Buying A House: C or D?

Is there a “Selling a house: C or D?” thread?

Update: the bank has said they'll give us some money if they like the home that we wanna buy.

Er, just have to find the home now.

Same, except contracts are with our solicitor

Its all a bit handy, dont like it

sellers of a place we were buying have decided, two months after we made our offer, that they don't want to sell after all. Cheers!

Oof

part of the fun

yeah we're looking at it that way, we'll get somewhere better. Obviously I hope the sellers rot in hell.

maybe their home will just rot

Now fully approved for mortgage, contracts are back with seller

As long as they manage to finish building this thing in the next four months it looks like a safe bet, this

Have we any threads about living in a country town have we

Moving out of Dublin going to be a change?

Well its been a year of change, and we're both from rural areas so this is going to be an in-between rly

WFH looks like it'll be an option for 2-3 days for each of us even after all this, so there'll still be the few days in dub each week (and still close enough to drive in in less than an hour)

fuck that sounds ideal dmac!

growing up rural & hating every second i thought I would never want to go back to it, or be nostalgic for wide open spaces but in my old age i realize its a life i understand so much bettet

Five mins walk to what ilxors would def call a village but counts as a decent town centre here, it aint a return to our roots or anything.

Going from living in a 1 bed and 1 other room serving as kitchen/living/utility apt with people on three poorly insulated sides to a four bed modern semi-d prob by far a bigger change. I can live with that tbh

sounds good to me; congrats!

Cheers!

That sounds like it could be the best of all worlds. Not sure if semi-d means you will have to take care of a yard, but that can be fun (or not) if you haven't had to in a while. Good luck!

congrats! how is the fishing situation?

Yard (back garden, really) will be rendered as low maintenance as suits the wife, ill not be touching it

If the fishing situation is not some property wheeler dealer code then im am im afraid unaware of even so much as a river running through the place but this was not on our priorities

oh, i am thinking about how i wish the entire last entire year i had a place to go fishing or crabbing. I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE SAME.

I do my crabbing online tbh

Yaaaaaay our very first HITCH

FFS

In 2018 my wife and I moved from London (26 years) to a small village in Norfolk, we wanted to own a place outright and the pace of life in London was too much for my other half, she's recovering from a brain hemorrhage, it's about 25 mins from Norwich but the place is super quiet.

We live right in the centre opposite the church, it's interesting giving up some of the extra sense of mindful-ness I used to have to carry in London, where ppl are much less friendly or talkative and possibly more likely to rip you off in some way. Ppl up here are generaly kinder and more inclined to pass the time of day with strangers.

Fishing is decent up here (I'm told) lotsa mere action.

M3restan

but can you kick a ball in the street?

I long to return to small-town life. Philadelphia is a great city, especially in that it's one of the only affordable major metros one would actually want to live in in the US, but I desire a yard and some good nature nearby.

Table, you can have my yard, I'm tired of it.

...

Actually semi-seriously we are likely to sell our house soon, and buy a different one. For various reasons it won't be a simple transaction.

1. I mostly like the house despite its quirks. My wife... doesn't. The past year or so of having us all cooped up together has made it feel pretty claustrophobic. Cramped, dated, not in a good state of repair.

2. Renovating it to match modern expectations (like, a functional kitchen, a master bathroom, and decently-sized bedrooms) is just not feasible. Even if I could afford it (which I can't), the disruption of life while said renovations take place would be difficult in the extreme.

3. The value of the property (very desirable location and large lot) is 8 or 9 times the value of the house.

4. Therefore, I am tempted by the idea of selling it more or less as-is, for cash, to someone who will immediately gut and remodel it.

5. Given #4, is it even worth cleaning and painting and fixing things? With children and pets and -argh- LIFE going on, I'm not sure how we could do the traditional staging/showing rigamarole. We have 20 years worth of accumulated stuff, just getting to "staged" is itself a herculean effort, let alone the stress of living like that for an extended period.

6. Even if we got to a show-able state, people will notice the tiny kitchen, insultingly small rooms, and the cracks that I'm just not able to fix.

Maybe there's somewhere in between: just enough cosmetic fixes to make it look like a plausible place to live, with the almost-certain knowledge that the likely buyer will rip it all up and start again.

not an expert but if you're in an area with older homes where gut remodels are common i wouldn't do much to prep it for sale. there are two active gut remodels on my street right now and no one moved into them before work began.

Yeah, of the four houses on my block, two have been completely redone.

The temptation is strong, although it potentially means leaving an awful lot of money on the theoretical table. Like, I have received an online cash offer that is a hundred thousand quatloos below the "zestimate," but given all the costs involved in fixing things I suspect it may work out about the same.

5. Given #4, is it even worth cleaning and painting and fixing things?

probably not, but this depends on the location (expecations of curb appeal, how hot the market is) but ask a couple of local realtors for their take on this.

we have to basically gut the downstairs of the home we're living in. there's a 221 sq foot guest quarters. If we can make it into a "tiny home", maybe we can live there during renovations.

caek, you speak truth. Before I accept a lowball as-is offer I fully intend to get the opinion of some agents who are hip to the scene

as the kids say

if you're going to lose the use of multiple rooms including bathrooms and kitchen then i would be (very) surprised if you make enough profit doing it yourself to pay for 6-12 months of hell. especially if your spouse is keen to get out for other reasons!

it might makes sense to "self-flip" if there are no regular buyers for the unrenovated property and there isn't much of a community of professional flippers. where we live neither of those things are true.

flippers have somewhere else to live, the liquid cash to pay for the improvements, a GC/crew on hand to do the work, and they know exactly what the market likes. that's how they make a profit even though they have to pay a mortgage on an uninhabited property for a year. they're mostly inhuman scum, but they know what they're doing. i'm skeptical it's something with family obligations can just figure out evenings and weekends.

Yaaaaaay our very first HITCH

FFS

― cpt otm (darraghmac), Monday, 8 February 2021 13:27 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not a major hitch, signing contracts tomorrow iirc

Delighted for ye.

good luck darraghfolks

Nice detail

Our solicitor is so old school that he saw the entity known as mrs macs surname differed to mine and put us down as unmarried and prepared all docs as same without thinking to ask once in all the interactions

Have to locate marriage cert now but I remembered the date at least when put on the spot

Ahh love it. Good detail that.

Reminds me of going to see properties with my partner, realtors would try to find out if they should be pitching to me as the "wife" while I tried to stay out of it.

Realtor: "So you're married."
Me: "No."
Them: "So...you'll be living together?"
Me: "Nope!"
Them: "So...it's not serious?"
lol

We weren't married when we bought, but we're gay, so that's more normal or something lol. Also our realtor was one of the stupidest people I've ever encountered in my entire life.

We have 20 years worth of accumulated stuff, just getting to "staged" is itself a herculean effort, let alone the stress of living like that for an extended period.

As someone who has done this a few times, it's worth the effort not in terms of increased sale price but as a way of getting rid of a ton of junk before you have to pack it all up and move it to a new house

Them: "So...it's not serious?"

obviously buying property together is a fun idea for a second date activity

Iirc that conversation might have been with this person?

https://images.homesconnect.com/AccountData/150274463/stacybresciaspreerPhoto__9dd2e4da.jpg

When do you think that pic was taken? 1990?

how many bedrooms are in that hairdo?

without thinking to ask once in all the interactions

From experience, maybe sort of expect that from now on...
Also if you ask for a list of what is left for you to do, they are legally obliged* to only tell you the next thing and not the 10 other things after that.

*I can only surmise

So...it's not serious?

Dying here

I love when people get to this stage of asking me about either my current or origin story tbh, and believe me we always get to this stage

girlfriend in a mortgage I know, I know...

girlfriend in a дома

looking for an apartment in brooklyn is an existential crisis

congrats darragh