Buying A House: C or D?

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

that place is awesome

not sure if you'd want to do anything to that gorgeous fireplace but if you are concerned about heating you could put in a wood burning insert and have an additional heat source

3 acres would give you an endless supply of firewood too

it's pretty lol that we're even considering something with that much land. not really our scene or forte but i guess i could learn.

where else are you looking

basically towns of metro west/495 belt that are more than bedroom communities and have some basic services close by.

it's a pretty short list.

Does it have a bar?

Not sure if it was mentioned for first-time buyers, but having a house with a big lawn = $ for lawn service or immediate $ put down to purchase lawn-mowing equipment. We had set some money aside for hiring some short-term lawn maintenance while we got the house in order but we had no idea it would be so expensive. Cut to having to buy a mower on a budget and it taking 2+ hours every 2 weeks for it to look semi-respectible.

interesting--what kinds of quotes did you get for lawn care service?

yikes look at this addition

https://ssl.cdn-redfin.com/photo/159/bigphoto/622/3843622_0.jpg

so bad

they should do that again and have a little roof above the roof above the roof

we heard you like houses

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

so long as that addition houses one of those US vs Canada bubble table hockey games, it was a good move imo

anybody know how many softeners/filters/etc I will need to purchase for this tankless water heater I am inheriting?

water quality is v bad out here, btw. Not uncommon to have water brown with sediment on occasion.

http://i.imgur.com/EDxM5GB.jpg

That's the Pontiac Aztek of additions.

Or there's Pittsburgh, kinda like Cleveland except with better hockey?

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1210-Tyndall-St-Pittsburgh-PA-15204/11479126_zpid/

I'm staying in an airbnb house in Seattle right now which prompted me to look up what houses in this neighborhood go for; they're all 1/3 to 1/4 the size of that Pittsburgh place at 5 to 6 times the price.

This place a block away from me is 2/3 the square footage and 15 times as expensive:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Seattle-WA/54831713_zpid/

tbf, the Pittsburgh house needs a lot of work.

Does it? Looks very livable in its current state.

It is a little apples to oranges but you could put 1.1 million in upgrades into the Pittsburgh place and still be a million ahead

Scrolling through those Pittsburgh photos, definitely something between the lines -- enough where I wasn't all flabbergasted going "What's the catch?" Figure there's at least a ghost underneath that pink carpet upstairs.

Still. $149,900 is crazy.

Declining neighborhood, few amenities, bad school.

interesting--what kinds of quotes did you get for lawn care service?

― call all destroyer, Sunday, 11 September 2016 03:46 (one week ago) Permalink

I think we were paying $65 a week for a pretty bare-bones service, but that was only because he gave us the rate as the previous owner. We wanted to use a different service because they turned out to be pretty flaky after a few weeks but we couldn't find anything remotely cheaper. I think we stopped after 1.5 months or so after we decided we'd essentially pay for a decent mower and trimmer after 8-10 weeks or so.