Buying A House: C or D?

that's a hell of an obit

for instance, this house would be scooped up so fast if it wasn't in greenfield. it's been for sale forever. so friggin' nice. 8 acres! but people here are looking for cheaper houses. the house across the street from me was priced to sell and it sold in a week just last month.

https://www.trulia.com/p/ma/greenfield/27-george-st-greenfield-ma-01301--2000390706

it was actually a sweet deal across the street from me. there is an apartment upstairs that you can rent for $1000 or more and there's your mortgage! people love buying stuff like that around here. and its in great shape.

https://www.movoto.com/greenfield-ma/68-pierce-st-greenfield-ma-01301-300_72286458/

failing to buy a house atm, just had another offer 10k over the asking price rejected, it is the worst market, i despair

the problem with the drive to build new houses is that every modern property we've seen on the market is horrible and usually tiny

we have two people coming to look at our house today. it would be nice to get an offer even at asking :)

And shockingly badly built. Our (rental) place was built four years ago and it’s falling to pieces. We’ve had electrics fail, sewers back up and whoever designed this house managed to fail at designing a block that could avoid getting hit by trucks. Seriously, the way he balconies hang out towards the alley means that out neighbour’s balcony has been hit by trucks on at least 4 occasions.

We’re looking at joining a property collective. Essentially a group of like minded people who buy a block and subdivide it into townhouses, but everyone gets a say in how it is speccced and built. We’re doing a co design workshop tomorrow, but it’s a pretty long process 3 years from signing up tthe getting a house.

best of luck

if all goes according to plan I'll arrive home tonight to find a dumpster in my driveway and part of my siding torn off. phase 2 of the wallet-draining has begun!

xpost Kind of like a commune? Oh I guess communes share in more day to day responsibility and space. I have been thinking about visiting Twin Orange in Georgia to see how much on the granola spectrum they are.

we've seen the perfect 'forever' house - need to move fairly soon for schools etc. exactly what we want, in budget. But it's on a main road on one side (fields out the back though) so level of traffic noise is possibly more than I could tolerate. potential to put more soundproofing measures in but that's quite a gamble. really torn!

kinder, I live on a major street with four lanes of 30-mph traffic (roughly 37 gills per parsec, for the eurodweebs) and it's fine.

Pros: Giving directions is easy. Pretty much everything we need is right nearby (walk to multiple grocery stores, restaurants, public transit).

Con: There is traffic noise but we got used to it very quickly, and now don't really even hear it; it's like living by the sea. Indeed, nowadays if we vacation someplace quieter it's kind of eerie and unsettling!

We do have a lot of trees and hedges for privacy and noise/exhaust blockage, and I intend to plant some more to give us the full secret-garden look as years go by.

If it's the right house for you it's the right house for you.

it depends how busy a road it is. I'm not a great worrier but I don't find the raft of studies linking the air pollution you get from living on main roads with various illnesses all that hard to believe. more conclusively, on our way to our last viewing we saw a dead cat with its guts spread over the tarmac and that's decided the matter for now

aw, don't jump to conclusions, coulda just been a perfectly ordinary satanic ritual

the end of my street that has the most small children is also the end that previously had a guy who loved to really gun the engine after leaving his driveway. great combo when kids are constantly running around the street because it's the sleepy end of a block

I've said it before, I live about 650 ft (200m) away from I-40. Like Puffin, I compare it to living by the sea too.

My only concern would be about ever wanting to turn left out of your driveway.

For us, if the traffic is too vigorous for a left turn (generally only at morning rush) we just go right, then go around the block or make a u-turn.

The streets are arranged so that we have choices; one can go left, right, right-right-right-left, left-left-left-right, or right-U. Or we can say fuck it and walk, or say fuck it and take public transit.

IIRC, that's how you get the Fatality effects on Mortal Kombat IX.

first ppl today loved the house but it was too small for them. second ppl coming at 3:30. plz wish me luck.

good luck!

I just had that terrible time yesterday of getting a lot of rain and then the basement is all wet
which made me long for apartment days

I spent hours shop-vac'ing water out of my basement yesterday too. Amazingly nothing got damaged aside from a bunch of CDs that I'd stupidly left in a box on the floor. Won't be reading the lyrics/liner notes on a bunch of my V through Y artists anymore.

I live on a main boulevard of my city with two lanes of traffic, then a divide with an elevated metro line, then two more lanes of traffic. But the windows installed here are incredible, they block almost all that noise so that the trains rolling by every couple minutes are just a rumble like distant thunder, and the cars are silent. Ambulances and police cars are a bit more but really I’m amazed, outside or with the windows open it’s quite loud.

it's really annoying, our current place and previous place are both on no-through-roads in the city centre, but amazingly quiet. distant traffic noise, sure, but it feels distant iyswim. car alarms, police helicopters occasionally.
yet moving to a countryside-ish village seems to entail living on an A-road!

I'm mainly scared of being woken up at 6am by huge rumbling trucks or double decker buses. and yeah the pollution although we would spend minimal time on that side of the property (hopefully can find a back way to schools etc)

the golden rule of basement - if you care about it, put it in a rubbermaid bin

ha i've been burned by basements before so my rule is - if mold can grow on it and/or if you don't want it to smell, don't put it down there.

we had 48 hours of heavy rain earlier this week though and it was nice to see that everything was dry down there

Yep I have a basement music studio with approximately a brugjillion farthings' worth of instruments and recording gear in it. No space for these things anywhere else, unfortunately.

We had some wetness down there a few weeks ago and I hoped it would go away on its own; it didn't. We were about to go out of town and I was setting out fans and shop-vacing like mad. Eventually I figured out it wasn't coming through the foundation - just a leaking water heater. Vastly easier to fix. Happy ending.

Joys of homeownership, eh?

lately instead of being terrified of owning a 110-year-old house I have been relieved - if it's still intact like it is after that long it'll probably be ok under my tenure

When I looked at my place with the realtor (exactly one year ago last Saturday) it had been raining for a week straight and the basement was totally dry which I took as a great sign. Some water showed up on the floor this fall and I panicked until I realized it was the kitchen sink drain leaking above it which is so much better than a crack in the foundation.

As for noise I live on a fairly busy but mostly quiet street, but the downside is that it's in the middle of hundreds of student houses. None within three or four blocks due to rules that limit the number of non-relatives who live together, but on weekend nights there are plenty of loud drunken people staggering through while party hopping late at night singing or yelling or getting in fights or whatever, and on home football saturdays there are suddenly thousands of people walking around en route to the stadium. Which isn't necessarily horrible, but just really took me by surprise the first I went out to walk the dog and there were a dozens of wasted college kids roaming around at 10am on a Saturday.

lately instead of being terrified of owning a 110-year-old house I have been relieved - if it's still intact like it is after that long it'll probably be ok under my tenure

This is similar to how I used to feel about the United States of America.

You never know how damp basements get until you use a dehumidifier. Our old basement was only maybe 700 sq ft and on some days we would need to empty out a liter of water every day.

marcos, I've had the same thought

if no one has wrecked this place over that many years, I don't think I have the special ability to do so now

or, going off pplains' rejoinder, someone's probably wrecked it in different ways and making a token effort is worth the try

Ha exactly

a liter? oh man, that's nothing. the humid season here and we're talking gallons

luckily I just have mine running to the floor drain

we got a dehumidifier with the hose attachment and just set it up to drain all the time, nice to not have to empty it

This was in Blyn, our basement was tiny. Gah, we should've had it run to a drain, it was always annoying to have to go down to empty it. I do not miss living in a house.

I've got a dumpster parked in my driveway so I can't pull in, I've got a bunch of siding/soffit material sitting in boxes in the yard, and it's sleeting so they probably aren't going to start working today. Hopefully I can find a route for the people putting in a new water line to make it to the back door on Friday.

It could be much worse of a mess, but.. sheesh

lately instead of being terrified of owning a 110-year-old house I have been relieved - if it's still intact like it is after that long it'll probably be ok under my tenure

― marcos

our house was built in 1920, before they put in the dams on the river. so if we get a flood, the basement will be flooded, but the house itself should be fine since it's built about 3 feet above ground level

I was specifically thinking about this after reading abt the Kauai floods

frantically cleaning before the BPO in an hour. It probably doesn't change anything but my mental state, but it is the ritual one must perform for the anxiety gods.

xpost our apartment in Chile is on the 10th floor. I worry a tad bit whenever I can feel an earthquake (5, 6's usually) but I figure since it's still standing after all the 7's and 8's, we'll be ok.

those chilean engineers are something else, they build differently there right

A lot of rebar and concrete? I don't know. I sometimes wonder why we know so many architects here and then I am like...oh yeah.

The tallest building in Latin America is a couple of blocks from where I live and when there have been 7s and 8s I think the damage has always been minimal (stuff falling off walls).

you live in providencia? santiago is a pleasant city imo

Yep. It's an ok city. Outside of Santiago is much more interesting.

brb coming over

getting a new roof and the house painted this summer so wish me luck with ocntractors

spent 1 hour cleaning up and reorganizing a storage space that the realtor never even looked at

I've only ever owned places that were built in the 1800s. sturdy as anything (except the twirly bits on the outside that are prone to falling off I guess). When I moved to sf I realised how many ppl live in what are essentially wooden sheds :-p

spent 1 hour cleaning up and reorganizing a storage space that the realtor never even looked at"

WHy didnt you say DONT YOU WANNA LOOK IN HERE!?!?!