Buying A House: C or D?

Kind of stunning how much $$$ we are spending on a house we are leaving.

Thank god we are just dealing with renting on the other end. God help those who have various selling/buying contingencies happening.

Also lol that caek is fleeing where I am moving.

ILX house swap?

q, our apt is up for sale as of a week now.

we are moving 1 mile away to a house and putting our condo up for sale shortly.

the house has a demo'd kitchen. we need to put a cheap oven in to make it count as 'functionally a kitchen'.

before we sold our old house we put in a new range and range hood, removed carpet and installed new flooring throughout, and had the exterior and interior repainted ... we more than recovered those costs on the sale, but at the time our reaction was, "Why didn't we do all this when we could have enjoyed it ourselves?"

we just painted it all and cleaned. our first house we sold we asked the realtor about making some bigger changes for sale but he was like don't bother because people here reno so much it would likely be thrown out anyway. which i get too because i am super particular about stuff like counters and tiles.

Did you empty it out for showing or sell with your stuff still inside?

our first house we kept stuff inside but just made it more "staged." Which is annoying to constantly needing to hide toiletries and stuff like bathmats. My apartment right now, friends were renting from me and so it's completely empty now which is not ideal for selling but whate'er.

is it generally wise to have things staged for walk through? even for a place with small rooms?

i used my realtor multiple times now and he always said it's so that in pics buyers can get more of an idea about room dimensions and possibilities. as long as the furniture is presentable and one has decluttered. I think it depends on the market though. This is in a city, so you try to attract the buyers that would be most likely to purchase your place. Like our one house he totally wanted to put my roommate's cello in the corner and one of my quilts against the sofa.

xp

we were lucky enough to be able to move out before the sale, so we focused on cleaning the hell out of the old place ... we did everything we could ourselves and then had a cleaning service come in ... I think it showed better empty than it would have staged because it looked much bigger with nothing in it

this was in 2008 so I don't think online listings/photos were as much of a deal then, at least in our smallish market

for physically showing a place with stuff still in it, staging is essential, at least to the extent of having things ultra-tidy and stashing away personal items and distracting decor

is it generally wise to have things staged for walk through? even for a place with small rooms?

it depends how common this is in your local market. if you don't do it in southern california people think you're an animal and your house is a meth lab. there's an expected look. it's less common in the NE USA as far as i can tell. but assuming it's common in your local market, you'll get more interest if you do. whether that translates to a higher sale price is another matter

thanks all. leaning toward leaving some furniture/plants for staging, but not all. will remove redundant shelves/cabinets to show that the place is potentially bigger than how we lived in it.

My house was mostly empty but there were a few "staging items" - like a rug or chair here and there. There was one little loveseat in the living room, so you could kind of vaguely imagine what the house would like like if it had furniture. But if any realistically-sized furniture had been in the house, one would have been able to see just how small and cramped things would be. (And, newsflash, how small and cramped things currently are).

On the "whether to renovate" it really does depend. If (as in my case) the likeliest scenario is a developer ripping the whole thing down and putting a McMansion in its place, then don't bother fixing anything. If the likeliest scenario is a young family who wants to make it thir home, I'd act very differently.

Where is yr place? Like general idea?

Xp to SG

it is up State a few blocks from the mission, but not directly off of State

lol how much

my ilx email don't work no mas otherwise i'd say hmu there. don't answer if you don't want to/prvacy

have any email addys created for polls?

I wld like to know more too! But my webmail is also dead.

Also if you have any leads on rentals, we will probably land in the Nov/Dec timeframe.

I need to join slack. I will post more there if truly interested after/if we actually close on the house.

ILX: the place to find spouses, houses

I fixed the dryer!

It was way harder than I thought but I did it. The main thing was that the bolt that held the roller axle in place was rusted on. Took me a long time to figure out a way to get enough force to break it while also gripping the bolt at an awkward angle with not much room.

anybody test black mastic for asbestos? we've a real money pit on our hands.

> I fixed the dryer!

repairing things

Sign went up yesterday and now random people are stopping by to take pictures of the house.

xp Sufjan -- isn't the process to take a sample and send it to a testing lab? The org I work for recently did this on a building we are working on -- it cost us $35.

thanks, sarahell. Been reading more about it and I believe you are correct. You can't tell from black adhesive color alone. Good news is it's also reasonably safe after you cover it up with a new floor. $35 not too bad! Would make things more danherous and expensive if we wanted to route any gas lines on the slab away from an exterior wall

iirc mastic is one of the safer asbestos containing materials bc of its inherent encapsulting properties

Yes, I agree. Mostly worried about the kids walking on it a bunch, which might free some fibers. Also, if we needed to channel the slab for a gas line to cross a doorway to an interior wall. We are leaning toward keeping the water and oven stuff by their already existing hookups to avoid headache. Everybody wants to sell you on an open design with a funtional kitchen island

I don't want to fuck around and end up the subject of mockery on the kitchen island thread.

worst part about this process is i can't sleep. I jokingly complain about our cat, who is an anxious runt leaving a ridiculous number of litterbox deposits. But i'm learning i too am ananxious runt.

wait but im not shitting a lot. or especially in a litterbox. i just can't sleep.

Bathroom leak ;_; ;_; ;_;

Turns out the bathroom reno was shitty and there's no waterproofing under the shower tile and the second showerhead (handheld) has been causing a leak for a long time. The owner didn't fix it, he just redid the sheetrock to hide it. May wind up having to retile the shower which means might as well just redo the bathroom about 5 years sooner than i was hoping to (didn't like it but thought we could live with it).

Boo!

I hate bathrooms

we should all bathe in lakes or streams

even the humble toilet seems to fail in the most obvious but still annoying ways

we should all bathe in lakes or streams

For three years, the nascent Talking Heads lived in a loft with no bath or shower; they would just go over to friends' houses and, after a decent social interval, just ask "hey, do you mind if I take a shower?"

Neddy Merrill of showers

For three years, the nascent Talking Heads lived in a loft with no bath or shower; they would just go over to friends' houses and, after a decent social interval, just ask "hey, do you mind if I take a shower?"

I feel like at some point it would be the friend asking "hey, do you mind taking a shower?"

Or "thanks for stopping by so i can complain about my problems. first, and this one is the least of it, but my shower broke. Have a seat. Shall i open a bottle of pepsi?" Etc.

I spent a good six months of my life bathing only in the river near our place, back when we lived off-grid.

Similar thing with our bathroom, man alive— whoever had done the reno before hadn't connected the shower properly to the main, so whenever we took showers for the first few weeks, water was spraying into the walls and ceiling. A real treat.

Movers are coming next week, after which we will be living with a bunch of staging shit. Gonna feel weird.

where are you moving to again?

Santa Barbara