Buying A House: C or D?

so the son came over and talked to me directly (he had previously run this whole scheme past my wife prior) and told me that my trees were my responsibility, and I need to make it right with his family. As soon as I balked he started to get angry so I'm saying things like "look I want to be good neighbors here but that's not how it works at all."

"well if you want to be a good neighbor then you need to show me a good faith love offering, or you can bring your own crew over here every four months to clean out my mother's gutters, because she shouldn't have to"

"she doesn't have to. you don't have to pick up anything out of your backyard, man."

"that's right, because it's your tree and your responsibility"

"I'm not paying you to clean your own yard"

and on and on it went until we both walked away shaking our heads. good god. I'm going to ignore the whole thing and see what happens.

Did he really say "good faith love offering"? Are you the sole owner of trees in the neighborhood?

“Good faith offering”, “love offering” and “neighborly contribution” were all phrases he employed.

“If these trees weren’t here my mother’s gutters wouldn’t be clogged”

“If there were no trees anywhere no one would have to pick up any leaves”

“I’m not talking about all trees, I’m talking about your trees”

and so on

I had a neighbor who on the first day I moved in, warned me not to park on the street in front of my own house.

Our street was on an incline. He said that whenever a car was parked there, and it rained, the water would wash down the curb, hit the tire, and somehow ramp out of the curb and into the next yard below mine. Making a mess, I guess, since that yard was already downhill from the street.

I told him I'd keep an eye on it as a courtesy, but hey, the only thing more public than he street was the rain itself.

I didn't need to park on the street anyway because I had my own driveway,. But at least twice, he or his wife asked friends who were visiting to move their cars. Once, I came home at two in the morning with a friend who had parked her car there. Yeah, it was raining. As we got out, through the darkness and the rain, I could hear the dude yelling from his porch, "Ahhhh, see what it's doing?"

Go sue the Lord, dude, I wanted to tell him.

xpost I don't know which subreddit the tree controversy belongs in but I feel like it wouldn't be out of place on the Choosing Beggars one. He's trying to appeal to you being a good guy and wearing you down. He should do a forensic analysis of everything stuck in his mom's gutter.

I would happily call bullshit on his claims of cleaning her gutters even twice yearly. In 7 years I have never seen the guy on a ladder for any reason.

thinking about this tree son vexes me

you should definitely come up with things to charge him for, though. does your tree shade the neighbor’s house at all? charge for the savings on air conditioning they’re realizing in the summer.

I have a beautiful Japanese maple in the backyard that he acknowledges is “cool, because it gives shade”. I did not seize the opportunity to hand him an invoice.

good god. i am so sorry you have to deal with this twerp.

though it does sound like these phrases he's using, like "good faith offering" or what the fuck ever, mean that he understands the law isn't on his side. he's probably looked it up during one of his family stewing-in-it sessions.

also “token of your esteem”

mate

Pay nothing for the trees you like, charge for the ones you don’t! Act now!

I asked him why we’re only hearing about this now after living next to his parents for 7 years.

“It just occurred to me”

...

should I keep updating this madness or no? Sorry if I’m boring everyone.

"It just occurred to me that you're trespassing"

I would have called the cops on this fuck by now

should I keep updating this madness or no? Sorry if I’m boring everyone.

This is better than my NextDoor group. Keep it up.

I live for these types of squabbles. Keep updating.

I'd start blowing my leaves into his yard.

When my latest neighbors moved in they kept their dog in the back yard 24/7 and it was breaking out constantly, shitting in my yard and tearing up my trash so I started throwing it all in their yard. Dog situation was quickly resolved, she's now an indoor/outdoor.

Just visited friends in the suburbs for the first time since they moved out there about 1.5 years ago--they are really the classic house-poor family. They bought a 3000 square-foot house and their taxes are 19,000/year. Granted they have four kids and I guess 19k/year is a pretty good deal for a top public school for four kids. But they have almost no furniture.

Damn. $19k.

Yeah, that's the NYC metro for you. And now you can't even deduct most of it as far as I understand, under the trump plan, which was specifically designed to fuck states like NY.

My last two visits to people who own houses have kind of given me cold feet on owning a house. Maybe I'll just stay in my nice cheap coop where there is virtually no chance of a major repair that I'm on the hook for. The worst thing that can probably happen to me that isn't covered by the building or insurance is needing a new kitchen appliance.

Found a 7,500-SF house on the golf course, at the end of a peninsula. Bought in 2013 for $1.67 million.

Taxes last year were $17,000.

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

xpost, are they in westchester? I found it almost impossible to go on a long vacation worry free when owning a house. I have an apartment that I left for 2 months and it was a completely different feeling.

Sounds like Large Adult Son is not the homeowner next door, so why on Earth does he think he’s got any business talking to you, Sparkle? Thousand-dollar bet his mother doesn’t know he’s pulling this crap with her neighbours. Write to her, maybe?

This tree business is amazing but also giving me anxiety.

Small update if anyone cares: we successfully cancelled our pmi, and the bpo document was also cool to get. So mh otm basically.

xp Long Island

I have no idea what I said re: that but I very cautiously accept this endorsement *looks around nervously*

Re: tree - no further discussion, no contact, no response. Anything else is just legitimising this guy trying to shake you down. Zero response is the only way to shut such people off. It's not his business, but he thinks he is negotiating with you when in fact he's not.

tree stuff is hilarious keep posting

starting to get the_fear about the amount of reno work we’re going to have to do 😬

what are property taxes? Is it like 'council tax' in the UK which is supposed to pay for rubbish removal, police, fire etc? Varies from council (region) to council but generally the bigger the house the bigger the tax. But it's only like £2-3k max per year for most normal people even in big family houses.

lol yes it is a bit like that. keep in mind the UK is practically alone in having virtually zero property tax, which is one reason its economy is so completely fucked up. houses become investments rather than places to live because the tax situation on them is so attractive.

we have 'stamp duty' which is a one-off tax when you buy a property. Plus capital gains taxes which apply (or are meant to apply) to any assets that aren't your primary residents. But nothing ongoing. So this $19k property tax, you just pay that monthly or whatever? Does it factor into the amount a mortgage lender will give you?

I actually don't know what the normal arrangement is, I think technically it's due at the end of the year but people often have escrow accounts with their banks so they can pay into it monthly? But I live in a coop apartment which is a different situation -- the taxes are assessed on the building rather than the apartment and my share of taxes is included in my monthly coop fees.

The big drawback of the system is that in most places property taxes are what funds public schools, so it de facto gives wealthier areas much better-funded schools. Of course that's less of a problem in a municipality that has a wide variety of property sizes and values rather than one that has all large lot single family homes, and there are some municipalities where good zoning laws and affordable housing construction gives lower income people the opportunity to attend better funded schools.

yeah bank escrow is the normal approach. it’s just part of my monthly mortgage payment.

in nyc I think I got billed twice a year from the city for property taxes.

Yeah, mortgage, tax, and homeowners insurance are all folded into one payment by the bank nice and easy like. While I doubt I'll live here long enough to pay the house down to $0, juggling tax and insurance payments by themselves would be an acceptable trade for no more mortgage.

Ah, I see, some banks do the escrow thing so all your payments are together. I have never used this option? I guess. My insurance and taxes were always separate except for my co-op apartment (just separate insurance for the interior of the apartment).

dang in the last dumb usa place I lived our property taxes were like $5k & people were balking at that when we tried to sell it. of course this was in corny nowheresville & people were like "scared" of the high school (that DFW attended so I dunno I don't think it was that bad? we left before our kids went to hs). but $19k a year? now I sorta get why people would be all like "my kid goes to private school so I don't want to play taxes". even though that's a social evil.

here we pay like 250 € a year for our "taxe d'habitation" but I think that's being suppressed in the near future as a reform of Macron's ?

$19K a year is probably on a very expensive house. Property taxes are pretty minimal -- per this chart

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-property-taxes/11585/

it looks like it's usually under $3K unless you live in one of a few high-tax states or have a very expensive house.

These taxes sound pretty low to me. In most markets, real estate appreciates very nicely in the long term, so people with enough capital to buy a house have access to an investment vehicle that generates profit with no work at all, and on which you pay -- get this -- zero tax on the first $250,000 of profit when you sell.

My county/city property tax combined for 2017 was $392.12.

My tax on my house in Brooklyn was I think $2500 a year but it tends to be lower in the city because of density and I had a small footprint. People move out of the city and pay those high taxes because the public schools are "better". I don't know since i don't have kids, but I am fine paying taxes for schools.

I bought in a part of Atlanta that's getting better each year, but is still slow/resistant to gentrification. That means the people who live here want to be here and aren't just flipping houses and moving on to the next hot neighborhood. The downside is that there's not a lot of cool stuff nearby and I have to drive into Atlanta proper for that, but the major upside is that I can afford to actually live within spitting distance of a major metropolitan area.

ours are $5200 per year, up from $4400 or so per year at the condo we lived in before this house. DC has really low property taxes, certainly lower than Maryland or Virginia, everybody in the suburbs assumes the opposite of course.

probably 2500-3000 a year here in Oregon, of course that's partly because of a property tax limitation ballot measure passed in the 90's that has totally fucked over the schools

Uh my wife tells me it was more like $7k in urblanda, ok I see why buyers were upset. That’s about how much in debt the bank « forgave » on our short sale.

When I buy a flat here it’ll probably cost a mil so we’re uh saving I guess.

$19K a year is probably on a very expensive house.

Not by NY metro standards. I think it's in the $600-700k range.

I was just told by my spouse that our apt here in Chile, the property tax is about $1000usd for the apt and parking space, paid separate from building maintenance.

my area generally has higher property taxes per square foot in the city, partially due to suburban leeching of resources and various political machinations. about $3500/year

Re: tree - no further discussion, no contact, no response. Anything else is just legitimising this guy trying to shake you down. Zero response is the only way to shut such people off. It's not his business, but he thinks he is negotiating with you when in fact he's not.

this is my preferred approach. What I think we'll end up doing is hiring a licensed arborist to prune all the trees on our lot, and give us some background data on rate of growth, maintenance etc. We want to make sure we are "reasonably maintaining" the trees by the standards of the law in case the neighbors want to proceed to get litigious with whatever fictions they cook up next.

Beyond that I'm going to make sure not to talk to them any more than is absolutely necessary.

What a fucking un-neighborly thing to do, it really stinks the more I think about it.