Buying A House: C or D?

this seems fine.
http://1cdn.cbhomes.com/s3/mediasvc-prd/properties/Ea79B20EcA064Cc-215144.jpg%3Fpreset%3Dtrim

http://1cdn.cbhomes.com/s3/mediasvc-prd/properties/Ea79B20EcA064Cc-215144.jpg

that seems like the perfect setting for a horror film

getting deep dream vibes

chef michael symon's house is for sale: https://www.redfin.com/OH/Cleveland-Heights/2080-Kent-Rd-44106/home/66296322

now that's my shit

never mount a tv over the fireplace, though. worst home trend ever

That's where mine is, but it's a) a decommisioned/decorative-only fireplace now and b) there was literally no place else to put it because of where the windows are and a built-in bookcase.

our soon-to-be house has a perfectly-installed bracket above the fireplace that will be mercilessly removed. i can't stand watching stuff at an upward angle.

i wonder if michael symon watches himself cook on that kitchen tv while he cooks.
can't believe that house is less expensive than my 2 bedroom apartment in a not totally desirable neighborhood in brooklyn.

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/renovation/news/a32031/home-improvement-fails/

That house is pretty rad, especially the kitchen. I'm honestly kind of surprised at how small the fridge is, compared to the giant monstrosities I expect to see in fancy kitchen remodels these days. But TV over the fireplace is terrible, always. Even moreso when new houses are built with something specifically for a TV in that space. I'm struggling to think about where to put the TV in our new house and refuse to put it over the fireplace even if that might be the most logical spot.

Finally sold our current house yesterday, two weeks later than we were supposed to, thanks to the lender being a dolt and screwing up a couple of things. So I technically do not own a home nor do I have a lease anywhere for the next two weeks when we close on the new place.

Congratulations and good luck!!

Our dumb American house finally closed yesterday, after two years! we hadn't paid the mortgage for a year, intending never to live in the USA again, so we didn't care about foreclosure, but the bank was happy to take a short sale since it wasn't gonna sell (or rent) any better as their property.

my advice is to avoid buying or for that matter living in the American midwest but ymmv

my advice is to avoid buying or for that matter living in the American midwest but ymmv

Too late. Though honestly there is a lot about moving back to the Midwest that kind of bums me out.

i miss boston a lot sometimes and i just spent last week in colorado thinking "why would anyone want to live anywhere else" but having a tiny mortgage on a 5 bdrm cool old house in a decent city is pretty dope, hard to get that anywhere outside the midwest

btw i love euler always referring to his house as a his "dumb midwestern house" itt

that phrase has loomed in my head since we closed and i worry that someday i might refer to my place as that

btw i am also not a fan of the TV over the fireplace. TVs in general are ugly and suck even if a necessity (for me), no good place to put one really

in a cabinet that can close imo

good point

fuck that, I have no shame in my television watching. that sucker gets a place of honor alongside the wall, with my most comfortable furniture facing right at it

yes agreed but it's nice to be able to cover up the great black void if one wants.

toilet notch resplendent

I have come to feel that location is 99% more important than the actual dwelling

there ought to be a saying or mantra that captures this feeling

About buying in the Midwest - just wait, it'll be coastal soon enough, right?

I won't cast TV judgement, except to say that every television in that Cleveland Heights house is poorly placed.

Two above the fireplace, where there looked to be plenty of room elsewhere.

And there even looked to be glare all over the kitchen one. That's a professionally taken photo, so imagine what that's like in real life.

I have come to feel that location is 99% more important than the actual dwelling
I have come to feel that location is 99% more important than the actual dwelling
I have come to feel that location is 99% more important than the actual dwelling

really the only thing I wanted in an American house was a pool but we chickened out of that bc the summer didn't seem long enough to make it worth it despite their midwestern hellmelt but if we hadn't maybe I'd have wanted to stay? well and maybe we'd need a landscaper bc I hate all things yard work esp mowing the lawn but then it's not that cheap anymore.

pools are really expensive to maintain! and yeah, they're amazing for a few months in the summer but in the midwest they're even more likely to get fucked up by the winters

yeah i've been looking at houses in upstate ny and every time i see a pool it just seems like so much work and expense for so little benefit. i don't really like swimming in pools either.
hot tubs on the other hand are a total bonus.

Pools: we specifically avoided houses with pools, and I was pissed a couple times when looking and a new listing would have a pool. I like the idea but you'd only use it a couple days a year and it feels like it would be a huge liability in terms of upkeep, having a toddler, insurance premiums, etc. One house on the market actually belonged to friends of friends, and our friends told us they were selling specifically to get a house without a pool.

Place: this one is kind of weird thing for me to think about. We're both academics (she's the "real" one, I'm the spousal accommodation) so we're sort of doomed to live in one of maybe 100 cities in the US and a good number of these are small, out of the way, not particularly interesting, etc. I've spent 11 years in an area with a metro size of about 85k people and the place I'm moving to has a metro area size of about 550k - so I'm excited about having more stuff around, if nothing else.

But if I was to get out of university life or had lottery money, I wouldn't even think of living in any of these places - I'd live in Portland or Seattle, possibly Denver or Minneapolis. So on the macro level "place" really isn't something I can think about too hard without totally changing both our careers in our early 40s.

On a micro level though, a lot of these places allow you to live a comfortable life in a nice house - the $225K place we bought would easily be $800,000+ in a lot of the neighborhoods I'd like to live in in Seattle. And it's 3/4 of a mile from my office, half a mile from downtown, a block from a park, less than a mile from where my kid will eventually go to school, etc.

Part of me really wishes I could live in a more desirable city, but it really isn't going to happen based on our fields as none of the schools that want my wife are in any of these places. But we also have have 3 months off every summer to travel which sort of makes up for it - we can go to my sister's place near Lake Michigan 3 hours away, visit my brother in law in Portland, our kid's birth mom in Seattle, etc., without having to blow our two weeks vacation on one trip per year.

So who knows.

Place is a balance for me (or would be if I had options) - I'm learning to weld, I'm painting a guitar, I'd do a fair amount more woodworking if I could, etc..

A garage or exterior shed/building is valuable to me, but if I had the opportunity to move to a Seattle or something I'd probably reevaluate my priorities. Much more likely those would have communal options, too.

Yeah I've been into woodworking, working on bikes and motorcycles, building guitar amps and pedals, playing drums and guitar at deafening volumes - all things that are easy to do when you have a garage or basement or workshop and no neighbors on the other side of the wall.

If I lived in Seattle/San Francisco/New York this would be harder to do outside of some communal space, but I imagine I'd spend more time seeing shows or events or going out to eat.

TVs in general are ugly and suck even if a necessity (for me), no good place to put one really

we do basement and that works really well

yeah. my ideal house would have a tv-less living room and a basement with tv, stereo and ping pong table.

ugh fuck. we are having our house painted this summer, it needs it badly, and we're working with a contractor to repair some rotting clapboard siding here and there as well as some rotting tongue-and-groove boards on the porch floor. the contractor took a look at the porch flooring and foundation and said that he won't be able to replace anything without the city requiring a new porch, it's that bad. he said that patchwork (and (and poorly done) repairs indicated pretty clearly that the previous owners knew about the problem. how the inspector missed this i don't really know.

that is a drag marcos. is there ever any recourse for an inspector missing something?

our inspector left a bad taste in my mouth cause he made some crack about plumbers earning so much money for just showing up, and i was thinking yeah but plumbers actually make stuff work, you're charging me $$$ to look around and tell me what you see.

the inspector noticed the rotting wood but thought overall that the porch foundation was fine. he said that down the road we'd need to do some repairs but it wasn't anything urgent.

imo get a 2nd and 3rd opinion if you dont want to pay for new footings now. your contractor probably wants the extra $$ when its just a porch

option of vinyl siding instead of paint?

Hello and welcome to the thread, Satan.

@marcos, call the inspector and tell him what this contractor is claiming. Also, do you have a home warranty? Sometimes mortgages include them automatically - ours did and we were able to claim a repair on our HVAC that was needed in the 1st year.

option of vinyl siding instead of paint?

― Dean of the University (Latham Green), Friday, June 23, 2017 11:43 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hello and welcome to the thread, Satan.

― Dan I., Friday, June 23, 2017 4:28 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

loooooool

spencer that is good advice

thanks

we got some extra opinions on the front porch, one from the GC who finished our attic and one from the housing coordinator from our local community development org, both said sure there a couple patchwork repairs you can do on the porch and but certainly nothing urgent, so that's a relief (and is in line w/ what the inspector originally said). the earlier guy got me thinking our porch was gonna collapse by the end of the summer

we move in next week. i'm excited but also kind of terrified about this responsibility. owning a 110-year-old beast scares the shit out of me. i smoked too much weed last night while working on a couple things in the empty house and i started freaking about shit, like wondering if there is asbestos in the plaster walls, moisture penetration in one of the bedrooms.

the guy who did our attic did a pretty good job and accomplished it on time (we really wanted it done before we move in). he kind of skimped on the floors though. we kept the rough plank flooring already present in the attic, he and his guys sanded it a little and did one polyurethane coat and that's all. i didn't notice until after we settled up (things have been hectic and crazy as we try to wrap up everything for the move) but the floors are still pretty rough and splintery and could use another sanding and a few more coats of polyurethane. the guy, who was great to work with until now, basically said they've done all they can do and anything else would require significantly more time and money and that i was welcome to sand and put more coats of poly on myself. ok thanks dude?

i get what he's saying to an extent, they are very rough planks almost similar to barnwood, and the floors were not a big part of the quote but im kind of pissed they didn't quite finish the job. being new to all this too i have a lot to learn about specifying everything clearly w/ folks im hiring