Buying A House: C or D?

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

Selling my mom's house. Escrow was supposed to end on Oct. 27 but things are in stasis right now because the buyer's loan underwriters decided that they needed more documents at 4pm the day of close. All pre approvals are meaningless. I want to gnaw off my limbs and beat myself to death.

Sounds like the underwriters fucked up.

Of course they did. This was a three month escrow period - plenty of time for them to ask earlier.

i don't know how these things work so i'm asking: is there any indication that a trump presidency would result in higher interest rates?

Not so much him, but the Fed's likely going to lift the interest rate next month anyway.

If rates go up, you could see a seller's market as buyers try to beat the rate before it gets higher.

that sucks, im already looking in a seller's market :(

two really cool-looking properties showed up when we were out of town this weekend

https://www.redfin.com/OH/Lakewood/1474-Wagar-Ave-44107/home/66145695
https://www.redfin.com/OH/Lakewood/1506-Marlowe-Ave-44107/home/66100359

both under contract by the time we got back into town

the second one had some issues (you can see significant damage on the left side of the front porch ceiling) but the first one looked pretty spectacular, bummer

For the second one I'd say the kitchen actually looks too big, which is not the usual complaint about kitchens.

i finally saw my house! it's nice!

cool!

what kind of place did you buy

Bitched about this on the moving thread already but double check all your outlet boxes, including the coax / cat5 ones. We're going to have to pay a guy to come over this week right as we're unpacking and fix all of our cables + check everything over once more because apparently the inspector didn't catch everything they'd skimped on. And the rest of all the renovations look great and are nicely done so we didn't really think about the fact that maybe the wiring contractor just DGAF.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring - be wary!

have any of you guys finished (or paid someone to finish) a third floor attic before? we are going to see a house tomorrow that looks pretty cool but has an unfinished attic. many of the attics in the area are finished so this one is priced accordingly.

https://www.redfin.com/OH/Lakewood/1493-Northland-Ave-44107/home/70838241

so we saw that place this morning, yikes, it needs a lot of work. our realtor estimated (and we agreed just based on a loose assessment of things) that it probably needs about $100k worth of improvements, including:

kitchen remodel (w/ possible addition if we want a bigger kitchen, current one is very small)
attic finishing
new windows (or refurbishing of existing windows)
exterior paint
interior paint
wood floor refinishing
basement waterproofing
+ lots of other things here and there since the house hasn't been that well maintained

there are some very cool aspects of the house, lots of cool architectural details, it's a neat place. the street is gorgeous and is one of the nicer blocks in the town. other houses on the street are priced $250k-$300k. we are tempted since we've seen a lot places that are much more expense that still need some significant work but i don't know if we want to get into that many projects right off the bat. we have some cash on hand for a couple big projects but i don't think we have $100k worth. we could always wait on a few things but i don't know.

i mean things like exterior/interior paint and wood floor finishing are kind of givens no matter what price we pay for a house but the bigger things like a kitchen remodel or attic finishing or basement waterproofing are a little scarier to get into now.

you could do it step by step? waterproof the basement and redo the kitchen, then save for a couple of years to deal with the paint, etc

that's true, though a lot of things seem way easier to do before we move in. since we're renting a place a mile away on a one-year lease, there's a temptation to try to get all the work done before we move in

some things freak me out about the place though, seeing significant water stains on the wall in the basement, wondering if there are major foundation issues to deal with. i think we'd probably have to go back and see it with a contractor since neither my wife nor i are really handy. there wasn't much in the property disclosure either since the owner died this summer.

xp to marcos: one family home in nashville. I have a two car garage and no car! A fire pit in a backyard! It's all very weird.

cool!

we passed on that northland ave place btw, just felt it was too much work to take on even though it had a lot of potential. i think if we were remotely handy we would've felt differently but since we would be paying a lot of people to do work it all would add up pretty fast.