, bought a house in Richmond, California, in March 2008. That鈥檚 right, just as the real estate market crashed. Their home鈥檚 value was immediately underwater and stayed that way for seven years.
鈥淒uring that time, we had both our children, and we never imagined we would be leaving,鈥� Miglio says. 鈥淚鈥檓 originally from Miami, though, and the family pull proved too strong. It got harder to leave each time we visited, and the cost of living [in California] was becoming unsustainable.鈥�
The couple waited until the East Bay real estate market recovered to make the cross-country move. But they were surprised to find that since their last home purchase, and as a result of the housing crisis, the mortgage process had changed considerably.
鈥淎pparently, we bought our [Florida] home just in time for聽to kick in, so scrutiny on our application was higher and took longer than we had experienced in the past,鈥� Miglio says.
鈥淎t one point, just days before we were supposed to close, the underwriter discovered that the proceeds from our California sale technically went to a trust we had set up in our own names in California,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he underwriter required a copy of the trust, and that was in the movers鈥� storage back in Concord, California. We had to beg our lawyer to make a full copy of it and pay her $300 just to appease the underwriter.鈥�
How to make a long-distance home purchase work
Additional paperwork delays because of more stringent mortgage regulations made the process even more stressful for the Miglios. His advice for others planning a cross-country move?
鈥淗补惫别, even if it means eschewing your brother-in-law who just got his real estate license,鈥� he says, and stay in constant contact with all parties involved in the transaction.
鈥淚 call it 鈥楴ew York mode,鈥欌�� he says. 鈥淲e lived in Manhattan for a few years, before California, and the pace and expectations there are understandably higher. I developed a 鈥榞rinder鈥� mentality there that stayed with me when I left. I tend to be annoyingly diligent in ensuring everyone is doing their jobs in a timely fashion. It鈥檚 like herding cats with so many moving parts, though.鈥�
To reduce the stress of a cross-country move, Miglio recommends聽going with a聽that has good reviews as well as soliciting advice from friends and family about their positive lending experiences.
鈥淥h, and good beer,鈥� he adds.
Hal Bundrick is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email:聽hal@nerdwallet.com. Twitter:.
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