Buying A House: C or D?

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.

oh yeah we totally had an illegally finished basement when we bought and then after one of our neighbors got fined for having it as well i started getting worried about getting fined and not being able to sell until it was either brought up to code or returned to the original state.

this town is notorious for being a stickler for code. It's not visible from the outside because (1) it's in back and (2) the door is still there, it's just blocked inside by a dishwasher. But i assume that in the process of getting permits for the other work we'd do (which this town requires for literally fucking anything) that issue could be discovered as well.

I would consider doing the work as long as the seller will lower the price, it doesn't seem crazy and we wanted to redo the deck or rip it out and put a patio anyway, so it's just a matter of adding a sliding door and changing the deck location. And actually maybe moving a recessed radiator, which seems a little more complicated, unless we want to put the deck door on the side of the house and have it wrap around or something. :?

Meanwhile, a great house is on the market in a town we like slightly less nearby so we are going to check it out just in case.

Still in limbo about that house, but the good news is the code issue is more minor than we thought, just need to close up the kitchen door with wall or window. So we may actually move forward soon.

Meanwhile, we had made an offer on another house which wound up with multiple offers as I expected (pristine, reasonably priced house in great location and school district with no inventory on market). We may have actually made the high offer but were asked to waive the mortgage contingency and refused. That seemed insane to do, but someone else was either insane or had a ton of cash lying around.

There's really no downside to waiting for the right spot. Home values are on a downward trajectory, and many more people will sell if the economy continues to crash imo.

NYC metro area can tend to behave a little differently than everywhere else (although the burbs were on a downward slide pre-COVID because of the Trump tax changes and boomer retirement). I think this is definitely pushing a lot of families like mine out the door faster--people that maybe would have eventually found their way to the suburbs and are like "fuck it, do it now." Would also kind of like to at least be in contract by school start, assuming there is going to be school ever again.

Lost bid # 3 yesterday. This evening I made an offer on a preforeclosure that wasn’t on the market. Needs some work but could be much worse and the location and yard are great.

And that one failed too. Decided to rent a house. Signed a lease today. Market is insane.

And that one failed too. Decided to rent a house. Signed a lease today. Market is insane.

Sorry to hear that. I'm surprised--everything I read about the Toronto market (which I sort of keep track of out of deference to my broker friend) says it headed straight down.

There’s a panicked flight from nyc to the suburbs. Market in the city is def down. I have to think it can’t stay like this for too long and it should die down once we are past the window of people trying to get their kids into school (or possibly earlier).

Compounded by low inventory as a lot of people aren’t listing/showing right now.

The rental market in my area is batshit, seriously thinking about trying to park a tiny house in my mom's driveway.

I was against renting because the market for that is even more insane than buying, but something sort of fell into our lap.

right opportunity will come along later

a realtor tried to get us to see a not-yet-listed house a few weeks ago and I nixed it because the lot is listed at 4000sf, i.e. doesn't have much yard

I just got a message from them saying "My husband and I had this whole thing about whether you could or couldn't fit a swingset back here and I think that you can!" lol, if you have to argue about it

one of the most frustrating things about home ownership imo is appliance repair + replacement. most of the repair ppl are bad, often can't help you, are quick to say something can't be replaced (bc they get paid a coming-out fee whether or not they do a repair), and then when you go to replace it your options are not great either. last year we had to replace a washer + dryer and we used lowes and it took weeks and they were a huge pain and delivered the wrong thing and then had to come back etc. such a terrible experience. anyway my fridge died today.

i've had good luck dealing with small appliance stores for purchasing at least.

Yeah that shit sucks. I had to buy a new dishwasher a couple years after we moved into our place -- one place wouldn't deliver, another first said they would but then showed up and said they couldn't do the install because it required drilling into our granite countertop and that was against their policy. Then finally a third company would do it and said it was never necessary to drill into the countertop. But the dishwasher we bought (whirlpool gold with stainless steel tub -- supposedly a solid mid-tier dishwasher) had constant problems. It's full of little cheap plastic pieces that constantly break. We did pay for an extended warranty, but it's still a massive pain in the ass to get it serviced each time. Then the stupid plastic handle broke off our kitchenaid microwave, and we kept supergluing it back on but it kept breaking and also the glue expanded in a way that looked ugly, so we paid some silly amount of money just to have someone come replace the handle. Then the magnetron stopped working and that would have been another $250 or so to fix at least, so we bought a new one. Range microwaves are themselves absurdly expensive it turns out.

i just bought this bullshit

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AH5Z7CO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My dryer died and I decided to just replace it with a drying rack because pandemic money fears + it's just a pain in the ass to install. Not so bad for now except sheets still mean a trip to the laundromat.

I also never replaced a door rail on my fridge because the replacement part was like $60. For a fucking rail.

I enjoy replacing parts on my working appliances so they stay working and have done all the replacement installations myself (dishwasher, microwave needed a help from a handyman because the vent wasn’t cut properly). It’s annoying but since we had to take out a loan to replace our fucking old-ass ROOF last year I don’t really sweat it.

dryers are not necessary

we're five & in a small apartment so our dryer preserves important living space. not necessary but it's better than having a bigger apartment.

well alternatively you could have fun constructing 'wet forts'

one of the big draws of southern european life is the thought of pegging all my washing to a pulley over the street and letting it drip a great distance down on to pedestrians below

we didn't have a dryer at first, but we do laundry once a day and we only have one room where the drying rack can fit, and it takes up almost all the walkable space there when it's up.

dishwashers are not necessary---but I expect someone will chirp up the way I did to explain why they are. or probably this has already happened on some thread or another already.

Dishwashers use a lot less water and energy than washing manually.

There you go.

I never understand dryers. Why throw your money away when the air will do it for free.

Because our air is wet.

^^^this

Our A/C died last week. Granted it was over 20 years old, it had a good run, but sad face over swift dispersal of $7800.

And anyone who tries to tell me A/C is unnecessary has clearly never been to DC in the summer. There’s a reason it is known as The Swamp.

I found a good local repair person who told us in no uncertain terms NOT to replace our old appliances, because most new appliances have computers in them that are not repair-friendly.

With the old ones there might be an occasional need to replace a door latch or gasket or belt or something, but they can be coaxed back with ease. New ones tend to require programming fixes that are way more expensive and disruptive.

he is right

xp Have you considered draining it?

our oven has a touch screen to change temps (not a multitouch smartphone phancy thing, just a monochrome screen laid over physical buttons) and it keeps coming undone & we keep having to fasten it again. a temp dial would be much better.