Buying A House: C or D?

My 50 yr old good friends (longterm couple) are getting ready to buy their first house ever and keep asking me how much money they should have (we are on our 3rd place right now). They live a very not frugal life and continually don't understand how much money is involved when buying property and how much money you need after it's done. They also don't share any finances with each other which I just....phew.

ay yi yi that makes me nervous by proxy

based on what you said they seem like the type to buy more house than they need or can be afford

I think it's a terrible idea but I am staying out of it. I don't understand how you can be in a relationship for over 10 years but still venmo each other money to pay for your share of dinner.

Here's an actual look at the home-buying process. Each step costs the consumer about $/£500-750.

“I’ve never done a deal. What’s it like?”

Me:pic.twitter.com/8ThtKAwY3P

— Brent Beshore (@BrentBeshore) October 22, 2019

Hmm, the road is on a hill - the road itself is approximately flat but there are steep banks separating the parallel streets up and down the hill, so the possibility of subsidence is a good call. Elsewhere on the same hill a road was shut for months due to badgers undermining the road (!)

We don't know any neighbours and knocking on a door to ask questions seems a bit weird but I guess we could. Someone at work lives not far from there so I'll see if she happens to know anything about the street - not necessarily about that, but she may know someone who lives there or have heard some kind of local rumour if there are any problems.

They live a very not frugal life and continually don't understand how much money is involved when buying property and how much money you need after it's done. They also don't share any finances with each other which I just....phew.

ha, it us

well, sort of. we are "not very frugal" but maybe not "very not frugal"? but so far our finances have stayed separate and we have both been lucky enough to get used to being able to buy whatever little luxuries we like without counting the pennies in terms of buying a bottle of booze or having a meal out in a not-super-fancy restaurant just because we feel like it, so going back to tight budgeting might hurt

I'd bite the bullet and knock on doors - can't see how else you're going to find out. it's not weird. the seller and agent have no incentive to find out for you.

I am possibly scarred by past experiences but I would avoid as much as possible having to have any financial responsibilities that ultimately rely on the mental health of your neighbours.

re the road and shared maintenance

responsibilities that ultimately rely on the mental health of your neighbours

haha a v valid point, brr

I bought a house, in Australia, which is probably a terrible investment but I can sit on my roof in a post barbecue haze, and watch the bats fly out from their roosts by the Yarra and feel pretty good, even if I did some yesterday dealing with the fact that the previous owners never attended to their drain traps and I had to remove some unspeakable horrors.

Congratulations Ed! on the house AND the crucial drain trap work!!

congrats Ed! hope you continue to feel pretty good abt yr house for many years to come

If it makes you feel any better about buying a house, I am buying a HORSE which is like 10000 lbs of the worst investment ever.

congrats!
you should get a boat to put the horse on and then it will multiply the badness of that investment. ( i know nothing about horses)

On the hunt right now and I’m struck by how grotesque building trends have been in the last couple decades and also how inequality seems to have created a weird and unsustainable market in my area where there are these small, cramped houses on tiny lots that are affordable for us and then there’s this huge price jump to MASSIVE houses that are way too expensive and I don’t see myself even wanting to live in, and nothing in between. Maybe that’s also unique to NYC suburbs.

On the verge of making an offer now - great town/area/school district, nice street, decent lot, house and yard need some work. House is a good price for the area but I'm struggling to add up in my head whether everything it's likely to need is worth it vs just buying something in better shape but a lot more expensive (there just isn't anything in between on the market rn).

Do you like Work?

I like it some, and I also intend to pay for some of it to be done, which is more doable given the price

Embrace it

I expect it will need a new roof, new boiler, and new water heater all fairly soon, and I don't plan to do those myself. Yard could also use landscaping beyond my capacity I think. I may attempt to build the small ground level deck we want though.

When you buy a house it will always need a new roof, boiler, water heater. It's just the rule.

I have a gut feeling it will need to be rewired as well. Fingers crossed no plumbing issues. It’s block construction so at least no termites or mold.

General observation for anyone on the fence. I've made some bad decisions in my life; the two houses I bought--in 2003, and again last year--were easily the best.

General observation for anyone on the fence. I've made some bad decisions in my life; the two houses I sold--in 2012, and again five years ago--were easily the best.

You’d be amazed at how many of those “I need to fix this right after we move in” things you end up just living with for years because they don’t seem like that big a deal after a while.

(xpost) I think selling and buying are inextricably bound. Buying the one house in 2003 was a great decision; selling it when I did in 2019 made the 2003 decision retroactively even greater.

Put in an offer today, supposed to hear back tomorrow. I did a walkthrough with a contractor (who happened to know the late former owner and had worked on the house and is also well versed in the local market). He said it didn't need anywhere near as much work as I initially thought and that we could do pretty minimal stuff, move in, and then decide what else we want to do over time, what we can live with and not, etc. He said it was a "good house," that the price we wanted to offer was reasonable, and it turned out the former owner was the town building inspector, which made me think it was less likely to have horrible hidden problems. I got a lot more comfortable with the situation and upped my price from lowball to normal offer. The house has some fugly aspects inside for sure, but a lot of potential, and it's a town we love with great schools that has a very tight real estate market. So wish me luck. I'm supposed to hear back tomorrow.

good luck dude. it's quite an emotional rollercoaster.

the location is important, but also so is your inherent love for the house

Good luck.

You’d be amazed at how many of those “I need to fix this right after we move in” things you end up just living with for years because they don’t seem like that big a deal after a while.

True. There was a wiring issue with my first house that initially made me think I'd have to spend a lot right away to get it fixed. I instead did nothing and never had a problem--all I had to do with some of the outlets was be extra mindful of shutting something off first before removing the plug (which you're supposed to do anyway).

conversely, you will discover things that desperately need work years after you move in that no one told you about. like this year i suddenly realized my house was missing a gutter on the back of the attached garage and it was wrecking the foundation.

I ended up buying a modest but beautiful historic home in an amazing neighborhood, a house that was architecurally significant but which which was a complete and utter wreck, that needed years worth of work. My father when he saw it described it as a toolshed

I put a ton of work into it and am happy with the results, and am grateful to be able to shelter place here, but those years reconstructing it were pretty grueling and I feel in retrospect like I lost those years.

so not sure what the calculus is for anyone else

you'll laugh at this given the amount of work you did, but when we got our house i had about a week where i would work normal office hours, drive to the new house and paint interiors until like 10 or so, come home, drink a beer, sleep and repeat. it was not a sustainable routine for me.

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

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.