Want to buy house and do some remodeling right away. How?

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robinpeterson

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My wife and I are looking into buying a house but the kitchen is super tiny and we'd like to remodel right away. If someone is shopping for a house and there's a room that they know they can make bigger, but don't have the money right away, is there something that they can do to get the sellers to support or pay for the remodeling? I know of home equity loans. Can home equity loans be taken out right away?

We basically need to knock a wall out and install more cabinets and a new stove. Just wondering if that's something that can be put into the buying terms for the sellers to do or pay for or if we'd just have to come up with the money ourselves.
 
Get the price down to cover the cost of what you want to do. - Remember, anything you you remodel, it will cost 50% to 100% of your estimates because of the unforeseen situations that come with a house with walls enclosing many things.

Dick
 
If the wall is load barreing it can add greatly to the cost and a replacement beam can change the plan for the room. Home equity loans apply to how much of the house is paid off, so getting that right away may be tricky.
 
8 or 10 years ago, money was "looser" and there were a lot of creative was to do what you're talking about. Nowadays, the best you can do is to #1) Find a house as close to what you want in your price range, and #2) Purchase it for as low a price as you can. A lot of sellers these days have more money in the house already than what they can sell it for, so they aren't going to be very willing to do any more than sell "as-is". Case in point, our last house we purchased for $90+k. We just got an offer for $43K (the only offer we've gotten in 2+ years). You KNOW we're not going to do anything at all to it. Totally as-is sale. That said, you can always ASK. Better off to buy something you can live with just like it is for awhile, and then in a year or two you can do some remodeling when you have some money put aside for it.
 
OP,
FWIW, you can make an offer based upon what you think will be required mods. The seller can agree, say no, or counter offer. It's up to you. There are no rules and you can't force them to "make you happy".
 
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