Buying A House: C or D?

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

You can also hold back like 5% of the total for a specified amt of time, like 3 months, after work is finished, to allow you time to notice things like that in the process of living in your place, which gives you a bit of leverage for fixing problems. One for next time maybe!

that's a pain in the ass, yeah

going to get some quotes on external stuff soon -- I know I've been posting that for probably years now, but I pulled the trigger on a cash-out refinance last week, as opposed to just dumping a bunch of my discretionary cash into improvements over the last five years on small projects, so I should have the $$ for bigger things. also lowered my interest rate and dumped a few years off my mortgage term, so I feel like I'm doing things proactively regardless of how much gets done immediately

marcos, your attic sounds a lot like my upstairs half-story. I redid the floor on 1/3 of it (there's a natural break where the chimney goes through, so I consider 2/3 of it one "room" and the other third my office "room") and it was a little uneven and I did some similar work. I think the roughness is fine, because that kind of wood doesn't lend well to being sanded smooth. if it's surface splinters, then it sucks because it might need some sanding. if it's the edges and there's a gap between the boards, you might be able to alleviate it by using some filler in the cracks and sanding that until it's level. then you don't have edges splintering into the gap.

fwiw I still fall into these nightmares about how my house is over a hundred years old, and something is going to go wrong, and omg my life is tied up in home ownership

but on the other hand, look at it this way: if no one's managed to fuck this thing up and have it fall over for a hundred years, it's really unlikely you'll be the one to do it!

You can also hold back like 5% of the total for a specified amt of time, like 3 months, after work is finished, to allow you time to notice things like that in the process of living in your place, which gives you a bit of leverage for fixing problems. One for next time maybe!

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, July 24, 2017 2:53 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes this is a very good idea

i settled up w/ this guy after a brief walk-through and even though i noticed the roughness the next day he's not interested in hearing it

if it's surface splinters, then it sucks because it might need some sanding.

yea that is what it is

rude, that guy sucks imo

i'm excited but also kind of terrified about this responsibility. owning a 110-year-old beast scares the shit out of me.

Oh man I totally get this. We moved into our 80 year old place two weeks ago and I had serious, intense buyer's remorse for a couple days about how old the place is, how everything was going to break down and catch on fire and leak etc. It's gotten a lot better as we settle in and meet neighbors and establish routines.

Moving stress is intense and unrelenting - leaving a place we lived in for over a decade, packing 80% of our shit (movers did the rest), selling and getting rid of tons of stuff, a fucked up trip that had us on one flight, 7 and 9 hour drives, and sleeping in 6 different places in 3 time zones in 10 days.

us sleeping in six different places

welcome home, joygoat!

btw if anyone wants to come visit in a few weeks I'll be way flush with that refinance cash and all the contractors are overbooked anyway, so... beer money, man

(you can tear off some shingles while you're here

haha count me in

right now I am taking a break after prepping to put a polyurethane layer on the attic floors :/

i took a break from the weed tonight to avoid crushing paranoia about how I'm probably ruining the house

All the houses I could theoretically still afford with the market going nuts were built in the window when aluminum wiring was acceptable. I'd seriously have to consider budgeting for a complete rewire at that point, I don't trust aluminum at all.

so i got two more poly coats on in the past couple days, the floor is looking much better. the first night i used a lambswool applicator and last night i actually just used a brush on the whole thing to make sure all the cracks got some coating in there. getting a real close-up look of each board, crack and crevice i kind of see what the contractor is saying now - it's a very rough soft pine floor in terrible shape and it was never really meant to be anything more than a subfloor or a surface for storage. the extra coats are helping but i think in the long term we'll figure out another floor solution for that space.

and jeez polyurethane smells terrible. even wearing a respirator i felt so awful at the end of the night

Moving stress is intense and unrelenting - leaving a place we lived in for over a decade, packing 80% of our shit (movers did the rest), selling and getting rid of tons of stuff, a fucked up trip that had us on one flight, 7 and 9 hour drives, and sleeping in 6 different places in 3 time zones in 10 days.

this sounds intense! even moving 2 miles away i feel so overwhelmed. i did the cross-state move last year and it was a pain in the ass.

xp so true

yeah, it sounds like it's rougher than mine was, but I definitely gave it a soaking and even did a light grain sanding between coats

but since I had a relatively small space (this is where the masochist part comes in) I used a handheld random orbital sander instead of a standing one. sure as hell renting a standing one if I ever get around to finishing off the rest

i need some cash to do my kitchen and back deck and a couple other things. i've been in my house four years. i want to pay off my credit card and car before i do anything so my credit score will be better though. that's time to build more equity i guess. i totally feel that 100-year-old house fear. all the time.

I am kind of angry because I have a credit card that gives a credit score for free on the site but the one the bank pulled was lower! I think it’s because I did an online mortgage quote thing I didn’t think pulled a credit check so the bank’s query was a second credit check which dings it, and it thought I had a higher balance on things than I do? I have a balance on one credit card I pay off monthly

I kind of wish I had filed an insurance claim when a giant tree branch hit my roof the year I moved in. Several people I know have had storm damage and apparently home insurance pretty much demands a full reroofing on their dime for roof damage. Could have had a new roof! (It had a tiny puncture where a hunk of wood was sticking straight out of it)

If a seemingly reasonably-priced house is listed for 30+ days in a pretty hot market (Minneapolis-St. Paul), that's a huge red flag, right? Are there any common explanations that don't entail insane sellers or undisclosed massive structural issues or other similar deal breakers?

could have been that they were in the process of accepting an offer and the buyer failed to secure a mortgage, or there is an offer on the table that's good but it's contingent on someone else selling their home so it's still on the market

Or priced too high and the seller won't budge. I guess this may be the insane seller scenario.

If a seemingly reasonably-priced house is listed for 30+ days in a pretty hot market (Minneapolis-St. Paul), that's a huge red flag, right? Are there any common explanations that don't entail insane sellers or undisclosed massive structural issues or other similar deal breakers?

Look at it if you can. If you know someone who knows shit about houses, take them along. Most people won't commission an official inspection until after their offer has been accepted, but you can make your offer dependent on whether or not the results of an inspection meet your approval.

Based on conversations about houses like this with a friend who is a realtor it was usually inability to get a loan, the owner being unrealistic about the value of their place, or something like foundation or sewer problems that cost a shitload of money to fix. Or some combination or series of all of these.

buying a house has been the single biggest preoccupation in my life for the past year but now that it's done and our stuff is there and we are unpacking i feel crushed by the feeling that i made a horrible decision that will trap me financially and otherwise for years to come :/

im hoping it subsides once we are actually settled, as it did for joygoat, but holy shit we have put a lot of money into this house already and it will still need more and more, fuck "move-in ready" as we thought. even the landscaping which was beautifully done will require more money to maintain than i thought - a beautiful redbud tree in the front yard suddenly has an 8-inch split down the trunk. there's aa feeling too that we overpaid because we bought in a stupid seller's market

we're still not even living there yet, staying at my folks house until everything's ready. the house is still just a concept in my mind rather than our actual home because i don't even have a bed set up there yet

I had the same buyer's remorse when I bought mine ("I paid $X for this?!!"), but it turned out to be the best financial move I ever did. Best move I didn't do was trading up in a down market about a decade later.

it'll be fine

as documented elsewhere, I'm getting over a hell of a summer cold and generally feel like crap. got a call friday from an assessor trying to schedule a walk-through for the mortgage refinance I'm doing, so of course I wanted to tidy up a little before he came through... which was this morning

so I did the most halfhearted shuffling during the couple hours I wasn't in bed over the weekend to do things but the overall state of my home is shameful. which doesn't matter, because a little dirt and clutter isn't a big deal for assessment but ungh

so in my fever and tiredness-induced anxiety I'm thinking of all the things I should do, how I have no idea where to start, all the clutter I should deal with by throwing things out and all the cleaning, and how I should have taken that stupid-ass marie kondo book to heart years ago and then moved my five remaining possessions that give me joy into a studio apartment and saved all this money

but the reality is, things are fine

Had the same fears/regrets when I bought mine. Then I stopped thinking of it as a financial decision and just started enjoying living in a place I love. Next thing I know a shit load of years have passed, and suddenly my house is worth a lot more than I assumed. Turns out I'll probably end up making money on it, maybe a good amount, despite all the ridiculous expenses.

You'll get your money back one day, provided you live there long enough. And since you presumably bought the house because you want to live there for a long time there's no need to worry about it in the meantime

imo do things as soon as feasible because the "well, I might not live here that long and won't get it back" tendency denies you the years you could have enjoyed with these renovations and changes

I have a mental list of things I don't like about my house, a (longer) list of things that badly need to be fixed, and an infinitely long list of things that I would like to have in a fantasy dreamhouse.

But I still get a little frisson of "aahhh, HOME" frequently. And this sounds corny as hell but there are times when I catch sight of my house from across the street, or step out onto the porch and rest my hand on the railing, and unapologetically love it.

imo do things as soon as feasible because the "well, I might not live here that long and won't get it back" tendency denies you the years you could have enjoyed with these renovations and changes

On the other hand, you can put those things off until you realize you no longer want them!

also you won't ever get the money back if you want to do terrible things

hah, that too

the easiest thing you can do to change things and bring joy is removing things you don't want or need that add no value imo

there was this stupid "deck" behind the back of my house that had a view of absolutely nothing, was right outside my bedroom window, and was in poor repair

it's in a dumpster and there are flowers there now

I don't know about other people's property (yeah you know me), but hereabouts our assessments differentiate between the value of the house and the value of the plot. Currently my house is worth about one-twelfth of the value of the land it sits on. So I could paint it purple and equip it with a BDSM dungeon. I could take a sledgehammer to it and knock out five bricks a week for decades.

I am given to understand that the only home modifications that noticeably affect resale value are those that add square feet. Because it's vanishingly unlikely that I'll be able to afford an addition any time soon, I am inclined to do exactly what I please, and only those things that I think will enhance our quality of life while we're here.

You'll probably get over it. I've bought three houses now and while I still have little freakouts we're still paying less for a mortgage payment than we'd be paying to rent a comparable house (assuming we could even find such a thing).

We probably broke even money-wise on our first place but it still felt worth it cause we got to make it our own and never had to tolerate shitty problems if we were willing and able to fix them ourselves. And when we sold it and put the money into the next house it all just started feeling very abstract and not really like "spending" anything, you know? Just signing papers.

I say that "assuming we could even find such a thing" because we live in GIANT COLLEGE TOWN and our neighborhood is very close to campus but has zoning that does not allow rental properties (other than some grandfathered ones) within a couple blocks, so we'd either have to live driving distance away or amongst the drunks and couch fires.

trying to figure out if Puffin has a really large tract of land or has a chicken shack in a decent part of town

The latter. Tiny, old, dilapidated house; decent-sized yard; very desirable part of town.

If someone else bought it, they'd almost certainly tear the house down and put a mcmansion on it. With a six-inch strip of grass surrounding the mcmansion.