Buying A House: C or D?

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.

I'm kind of in awe of this house a few blocks away -- someone bought a lot with completely dilapidated buildings on it, tore them down, and built a house with modern materials that looks like a craftsman-style house so it doesn't look out of place in the neighborhood

someone in the city office liked the idea enough they put it on the website for redevelopment tax abatement: https://www.dmgov.org/Departments/CommunityDevelopment/Pages/TaxAbatementInfo.aspx

I think it actually looks better in person, it's a little too new in the pic

that's a nice looking house

hung a corner shelf (https://www.amazon.com/BGS3100-2-Lavatory-Bathroom-8MM-Thick-Triangular/dp/B00PEHM9MG/) in the bathroom today for a potted orchid. It looks pretty nice but have I mentioned I hate, despise, and hate drilling into plaster over masonry? It's not level but I'm the only one who can tell.

also pro tip, paint the walls of your bathrooms bright colors. so nice.

nice

at least you didn't have the anxiety of drilling into tile!

we hung a bunch of towel racks and door hooks yesterday, we have some nice old solid wood doors that made it super easy.

Starting to save this month so we can hand over a 50k deposit in ten years to own a one bed apartment forty years after that.

Ill put the money away for a quiet life but I'll eat it in coin format before I become part of this

you can always sell it when the time is right for a quiet life. well not always. maybe have a 10 year window that is right for the quiet life just in case.

I've a good pension. The investment side of it disgusts me regardless. It's a utility.

I sometimes whimsically think of equity in terms of what vertical percentage of the house the bank owns, vs. what we own. When we bought the house, I think we owned up to about waist height in the basement. Now I think we own the ground floor - but just the floor, and maybe the baseboards by now.

Yeah I don't mean to piss on anybody's woodchips itt, sorry.

It's crazy here again and all my friends have just sunk themselves in it and I'm p horrified by the whole thing rly.

But then I don't and won't have kids and we're OK to up and move at a moment's notice so I have the luxury to be horrified and not participate.

I sometimes whimsically think of equity in terms of what vertical percentage of the house the bank owns, vs. what we own. When we bought the house, I think we owned up to about waist height in the basement. Now I think we own the ground floor - but just the floor, and maybe the baseboards by now.

Well, the good news is that we own up to the top of the living room light switch.

The bad news is that it's a two-story house.

I never think in terms of what % I or the bank own but sometimes I think "I own that tree" because it seems weird that just comes as part of the deal.

we own the right to stop neighbours opposite building on a very small piece of their garden, which I sometimes smile about

also this happens so so rarely but the previous owners of our house actually cared about putting decent things in it like lots of sockets and internet ports in sensible places, and also a skylight that you open with a button and it closes itself when it rains!

whoa

that is an a amazing feature

Yeah the sockets and ports thing - I was setting up stereo equipment in the new place and found wires coming out of the floor and it turns out someone had run speaker wire between two rooms, exactly where I'd want to have two sets of speakers set up. Every place I encountered an obstacle, like needing a hole to run cable, or a power source, I was pleased to find someone had already drilled a hole there and made sure there was an outlet inside of a builtin cabinet. It was great.

Of course there are tons of dumb things as well, the "how could you live with this for so long?" stuff like a switch on the left controlling a light on the right and vice versa.

When the guy before us built the house in 1999, he had landline connections installed in every room. Even the kitchen! The bedroom has a line on either side of where a king-sized mattress belongs.

So of course, 17 years later, we stream everything on cordless devices.

Despite admiring the sockets we did end up moving a big bank of them to the opposite side of the room...

hey, look what went on the market around the corner
https://www.fsbohomes.com/homes/des-moines/ia/details/113732/1002-40th-street/

yea that is a nice house. $315k for a new build of that apparent quality seems like a good deal imo

reminds me of this new build near my house that went on the market this summer, also done in a craftsman style with some built-ins, woodwork, etc: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1427-Scenic-St-Cleveland-OH-44107/33489147_zpid/

another one by the same builder is going to be built a few houses down from me. if you going to do a new house i think it's cool that they have it blend in with the other housing stock

there are no pictures of the basement in the one I linked, so I'm assuming that's where they lock up their children

hickory floors must be really 'in' right now

they are cool!

i see this where i am. i don't hate the olds but there are a lot of them where i am because everyone quit smoking and can't afford to move to florida and health care here is pretty decent. they aren't going anywhere. but they are kinda done? lots of single/widowed older people living in big old houses. and i do want younger people to move in and make an investment in the town and have energy and ideas and run for office and keep the town breathing, you know? the older people just want everything to stay the same. but other than a job with Big Candle (Yankee & Kringle) or the Opioid Task Force there isn't a whole lot to keep younger people here. You need fresh blood to keep a town going.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/baby-boomers-who-won-t-sell-are-dominating-the-housing-market

I think that some people my parents' age (mid 60s) are starting to get it, in that I've heard them discussing how they don't want to be stuck in their homes doing maintenance and hoarding as they get older and aren't able to do as much as they can now. Both my parents have had fathers living alone in homes that were falling apart with the classic "I'll die in this house" mentality. But they didn't, and their health suffered and their homes fell into disrepair and they ended up going straight from messed up house to care facility.

The couple who lived in my parents' current home prior to them downsized to a townhome for a decade or so and are now in a senior community, so *some* people get it

the six houses immediately surrounding mine are all owned by people ages 60+ who have been in the neighborhood for 30-40 years

there are people on nextdoor like that, and they keep wondering why all these immigrants and crime are in their neighborhood when it used to be so nice

it's because your neighborhood has fallen into disrepair and the lack of new people moving in/out has caused it to be less interesting to young people, driving property values down

i would be ALL about a nice senior condo setting when i'm 70 with a pool and someone else to cut the lawn if i could afford it. there is not a lot like that around here though.

people have to work forever now too. they can't afford to move in a lot of cases. 2nd and 3rd mortgages, etc. there need to be better options for the oldies. also now that they live into their 80s and 90s more frequently.

tbh after some stupid political article about Levittown I poked around a little bit to see what that area is like now

all these homes built to a handful of plans, at the same time, taking up massive tracts of real estate. none of them really conforming to what anyone wants in a house in the 2010s (although the majority have been modified), all with aging populations. it's a weird thing

where's the thread for complaining whenever a new home repair needs to be done? i swear these fucking things are never ending. two leaks in two separate parts of the house in a week. one requires that the plumber basically remove the kitchen ceiling to repair.

i've just been using this one.

ahh that sucks btw

it's like obviously not the end of the world and it can be fixed without much upset and the cost isn't going to bankrupt me so thank god for all of that but it's just crazy i never really appreciated until i owned a house that the repairs would basically be never ending. you're in a constant war with nature and entropy to keep things running correctly. there's never a moment where /nothing/ needs to be done.

i swear these fucking things are never ending. two leaks in two separate parts of the house in a week

Is that you, Mooch?

xp so true, even if nothing is broken, just living there and having a building that has weather going around it and people tromping through means things will age and deform and break and you have to maintain

yea even though our mortgage is lower than almost anything we've had to pay in rent over the past 10 years, we have already spent such huge amounts of money on this place that i can't believe i once thought that owning would be cheaper than renting

if you buy a brand new home and everything works exactly as it should and you do minimal landscaping and then move as soon as something breaks, you might get out cheap

of course people that do this every time are jerks imo