Buying A House: C or D?

home staging is such a weird thing

my parents lived in a 70s split-level home on an acreage, and the realtor's "staging expert" was some douche who used to work for Ethan Allen who thought they should borrow or buy a bunch of staging furniture and redo rooms in dramatic fashion in order to sell

it was a relatively modest house in the countryside! I have no idea why you'd stage it like it was a mcmansion

do you guys think having only one shower for two adults and two kids approaching adolescence is a minor problem we'll forget about or something we should strive to fix

My kids are only 3 and 7 so my feelings might change over the next few years, but we settled for a single bathroom house because it was better in all other aspects than what we'd seen in the 2+ bathroom houses in our budget, and I have no regrets at all. It's occasionally a minor annoyance, more than made up for by everything else we love about the house that we wouldn't have had otherwise. The people we bought it from had raised two kids there too. We might look into adding a second one at some point but I'm in no rush.

Biggest downside will probably be resale difficulty if we don't add a bathroom, but I don't anticipate having to worry about that for 20-30 years.

I mean, on one hand sounds challenging, but otoh at least tens of millions of americans could not fathom living in my situation, i.e. raising two kids in an apartment (which happens to have two showers). I think you'd just have to plan a little more carefully, and if ultimately the rest of the house works really well for you, showering is a pretty small part of your day. I do hope it has a second toilet at least though.

Yep, right now it has 1 shower 2 toilets. I think we are leaning towards adding one more shower/toilet before we move in if we buy this place. Current owners say they're not considering places with fewer than 2 baths in their current house-shopping, so I guess THEY find it annoying....

can't figure out whether i'm stressed we might actually buy this house or stressed the purchase may fall apart somehow

One of the only times I have ever cried at work was due to buying a house for the first time. Constant stress about paperwork missing, rates changing, being short of money that was never requested before, trying to time moves, finding out something was wrong during inspection. Ugh.

can't figure out whether i'm stressed we might actually buy this house or stressed the purchase may fall apart somehow

yea, it's probably both. i was scared the deal wouldn't go through for some reason, but also scared i was making a huge mistake.

I cried at the closing when I found out about an undisclosed assessment and I thought my lawyer was being dismissive of me.

Now you are happy though, VP!

okay, here's the jam and under a quarter million! Buy now!
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/508-N-Hamilton-St_High-Point_NC_27262_M62980-39945

http://hyperallergic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/LargestDrawers-720x486.jpg
http://ap.rdcpix.com/921387147/41cd7f0ccd68f533136f2a60756ead5bl-m1xd-w1020_h770_q80.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/bd/87/c1/bd87c1210fe519af3e0600c1b5d0ab02--funny-clothes-lost-socks.jpg

I would love to have a life where I could have that dresser place. And it's got two buildable lots included? Dude, you could build a normal house on one of the lots, and use the wacky novelty house as basically anything: rumpus room, recording studio, art space, library.

I bet the person who built it had nice furniture in there.

quite nice furniture shaped like various habitations

I tried looking for this on Realtor and Zillow, but no luck. Apparently it's in Lincoln, IL for $145k. (?!)

http://thehousehuntingblog.com/post/170166691375/1450002-br2100-sq-ft-lincoln-il-ah-yes-ive

http://78.media.tumblr.com/173250bca21f86a93c49a73a65b36fb7/tumblr_p36sc2esAT1tdcgqjo1_1280.jpg

http://78.media.tumblr.com/46de10a75a43bc451234446495bea845/tumblr_p36sc2esAT1tdcgqjo8_1280.jpg

http://78.media.tumblr.com/9aa92c60671ec18a313cc5f85b0426af/tumblr_p36sc2esAT1tdcgqjo6_1280.jpg

http://78.media.tumblr.com/0ee8b6a9566d419405b37b5b5f6bc3e5/tumblr_p36sc2esAT1tdcgqjo9_1280.jpg

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/314-Pulaski-St-Lincoln-IL-62656/125012316_zpid/

Oh dern, it sold. :(

Kind of a different perspective in this one:

https://i.imgur.com/nWQMhFo.jpg

I'd happily live in the middle of a small midwestern "downtown."

Why does a 2-bedroom house have 3 bathrooms?

"First settled in the 1830s, Lincoln is home to three colleges and two prisons. The three colleges are Lincoln College, Lincoln Christian University, and Heartland Community College. It is also the home of the world's largest covered wagon."

Langston Hughes is from there.

I bet those transformers right behind the house are loud as hell if they blow.

Apparently Henry Darger was institutionalized there in the early 20th century for excessive masturbation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger

Where by "there" I mean the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children, not that house that just sold

lol

He was a Mid-Century Masturbator.

"First settled in the 1830s, Lincoln is home to three colleges and two prisons.

Did a big waaaiiiiit a minute here, but as it turns out, Lincoln, Illinois, was not only named after Abraham Lincoln, but it was also named by Abraham Lincoln.

The town was officially named on August 29, 1853, in an unusual ceremony. Abraham Lincoln, having assisted with the platting of the town and working as counsel for the newly laid railroad which led to its founding, was asked to participate in a naming ceremony for the town... At noon he purchased two watermelons and carried one under each arm to public square. There he invited Latham, Hickox, and Gillette, proprietors, to join him, saying, "Now we'll christen the new town.", squeezing watermelon juice out on the ground.

I love this city now.

Are there no... zoning laws? In Lincoln, Illinois....

https://i.imgur.com/MQMKGHE.jpg

Mane Attraction

many xps I live in a 2 bedroom/3 bathroom home because both bedrooms are upstairs and there is a downstairs bathroom.

I thought it was Lincoln, Nebraska in the first mention which has some merit (the only reasonable side of Illinois, college town, some stuff) but... the Illinois Lincoln? Well, it was named by the good president man

lincoln, il looks good

I recently lived not too far from Lincoln IL & I do not recommend it tbh

Only a 3 hour train ride to Chicago.

nice to meet you, i'm the guy who just found out how much it would cost to add a new bathroom to this house, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

inside the boundaries of the home, or as an addition?

inside the boundaries. one possible configuration would involve pushing out the roof, so i guess kind of an addition? but even doing it inside the current home is .... more than I thought

yea bathrooms are hella expensive

makes me wish I was more motivated when it came to putting in walls, figuring out who to call to make sure I'm doing things up to code, and just started farting around doing projects in the evening

how my dad ever did so when I was a little kid after working all day.. I guess he just loved doing that stuff

Me, I favor little quality-of-life improvements that I can accomplish myself: a shelf here, a little home office under the stairs, a rack for pots and pans, a fire pit outside, fresh paint here and there.

I'm told that the only renovations worth doing (in a resale value sense) are those that increase square footage. Even then, the return on investment might be negligible or nonexistent. Not coincidentally, those are very high-dollar projects. And they can entail a year or more of project management, as well as life disruption.

Some people can live in a house that's being remodeled, putting up with (for example) having to cook on a hot plate and use a mini-fridge for a couple months. Others rent a house for a while during the time their normal house is undergoing renovations - an additional spate of costs and headaches that needs to be factored in.

to some extent "renovations" is also a code word for upkeep, and those things... are essential

I will never, ever again live in a house that we are renovating. If you think purchasing a home is stressful, wait until you do renovations. And yeah, I agree that renovating for resale is not worth it really. People have vastly different tastes. The worst thing ever is when I see a place I like and it's evident that they newly remodeled but you know you will have to remodel again due to different styles. Like, I hate granite anything.

yea we had our attic finished before we moved in and im so glad we did it that way

btw we thought about adding a bathroom up there but it was gonna had another $10k-25k to the cost. fuck that

I'm told that the only renovations worth doing (in a resale value sense)

I'm not even thinking about resale, I'm thinking about whether I want to move two adults and two kids into a house with one shower. So I think of the money as spent on something to improve our lives, not money I expect to get back.

And we would have it done before we moved in.

But I am gonna see how expensive it would be to put a bathroom in the basement instead, that seems to disrupt the house and my kids can walk down a flight of stairs if I'm in the shower if it's gonna save a ton of money, I'll just pay them $100 every time they shower down there

dang how long a shower do you take

FWIW, eephus, I sleep on the second floor but only ever shower in the basement. I leave the upstairs bathroom to wife + kids, and that's worked out well for us.

sorry, i meant a shower in basement "seems to disrupt the house LESS" and i really really hope it would be cheaper

So YMP you have this "1 shower upstairs 1 shower in basement" configuration? And it's workable? The basement in this house is mostly unfinished so I feel like you're not giving up already-finished space to do this, if it's functional and less expensive the idea is growing on me