Buying A House: C or D?

my house in Ill-annoy is still available!

we have stopped paying the mortgage and are playing chicken with the bank: do they take a short sale or do they want to go through foreclosure? we don't care, either way we don't make or lose any more money. if they foreclose then our american credit rating takes a hit but we have no reason to move back to the USA now that I have a permanent position in Paris, with more job security than I had even in the tenured faculty positions I had in the USA.

good luck! kind of cool/crazy that you can just let your american credit tank w/o consequences

Have I come on this thread to say "fuck house hunting?" Fuck house hunting.

Ha, that's not just the town's biggest road, but a concurrency of two federal highways screaming past your door.

Cool house, tho'.

people love living on it though! some of the town's most beautiful homes are on it. but yea ultimately we are relieved

also it's not evident in the photos but the garage is in shitty condition, leaning heavily to the east and w/ broken-up asphalt on the ground, deep grooves from cars parking in it. weirdly they re-did the entire roof (not just the shingles, but the beams and everything) but the bottom half is about to collapse. a tear-down and rebuild would've been required for sure

I take Clifton several times a week. Traffic moves slow (35mph) and it empties out at night. There's a sweet bus route on it too.

Oh good, Redfin totally underpriced this renovated place with a finished basement in the neighborhood we want.

I hate the very idea of getting into a bidding war. Ugh.

Seems dumb that single-round, sealed-bid, second-price auctions don't get used for buying houses, they're the best kind of auction.

this house is a little smaller than we want but it is such a cool house http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1452-Larchmont-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33497406_zpid/

I don't believe in getting into bidding wars. The way I see it, it's too hard to avoid paying an irrationally inflated price once the competition gets your blood going. And also there's never a good reason that you have to have *this* house *right now.*. And if you do bid, you have to know your max in advance and be prepared not to go over.

we did have an escalation clause when we made an offer on that other house a couple weeks ago, but yea we had determined a maximum in advance and our initial offer was only a little below the maximum anyways

we are no closer to buying, each house has plusses and minuses, nothing excites, it sort of sucks that you need shelter in order to live

live in the forest imo

you need shelter but you don't have to have a mortgage

we would be happy to rent forever but the place we're living now may get sold and there aren't a lot of standalone houses for rent around here. So it's move the family into an apartment or buy something. (Also, my wife is more positive about buying a house than I am, and it's our average level of enthusiasm that ultimately matters...)

in Paris rents are (shockingly) absurdly high but also supply is very low, particularly if you want more than a tiny studio, so the competition is very hard, even for 5 story walkups in not great parts of the city. but buying a place is much less demanding. it's not cheap: we're looking at 500k to 800k euros or so, but it's doable, just need to save for 5 years or so to get 20% (can't really do mortgages around here for less than that, unlike in the USA where we put 0% down both times).

Sometimes I sort of regret buying in a co-op where we had to do 20% and a higher rate co-op mortgage when we could have waited a few more years and done a house with a low down payment and lower interest rate. I guess at least we locked in our monthly housing cost and got the chance to build some equity/get some appreciation.

yeah we got a very low interest rate on the 2nd house with putting (almost?) nothing down. that's the house that we're now trying to short sale or foreclose on. so, no equity.

our next apartment will hopefully be social housing, since by law 5% of housing has to be reserved for state employees like me. but that's also super competitive. still it's heavily subsidized and we're in the running for one at the moment.

when I was on the faculty at st@nferd my housing was also heavily subsidized, we lived on s@nd h1ll road for right around 2k a month, in a 3 bedroom.

this kind of shit is like the only place in my life that I have to be a realass grown-up & I don't like it.

saw this house this weekend, interior was very stunning but the trim and other exterior wood (whatever wasn't covered up by the fuckin grotesque vinyl siding) was rotting in places, roof is in very rough shape, we strongly considered making an offer but idk it seems like it would be a lot of money we'd have to pour into it

open house was a complete zoo and we found out today 8 offers came in yesterday

oh here is the link http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1616-Belle-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33499336_zpid/

$215k

another beautiful place but it is also on the same 6-lane road as the house i mentioned a few weeks ago :( http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13915-Clifton-Blvd-Lakewood-OH-44107/33494593_zpid/

That's a wonderful house. Love the bathroom and the garattage out back.

Kinda love the street it's on too:

"So how do we get to your new house, marcos?"

"Take Highway 20."

"Ok, Highway 20... and then?

"That's it. Just get on Highway 20 in Boston and go west. We're the 430,657th house on the right."

I live 600 feet away from Interstate 40 and love it. The traffic sounds like the ocean at times.

lol

Our chain is finally complete, and we have paid for searches and surveys.

A friend of mine grew up right off of I90 in Syracuse and freaked out the first time she driving in Seattle and realized it was 2700 miles and only three turns to get to her house.

ME: "See, you could take that road almost all the way to the Atlantic Ocean without stopping! And if you go back the other way, you'd end up in California!"

DAUGHTER: "What about this road we're on now?"

ME: "Well it terminates in Fort Worth, Texas. Listen, I was talking about I-40 back there. Eight states!"

whoa yall check this place out http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/9402-Madison-Ave-Cleveland-OH-44102/33327570_zpid/

I've seen that listing before, it's really something.

what an interesting house

*files it in the "no way in hell am I living there" file*

Oh my god but yes I could never bring myself to undo any of the historic detail and yet I have no interest in living in it like that.

brownie cleveland is amazing isnt it

That's an amazing house, but I'd want to know exactly what the "historic landmark" designation requires. Also kind of with laurel here, I couldn't live with all that wallpaper and heaviness, it gives me the creeps. Cool as hell from the outside though.

agree i would not want to live there

i would dig having a kitchen like that one, with all that wood

brownie cleveland is amazing isnt it

ha! I've been looking at houses in clevo for many years and it's amazing I can afford to live in some real gems despite my low salary.

also it's kind of an ugly surrounding area

http://i.imgur.com/ObQPF9F.jpg

ha! I've been looking at houses in clevo for many years and it's amazing I can afford to live in some real gems despite my low salary.

― brownie, Wednesday, August 24, 2016 4:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea there aren't many cities where i can buy beautiful 4 bdrm historic homes on my salary

we have a similar-ish area if you want to drop in on google streetview in the middle of this neighborhood:
http://www.google.com/maps/place/Sherman+Hill,+Des+Moines,+IA

even lakewood being a little more expensive and competitive than most places within the city of cleveland i could still afford some incredible places

mh that is GORGEOUS there wow

what's it like, is it pricey?

it's more so than it used to be, since people started cleaning up the neighborhood and renovating homes in the last couple decades

there was a period of time (90s maybe?) where a handful of the people really into renovation were gay dudes and part of the neighborhood was both an area of urban revitalization and gay mecca! I might be misremembering the timeline or exaggerating some of the neighborhood stereotypes

also there are a few apartment buildings like this which are amazing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexington

a friend lived in a different one (on 15th maybe?) that needed some work but had a couple small bedrooms, huge living room space, and a three season porch

xps re that Cleveland one
"Historians, millenniums, families, and everyone in between will be in awe of this beautiful home!"
haha
the pillow on the bed aaaahhhgggghh

what it is a nice pillow you don't want to put your head onto it?

http://photos1.zillowstatic.com/p_f/ISpxu7xthwc3c71000000000.jpg

jesus nooo

lol, i was literally just about to post that picture

these rooms make me nervous just looking at them
http://photos3.zillowstatic.com/p_f/IS9lqjwg9gw8c71000000000.jpg
http://photos2.zillowstatic.com/p_f/ISt8mvv310gec71000000000.jpg

even though i like our house fine now i want this place. right at the end of main street. always loved the idea of having store + house. mortgage would probably equal our current mortgage + current store rent. 11 parking spaces in back! and a huge back yard. our house would sell for about half what this one is going for though.

http://cohnandcompany.com/properties/commercialindustrial/greenfield-massachusetts-72048316