Buying A House: C or D?

d) please insert a comma after 'open plan' above.

accepting an offer on your place before find another place to move is not the best idea.

It's better than getting another place before an offer has been made on your first place.

ledge, I can't quite picture what you're talking about.

But I did find this atrocity in a search for "Open Plan" "Curved Wall":

https://i.imgur.com/YTvlD4d.png

Video

ok imagine that's the whole ground floor (about 4 room's worth) and the curved wall goes all the way to the ceiling and the other wall, completely enclosing one corner, with a door in. and it was painted blue iirc. i've gotta find it again...

very nice of them to put in a partial wall so you can't quite see the toilet from the bed

It's better than getting another place before an offer has been made on your first place.

not if you sort of agreed the buyers could move in fairly quickly... or: TS: paying for two houses vs. paying storage costs and 2x moving costs and having to live with the in-laws.

Most of the houses on my block are based on slight variations of the same 1938-40 floor plan. It's neat to go to other people's houses and see how they treated the little idiosyncracies that vex us.

There's a comically teeny bedroom (teeny by current first-world 'burb standards anyway), about 6.5x7 feet. Half of my friends have closets bigger than that. Perversely, the door opens inward. (Ours is my son's bedroom, at least until he decides he's jealous of his sister's more generously-sized room, then we will need to work something out.)

Anyway when houses in my 'hood are on the market, I get a kick out of seeing horribly fisheyed pictures of that room. Somebody had it staged as a nursery, and in the photo the crib looks like an isosceles triangle.

^ My old neighborhood was like that too. Took me awhile to figure out why my hallway was so dark and cramped compared to my neighbors until it dawned on me that, oh, I've got two closets there that were added after it was built.

TS: paying for two houses vs. paying storage costs and 2x moving costs and having to live with the in-laws.

I dunno, which side has drinking the arsenic? I'd probably pick that one.

I put my stuff in storage and subletted for 6 months between homes we did the move into a storage unit ourselves the first time, so only paid mover costs really once). But It made sense financially and was less stress about finding a new place to live. And I subletted in a neighborhood I had always wanted to live in so it was fun.

I don't understand why that curved wall above is so thick.

I think just so it matches the width of the seat/laundry hamper at the end of it?

https://i.imgur.com/fdx8ZFF.png

(And boy did I have a much different reaction the first second I saw that.)

I wrote out like 8 different reactions. I don't know. Stay in school kids.

My apartment right now has an exposed bathtub/shower, toilet around the corner but viewable from the sink, closet. The guy who designed it/renovated it wanted it to be like a hotel bathroom. It works for us because we don't need much private/private time and I like to sit in the bath and socialize (ha).

Selling house & moving out:

a) leave in picture hooks, screws, etc
ii) take them out, leave holes
3) take them out, fill in holes

a, ii or 3?

3 is generally the accepted practice, as it's unlikely the new residents will want to hang stuff in the exact same place.

A friend said when he left an apartment once he patched the holes with toothpaste.

Sometimes it's in the contract about the condition of the walls when you leave the house and too many holes. And also, for when they do the walkthrough the day before.

yeah nothing in the contract that I've seen. walkthrough, whassat? our buyer is a pushy bugger who's basically making us homeless so i shouldn't give a shit but i'll probably be a sucker and do the right thing.

Option 3

Usually before the closing date, like the day before or whatever, the buyers do a walkthrough of the house to make sure nothing has materially changed.

But that is the US, maybe other countries are different.

what happens if things have changed? renegotiate? sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

I would think it depends on the severity and the contract. You can really negotiate anything into the contract. Like we didn't want to deal with removing the carpets in a place so we put that into the contract that it all had to be removed. If it hadn't been removed during the walkthrough, we probably would've delayed or asked for a concession.

Starburst fruit twists are best concessions if you can manage

hot tamales imo

the walkthrough for me was mostly “is all of the stuff moved out, they didn’t fuck up the built-in things or take the appliances that were supposed to stay”

In an actual house nail-sized holes are insanely trivial unless it’s a two year old place and you’re evaluating it like a barely-used car still on warranty

agree w that

If it’s a two year old house you need to worry about it falling down when the previous owners slam the door and run away. Modern building is rubbish, everyone I know whose moves into a new or nearly new house across three continents has had no end of issues with shitty workmanship, poor design and crappy materials. My brother is moving out after 2 years in a new place as they are sick of fixing stuff that wasn’t done properly in the first place.

Every house I’ve lived in has been riddled with nail holes and picture hangers and I’ve personally made no effort to patch any of these before I moved out of them. It’s just part of the deal in old houses.

The newest place I’ve ever lived was built in 1963 and I find it reassuring to know that any major things have settled or been fixed long before I lived there. My current place is from 1938 and is made of concrete block; even if the inside burned out I imagine the exterior shell would be totally unscathed

our new house was built in 1908 and has issues that need to be addressed (particularly the chimney which appears to be on its last legs) and i want to thank marcos bc this comment has given me a lot of comfort recently:

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

also another vote for wtf who bothers closing up nail holes???

oh god the English house-buying system is ridiculous as everything takes SOOO LONG

haven't bought a house for 17 years, is there a SYSTEM now?

If ringing & emailing your solicitor every day until they deign to talk to you is a system then sure.

We went from offer to completion in 65 days which is apparently something of a record, is it quicker elsewhere? God knows what takes so long, unless you're buying in birmingham where the local searches take seven weeks :(

I think when my partner bought this year it was offer to closing in about 5 weeks?

i’d rather holes be left alone tbh—when i moved in i could decide rather to reuse them or just patch them myself and know that i was doing it correctly.

*whether to reuse

if only I was just dealing nail holes. If you sold it "as is" I wouldn't bother.

What else are you all leaving behind?

https://i.imgur.com/SWP9toe.png

Christian babies

oh god the English house-buying system is ridiculous as everything takes SOOO LONG

― kinder, Friday, 6 July 2018 12:22 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I’m selling my london flat right now and it’s taken 6 months to unpick the feudal freehold/leasehold tangle to the satisfaction of the buyers.

Yeah selling our flat was a terrible experience

Modern building is rubbish, everyone I know whose moves into a new or nearly new house across three continents has had no end of issues with shitty workmanship, poor design and crappy materials.

That's so true! Is building high quality houses really a lost art?

I don't know if it's like this everywhere, but around here the difference between pre and post WWII houses is crazy. Everything just went to shit

It is possible to get a new house built well, but you have to be involved, commodity builders just don’t give a fuck.

Especially as many are building for buy to let landlords who equally don’t give a fuck. We’ve just tried to get the bathroom regrouped and sealed by ge landlord because water is deep behind the tiles and into the walls and floor. The landlord just declined to do it after getting the quote, it’s a few hundred dollars. There will be a much more expensive expensive rot problem in a few years.

Oh well we did our duty as tenants to report it now it’s his problem. In the mean time the balcony got hit by a truck again, which means more water is getting into the balcony woodwork - more rot to come.

Plywood is worse now but much safer. Drywall is better now than 50 years ago. Contemporary lumber is predictably much worse. Whenever possible I go to the architectural salvage yard to pick up lumber for my projects.

Advanced modern techniques for creating energy efficient homes are the best they’ve ever been, but builders have to be conscientious and said methods and materials in order for them to actually work.

I want to hear about more yard upkeep shakedowns.

I don't know if it's like this everywhere, but around here the difference between pre and post WWII houses is crazy. Everything just went to shit

― Dan I.

the shitty pre-wwii houses aren't around anymore for comparison.

my pre-WWII house is way sturdier, but I sometimes envy the room sizes and storage space of newer houses

I envy modern 2x6 framing that allows you to hide DWV pipes inside the walls.

UK ILXORS ONLY should i tip the removal guys?

Oh yeah, true point about survival bias arising from the shitty older houses being long gone by now