Buying A House: C or D?

ok well there we go

the buyer closed on our place today and our offer got accepted on our new place tonight
on to contract and lender bullshit and god knows what
BLECCCH.

well at least I get to paint everything whatever color I want, I guess? and no more condo meetings! wheee. now I just have to worry about forcing ourselves to save up for things like roof repairs and shit.

CONGRATUMATATIONS ON YOUER MARTGAGELEBRATION

Uergh, the house we're (meant to be) buying needs a whole new roof, and the vendor is refusing to budge. So we're almost certainly going to walk away.

the buyer closed on our place today and our offer got accepted on our new place tonight

sweet timing though.

congrats tomboto, where did you end up buying?

nooo nick. Roof problems are the worst.

columbia heights by the petworth metro

back porch looks out over an abandoned building that's hopefully going to get a good RFP response and be restored soon

Um...

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/24-Brentwood-Dr-Avon-CT-06001/59011376_zpid/

woah

https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/23-1n019-jesus3_-c-300x300.jpg

otm was going to search for that

I was thinking decay? vandalism?, intentional? And by god that was done by the owner, on purpose.

It's almost like the "after" footage of a house on Hoarders where they cleaned it up as much as they could but you know there's still dead cats and plastic bags with poop in them somewhere.

my wife's home from ages 2-7 is like 5 mins from that place; i think i just freaked her out pretty good by sharing that.

I'm not going to enjoy taking this down and putting it back up. I really hope it doesn't turn out to be one of those deals that just doesn't move well.

http://theevosystem.com/

The Avon project is complete.

hoo boy

i dont know if i have more questions now or less

i'm pretty sure i never had any questions just a lot of exclamations

http://www.synkovhouserepair.com/about.html

Vacant Position
Senior Design Manager

Vacant Position
Client Relationships

Vacant Position
Chief Officer

:/

http://fermata-arts.org/nsynkov.jpg

Found a video, if anything it's more horrific than the photos. How does every room seem not to have windows??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM9nA1fKnhw

visited a house, agent was like "i know it needs a lot of work but you could really make something nice out of this," house was in approximately the same condition as the one where my family and i have been happily living

Oh, that hurts.

it really did upset me tbh, i was crabby the rest of the afternoon

When I was looking, I told my agent to not even suggest me anything in a certain neighborhood because 60s/70s red brick ranch houses aren't my thing at all. I even shit talked them a little bit.

Later on in the process, it came up that she lived in one of those neighborhoods.

Oops.

we looked at this house on sunday: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1264-Saint-Charles-Ave-Lakewood-OH-44107/33494385_zpid/

we are thinking about making an offer, but there are a few negatives:

1) there are no hardwood floors on the first floor, which is pretty rare for this neighborhood in which most houses are century-old homes w/ hardwood. there is shitty carpeting in the living room and engineered wood in the dining room. i don't really know the cost of installing new solid hardwood but im not sure if i want to get into that when most homes in the neighborhood already have hardwood floors
2) it's had some updates but the owners have used pretty cheap materials (plastic in the shower/bathtubs, cheap tiles, etc) and we could live w/ those for a while but we'd have to update them eventually.
3) there are multiple old layers on the roof, we'd prob have to do a complete tear off and replacement

i don't know. we could offer lower i guess? it's a very cool house, functionally has about 5 bedrooms since the attic is finished, location is our ideal where we are looking too -- it's two blocks from a giant lakefront park and one block from the downtown area of the suburb, we could walk everywhere. we're renting already just one street over and we know we love that area.

also the house has character, especially some of the shingle work on the exterior, but it is missing a lot of the built-ins and leaded glass and other features that are v common in other houses in the area. not a big deal but we've looked at a few places w/ awesome railings, trim, banister, built-in wood cabinetry, pocket doors, and leaded glass and it is kind of a bummer (though i guess not a deal breaker) that this house doesn't have all that stuff

columbia heights by the petworth metro

― Anacostia Aerodrome (El Tomboto), Tuesday, September 27, 2016 2:53 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

back porch looks out over an abandoned building that's hopefully going to get a good RFP response and be restored soon

― Anacostia Aerodrome (El Tomboto), Tuesday, September 27, 2016 2:53 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cool! i lived in dc from 2002-2008 and it was astonishing how much columbia heights changed during that time, i visited again a few years after i left and i didn't even recognize it

feeb question but easiest way to get the best rate when refinancing?

not sure? my sister just refinanced and their loan officer helped them get the best rate, they have someone they can trust though

w/ this house i tihnk something we are not sure about is do we buy a cheaper house and do some upgrades or do we buy a pricer house that doesn't need as much work?

Marcos, I think I could live with that house's aesthetic shortcomings (with the understanding that they can be corrected) better than I could live with one that had the right Vintage Elegance Factors, but was in generally poorer repair.

Given the choice between putting up with using a tacky plastic shower for a few years vs. putting up with ancient leaky plumbing? One could be forgiven for going with the slightly-less-classy stuff that actually works.

Of course, I say this having bought an old house partly because it had the right Vintage Elegance Factors - hardwood floors, built-ins, etc. - but was and is falling apart otherwise. Only you know what your priorities are and what's important to you.

yea it's tough to sort the priorities. we know the must-haves but a lot of "would be nice to have" things are hard to sort

fireplace being one of them too...

First house we spent a lot of time redoing things and it taught us that we don't really like redoing things on our own and would rather pay someone to do them which is fine but expensive and disruptive, even before we had a kid.

Current house was totally finished; some of it isn't quite how we want it but it's livable and everything works. And in two years here a lot of things I thought I wanted to change right away don't seem like a big deal anymore, while other things I never thought of have become priorities.

artist's spec for the brentwood house, apparently
http://nebula.wsimg.com/d2d1e9307fee8e376e94e42c9174fcc7?AccessKeyId=D805D8BDDABF3F976511&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

(cross-posted on the real estate thread)

yes it is unreal

imagining the "work" and conversation that went into all this..

marcos don't you want engineered wood anyway, partic on a ground floor? more stable, less expansion/contraction, etc

solid hardwood is fine on ground level, it does expand/contract more than engineered but also i like the look/feel of solid hardwood way mroe

a good engineered floor is indistinguishable ime. apart from the tighter fit of the planks maybe. the top 3-8mm is real wood anyway.

well "sawn" wood i mean. you know w i mean.

ya maybe i've only seen cheaper engineered? it's been in a few houses we've seen, most i've been able to tell the difference even just looking at the listing photos

i mean judging by the rest of the updates in this place i would not be surprised if they went with the cheapest floor option available

i've been thinking alot about this because i'm redoing my floor (in the UK) and getting the planks from here:

http://www.havwoods.co.uk/search/havwoods-construction-engineered-wood-flooring

so we made an offer on that house, offered way less (about ~$15k below listing price) since we felt like there were a few substantial projects to do. sellers accepted another offer that was apparently at asking price or maybe slightly higher, not too surprising that we didn't get it

ugh moving is so annoying

the lawyer at our closing was like "you got 4%, that's a fantastic rate, that's another thing millenials feel totally entitled to by the way" - there were some pretty good chuckles about venmo