Buying A House: C or D?

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

(i don't live in the bay area but i assume it's the same pretty much everywhere in coastal california)

all homes should be sold in a single round sealed-bid second-price auction, as should everything else

it would make grocery shopping a trifle complex, but hey

about to embark on an $80,000 foundation repair journey. good news is we will save hundreds on our earthquake insurance every year. just need to live for 200 more years to start seeing a return. ok, it should make us safer for The Big One. maybe also slow down the east-to-west roll of lego heads that hit the floor.

I own curtains as of today

The contrast between the last two posts is pretty much the breadth of the home ownership experience.

a wide breadth with one consistent theme: the spending of your money

Hey it only cost me 1/20th of an earthquake-proofing im a happy man

those curtains better have officially licensed disney property print at that price

in the middle of the US, you can save money acquiring wares with the likeness of your favorite premium property by negotiating with a local criminal cartel that skirts such official licensing. they are called "the Amish".

of course, you risk making up the difference in your total expense via the unconscious and habitual collection of out-of-season christmas tchotchkes

Curtains are SUCH A THING. When C moved here, we went to Target like very weekend for months to buy an astonishing number of sheer curtains for some basic privacy (since a lot of windows look out on a city street). Before that, he'd lived in a rental apt that came w louvered blinds so he never thought about it.

We had bare windows til last week, blinds then, curtains now, its a huge change and i knew it would be but i didnt know know it until im looking now

I still do not live in the house purchased 11 months ago because we have been hemorrhaging money on a gut reno for 11 months! Dear god I hope we make it in before the year anniversary. But we probably won't?

oh no! sorry to hear that. we waited 4 months for the permit, but we can "live" in our house during the foundation work. i do wonder if the noise and mess will be too much anyway. I don't have a great idea of how long it will all take.

"Renters keep leaving due to rising rents. Can we require employees to be homeowners?"

This post is a perfect clusterfuck of NIMBYism, homeowner brain, and hand-wringing about "transient" renters pic.twitter.com/HFRxjTU4kp

— 𝐮𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 (@yhdistyminen) December 7, 2021

that's just deeply diseased thinking, I can't even begin to pick it apart rn. Can't imagine their business will be too successful that way either.

lol will believe it when i see it https://www.redfin.com/news/pricey-coastal-metros-california-housing-market-cooldown/

Just means prices are rising at 15%/yr instead of 20%/yr.

Yeah the degree to which I can't buy a $1 million house is exactly the same as the degree to which I can't buy a $2 million house.

Yes, one is twice as expensive as the other. But from my perspective they are both in the same category of "houses I can't afford ever." So the difference is irrelevant to me.

The price of the average UK home rose by just over £28,000 in the past year, which is pretty much the same as the average UK worker earned over the same period.

Happened for the first time in the US last year too https://newrepublic.com/article/165980/labor-real-estate-economic-inequality

Nice article. Would like to read more by/about Henry George

here for the spreading of henry george thought

i don't know a lot about it, but i get the impression it's moving from a libertarian thing (has slight flat tax vibes) to a thing that yimbys like? they've rebranded it https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22951092/land-tax-housing-crisis and argue it would stimulate high density construction.

it also has this moral aspect that i personally find appealing (the land you live on is not yours, it belongs to the earth, pay rent mother fucker).

Nice article. Would like to read more by/about Henry George

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, April 19, 2022 11:19 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Some people have been asking- "Who is this guy? Why should anyone care about someone with two first names?"

A thread on Henry George and the Single Taxers, the most important historical movement you've probably never heard of🧵 https://t.co/S7kJa1AXP4

— Joseph Addington (@GeorgistJoseph) June 1, 2022

30 year rates now over 6% and there's this

https://www.redfin.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/investor-share-chart.png

and this https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/upshot/housing-market-slow-moving.html

my fairly recently launched search for the perfect 2br co-op in jackson heights is already feeling dead in the water--not because stuff is getting snapped up overnight anymore but because i'm afraid interest rates will be sky-high before sellers figure shit out and stop expecting people to offer 120% of asking off the rip.

the fact that governments are promoting RV parks and lots where people can legally live in vehicles as solutions to the housing crisis speaks to the cost and structural barriers to building new housing.

I've been wanting to have this conversation for as long as I've been low-key obsessed with tiny houses and "van life" Tiktok. My dad, who currently lives in an actual trailer/RV-ish thing, in a park full of other RVs, all owned by white retirees who are sitting on lots of money from liquidating their suburban family homes that they bought 37 years ago, says I'm "reading too much into it."