Buying A House: C or D?

Nice bookcase you've got there!

fwiw lumber is finally falling

July lumber futures peaked a month ago and are limit down again today, lowest price since April 22nd: pic.twitter.com/2PfiWBKZLp

— Conor Sen (@conorsen) June 7, 2021

but appliances and fixtures/fittings are going to take longer to come back in stock.

we bought one of these (i know it's insane $ for some foam but it's big hit, highly recommended if you have young kids, made lockdown bearable). like i say, it's just foam, shipping from inside the US. it took 9 weeks to be delivered.

https://nuggetcomfort.com/products/the-nugget

and now this https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/business/starbucks-shortages.html

caek is that big enough for a smallish adult

Asking for me

yes, i have slept on it

Ha we just got our nugget after ordering it like 5 months ago

"We believe we will continue to experience below-average levels of new housing supply in our markets which will support future rental rate growth and home price appreciation." Blackstone, in the prospectus for the Invitation Homes REIT

— Alex Fisch (@AlexFischCC) June 9, 2021

When they tell you why they're going to do what they then do, believe 'em. pic.twitter.com/FIoRvD12KG

— Alex Fisch (@AlexFischCC) June 9, 2021

How do can we stop the REITs? American Homes 4 Rent, another residential REIT buying your neighborhood, recently disclosed its Achilles' Heel in another SEC filing--more homes equals more vacancies and slower rent growth. pic.twitter.com/mL41xlUqjL

— Alex Fisch (@AlexFischCC) June 10, 2021

I have a wooded vacant lot out my kitchen windows, with squirrels and woodpeckers and raccoons. Lately there's been guys in orange vests wandering around and it stresses me out, I know they want to build an ugly apartment building there (aka "podium building"). I'm torn because California obv needs plenty of new housing but this weird hilly lot has never been built on (in a heavily developed neighborhood).

I might 'discover' some pre-Christian artifacts over there if I'm forced to.

Fuck me. We need a new fence and just started the process of looking for bids. One 16' section of our fence collapsed and we figured we should just replace the entire thing because it's all old and patched up. We have a gigantic yard, wondering if we should put this off for a few months...

If you can get by, I'd wait and check in a month or so when prices should have stabilized quite a bit.

xxp ralph fiennes will find your boat

xp agreed. we're doing the fence as part of a big job involving the garage, so the lumber craziness is getting lost in the noise of that project, but i would not do a fence on its own right now. it might make sense to find the contracter and book them for like september/october though. it seems a lot of them are booked weeks in advance.

so caek are you saying I should invest in INVH instead of trying to buy a house?

sadly yes

right? if you hate blackrock buying homes as investment vehicles wait until you hear about homeowner cartels around the country conspiring to keep supply low and prices high https://t.co/SyQoJL8DES

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) June 10, 2021

It does seem safer to invest in hundreds of thousands of houses than one house, which could catch fire and wipe me out

Ideally I’d just rent a house directly from the state

Anyway splashing $1k into INVH just to annoy…someone. Myself.

Used, everywhere.

― Alba, Friday, 11 June 2021 2:45 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

OTM, we just got a great* set of dining room chairs for a local auction house for what seems like a very reasonable price for 6 solid walnut chairs.

*greatness is still to be determined lockdown only ended last night, but if we really don’t like them we can keep them until we find something we do like and then back to the auction house they go.

Estate/divorce/house clearance auctions are good too.

are there not bedbugs down under

homes get more valuable because not owning a home gets worse.

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Even in Philly, the housing market is wild. Fixer-uppers in our neighborhood are going for as much as we bought our renovated house for in 2018, and newly renovated stuff is going for almost double.

Some friends who live on the other side of "a line" that divides one part of the city from another had a couple move into the house across the street— they bought their house for 120k in 2011. The house across the street went for 850k to a couple who recently came to Philly from New York.

is the line school districts?

https://nuggetcomfort.com/products/the-nugget

omg you bought the sex couch!

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2021/02/10254737/nugget-after-dark-tiktok

Why doesn't it come in white? 🧢

maybe it does/did and you can find a used one?

All couches are sex couches. That’s one reason to not pick one up off the street.

Only in a trucker hat, surely.

this is me

http://cdn01.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/clooney-burn/george-clooney-burn-after-reading-11.jpg

We have accumulated most of the furniture needed for day one at this stage and have anything we're bringing with us in storage but still no completion date

Any day now.....any day now.....

are there not bedbugs down under

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Friday, 11 June 2021 2:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The spiders ate them all.

Seriously though, I never gave it a thought, but it’s does appear that is a risk, but not a massively common one down here.

why would bedbugs be a problem for dining room furniture?

They can live in wood, apparently.

BlackRock thinks it's classic

i like #lumber #twitter memes

@LumberTrading pic.twitter.com/PCTnBBRaBE

— Andrea Matranga (@andreamatranga) June 14, 2021

Fuck me, next door's house is on the market at twice market value and has had two viewings so far in 48 hours.

Would get a fella thinking

We have a completion date which is the first actual news in months, the interim period saw our landlady sell up so it'll be skin-of-teeth to get everything done by end of next month but lets see how it goes

Got to buy in the same market though so it's a self-defeating argument.

How are you figuring out market value?

Welp my parents were going to build a house this year but the price has gone up $170k from the 2020 quote they were working towards. Looks like they're going to wait it out and leave all their stuff in storage for possibly 1-2 years.

How are you figuring out market value?

Zoopla have a pretty accurate last sold/current value metric for pretty much every house which I've found to be very, very reliable - within £10k of selling price for about 3 years round these parts and tested most recently in February.

is the line school districts?

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, June 11, 2021 10:11 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's a little hard to explain, but essentially, in West Philadelphia, there were the areas that were red-lined due to government and bank malfeasance/bigotry...but one of the biggest employers in the city (UPenn) is also located in West Philly, and has had a program since the 70s wherein they will fund a large percentage of many Penn workers' purchase of a house *within a proscribed area*. That area originally went to certain line, then it was moved further out, then further out again, this last time finally breaking the barrier of where the government/banks had red-lined back in the day.

We live in this last area. The friends I am speaking of live in the middle area.

Walked through my new house for the first time today lads, its a pleasant feeling

:D

so exciting!

nice, congrats!

Oh, we are in about a fortnight.

Seems nice, we'll keep it i think

Congrats! We're just renting with our almost-two year old, and expecting to be kicked out sometime around the end of the year. Which gives me about four months to find a job, get a mortgage and find a chain-free house or flat for three of us to move into. NO PROBLEM I'M SURE.

(When I say "me" I mean "me and my capable and employed partner")

Jaysis no pressure

Gluck!

i had wondered why houses literally never go for asking price or below where i live. it can't be that hard to guess the valuation, can it? of course it's not.

In addition to sky high prices and near-zero inventory, the Bay Area housing market trades on a sadistic pricing scheme in which homes are drastically underpriced so that buyers are forced into a blind auction. Great story by @candacejackson. https://t.co/4W2j3MW6uw pic.twitter.com/mkNpenLzTh

— Conor Dougherty (@ConorDougherty) September 7, 2021