Buying A House: C or D?

sufjan what did you say in your letter? it occurred to us to maybe write one to "distinguish ourselves" in a multiple offer situation (which seems extremely likely for any house we want in the current market) but i don't really feel like writing one

― marcos, Monday, August 29, 2016 10:51 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I'm not sure that a letter does much. It could be a trick where the realtor suggests that you write a letter, you get the place, and then the realtor can say "The seller loved the letter!" The letter seemed important for us because we were the first offer, but we also had a ridiculous-looking pre-approval from Quicken in which they even misspelled our name. So the letter was an opportunity to explain that we weren't actually going to use Quicken and that we were serious about buying the place. I also got a sense of who the seller was from her realtor, and I did try to appeal to that person a little bit. But as I said, I'm not sure that the letter really made any difference.

those multi-colored tile back splashes are dated NOW. It's like exposed ductwork in 2005

lol, you're right on there.

what will be the next dated house feature?

- subway tiles
- dark wood flooring
- white-on-white handleless kitchens

Dark wood is already dated!

yes that was a reach. potfiller taps also dated.

belfast sinks?

stainless steel appliances

I think the dated stuff isn't there until it is, once it appears, it immediately makes itself into a signal of a particular time in home remodeling. Black refrigerators.

Stuff like stainless steel appliances have been around for over a decade and doesn't date the remodel really.

I can't wait for front-loading washers to die, though.

in a tiny laundry room like mine, front loading washers are the only option. I couldn't be happier with it.

I'd still have Belfast sinks and Metro tiles. Still into slate floors in kitchens and bathrooms.

place we are trying to buy has many of these dated items. we are purchasing a renovation museum, really.

we will add to the kitchen exhibit for posterity.

front-loading washers are less of a trend and more of an energy and water efficiency thing, right?

yeah, you use a fraction of the water. the downside is that running a load is painfully slow compared to a toploader

dark wood is not necessarily dated! i've been in tons of older homes that have had dark stains and it looks classic. hardwood in general doesn't really get dated imo

stainless steel has been around for ever, too. i just went to an open house and it had brand new stainless steel appliances everywhere except the oven, which was from the 60s or 70s probably, but it matched up pretty well with the other appliances:
http://photos3.zillowstatic.com/p_f/ISecasml1kwxfq0000000000.jpg
http://photos2.zillowstatic.com/p_f/ISyv2fljqzmu5v0000000000.jpg
http://photos3.zillowstatic.com/p_f/ISqllgo1rhtlou0000000000.jpg

haha maybe i am corny but like belfast sinks

subway tiles can look okay unless you choose tacky colors in which case they are already dated

certain kinds of granite countertops look dated already

shiny handles on dark wood cabinets

ark wood is not necessarily dated! i've been in tons of older homes that have had dark stains and it looks classic. hardwood in general doesn't really get dated imo

― marcos, Tuesday, August 30, 2016 11:37 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when i say this i mean hardwood flooring

You're welcome to guess what I think is the most dated part of those photos.

the chalkboard surely?

Yes, that would be correct.

I've posted these around here already. I'm sure there's more.

http://i.imgur.com/yp7IkCr.jpg

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

http://i.imgur.com/NmT5hLR.jpg

lol

also from a cook's perspective hanging spices right above the stove is a terrible idea, the heat will ruin those spices

kitchen design choices that show nobody actually cooks

in my house, that's called "putting the mail on top of the burners."

I would never use my stovetop for storage *quickly shuffles all the junk off the stove*

yea the heat will make your oils rancid too

If indeed stood still in those moments, then are we actually in an alternate universe where it kept going?

If, let's say, time stood still when Rebecca and Jonathan got married, then it must have restarted at some point so that Landon could be born, right? Etc.

A true asshole could just go in there and spin the clock a whole bunch of times and kill poor Logan.

OR TURN IT BACKWARDS so they'd never been born? Or just invalidate the marriage to make the boys illegitimate.

The mind reels.

mmkay

lol at the handles literally in the middle of the cupboard doors. why do people do this??

haha i didnt even notice that

to show you have such good upper body strength you don't need the extra leverage of having the handle at the edge

we didn't make the offer on that expensive house btw and i'm feeling good about it, thx ilx

not making offers, not having them accepted, and not getting a mortgage is a feeling that I miss now.

house buying is so weird. We bought 5 years ago in the Bay Area when the market was in the toilet, and it was stressful beyond belief then, to say nothing of the way it is now. The idea that you walk into an open house in a neighborhood that you think "well I guess I could see us living here" tour the house for 20 minutes and walk out and make an offer because there are dozens of people just like you... it's madness. By far and away the biggest purchase ever and you just kind of do it. It's not rational.

The idea that you walk into an open house in a neighborhood that you think "well I guess I could see us living here" tour the house for 20 minutes and walk out and make an offer because there are dozens of people just like you... it's madness. By far and away the biggest purchase ever and you just kind of do it. It's not rational.

yea totally, this drives me nuts, the fact that we just have to decide, within a couple hours, whether to offer is just wild

that said though the longer we've been looking the more confident i am getting about what it is i want. i feel like i learn a ton with every house we go to see

the more confident i am getting about what it is i want.

haha i should change that to the more confident i am about knowing what it is i want. i'm not super confident about getting it!

I bought a house five years ago and the market was still doing OK locally, but in the past year it's gone crazy. I think half of my mail is postcards from realtors saying LET ME HELP YOU SELL YOUR HOUSE!

xxxxp otm. I've been going crazy trying to get that last .1% on the rate and that last $50 of fees waived now. It's a drop in the bucket, but I'm just fighting for anything to make feel better about how insane this all is.

xp mh that's how it is in the neighborhood im looking in, we are probably buying a few years too late. home values are really starting to go up, inventory is super low

been looking a lot at redfin/zillow's "recently sold" thing and it's pretty crazy how much cheaper similar houses were even 1 year, let alone 2-3

yeah, definitely not feeling good about buying at this time. just keep telling yourself "rates are low", even though the people that paid 90% of what you're paying just refinanced to those better rates, have lower property taxes, etc.

However, rent is also getting insane. So buying is maybe not a terrible idea if you aren't locked into a low rent.

yea even though i would've been better off buying 1-5 years ago it is still better to buy now than i think it will be 1-5 years in the future

in retrospect we took an enormous gamble with this house. If my wife and I had not gotten promotions, I suspect we would have had to sell already. The first year we had some savings combined with incremental property tax adjustments. By the time that the full weight of completely adjusted property taxes entered the picture, had we still been at our previous income levels we'd be back to scrambling for an apartment. It was just one of those things that demonstrated our complete lack of understanding of what we were getting ourselves into.

It almost feels like fees, taxes, rates, etc cancel out a lot of the time. I guess refinancing to get out of PMI has the downside of higher property tax payments. Or they can just change on their own. PMI seems to be fairly cheap now, but there's no longer a tax break on it. Having a ton of money already seems to be the only surefire way to save money.

there's still a tax break (or was for 2015 anyway) but I didn't qualify for it any longer, so now the dilemma is to figure out if a refi at a slightly cheaper rate and no PMI will outweigh the cost of the loan and having a new 30 year mortgage 5 years into my current one.

i wish I would have done a refi 3 years ago but wasn't in a position to do so at the time.

one of my least favorite things i see in a lot of renovated places is sinks that look like a bowl on a table
http://photos2.zillowstatic.com/p_f/ISqlxx9vxh4iqw1000000000.jpg