My wife and I are looking to buy a house in Minneapolis in the next year and the whole process seems kinda daunting to me. I thought I'd come here to see if anyone had any recommendations on good realtors or mortgage lenders that work well with guiding first time home buyers looking to buy in the city.
Welcome to the homebuyers club! There are some really great houses in Minneapolis but it takes some effort to find the real gems. Patience will pay off big time. If you tell me where you're looking I can maybe look up some contacts and see if they know people.
Unfortunately, the realtor I used is not someone I would use again, nor the original lender. The realtor literally tried to illegally steer me though I don't think it was intentional. But that's the sinister nature of structural racism. It's never intentional, yet it happens and bad things result.
The lender was definitely one of those who didn't care at all whether I could actually afford the mortgage. Looking back, I probably bought too much house but was fortunate that I could manage to cover the payments until I could refinance. I was naive and I feel the lender took advantage of that. I was a lot luckier than some. After refinancing a couple of times I'm very happy with the loan from our credit union. I would definitely go the credit union route if you can.
The biggest underappreciated part of the process is the inspection. Get lots of recommendations for those. Again, I didn't have a lot of resources to lean on so I just took the first inspector I found. Big mistake. The guy missed several large problems that I had to pay to fix a year later. I'm talking life & death type problems that needed immediate fixing and I didn't really have the financial reserves to do it. But I had to do it anyway.
Since you're looking to buy in Minneapolis, find people familiar with old houses. Old houses operate a lot differently than newer stuff. I can't believe how many different opinions I've received regarding what to do to seal up our attic. It's amazing how ignorant supposed professionals are. Ask people how much experience they have in the areas you're looking. Don't settle.
There are some things I wish I had known before looking at old houses. I wanted something close to original - woodwork, rope & pulley windows, etc. I ended up with something I'm very happy with but I might have looked a little closer had I known some of this stuff.
- Ask if there is any insulation in the walls. It turns out our house has some but we've only had one part tested. Who knows if the whole house is insulated or not?
- If you want original windows, they're hard to find. They leak a lot. Ask if the "rough openings" around the windows and doors have been insulated. But be prepared to spend more for heating. I'm crazy about rope & pulley so I'm willing to spend a bit more.
- I would kill for the original stained glass windows in our house. If you value cohesive, beautiful architecture, look for a house that still has them. But be warned that they're pretty rare.
- Not every house has had the trim ripped out. I looked at a lot of houses that were horribly mutilated, so when I found our house had the original trim downstairs, I was overjoyed. But we'll have to replaced the ugly ranch-style trim upstairs at some point. I'm willing to do it but again you can avoid that cost by being a little more picky. A common thing to look for is door and window headers that are simple flat pieces of wood with no beveling or framing whatsoever. These have had their decorative crowns removed, probably because the crowns collect dust so people got tired of cleaning them. But the crowns are an integral part of the architecture.
- The library has some great books covering domestic interior architecture for the period many Minneapolis homes were built. I tried to find the book I read a couple of years ago but I searched for a while without luck. Search under Architecture: Domestic - United States for some references. There are books there with illustrations showing how the interior trim of period houses should look.
- Everything original in our house is in fantastic shape. Everything that's been redone is falling apart. Ask about renovations and be very suspect about their quality. Ask who did the renovation. If the owners don't know you can look up the permit records at the city and find out. If there are no permits it's a huge red flag. Check previous Minneapolis/St. Paul Home Tour guides to find reputable remodelers. If they've worked on a Home Tour house it's likely they did a good job.
- We want to reopen our enclosed porches. Enclosed porches sound very practical but it turns out they're not that useful. I do relax there sometimes but I would do it a lot more if they were connected to the outside (i.e. open). They're really just impractically oddly shaped small three-season rooms that just end up feeling stuffy and claustrophobic.
- And old house should have a small vestibule with a door to the outside and a second door to the inside. This is because the porches were open and the vestibule served an insulating function. If the house doesn't have a vestibule, it's been altered. That's not necessarily bad but it 's something to be aware of.
- Check the hardwood floors for areas that have been patched to get an idea of possible alterations. The floors can tell you a lot of things like where walls used to be or where radiators were originally. Radiators were often moved to thermally inappropriate places in a miguided attempt to create more usable space in a room. Trust the original designers. They knew what they were doing.