Buying A House: C or D?

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

should be noted that that is not the worst choice made in that particular renovation.

wow that is some design aesthetic they have going there

i think some bowl sinks can look very cool, ive seen a few that are made out of very beautiful glass and are pretty striking, but that one is horrible especially on that cylindrical cabinent thing wow

if bowl sinks have no place to put a bar of soap, I am anti bowl sink. I guess this is a special cylindrical cabinet case where you have no surface area surrounding the sink bowl, though.

it is kinda fun to go through the decision process that led them to adding soap holding fixtures to the wall outside of the shower.

favorite part may be when they realized they couldn't have a ridiculous mirror frame and a full shelf above the sink, so they chose a ridiculous mirror frame

Don't like the bowl sinks. Too much leeway for the faucet to get in the way.

Also, those things shouldn't be called "sinks" anymore.

apparently they're called vessel sinks
http://streeteasy.com/talk/discussion/15462-i-just-dont-get-it-what-do-people-like-about-vessel-sinks-

I am not sure where your right leg goes when you sit on that toilet.

apparently they're called sidesaddle toilets

i've lived too long

well i think they vessel stink!

it is kinda fun to go through the decision process that led them to adding soap holding fixtures to the wall outside of the shower.

Those are for the hand soap. There's probably, like, six or eight more soap fixtures out of sight in the shower.

I know they are for hand soap. It just looks weird and seems like a bad idea. I don't know that I'd ever seen them outside of a shower.

Sometimes they have little holes in them for you to drop your toothbrush stem through.

for those with greyscale?

I am not sure where your right leg goes when you sit on that toilet.

That's a $15,000 Japanese toilet that comes to you when you need to use it. The bathroom corner is just where it sleeps.

Today was edifying. One: we definitely need to do some credit score magic between now and whenever we close. The rate we got quoted yesterday in our pre-approval sucked. This is fixable though, and we have time.

Two: "hot" neighborhoods are not for us. First time buyers in their late 20s / early 30s have no idea what they're doing, they apparently love stupid finishes (saw like five of those ridiculous backsplashes today, at least one pot filler tap, lots of dark wood floors) and they overpay to live next to their cool happy hour spots.

I'm all about a boring kitchen in an older neighborhood that is staggering distance from a place with only five taps. Shaw and the Atlas District are for rich douches.

I have a dislike of bowl sinks, but they can be quite nice to use I guess.
We have really nice dark wood floorboards and want a big springy tap to replace our stiff old kitchen tap :p

I've had adam sandler in the wedding singer singing "bowl sinks! yeaaahh eeeeyeeeaahhahhh!" in my head for 2 days now

today, the mortgage people sent me some forms to sign and had not updated some fields on the last two pages with my information. So they basically gave me the names, SSNs, and address of previous clients. I feel very safe with my choice now!

can we talk about how much vinyl siding sucks

so many of these older homes have it and it looks so bad

i'd be okay with it on newer construction i guess but for a 100-year-old home it is awful and ruins the house

looks bad but it's cheaper to clean/repaint/replace than other options but you get what you pay for

xp huh on older houses? I think of it as a 90s+ thing

I've got siding, and no, I'm not a fan.

Few years ago, I had it replaced on my "chimney". Felt like a charlatan once I saw inside there and realized it was just a damn pipe going from my fireplace up to the top of a two-story enclosed closet.

people reside old houses w/vinyl pretty often, because ppl cheap out on maintenance and residing with more expensive options doesn't result in a significant difference in house appraisal

I have residing on my long list, I want to use hardieplank or a similar product, though. Looks similar to wood, but has a lot of nice features

xp huh on older houses? I think of it as a 90s+ thing

― droit au butt (Euler), Friday, September 2, 2016 10:51 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea probably 80% of the houses in the neighborhood we are looking in are pre-1920 and a moderate amount of them have been re-sided with vinyl

also vinyl is, iirc, more likely to be tacked on over old siding

i've heard good things about hardieplank, that it can look indistinguishable from wood but that is significantly more durable and longer-lasting

basically deciding whether we should buy a house that we otherwise like a lot with a plan to ditch the vinyl and re-side with wood (or hardieplank) or just pursue a wood-sided house and ignore the ugly vinyl ones

http://www.hsh.com/images/slideshow/city_salary_static.png

(from http://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-cities.html#how-did-we-come-up-with-these-salaries)

crazy.

There's no way the NYC number is correct. It says it's based on a median home price of $395,400. That pretty much only buys you a studio apt in most parts of town, plus they're not factoring in co-ops, which have high monthly common charges.

it's for the metro area and only covers the principal, interest, taxes and insurance payments

Lol sf

San Francisco is probably gonna be worse off than Angola any day now

i can play along in this thread i guess. i hate this entire process but i do actually want a house. we're checking out this weird contemporary a-frame tomorrow:

https://www.redfin.com/MA/Westborough/36-Upton-Rd-01581/home/16634004

Beautiful house.

But that aside, what do you think the heating bill looks like?

My dad's got an A-frame, and the windows – over a 20-year time span, mind you – has given him a few headaches.

Does that A-frame have any numbers on the wall? You gotta have 'em all!

3 acres! rad