Buying A House: C or D?

i don't think normal apts will go down that drastically (in nyc).

I absolutely expect my apartment value to go down post-pandemic. I also think it rose an exaggerated and unsustainable amount since I bought it. I think I will still be able to sell it for a modest profit on what I bought it in 2013.

xpost we had to live in our house while doing construction mostly ourselves, living with constant dust from sanding, drywall, floors for a year. It seems like I posted now expired pics from it above, 14 yrs ago. I remember sleeping on mattresses with plastic still on them and spending xmas sanding the walls where we took off molding because my mom was coming to visit and i was trying to make it look somewhat presentable. I don't ever want to buy a fixer upper ever again, esp in ny. Once was enough.

nyc places always seem unsustainable price wise. I don't know, I am supposed to sell my place that I bought in 2014, like right now. It looks like it will be more near the end of summer now. I don't really think there will be a post-pandemic anytime soon and I don't really want to wait. It may stay on the market longer but I am figuring it may go for like 5-8% less than it would've last year. shrug emoji.

good luck on the offer!

not in nyc but when this first started i thought property values would tank and now i'm much less sure about that. for people that can afford it this situation seems to underscore the value of having your own place.

it might loosen up a bit too if airbnb places are sold off in the same timespan. But i stopped following how much that still affects ny as opposed to some other areas.

My bigger concern than prices is time -- my apt is in a coop, and (1) it could take a while for them to even start allowing showings again and (2) coops just take longer to sell (20% down required, approval process, etc.). It's in a great school district but school is up in the air so that's a weird factor. Hence we were willing to buy something that needed some work, because it meant it was plausible to buy without selling.

yeah, my current place is a coop. I hate coops.

oh, and some work won't be bad! our 1st place in blyn was in pretty bad shape when we got it. basically everything was changed/fixed.

What I learned today that gave me some peace is that the roof has at least a few years left, the gas boiler doesn't need replacing, and the wiring is good and not that old, and nothing else dramatic jumped out at the contractor except for some floor rot in a half bath that will be the seller's responsibility.

What we need/want to do in the short term: replace the electrical box, replace the water heater, paint the exterior, landscaping to make the backyard usable, some interior paint, maybe random cosmetic odds and ends, rip out or paint the weird wood walls in one room, maybe put in a door on that room (there's a doorway), add a small patio

What we'd like to do longer term: install HVAC or ductless AC (right now it has steam radiators which I'm ok with, but wall and window AC which I'd prefer not), add another full bathroom, re-do the fugly existing full and half bathroom (institutional pink and blue like a doctor's office bathroom), move the laundry to the basement (hookup is already there), replace the interior doors, finish the basement, maybe extend the upper level over the garage to create larger bedrooms, maybe break the wall between the house and half of the garage to create a larger art studio space, or else move the art studio into half the garage and convert the other room into a guest room/office.

The plan is to do the immediate stuff with current funds and then do the longer term stuff based in part on how much money we get for our apt.

Work is almost always cheaper than the markup on the work when you buy a fresh flip. The most important things to have right on move-in are the floors, ducts, and plumbing.

I’ll never understand people who pay asking price because of shit like backsplashes and appliances.

it is such a waste when people choose terrible kitchen and bathroom fixtures soley for resale purposes.

Yeah that was very much part of my thinking in targeting this house, getting to choose non shitty stuff

install HVAC or ductless AC (right now it has steam radiators which I'm ok with, but wall and window AC which I'd prefer not)

If you are going to add traditional HVAC ductwork, I would highly recommend (if you can swing it) also converting from the steam radiators to a hot water heat system. You do this by converting the gas-fired steam boiler to gas-fired water boiler and then adding a hot water coil to your HVAC system, so that your heat comes out of the HVAC ducts. We did this and it has some great benefits: (1) you get to eliminate all the bulky steam radiators, which surprisingly gives you more room; and (2) hot water heat is much more efficient (and thus cheaper) than steam because you are only heating the boiler to 160-190 rather than 220. The only real disadvantage other than initial cost is that the forced hot air is drier than steam radiator heat.

Oh shit, that is actually a brilliant idea. The house is not big and the radiators cause a lot of layout problems.

steam radiators are so terrible. i have never lived anywhere where they were mostly quiet. we just completely stopped leaving them on at night because you wouldn't be able to sleep otherwise. and now i am so used to sleeping in the cold. ugh, get them out if you can.

Oh my god I love love love radiators, u guys are crazy

Mine make 0 noise tbf

Our steam radiators mostly just stopped working, so we had like 2 or 3 radiators heating an old 1100sf house (with no insulation, lol). Our gas bills would swing from less than $50/mo over the summer to like $1500/mo in the dead of winter. I should have just shoveled $1 bills into the boiler.

maybe we just couldn't find the right people, but no one ever seemed to know how to service/fix our steam radiators.

after a night with steam radiators, as a friend memorably put it once, you're pulling statues out of your nose

You Yankees.

Get you a gas floor furnace and install these bad boys.

https://i.imgur.com/23UBELP.jpg

At least once every two years, my grandfather would remove the grate for cleaning and my grandmother would come through the hallway and fall right in.

ohhh, i lived in a house in virginia that had that. it worked well.

we have radiant floor heating in our current place. i think it sucks. we never turn it on. i have a hot water bottle and a lot of quilts.

We went with mini split AC in our (small) bungalow. Love it, and I wouldn't want to switch heat from radiators to forced air. Forced air can be noisy, dry air, just much prefer the quality of heat from radiators (I know steam radiators can have noise issues of their own vs. hot water). And the mini split can provide heat if it's a cold day and you don't want to fire up the furnace/boiler.

if you're doing a full hvac project yes, get rid of the radiators, but steam can be made quieter and more efficient. the problem is that almost nobody knows how to work on steam systems these days.

i finally found a company that specialized in them and it made a big difference

Our 100+ year old radiators are also beautiful. At least after spouse stripped ugly industrial gray paint from them, down to the original cool bronzeish finish.

otm, and nice to sit on on a cold day.

Also, modern furnaces seem to have a lifespan of 10 years, +/-. Our 1926 boiler, original to the house, is still going strong.

My apt has nightmarishly loud steam radiators and also we don’t control the heat. I grew up with forced air so I know the dryness it causes, but you put in a humidifier and deal. On balance Id take forced air, especially given the room size and layout in this house. Radiators create a lot of furniture placement issues.

I’m also not crazy about the way those mini split A/Cs look, although still nicer than window/wall units.

i have water radiators and they’re great. they run off a combi-boiler that fits in a cabinet above the kitchen counter.

xp Yeah, the head units are v. ugly, though I'm overlooking it because they are worlds better than the old window unit we had, and super quiet.

i like those mini acs. i didn't know what they were called. I always wondered why they weren't used in the US more.

To combat dry air you can get a whole-house humidifier put in - it was a relatively inexpensive addition last time I bought a furnace.

I have definitely been in houses that have near-silent radiators, and if you have the space for them they can look very elegant, and you can also put cool-looking covers on them. The house that we made an offer on doesn't have cool-looking radiators, it has the kind that are sort of recessed into the wall/window sill. I guess we could keep them and just put stuff in front of them, but I assume that would affect both the heat circulation and could damage whatever we put in front of the radiator.

Oh sorry, they are hot water not steam.

Hmm, if the HVAC would be cooling only I'm wondering if maybe the mini-split is a better option after all. We could probably find a placement that isn't too intrusive.

Course I have to buy the house first, owner may not accept.

my apt in ny has crazy steampunk looking radiators that someone before me put in. they are flat, bronzey and have the gauges, levers and pointy exhaust thing at the top displayed.

innocent question: do you not think that property values in the NY area are likely to go down post-Pandemic?

I'm in a suburb about 30 miles outside of NYC and have been wondering if it might lift property values. I can see a scenario where fear of living in high density combined with more flexible work-at-home policies increase demand in places like this, where you have the suburban space with relatively easy access to the city. Most of my new neighbors over the last few years have been from Brooklyn, Queens, & the Bronx, and I wouldn't be surprised if this encourages that sort of move.

On the other hand unemployment, possibly reduced commercial tax base leading to higher residential tax or reduced services, etc could depress demand and balance it all out. Assuming the neighborhood stays nice I plan to be here for at least another 20 years so not overly concerned one way or the other, but curious.

(Very happy with my cast iron hot water baseboard heaters, gas boiler looks to be 50-70 years old and still running strong.)

you can put stuff in front of recessed radiators, it's not a big deal unless they're like spitting water in which case you have bigger problems.

innocent question: do you not think that property values in the NY area are likely to go down post-Pandemic?

I'm in a suburb about 30 miles outside of NYC and have been wondering if it might lift property values. I can see a scenario where fear of living in high density combined with more flexible work-at-home policies increase demand in places like this, where you have the suburban space with relatively easy access to the city. Most of my new neighbors over the last few years have been from Brooklyn, Queens, & the Bronx, and I wouldn't be surprised if this encourages that sort of move.

On the other hand unemployment, possibly reduced commercial tax base leading to higher residential tax or reduced services, etc could depress demand and balance it all out. Assuming the neighborhood stays nice I plan to be here for at least another 20 years so not overly concerned one way or the other, but curious.

(Very happy with my cast iron hot water baseboard heaters, gas boiler looks to be 50-70 years old and still running strong.)

― early rejecter, Wednesday, May 6, 2020 10:44 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, we are exactly that NYTimes cliche of the family "accelerating their move to the suburbs" -- we were already planning to do it within 1-3 years and now we are just trying to do it now. We have been having the exact same debates -- does flight to the suburbs increase property values or does economic mayhem lower them (or do the two balance each other out).

Ultimately the only answer to this is "if we find a house we like and can afford, we will buy it, and if not, we will wait and see." That's the only factor in our control. Right now inventory is ridiculously low, like 1/4 of normal according to a broker I spoke to. The reason why is clear -- anyone who is living in their house can't show it, and also may not be able to buy/move themselves. The houses we've seen have been empty. In a month or two, there is likely to be a "flood of listings" according to brokers I've spoken to. There may also be a flood of buyers at the same time. Pent up demand for selling and buying alone will cause this even with no further factors. It's impossible to predict whether the supply or demand side is stronger at that point.

i love steam radiators. you all are nuts. for anyone w/ asthma or allergies, the clean heat they put out is wonderful. i felt like i was gonna die the one year we lived in a forced air house before we bought our current one w/ radiators. if there are enough old homes in your area, you'll find somebody who knows how they work. and yea a boiler needs replacing once in a lifetime. fwiw i was told by our that they work best without covers and without furniture in front of them.

i sometimes wish we had ducts so we could have central AC in the summer; window units are clunky and inefficient, and if you have multiple bedrooms you'll have multiple units running at times. but we run the AC units only at night for maybe a few weeks each summer; the heat is on from late october through early may.

landscaping, depending on what kind of work you need to do, is a really good dyi activity ime -- there isn't an enormous learning curve for many things unless you have serious ambitions, otherwise it's just outdoor work. physical at times but not hard to learn. i'd say don't hire anybody unless you want to do some really professional work w/ quick results, or you want a bunch of things planted and don't generally know at all what you are doing. when we moved in, we got a few quotes from landscapers to remove a garden pond (we had toddlers at the time and wanted to let them roam freely without worry) and some mulching and it was fucking absurd what they asked for. instead, i had my brother-in-law come over and help me drain the pond on a saturday, and the mulching i just did myself w/ a wheelbarrow. and anyone can pull weeds.

we did pay to have a few trees planted but that's about it, and for that we went through the city's tree planting program.

Hmm that's a good point too -- it might actually not take a huge amount of work to just rip out the random shrubs in the middle of the yard and level some uneven spots to make it usable, maybe resod, that seems like plausible DIY work. And I know a landscaper who would give me advice.

man alive, you in Queens? Or looking to move to LI?

looking to move to westchester

I will say, I now believe that RE brokers actually earn their fee. I could not have handled this myself.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Principal–agent_problem_variantion_1.svg/1024px-Principal–agent_problem_variantion_1.svg.png

We are/were close to a deal but now caught up in trying to figure out whether an egress door violates code and needs to be redone, and if so, whether it's worth lowering the offer vs walking away.

Like we might have to break the dining room wall and put in a sliding door and a new deck. Could actually be quite nice but would want to lower our offer.