Buying A House: C or D?

Rydon! Every time I go anywhere near Rydon I think of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IHpkFOwSEk

Rochester is much nicer than I remember. Definitely geared towards tourism so possibly more outward-looking than Chatham / Gillingham. I only heard one argument about whether the Golly is "just racist because people have made it racist" in the first hour. Saw a pretty nice three-bed terrace for £180k, which seems very cheap less than an hour from London.

UCA has one of its campuses there, so there are a certain amount of ~art students~.

I am selling a house: dud dud dud dud dud

at least right now we have renters so we don't have to deal with preparing it for visits

since we are leaving the country we also get to sell all our stuff! that part isn't so dud since most of what we've acquired isn't worth having

I know this is a stubborn case of depression speaking. But right now I fear my condo will suddenly turn into a massive money pit/liability magnet. Therefore, dud.

I appear to have viewed a house, had an offer accepted and arranged a mortgage in four days. It has all been such a blur i can barely remember what the place looks like. I think it was nice though. It's a small Victorian two-bed terraced in a very nice town within commuting distance of London.

Hooray!

A house down the street from us in North Oakland sold for $250K over the asking price. That's been going on in SF for a while but to see it here is just like WTF. Then as it turns out the buyers already owned a house around the corner- they just 'loved this one so much'... and I'm sitting here wondering jesus christ how much money do you people have, and if you have it why do you choose to live in this JUST OK neighborhood?

so gross

so so so so gross

a QUARTER MILLION over asking price, fuck

All I can say is that we got very, very lucky 4 years ago, although it hasn't always felt that way. But seeing the housing horizon just implode from an affordability perspective has shifted my thinking tremendously. Our 2011 money would barely afford deep east oakland or maybe richmond now. And as for all my colleagues who had great rent deals in the city...they're moving to San Leandro.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2921-Livingston-Ave_Fort-Worth_TX_76110_M76143-54808?row=1

this house is still on the market over three months, worse houses have sold in the same price range, makes me wonder what horrors can't be seen from real estate photos.

Debating what to do - I'm aggressively selling off excess crap and saving a lot (not smoking and avoiding bars because of that is excellent for my checking account), so in a month or two I'll either be in a position to make a real down payment on a house (nearly 20% of something in the $125-140k range) or pay off all my debts (credit card, student loans). The latter is probably smarter but I'd have to start all over again saving?

Say you made an offer and got the place- would you be able to afford monthly student loan minimums and and decent size CC payments? I'd say the credit card debt is more vital to pay off than student loans, but that's just my experience. As long as you don't have to put the loans into perpetual deferment & just pay CC minimum payments, I'd say go for the place.

Yeah, the credit cards/etc. would continue getting paid down at the rate I have been (a mortgage under $125k would mean I'm paying less overall than rent), it's more a "gee, I could owe no one on Earth anything!" feeling if I go that route.

I was in the place before I bought a house, for about a whole year even. Having a house is better!

the place=that place

so jeal of people for whom buying a house is an option.

I live in southern california I will never own a house

tbh 90% of the homeowners I know (including myself) live in small boring towns for job reasons where having your own private affordable domain comes at the expense of art / theater / exciting new restaurants / diversity / museums / touring bands / and all other big city amenities.

congrats ShariVari. It's mental that buying a house is the biggest purchase of your like yet you probably spend longer looking at a new pair of jeans before buying.

Fort Worth has a million people so it isn't quite on the small boring town side (though it's not super exciting tbh) but it is 120F four months out of the year.

this house is still on the market over three months, worse houses have sold in the same price range, makes me wonder what horrors can't be seen from real estate photos.

Here's what that house looked like at this time last year. It was foreclosed on and rehabbed. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you would definitely want a very very good inspector to look it over thoroughly to make sure the rehabbers did a quality job as it obviously was not well maintained prior to the foreclosure. Looks fine cosmetically but a lot of serious issues could be hidden.

Layout seems a bit odd too, with that wall right up against the front door and the bedroom off the kitchen. Thinking it might've originally been a two bedroom.

http://scoot.net/gallery/bbs/livingston.jpg

I wouldn't even think of buying a home if I had any credit card debt.

xp to sparkle motion: i live on the border of oakland/emeryville, near the old emeryville high school, and a house one street over just sold for something like 750k. it was a cute house but still. every year that goes by, the idea of ever owning a house just gets more and more unlikely.

I drive through holby hills in beverly hills all the time on my way back from work and get to see 20m houses sold, bought, torn down, and replaced with something even more opulent. its rough.

ugh holmby

just1ne I lived in emeryville for like 6 weeks... 750k is crazy!

yah and rents are spiking too, as people are forced out of sf and into the east bay. we're sort of waiting for our landlords to put a huge increase on our rent :/

were you living in a duplex/house or one of those huge complexes? (another one of those has just gone up on the corner of stanford and powell)

we were being put up in a hotel, but a friend of mine was in one of the big complexes for 2 years. I don't recall her rent being too bad but that was around 2010 and comparing it to SF rent so

we looked at the one that backs right on to the free way - 2br, $2400, with something like a 10% increase each year.

grats sv

Thanks!

xref to student loans thread next month I start saving for a deposit be that for a place in Dublin (lol) or down home or just-to-have or for after the next crash (lol).

lol indeed

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/kitbrash/wdyll/smh_million_zpsfzseu6yy.jpg

congrats are in order for managing to buy in london, sv!

the question of whether to (begin saving money to) buy a house looms fairly large for me. i am saving a bit at the moment but i have to say if i ended up with even half the money for a deposit i find it hard to justify spunking it all on a house, as opposed to keeping it and the financial security and freedom it'd bring.

Thanks, though i can't claim to have bought in London. 35 minutes from Kings Cross and 40 from London Bridge on the train is pretty good going given that commuting from Zone 6 would probably take longer.

I've always been extremely reluctant to buy, as i think the market will probably crash at some point, but finding somewhere i'd be happy to live for a few years at least and that is totally affordable in comparison to London means it makes more sense now. Even at 6% i'd be paying less for a mortgage on a two-bed house than i would in rent on a one-bed flat in Romford or wherever. It could all go horribly wrong but the deposit isn't doing me much good in the bank.

yeah i guess it depends on your situation. because i am doing a kind of contract-based work along with separate doing performance and writing stuff, the money in the bank and the freedom to take a few months off if i needed to is quite attractive for me, maybe moreso than having the house.

what area are you in, if you don't mind my asking?

Sydney Morning Herald headline is bollocks btw. Sydney's median house price is not higher than London average house price. Higher than London median house price probably (I can only find 2014 figures for that and it was AU$722,709) but not average, that's AU$1.2m+.

I'll be moving to Rochester, if all goes well. It's much nicer than any of the surrounding areas (Gillingham, Chatham, Strood, etc).

https://www.redfin.com/IL/Chicago/1049-W-Wellington-Ave-60657/unit-3A/home/13364573

I'm in no position to buy, couldn't put enough down for this, but this is a pretty nice vintage just a few blocks from us. I would love to get into a newer construction, but a vintage that's been updated like this would be acceptable.

Higher than London median house price probably

99% probability they meant median, and that laying off 40% of workforce and literally offshoring subbing and layout 2 years back led to misuse of average

That one Jeff just linked looks a lot like a place I stayed at with friends years ago. They had an apartment that was just the entire lowest (garden?) level, though.

Here you go. Just down the street from the race track to boot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI3HpnvAYq4

4 BED, 3 BATH 3,000+ SQ. FT.

$162,000

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/552-Prospect-Ave_Hot-Springs-National-Park_AR_71901_M75648-95106?row=14

what is the difference of median and average (i presume by average we mean.. mean?) in london/sydney? interested to know. I imaging mean being slightly higher, due to existence of some ultra expensive properties, but not by much.

(i mean difference as in the numerical difference, not their difference in definition)

wtf at the house pplains posted - is it haunted or something?

Foreclosed, but that still doesn't really answer the question.

looks old, maybe the foundation is garbage