Buying A House: C or D?

Wulp, some of the price drivers are: Walking distance to the subway, three grocery stores, plentiful restaurants, a shopping mall, bikeshare and zipcar stations. While carelessness is possible here, very few people have the stones to try it (myself included).

But it's the square footage that is the story here. Suburban families rarely live in sub-1,000-square-feet houses these days. My house is only a little bigger, and we find it decidedly snug with four humans and four pets. Relative to our neighbors and peers, putting that many people in that amount of space is tantamount to doing something a bit eccentric, like veganism or Scientology. (Though obviously, city dwellers frequently make do with still-smaller spaces. Just speaking in relative terms here.)

Anyway, new houses in this 'hood are generally 3,000 sq ft. Most renovations of 1940ish houses involve additions pushing toward, again, 3,000 sq ft - which seems to be considered a reasonable starting point for a house that has kids in it.

So who will live in 980 sq ft? A gay couple with a dog. A few young-professional renters. Probably not a retired person. There's also the possibility that a builder or developer will buy it, obliterate it, and replace it with a McMansion that features the currently accepted minimum house size.

Um, I think I meant carlessness and not carelessness.

lol @ y'all, that would be 1.4 million easy round my way

round my way, you have to pay 2 million to live in this jpeg maze
http://www.printableparadise.com/images/easy-round-maze.jpg

haha sic where are you

I think in Palo Alto it'd be $2M+.

But in, say, Tulsa, it might be more like $200K.

So things are relative.

in cleveland it would be $80,000

it's almost as if location is one, if not say three, of the most important factors in real estate.

want to hang out in the center of the maze? that'll be another million!

did not know that about arlington

― marcos, Wednesday, May 20, 2015 9:37 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've been eying this little house a few blocks from me but i don't know i could do a 2-bdrm with two kids and if i'm honest it is still probably $100,000 out of my price range

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/264-Corey-St_Boston_MA_02132_M47368-96892?row=13&source=web

Are Boston's outlying communities cheaper? Because that house would probably also be over $300k here in Atlanta proper, but in my neighborhood just about 10 minutes south you could probably buy it for $100k or less.

we are barely looking right now, just browsing online and going to an open house or two to get a sense of what the greater boston market is like. so i might be way off. but it seems to me that some outlying communities can be even more expensive than boston proper. houses in newton, brookline, and cambridge are all pricier than houses in my neighborhood (west roxbury) which is in boston proper. those communities have better schools than the gargantuan lottery-based boston school system and i think that is part of it. (obviously desirable neighborhoods in the heart of boston, e.g. back bay or the south end or something are extremely expensive). you have to go really really far out, like an hour's drive, before you start seeing prices drop that much.

and that little house down the street is about as cheap as a single-family house gets in my neighborhood. $500k-$700k seems more typical.

$369k is more typical of a condo around here. if you want to live an hour away from the city then you can get a decent single family for that price, maybe not even though

marcos, are the sexes and ages of your kids conducive to room-sharing at present?

That place seems like it has a large enough lot that you could make do with the space for now, and potentially add on a master BR when the kids are older.

I do know of a few same-sex close-in-age kids who have shared a bedroom. My nephews shared when they were 7 and 9 until they were 12 and 14. Me, I have a 4-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl who get along reasonably well - but if they aren't good candidates for room-sharing now, they certainly won't be when they're (for example) 12 and 16.

The problem with going further out to the exurbs is that many parents then have to spend 2-4 hours on commuting. It can be a false economy, not only because of child care and transportation costs, but also the psychic wear and tear of never seeing your family in daylight hours.

yea they are both boys, would be a little while until room sharing since F is just 2 months old right now. also we talked about J on the autism thread and we are wondering if having his own space to retreat to when overstimulated might be a good thing for him to have, still early to tell though.

yea the commute is rough, definitely otm about the false economy, there is no way i want to spend 2-3 hours commuting back and forth everyday

also worrying about downsizing to a 2 bdrm -- we're renting a spacious 3 bdrm right now and we'd have to do a lot of purging.

haha sic where are you

Sydney. Owning a home is not likely to happen to me.

test

Anybody have any advice on buying a lawn mower? I've been using a reel mower, but it's on its last legs and just not getting the job done anymore. I'm afraid a gas mower is going to be too much maintenance and too heavy for me to lift up the stairs from my garage, though. Not sure what to buy next.

I buy the cheapest electric (corded) mower at a typical big box hardware store. They do a reasonable job, are maintenance free, and last about 15 years. They lighter than gas mowers, too.

Wish I could. Unfortunately, I don't have any outlets in my backyard. Using anything with a cord (even a weed whacker) is a major, major production.

Quality 410 sq.ft. shack in East Austin, only $450K! You know you want it!
http://www.austinrealestate.com/listing/6649852-1906-e-2nd-st-austin-tx-78702

Evan, how is your leaf situation in the fall/winter? When I bought this house last summer, I just went with a bagless mower because my yard's not huge at all. I wasn't even thinking about how enormous leafy trees surround the perimeter of my entire property, though, and the leaf accumulation became a significant problem (raking and bagging became a full weekend project almost every weekend for a while).

Anyway, I've got a little Murray gas mower I bought at Walmart for less than $150 that's really not very heavy and only needs an oil change about once per mowing season. I'm eyeing bagging mowers now, though, because I've discovered that raking that much is for fools.

How many stairs, and are they outdoors? You could invest in a couple long 2x4"s to use as a ramp up the stairs and get a mower that is self-propelled and it'll roll itself out of there

I was luckily gifted a lawnmower when I became a homeowner and the maintenance has been really minimal. Runs excellently, and I've changed the oil only once and replaced the blade once (could have been sharpened, but I let it go a long time and it was dented to fuck from rocks)

When we first bought a house in 2007 and were buying all that random shit like lawnmowers we had a pretty strict "buy the second cheapest one" principle and it's worked pretty well for the most part. Changed the oil and filter like once or twice, it's been fine, but I'm definitely not into lawns as a hobby.

Our new place came with a mower as the previous owners moved into a condo so now I've got that 8 year old cheapo and a fancier self-propelled bagging mower (cause the previous owner was definitely into the lawn as his main hobby) and I'm trying to figure out which one goes on Craigslist now. In some ways I really prefer the lighter, easy to move cheapo one.

I bought a battery powered mower that would be awesome if I had two or three more batteries, as it is I can do one yard, charge for half an hour, do the other. Which would be fine if I hadn't volunteered to mow my elderly neighbor's yard too.

I really need a weed wacker

This is what I have. The battery takes several hours to charge, but it lasts for quite a while if you're just edging and hitting a few weed patches at a time.

I've screwed up and not taken freebies from friends who were moving a couple times, although the timing was wrong.

I'll probably get a decent gas engine one tbh

god, one that has a reasonable head assembly, too. my parents used to live on an acreage and I was tasked with cleaning out the long-ass fence on the border of their yard when I was in high school and the weed trimmer line kept needing replacement until the point where it got caught and the head blew apart, spitting parts everywhere

of course they had the entire fence torn out and redone a few years later

oh shit if the hedge trimmer thing on this doesn't completely suck I'm in: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Toro-2-Cycle-25-4cc-Attachment-Capable-Straight-Shaft-Gas-String-Trimmer-with-Hedge-Trimmer-Attachment-51978CHT/205847961?N=5yc1vZbxbhZ1i9

My leaf situation is under control. Minimal leaves in the fall, and I don't mind raking too much. I used to have a battery-powered weed whacker/edger that I loved (so fun!) but then the batteries got progressively weaker. Now I have an electric one, but I try to use it less than once a month, because it's such a pain with the cord. Good power though.

My garage is the only source of power, and it's in a recessed alley at an awkward angle away from the house. So any cord is always falling out of the outlet because of the angle, and because of the tight stairs it has to follow. Big pain.

A cheapo gas mower is starting to sound like a good deal, so long as I can lift it up those stairs easily enough.

ramps!

haha, that sounds super fun! But it would require replacing some steep stairs with a ramp, which probably isn't a good look during our icy winters

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1004/360_ramps_0413.jpg

naw, I meant throwing some pieces of wood over the stairs to facilitate dragging it up and down

I've got a self-propelled gas mower with bag. Use it for grass and leaves. I can't believe I used to rake the entire yard.

I live in a city with one of those leaf vacuums, and I still use the mower over most of them.

Used to have a mower with the words NOT FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA over the engine. Made me feel guilty as hell.

I would feel like such a badass if I was pull-starting something that said NOT FOR USE IN CALIFORNIA on it

My wife's grandfather had a huge yard and was ojibwe so he had a 1970s Lawn Chief riding mower to celebrate his heritage. It had a goddamn cigarette lighter so he didn't have to stop mowing to chain smoke.

ILX's inner Hank Hill comes to the fore.

which thread reveals ILX's inner Bobby Hill?

riding mowers with cigarette lighters! I remember those

lollllll

Not my photo, but this is how I learned to drive a stick originally.

http://jacques_lacasse.tripod.com/CubCadet/Cub-Cadet-147_01b.jpg

Like literally I think our tractor was that exact model. I laughed my head off the first time I saw an electric corded mower.

I do not understand electric corded mowers

but I also have a grandfather who, my parents discovered, had multiple saws in his garage where the cord was cut off a couple feet from the saw. in other words, he probably accidentally cut through the cord while cutting something.

haha, yeah I struggle enough with the much lower vacuum cord stakes. corded mower sounds difficult.

My mower is gas, and my weed eater is battery powered. I bought a leaf blower that's corded, which is not something I'd recommend if you have no outdoor outlets (or probably even if you DO have outdoor outlets).

our mower is gas and we also have an industrial-strength weed whacker with a metal blade (for those times when we haven't mowed and the shit is three feet high)

a quarter of an acre of invasive weeds is no fun to mow