The "Looking to become a homeowner" Thread

[Godson]

So here I am, now officially working at my big boy job (well, today was my first day). I want to move out of the parents house, and I am left with a few options. Rent or buy.


I have never lived outside the parents nest egg of home etc and this is going to be a big leap. I don't like frivolously spending money without having some sort of ROI.


I know SLM had that massive thread of when he was house searching, I would just like to point out that I am just looking and am open to all CONSTRUCTIVE criticism.






Thoughts and Opinions?

[TheBenior]

Unless you're sure that you're going to be where you settle for living and work for at least several years, I'd rent for a bit. Various fees and costs wiped out about 10% of my home seller's cut of the house I bought.

Of course, the sound financial thing to do would be to live with your parents longer to save up more money (houses always need something), but renting isn't throwing money away, it's paying for shelter, and compared to owning, allows mobility. It may have been a historically unique situation, but I'm certainly glad I didn't buy when most of my early 30s cohorts did. So many of them are stuck with properties they're still upside down or are rebuilding their credit from strategic foreclosures. OTOH, I wish I'd bought a year or two earlier, as lack of decent supply is exerting upward pressure on prices locally (though still way off 2005-2006 peaks in all but a few very hot neighborhoods).

I was actually telling Janelle the other day that I wouldn't have been happy moving to the suburban far NW side of Chicago in my mid-20s instead of living centrally like I did for a while (where I definitely can't afford a detached single family house).

[Random]

1. Be very realistic with your budgeting.
2. Keep commute distances and shopping distances in your head as you look--cheap housing doesn't help you much if you're spoending the difference in gas.

[Kchrpm]

1) Get a garage
2) Get a 2 car garage
3) Get an oversized 2 car garage
4) etc

[Leon]

If you can, stay with your folks whilst building up a deposit.

You save a lot in the end with more deposit paid.

[G'day Mate]

Sponge for a bit and then, if possible, live within walking distance of your local supermarket and riding distance of your work

[neanderthal]

Start by paying your parents some rent so you get used to that part. It'll make it easier for them when you stay longer too.
Save a third or more of your gross to get your deposit built up.
Fix your credit.
Read SLM's thread for ideas.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Yes, if u gonna pay rent, pay your folks! At least offer to pay, I'm sure parents would be happy to let you stick around for a while for free... Point is you need to save up for a down payment.

And just buy whatever you can afford at the moment and don't worry about market tanking. Just don't buy around neighborhoods where you know are heavily dependent on 1 company... Should that company relocate, you don't want to be in a ghost town! ;)

IMHO, in normal neighborhoods, it's only natural that housing prices would go up... Just as rent and everything else go up.

[Godson]

Start by paying your parents some rent so you get used to that part. It'll make it easier for them when you stay longer too.
Save a third or more of your gross to get your deposit built up.
Fix your credit.
Read SLM's thread for ideas.


Credit is not an issue at all.







All sound points guys.

[thesameguy]

No really good answers there. My personal advice is suckle the parental teet as long as possible, then rent for a while. Home ownership can quickly become a full time job, and you really need a solid financial cushion to go down that road. Rent is cost control - you live there and you pay a small monthly premium for someone to handle everything. When it's your place and the AC fails or the subfloor rots or the roof blows off, that comes directly out of your pocket. I know way too many people who have emptied their bank to squeeze into a house and then end up getting murdered when something unexpected happens. I wouldn't go down that road. There is no shame in renting, and moreover it really helps you slip into the mindset of taking care of a place solo without any financial responsibility in doing it. I think there are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned while doing time in a rental. I highly recommend it.

[Crazed_Insanity]

As a renter, I had no motivation to fix anything though. Manager always took care of it! I also quite enjoy not having to worry about yard work. I think I was quite spoiled as a renter. I was doing more work living with parents! ;)

[thesameguy]

Yeah, you don't have to fix stuff, but you acquire a sense of what breaks, how it affects you, and how it's fixed - with absolutely no risk. You're also - often - free to do as much as you like or as little, again with no risk.

[JoshInKC]

Also, renting for awhile will give you a chance to get used to stuff like paying bills and buying all of your own food.

[Dicknose]

Renting is also a test run of "what do I want/hate in a house".
Things you hate aren't so bad for 6 months, but you don't want in a place you own.
Moving can be a pain, but it means you are trying different places.
Think of it as a medium term test drive!

[GB]

Constructive advice: Be nice to the Radiology Techs.

(That's advice for the job, not looking for a house. ;) )

Just echoing other's points:
Talk with your folks in an honest fashion... find out if you can stay for a while and pay rent.
Then rent a small place, and as DN says, find out what you like and don't like.

And, for ME, the opposite of Russ's advice: I'm willing to drive a little further for work and food to live in an area and a home that suits my wants and needs. Plus, rural property can be MUCH cheaper that urban and suburban.

I didn't buy till I was 30+. 20-something me was too irresponsible to know what I wanted or needed.

[novicius]

Roughly speaking, in my area the average home price is around $205K. 20% of that to avoid PMI is $41,000 down. This would result in a base monthly mortgage on a 30-year fixed of $1,150/mo + repairs.

Or I can rent for $950/mo, $500 down, no yardwork and all maintenance included forever.

Doesn't work for everyone but it works for us. :up:

[GreatScawt]

When it comes to renting - yes - you do get the maintenance / yardwork bit... but only if you have a competent landlord. Which many places do not.

[novicius]

I agree -- my previous landlord was slightly shady (downtown studio apartment, $650/mo).

My "new" joint (also site of the first MWGTP party I hosted back in 2001 :D) is better serviced, better maintained and much bigger w/. a garage. One must shop around to find AWESOME VALUE.

[Random]

And, for ME, the opposite of Russ's advice: I'm willing to drive a little further for work and food to live in an area and a home that suits my wants and needs. Plus, rural property can be MUCH cheaper that urban and suburban.

Oh, yeah, if I was looking at a couple acres with a shop and a garage and whatnot, commute time would be secondary (though I might check the typical traffic on the nearby freeway).

But, buying in suburbia, I'd want to minimize the amount of time I spent staring at the back of another car at a stoplight, know what I mean? :)

[Random]

My "new" joint (also site of the first MWGTP party I hosted back in 2001 :D)

Ha! I looked at a picture you posted on FB and though, "wow, the kitchen at their new place looks a lot like where we had the party."

[novicius]

Best bang for the buck for renting in Madison! :up: :up:

[Godson]

Constructive advice: Be nice to the Radiology Techs.

(That's advice for the job, not looking for a house. ;) .


I am nice to all members of the interdisciplinary team members. They make my job easier :)

[TheBenior]

Roughly speaking, in my area the average home price is around $205K. 20% of that to avoid PMI is $41,000 down. This would result in a base monthly mortgage on a 30-year fixed of $1,150/mo + repairs.

Or I can rent for $950/mo, $500 down, no yardwork and all maintenance included forever.

Doesn't work for everyone but it works for us. :up:

I'd still be renting if prices were like that locally in not-terrible neighborhoods.

Locally, 2 bedroom condos rent for what my total mortgage is with only 5% down. 3 bedroom houses like mine are an extra $3-600 still.

[Godson]

That's the issue here. For the price of a rental, I could have a house with insurance and be putting money aside for "emergencies."





With that being said, I think renting is a better option right out of the gate. My issue with renting is finding something that meets my (and my roommate-to-be's) needs. Which is proving quite difficult to find in a not-shitty area and still within budget.

[Dicknose]

And just keep thinking how cheap it is...
My suburb (nice but nothing exciting or posh)
Median house price 991k
Median unit 545k
http://apm.domain.com.au/research/Default.aspx?LocationType=Suburb&State=NSW&SuburbID=33332

[Dicknose]

A 2 bedroom unit in my street just sold for 700k
Wonder what mine is worth?
(Not that I'm planning to sell anytime soon)

[novicius]

Sheesh, at those prices I'd seriously just say "fuck it", not own anything but used bicycles and furniture and books, and rent a flat for cheap in the combat zone. :p

[Sad, little man]

I'll add a couple of things here...

First, I have to admit that, before I bought my house, I generally thought that a lot of people my age who were buying houses had kind of a weird and unhealthy fixation on house purchasing. It seemed like they were all just hell bent on getting married and buying a house, regardless of whether or not it financially made sense.

I still feel that way to an extent. You shouldn't base your self worth on whether or not you own a house. But, if it does make financial sense in your market compared to renting, then you should do it. The Detroit area is a very unique market that made it really really make sense to buy vs. rent, so I did. But it should be a strictly financial decision, not emotional. If you want a house that badly and it makes more sense to rent, then just rent a house, it's almost the same when you're living in it day to day.

Also, tsg still seems to be taking a position in all of this that I'm almost completely against.

First, no, I would not "suckle the parental teet as long as possible." You know, unless of course you have no self respect and you take pride in being a worthless, dependent person.

I'm not saying "If you're living at home, you're worthless, period." Not at all. If you're trying your best in this tough economy and not getting anywhere, then fine, whatever. Hard times happen to the best of us. But if you're actively just trying to milk the parental situation for all it's worth, then I have little to no respect for you.

For a lot of people, the goal is to move out of your parents' house once you graduate. Well guess what? I didn't even set foot in my parents house after my graduation ceremony. Graduation was Saturday, and my stuff was already in Michigan. The way the timing worked out, I left directly from my graduation for Michigan so I could be there to start work Monday. Yeah, that's a pretty extreme case, and I do wish I had done things at a little slower pace, but that's the reason I say that if you're leaning heavily on your parents just because you can, don't be surprised if I treat you like dirt.

Next, I continue to be (and even more strongly now that I do have a house) sagainst tsg's opinions regarding home upkeep and maintenance.

No, rent is not "cost control" IMO. It's the exact opposite actually. It's a massive cost you pay every month that goes completely out the window. It doesn't go towards equity in a house or anything like that, it just goes right to a landlord.

All of the scenarios he continually brings up are worst case, and not one of them has happened to me in six years of living in houses on my own, either renting or owning. In my experience, those costs are exceedingly rare. If the AC goes out, the subfloor rots, or the roof blows off, then you probably bought a piece of shit house to begin with, and hopefully you saved enough money on the initial cost of the house to cover stuff like that.

In my experience, owning a house is most definitely not a full time job. For the most part, houses just sit there. The roof doesn't blow off, the subfloor doesn't rot, and the few complex mechanical systems there are in a house like the heating and cooling are generally pretty goddamn robust. Sure, you need to clean your house and keep up the outside appearance, but it's generally not too hard.

I will agree that, if you buy a house, you must have a financial cushion set aside to absorb a potential large repair cost. If you completely drain yourself just to get a down payment together for the house you want, then you're living beyond your means and you probably deserve financial ruin to some extent.

[FaultyMario]

How much does pride cost if home ownership's entirely a financial decision and there's zero emotions involved?

[thesameguy]

Don't even know how to respond to that, except to say that is some seriously ignorant shit.

http://www.kiplinger.com/article/real-estate/T029-C000-S001-the-true-cost-of-owning-a-home.html
http://www.caniretireyet.com/renting-vs-buying-true-cost-home-ownership/
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/7-homeowner-costs-renters-dont-pay.aspx
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/real-estate/total-monthly-homeownership-costs-by-city.aspx

Read, especially, this:

http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2012/05/29/look-at-maintenance-costs-before-leaping-into-homeownership

which suggests that the cost of home maintenance, on average, can be as high as 4% of the purchase cost annually. Those costs need to be figured into calculations when you determine how much money you're "throwing away" on rent - along with insurance, taxes, etc.

You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of what "cost control" is. Renting is *the* definition of cost control - paying a fixed, never changing cost for a result. Ownership is exactly the opposite of cost control.

It's great that you've had a positive one year home ownership period, but please check facts before you dispense advice.

Like Mario said, financial decisions should be made dispassionately, using defensible statistics where facts are not available. I wouldn't recommend anything other than that - and have only ever suggested factors that need to be included in that process.

[novicius]

No, rent is not "cost control" IMO. It's the exact opposite actually. It's a massive cost you pay every month that goes completely out the window. It doesn't go towards equity in a house or anything like that, it just goes right to a landlord.
Depends on the area; in my area, renting is cheaper than owning. So by comparison I'd say that the downpayment, interest and PMI (in the event you have less than 20% down) constitute "massive costs". Over a 30-year term, you end up paying as much in interest as you do in principle -- that's a huge amount of money paid to your bank IMO. You lose sleep over the idea of rent, I lose sleep over the idea of 100% interest paid on a long term loan. :thppt:

If you live in an area with cheap rents, not only are you mobile but the buy-in price is very low (half of a month's rent for a security deposit?) and there are no repair costs. Nice and clean.

[Crazed_Insanity]

I'm all for home purchasing..., but I don't think TSG's points are completely baseless...

If your parents can afford it and willing participants, yeah, for sure utilize their help to build up your down payment asap. If your folks also need some income, then might as well pay rent to your parents at a discount price... rather than pay rent to some random stranger landlords. Point is you need to find ways to save up for that down payment as fast as you can in order to minimize waste. I don't think the main point was to just leech off of your parents just because you can! ;)

Further, my central heat and A/C went out. I spent nearly $15k replacing it. Fortunately Federal government subsidized nearly half and I had 0% financing from home depot, but it's still a big hit. Termite treatments can also be expensive. I think I also need to replace my roof in a couple of years... and that should also be well over $10k. My house was built in the 50s, so things rotting away is definitely a possibility. The price I paid wasn't really for the 'house', but land. Yeah, majority of the cost is land! So one should try to buy the cheapest possible house in an best area that he can afford. If you're handy enough, you can definitely make a lot of money buying up a fixer upper in a great neighborhood.

Just buy something you can afford, and have your parents pay for the down payments if they can afford it and don't want you to remain in their house! ;)

For sure one needs to be super handy himself... because there will conceivably be lots of little repairs that need to be done. The cost can add up if you had to call up professionals to come to your home to help you out every time.

If you are lazy or you know that you're just not very handy, perhaps it's better to just rent and rely on your landlord.

However, most folks here seem super handy. If you can work on your car, you can work on your house.

If you wouldn't lease a car, why would you lease an apartment? Cars pretty much always depreciate, and, unless you somehow ended up in a ghost town, houses pretty much always appreciate decades later even if you bought at a peak. Yeah, there are no guarantees, but the trend is pretty clear. The property you purchased... yes, the house may fall apart like cars, but that piece of land is yours forever... and earth's land surfaces won't be growing anytime soon, but population will continue to grow. Of course ideally you probably wouldn't want your house to fall apart. You absolutely need to take care of your house just as you'd take care of your cars.

Sure, one might have great reasons to want to lease cars, so one better also have great reasons to rent housing as well. Financially speaking, home purchasing usually won't be the wrong decision. In the event you lost your job and can't pay... what difference does it make if you get kicked out by the landlord or by the bank? You're going to be homeless and move back with your parents anyway. So you might as well invest your money on a piece of 'land'.

[Godson]

I have roofed houses, done drywall, plumbed, wired, painted, tiled, grouted, etc. There isn't much I can't do with a house (but I refuse to do electrical unless I absolutely need to).

FWIW, the only reason I still live with the rents at 28 is because of financial strain while I was in school (next to zero income for nearly 4 years). I was in the process of looking at houses back in 2007 right before the market crashed. I waited and it paid off for my patience, it also allowed me to change careers.


Good advice all around. Keep the info coming.

[Sad, little man]

Don't even know how to respond to that, except to say that is some seriously ignorant shit.

(Removing links to get under post character limit.)

Read, especially, this:


which suggests that the cost of home maintenance, on average, can be as high as 4% of the purchase cost annually. Those costs need to be figured into calculations when you determine how much money you're "throwing away" on rent - along with insurance, taxes, etc.

You also have a fundamental misunderstanding of what "cost control" is. Renting is *the* definition of cost control - paying a fixed, never changing cost for a result. Ownership is exactly the opposite of cost control.

It's great that you've had a positive one year home ownership period, but please check facts before you dispense advice.

Like Mario said, financial decisions should be made dispassionately, using defensible statistics where facts are not available. I wouldn't recommend anything other than that - and have only ever suggested factors that need to be included in that process.

Your first link... A woman's experience of home ownership that is inundated with superfluous costs. You can spend thousands upon thousands on a house if you want to. You don't have to spend a lot of that though. She mentions $4500 in furniture, hundreds in professional landscaping, and $5000 of remodeling. Are you kidding me? These are luxury items you are trying to disguise as just the basic costs of owning a home. You can apply the same principles to all of life. You can be as frugal or as free with your spending as you want in many cases.

The rest of the links re-hash the same basic points about all the costs of home ownership. The bulk of those links discuss things such as property taxes, home insurance, homeowners association fees, PMI, and the one time costs to close the deal.

I contest that, if you don't even realize that these costs come along with owning a home, then you don't have any business being anywhere near the dotted line that you sign on to buy a house. That is not what this conversation is about. These are not hidden costs of owning a home. They are right there in front of you when you close the deal in most cases.

You're right, I don't understand what cost control truly means. Congratulations, you know something that I don't. Unfortunately, it's just a contrived, technical definition for a very basic concept that anyone with any financial sense understands. We don't need to explain the difference between a fixed recurring cost and an unpredictable sporadic cost here.

You say that financial decisions should be made dispassionately, using defensible statistics where facts are not available. But... I do have facts. Sure, they are only facts that apply to me, so I offer them as only one anecdotal example, but they are facts.

My facts are, my house costs approximately $530/mo. This includes the mortgage, interest, taxes, property insurance. To rent a comparable house would be about $1000/mo. Even if you assume the worst case of 4% of the purchase cost to keep up the house every year, that comes to $3120/yr. I'm saving $5640/yr paying a mortgage compared to renting. Even with upkeep costs, seems like it makes sense to own this house to me. And this is making the assumption that every cent I pay into the mortgage goes to interest, which it doesn't. It's small in the beginning, yes, but some of it does go to the principal, so you can count that essentially as money saved compared to renting as well.

This doesn't even touch on the fact that, estimating conservatively, the value of my house has risen about $12000 since I bought it.

Will everyone's rent/own situation be this good? No, probably not. I got extremely lucky. I'm just offering my experience.

And with this, I'm finished discussing this with you. I already told you that I've lived in houses here in Michigan (and had the chance to experience everything that does or doesn't go wrong) for six years. And I've owned this house for two years, not one. You're skewing even the most basic numbers to make any advice I offer look invalid.

Why would I continue to discuss this when you've shown that you will just twist around anything I say to make it look like a pile of shit?


Depends on the area; in my area, renting is cheaper than owning. So by comparison I'd say that the downpayment, interest and PMI (in the event you have less than 20% down) constitute "massive costs". Over a 30-year term, you end up paying as much in interest as you do in principle -- that's a huge amount of money paid to your bank IMO. You lose sleep over the idea of rent, I lose sleep over the idea of 100% interest paid on a long term loan. :thppt:

If you live in an area with cheap rents, not only are you mobile but the buy-in price is very low (half of a month's rent for a security deposit?) and there are no repair costs. Nice and clean.

It may be a little naive, but I don't really consider the down payment on a house to be a cost. Unless the housing market tanks again, the idea is that you will get it right back when you go to sell.

If we're going to discuss the interest costs of a mortgage over its 30 year term novi, then it's only fair to discuss the total cost of renting for 30 years. At $1000/mo. That's $360,000 in rent. Far, far more than the interest on most 30yr mortgages.

I can respect your desire to just want to rent and not worry about the house. But for me, the headache is more than worth the savings of owning compared to renting.


I'm all for home purchasing..., but I don't think TSG's points are completely baseless...

If your parents can afford it and willing participants, yeah, for sure utilize their help to build up your down payment asap. If your folks also need some income, then might as well pay rent to your parents at a discount price... rather than pay rent to some random stranger landlords. Point is you need to find ways to save up for that down payment as fast as you can in order to minimize waste. I don't think the main point was to just leech off of your parents just because you can! ;)

Further, my central heat and A/C went out. I spent nearly $15k replacing it. Fortunately Federal government subsidized nearly half and I had 0% financing from home depot, but it's still a big hit. Termite treatments can also be expensive. I think I also need to replace my roof in a couple of years... and that should also be well over $10k. My house was built in the 50s, so things rotting away is definitely a possibility. The price I paid wasn't really for the 'house', but land. Yeah, majority of the cost is land! So one should try to buy the cheapest possible house in an best area that he can afford. If you're handy enough, you can definitly make a lot of money buying up a fixer upper in a great neighborhood.

For sure one needs to be super handy himself... because there will conceivably be lots of little repairs that need to be done. The cost can add up if you had to call up professionals to come to your home to help you out every time.

If you are lazy or you know that you're just not very handy, perhaps it's better to just rent and rely on your landlord.

However, most folks here seem super handy. If you can work on your car, you can work on your house.

If you wouldn't lease a car, why would you lease an apartment? Cars pretty much always depreciate, and, unless you somehow ended up in a ghost town, houses pretty much always appreciate decades later even if you bought at a peak. Yeah, there are no guarantees, but the trend is pretty clear. The property you purchased... yes, the house may fall apart like cars, but that piece of land is yours forever... and earth's land surfaces won't be growing anytime soon, but population will continue to grow. Of course ideally you probably wouldn't want your house to fall apart. You absolutely need to take care of your house just as you'd take care of your cars.

Sure, one might have great reasons to want to lease cars, so one better also have great reasons to rent housing as well. Financially speaking, home purchasing usually won't be the wrong decision. In the event you lost your job and can't pay... what difference does it make if you get kicked out by the landlord or by the bank? You're going to be homeless and move back with your parents anyway. So you might as well invest your money on a piece of 'land'.

Well, paying rent to your parents isn't really what I pictured when I heard the phrase "suckle the parental teet," so you're kind of arguing a situation different from what I was envisioning. I can respect someone paying rent that just happens to go to their parents. What I can't respect is the 30 year old guy with no ambitions in his parents' basement yelling for his mom not to forget the Cheetos when she leaves to go to the store.

I'm sorry your home ownership experience has been expensive. It's gone much worse than mine. Again, I only offer my experience as an example. I know that others' may differ.

Godson, you probably won't make out as well as I have buying a house. It's just the nature of the very unique real estate market that I'm in. It would be impossible to duplicate anywhere else. I'm just saying that it can potentially work out. And, I just don't feel like home ownership is half as much doom and gloom as tsg makes it out to be.

[Crazed_Insanity]

For sure tsg and myself are not arguing against home ownership. I think we both own our places and do not freeload off our parents... Just that parents can definitely help if they're rich enough. If not or I'd they're not willing, then too bad.

The doom and gloom situations are simply there to give people prepared. Owning a place is a good investment, but it will be costly at times. Women also love to remodel or redo landscaping... You have a lotus, and you'd really deny your spouse a request to beautify your home? ;)

A house can certainly be a money pit, so inspect it carefully!

[IMOA]

While I'm sure some people will jump up and down and point at the GFC the reality is that over a 30 year period rents will go up, house prices will go up and with a mortgage what you owe will go down. To zero.

If I look at my place comparing interest to rents (and this is using what it was rented for 5 years ago when I bought it, it would be quite a bit more now) my interest payments are about 2/3's of what it would have cost me to rent and the increase in value is around double the interest payments. It's all well and good comparing rent to interest costs now but you really have to project that over 30 years of capital appreciation and rent increases to do a proper comparison and thats before taking into account mortgage payments end, rent never does.

[Kchrpm]

But that's assuming you're going to be staying in the same place for 30 years, and not just renting for now because you plan on (or want to leave the door open to) being somewhere else in <5 years. That makes things more complex, you have to add into your considerations the difference in profit you will get from a sale and what you will save in upkeep costs.

[IMOA]

Moving around a lot does cost more when you own but even still while you're in the market you're taking the capital gain and paying off the actual cost of the house. If I sold up and bought another place now compared to renting I'd be up by about 30% of what I paid for this place.

If you're going to rent make sure you're investing heavily as there comes a point when you won't be working any more and by then you either want to have very low housing costs or a big, inflation protected passive income to cover those costs.

[novicius]

It may be a little naive, but I don't really consider the down payment on a house to be a cost. Unless the housing market tanks again, the idea is that you will get it right back when you go to sell.
Heh, coming up with 20% down is a significant cost to most people -- but Tyler may very well be in your shoes (has a good paying job but still lives with family at the moment). So whereas I'm looking at a difference of saving up $40K for a downpayment vs. $500 + first month's rent, if you already have a sizable savings then buying a house certainly becomes a better argument. :)



If we're going to discuss the interest costs of a mortgage over its 30 year term novi, then it's only fair to discuss the total cost of renting for 30 years. At $1000/mo. That's $360,000 in rent. Far, far more than the interest on most 30yr mortgages.
Oh I use the New York Times Rent vs Buying calculator (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html?_r=0) for all my data. With my parameters re: median home prices in my area, 5% down, PMI costs, a local 0.7% home price growth rate and the various other factors, I'm coming out ahead even in the far future. If the situation changes (namely, a massive increase in rent) then I may again become a homeowner.

You definitely have a great situation where you're at, SLM, no arguments there! :D :up:

[Crazed_Insanity]

But that's assuming you're going to be staying in the same place for 30 years, and not just renting for now because you plan on (or want to leave the door open to) being somewhere else in <5 years. That makes things more complex, you have to add into your considerations the difference in profit you will get from a sale and what you will save in upkeep costs.

Let's assume that you know you won't stick around for 30 or even 15 years. Let's say you only want to be around there for 3~5 yrs.

Let's say your house costs $200k and you don't have that much cash on hand, right? So of course you borrow from the bank.

So after 5 years, let's say your house went up in value to $250k. Guess what, you just made $50k profit using not your money, but bank's money!!! But real estate brokers typically take 6% of total sale, it can be negotiable I suppose, but just a heads up that there will be costs associated in buying and selling homes. Not to mention capital gains tax if you sold your primary home without buying another in time... and of course banks make money off of you with interest they charged..., but let's not get into those details for now in our hypothetical situation. Just wish to illustrate the point that should the housing market go up in value, that is YOURS to gain. You don't have to put up $200,000 up front in order to cash in on that $50k profit.

Now, in a worse scenario, let's say your house price tanks $50k instead..., now you're underwater!

Well, if you still have your job or whatever income, it's still life as usual. If you find another job else where and need to move, you could just try to rent your place out to cover your mortgage payment. Basically to delay the sale of your home as much as possible. Eventually it should recover to a level when it makes sense for you to sell and make profit. Heck, if you can, keeping renting out the place as long as you can so that you can have renters pay your mortgage payments to the bank and still keep the house. After 30 years, your rent income would all be yours! Basically you're still making money off of other people's money over time.

Now in a worst case and unlikely scenario, you lost your job and you can't find any renters and your house is underwater, can't even sell it at a loss... pretty much everything is against you and end up having to just surrender it and walk away. About the only advantage renters have over the owners are that they won't have a ruined credit. But seriously, if we should end up in that kind of lousy situation, who gives a damn about credit? What good would a credit score of 850 do for a homeless person? BTW, bankruptcy won't even stayed in your credit history forever. You could still recover from that eventually when your luck turns around.

Moral of the story? If you can qualify for a home loan while having a job so that you can borrow other people's money to invest in your own home, you really should do it.

Capitalism is all about making money using other people's money. For us regular folks who are not super rich, home ownership is about the only way we can make gains in the capitalistic the system. Otherwise, most of us usually end up play the role of relying on job income and then play the role consumers... and continue to whine at the top 1% that this isn't fair!!! ;)

[tigeraid]

As absolutely terrified as I am, currently staring into the dark abyss of despair...

I.... agree with billi..... :sadbanana:

While I cannot speak of the housing market in the States, and I realize that it seems to be MUCH more unstable than Canada... A house is almost ALWAYS, 95% of the time, an investment. With nothing but normal maintenance, worst-case scenario in the MAJORITY of cases, you will be able to sell the house for roughly what you paid for it. Even super-worse case, maybe the neighbourhood value takes a shit because of some abandoned homes or something, maybe the house loses $5k or $10k. If you've been living there for 5-6 years and have paid down a significant amount of the mortgage, you're still coming out of the place with cash in pocket. HUGE cash, relatively. Now you can use that on a downpayment for another house, or to pay off other debt, or whatever.

It's not that renting a place is "throwing away" money. You're literally paying for room and board. It's not throwing it away. But owning a home gives you an additional investment, it gives you liquidity to work with. As mentioned, it gives you, the normal schmuck, the ability to work with a large sum of money to invest in your future.

Real life example is Tara and I, we're finally thinking of moving just outside the city to a nice "hobby farm" sort of property. We bought our house for $148,500 eight years ago. We're at like $130something right now. In a couple more years, $120k or so. We plan to put the house on the market for, let's say, $165,000. Maybe we're deluded, we end up settling for $150k, almost what we paid for it eight years ago. That STILL gives us something like $30,000 to play with! That'll pay off a credit card, buy a new car, and have a healthy downpayment for a new house, maybe. Or a huge downpayment on a house. Or whatever. Is there a risk? Sure a tiny bit. Maybe just MAYBE the housing market will crash in a year or two and suddenly we can't sell the house for shit, or only sell it for an abysmal sum. But it's pretty unlikely.

And... once again.... *shudder*... I agree... With billi.... :sadbanana: .... That in an absolute doomsday scenario, you lose your job and have to walk away from the house. You're bankrupt. Shit happens? Credit score sucks. Life goes on.

Real life example: buddy of mine is in that exact situation. Got married, used money left in his dad's will to put a downpayment on a really nice $250k-ish house in suburbia. Ended up pissing away all his money into gambling and various other stupid ventures, then to top it off got divorced, and started having health problems that made his work hours spotty. Life crumbles, he has to walk away from the house and declare bankruptcy. Now here we are like 5-6 years later, he's re-married and has two kids, loving his life, and renting a shitty little condo unit. The place sucks, but are you gonna do? Is that risk REALLY all that huge a risk, that you have to go back to renting an apartment? Seems reasonable to me.

Fucking billi. :mad:

EDIT: mind you, this is all on the assumption you can afford a mortgage and/or downpayment in the first place. And are smart enough to not buy a shitheap of a house unless you're willing to do the work. The "renting is cheaper than buying where I live" argument is only useful if you're on such a tight budget that "I can only pay $600/month instead of $800/month" or whatever. Well then obviously, you'll rent. But to be able to AFFORD a mortgage but say "fuck it, I'm going to rent because it saves me $200 a month" is ridiculous.

[novicius]

Gosh, those are some pretty offensive words for us who choose to rent; why don't you tell me how you really feel, Tiger? :assclown:

[George]

As absolutely terrified as I am, currently staring into the dark abyss of despair...

I.... agree with tigeraid..... :sadbanana:

And with billi. :)

My wife and I are on our second house. We've been homeowners for 16 years. We recently figured out how much equity we have in our home and it made us very, very happy...and, it was relatively painless to acquire that equity. I mean, most of us have to pay a monthly fee to live somewhere. It's nice to see some of it still belongs to us.

[Kchrpm]

I'm not saying buying a home isn't often/usually a better financial decision. After all, I bought a foreclosed home for basically that reason.

All I am saying is that, if you're in an area where home prices are not rising and rent is low, you're not a do-it-yourself-er (so any maintenance/repairs will come out of pocket), and you don't plan on staying where you are for very long, then renting can be a valid if not much better option.

[thesameguy]

What good would a credit score of 850 do for a homeless person? BTW, bankruptcy won't even stayed in your credit history forever. You could still recover from that eventually when your luck turns around.

Well, being able to become un-homeless would be high on the list. I can't speak for elsewhere, but around here you can't rent with bad credit. A guy I know around here has made a sizable fortune as what I'd call a predatory landlord - he rents exclusively to people with recent bankruptcies (not just bad credit, recent bankruptcies) and charges them a FORTUNE for rent. He has no shortage of renters - he adds 4-5 houses to his portfolio annually, has around 50 or 60 right now. The people he rents to don't have a lot of choice. Secondarily, bad credit can cause you to miss out on other financial benefits and opportunities that good credit gives you. I think it's a pile of BS, but bad credit can affect your insurance and even your job prospects. In today's America, you really want to avoid bad credit - even for seven years. The bankruptcy -> pay more for everything -> never get ahead again scenario is real, and getting real-er.

(I would also argue the morality of undertaking a large financial commitment without reasonable certainty one would be able to honor it, but I don't think any of us are those kind of people.)

That said, I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue summarily against home ownership, especially in the long term. Watching a couple people in my life struggle with increasing rents while living out their twilight years on a fixed income is scary. Definitely do not want to be there, and the only reasonable way to protect against it is to pay off a house while employed. Renting stops being cool when your income drops off forever - unless I suppose you've planned for it in your retirement savings, in which case it might be awesome.

I simply believe that home ownership is a thing one should do when they're ready, not when they can. I could have bought a place when I was 20 - but around 24 and again around 31 it would have totally screwed me over. Far better that I waited, built up a good sized savings account to weather storm, got situated with a stable career in a stable company, learned some stuff about where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do and bought when all the factors (and Excel) agreed. There are indeed other places I might like to live, but I could reasonably die in this place and die happy.

My situation is of course my situation - a dude with a career largely based in unstable businesses living in a place with retarded real estate pricing. But I read a lot and I know a lot of people, and there are way too many stories about people who were "conned" into buying homes because they could, only to find out that they shouldn't have. Of course in the end they're alive and everything is ok, but for me, and maybe this is what it all comes down to, for me, I'd rather live a life on the gradual uptick than one punctuated with financial highs and lows. Losing stuff, having to move, or being trapped in a place because you don't have the wherewithal to escape all seems pretty sucky to me.

My point in any thread about "what should I do" is *always* going to be bring up factors - factors that not everybody know, regardless of whether they should or not. I'm not a dumb guy, but I've gone through plenty of things where I wish someone would have just said something to make me stop and think. I think it's irresponsible of people to do things like that, and I'm not an irresponsible guy.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Home ownership definitely has its higher rewards... and also higher risks associated with it compared to renting. Definitely should only do it when you're ready and not be rushed into it. One really need to gain as much understanding of what you're getting into as possible. If you're already living pay check to pay check and don't really have any extra money to invest anyway, then 1st priority you should do is probably think about how you can save more money.

However, once you've saved up some money and thinking about investing..., investing in a house is really a great way to go! Whether your investment(home value) gain or lose money, none of those investments can actually offer a roof over your head, right? ;)

[Godson]

I am not a paycheck to paycheck person.


I budget each months income out before it comes in and outside of school loans have zero debt (which may be waived with the Student Loan forgiveness deal right now). I currently have a Roth IRA that I started several years ago.




I also just found out that due to my employer, I get 400$ back in closing costs and may qualify for zero down for home purchase. I will be looking into this option next week.

[Leon]

I became a homeowner because I got tired of the rental place I was in being sold out from under me.

So I bought the place.

Bonus, it then carried on going up in value rather nicely.

Different markets do different things however. The house my mother bought decreased in value. The rental property she bought stayed about static. Both houses were / are in a small town.

I will be selling the rental house, because it isn't returning enough to offset the risk of ownership.

[Godson]

Well, I was approved for the Wells Fargo Neighborhood LIFT program grant. Kinda shocked and surprised. A little terrified too.

Currently actively looking at houses as I need to have a contract on a house within 60 days or I lose out on the free 15k.

[Godson]

I went and looked at 5 houses tonight. One was a no way with the garage layout. I couldn't pull in the driveway and open the car door because it was too narrow, and this was in my Mom's C-Max. Garage was non-existent in vertical dimension, I needed to duck to get around down there. Off the list.


Second one, was a pleasant surprise, I don't care for the outside at all. However, the inside has so much charm. Downside is at the top of my budget, and the main support needs to be replaced. The 2 x 10's are cracking and worn out. I suppose after nearly 100 years, that is to be somewhat expected. Going to do some calling around to get an idea on cost to replace that and possibly replace/reinforce a few of the floor joists while the new support would go in. The basement was very useable for what I would want, I don't think the Denali would fit in the garage, but that isn't an issue. It can fit under the deck (garage is on the backside of the house with a wrap-around driveway, and a large porch to boot). I am guessing it would be in the area of 4-6k worth of work to replace the main support. I know this is pretty common work to do, and I wouldn't be doing this work at all. To much to lose if something were to go wrong.

Next house is 6% higher than my budget, but appears to have no issues with foundation or support. Downside is the basement would be just a storage center. Can't really finish it to use as a rental, can't do much with it. Also has a deck, with a detached garage that would need to be torn down and rebuilt. The foundation for the garage was crumbling, and the garage itself was tiny with an odd add-on that has dirt floors. I could settle for that house depending on the pricing situation.

4th house was too tiny, garage was underneath the house and pretty much non-existent also. It was much more usable than the 1st house, but again I would be ducking to go up or downstairs the way it was designed. I could build a garage in the backyard to alleviate this (just as the neighbor did), but the value of the house is not likely to increase with that addition.

5th house. A waste of time. Very charming exterior, but the interior was a complete joke. Not even a consideration.


Numbers 2 and 3 are staying on the list, ironically the largest and oldest houses of the bunch. Both are in very stable market areas. The 2nd house with the main support beam is on land the could easily increase in value from the land alone being so close to some of the most expensive shopping area in the KC metro area next to one other place. This house is currently the front-runner as long as the seller seems to be willing to deal on price to count on the main support replacement.

[Crazed_Insanity]

I'd be careful with homes with major structural defects or foundation defects. It could be that they have defective foundation... or it could be land itself actually shifting... that'd probably be impossible to fix. One good thing about older homes is that it'd be obvious to see if it has been sitting on solid foundation/land. Any cracks or movements should be pretty obvious. Replacing supports probably won't be that much of an issue as long as the foundation is still good. However, unless there's termite damage or water damage or some sort of outside influence, otherwise, why would internal structures be 'worn out' or cracked? Does it need additional support or certain beams need to be beefed up more? Anytime a supposedly a 'static' structure changes its shape, it'd be nice to have the answers why... and have affordable solutions... I wouldn't buy a place if I don't know the answers for sure. Unless the entire neighborhood are full of these kind of 'out of shape' houses and you have no other options... ;)

Also, if you really like a house, 6% over your 'current' budget isn't really that big of a deal dude. Think about it, you've locked in your rent for 15 or 30 years! Supposedly your wage should go up, right? Worst case scenario that if you have only 2% raises, you'll be able to 'afford' your house in 3 years! ;) Of course if the price is way over than the loan amount you're qualified for, that's a different story.

BTW, did you get a preapproved loan? Whatever the amount the bank is willing to lend you, try to use it all!!! :D

[Godson]

I am pre-approved, and that is the thing. It is that is 6% over my budget. I am working in a tight timeframe to maintain the LIFT funds available to me.

I am looking at 4 more today.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Oh. Maybe you can try to negotiate with your lender to get a bit more if you really like that house... Anyway, eventually you'll be able to find something that fits you I'm sure..., in the mean time, have fun house hunting!

[Leon]

some people say location location location ... but I say also add to that storage storage storage!

[Kchrpm]

Or negotiate with the seller, 6% is not much to grease the wheels.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Ha, that's true too. It's probably easier to negotiate with the seller if it's a buyer's market.

I've totally forgotten about negotiating for a lower price with the seller because around my neighborhood, it's been a seller's market for a long time. Offering exactly the seller asking price wasn't enough. I have missed out on many houses by offering full price and still lost out to other cash offers that went beyond the asking price! It seems there are lots of rich Chinese people interested in my current asian neighborhood creating this weird chinese bubble I think...

To illustrate the craziness, it's only been about 4 years and my home value according to Zillow.com is now 160% of my original purchase price! I kinda doubt this same trend can continue forever... Wife and I are currently thinking about cashing out and move out to a more americanized neighborhoods that's closer to my work...

[thesameguy]

I've totally forgotten about negotiating for a lower price with the seller because around my neighborhood, it's been a seller's market for a long time. Offering exactly the seller asking price wasn't enough. I have missed out on many houses by offering full price and still lost out to other cash offers that went beyond the asking price! It seems there are lots of rich Chinese people interested in my current asian neighborhood creating this weird chinese bubble I think...

That seems to be true around here. I don't know anybody who's bought a house recently for asking. My friend just (April) bought a $340k house for the discounted price of $375k. :|

[Kchrpm]

I was going to offer a few grand off the asking price for my current place, until we pulled up the newest listing and they had already dropped it 7 grand :up:

[George]

The market here is nuts. You can sell a house like that. *snaps fingers*

I have a good friend at work who is a single guy and trying to buy a house. He has just about given up because he says every house that goes on the market sells the same day for more than the asking price, and to dual-income married couples, or real-estate investors. He says a single guy with an average income doesn't stand a chance.

I've seen these rapid-fire home sales happen in my own neighborhood recently. The house next door is a good example - it has sold twice in a little over a year, and each in just in a day or two. Our long-time neighbors moved to Texas when the husband/father got a promotion and a transfer at work. They didn't even get a For Sale sign up before they had a signed contract.

A really nice couple moved in from Arkansas. We liked them a lot. I rode bikes with the guy. They lived there just over a year and he apparently got a job offer back in Arkansas that was too good to pass up. They had an open house on a Saturday while I was outside working in the yard all day. The cars never stopped coming. There was practically a line to get in the place. They accepted an offer they got that day, made a $40,000 profit after living there for a year, and that's a hell of a lot of money for a down payment on a house in Arkansas.

I told my wife we should "cash out" and go buy a cheaper place in Arkansas ourselves. I don't think she thought I was serious.

[Godson]

Putting an offer on a house tonight.

Id prefer not to have this on fb as i don't want everybody telling me this or that.


Ill keep ya posted

[thesameguy]

This.

[Crazed_Insanity]

That.

Good luck man! ;)

[George]

The other thing.

Good luck!

[21Kid]

So??? What happened?

[Godson]

We have agreed to terms, I signed the contract today. I am going to have the home inspected on wednesday or thursday.

[George]

Congratulations! Welcome to the gentry, the franchise, and don't forget to pick up your Stonecutters membership application as you leave the closing.

You may also now add a comma and Esquire after your name on your calling cards.

[Kchrpm]

Yay verily!

[Godson]

Inspections coming in just under an hour

[Random]

Are you going along on the inspection? I recommend it, if the inspector will let you. You learn a LOT about your (prospective) house.

[GB]

Are you going along on the inspection? I recommend it, if the inspector will let you. You learn a LOT about your (prospective) house.
Secondeded.

[Godson]

I was there.


Unless the owners are willing to known 10% more off the house. I will not be buying it. There is close to 15k in things that need attention.



Looking at another house on Sunday. Ball is in the sellers court.

[thesameguy]

What's the market like there? Sounds like you have a fair number of reasonable options, yeah?

Also, I liked SLM's thread better, because he was posting pics of the houses he was looking at. :p

[Godson]

http://www.kansascityhomes.com/Kansas-City/5828-Harrison-St-Kansas-City-MO_64110/1872270.aspx

House in question.

[Godson]

http://www.kansascityhomes.com/Raytown/9503-E-64th-Ter-Raytown-MO_64133/1872089.aspx



Thinking this one needs to be looked into...

[Random]

The outside of that house so does not match the inside.

[Godson]

I agree. Welcome to Raytown.

A little bit of dressing up the outside would go a long way.

[JoshInKC]

I (partially) rehabbed a house just a couple of blocks from that one off Troost 7 or 8 years ago. Decent neighborhood.

[Kchrpm]

All I care about is Google Fiber eligibility.

[JoshInKC]

If do you end up in that place off Troost, I recommend checking out the food options to the south. Assuming they're still there, Niecie's(sp?) is a really good soul food place just a few blocks away, and further down (high 70's/lower 80's) is a great Jamaican/caribbean place on the west side of the street and then BB's Lawnside bbq is pretty decent.

And there was another good soul food place right at 75th and troost.

[Godson]

I have cancelled the contract on the House at Harrison.


Currently looking at this one.




http://www.kansascityhomes.com/Raytown/6716-VERMONT-Ave-Raytown-MO_64133/1895916.aspx

[Random]

Nice! Beer-drinkin' porches front and rear. :toast:

[Godson]

Front porch is small, but totally beer drinking capable.


And the Basement could easily be turned into a rental property. Access is available to the basement and from backyard without any interaction from me if I am upstairs. There is also access from the main entrance.

[Random]

Might check what the rules are on that if they are "non-conforming." But yeah, roommates/renters make the finances much easier.

You could also rent out a bedroom on Airbnb if you're handy to touristy stuff.

[speedpimp]

Pretty sure KC has a ton of people who come there just for the BBQ and Burnt Ends.

[George]

I like the house on Vermont Ave a lot. Good luck.

[Godson]

Pretty sure KC has a ton of people who come there just for the BBQ and Burnt Ends.

This is more true than most people think. We also have some damned good steak. Going to look at some other houses in the next week. Vermont is a possibility, but not in the area I really want to live (see still in the same city as where I live and 20 minutes away from work).

[Godson]

http://www.kansascityhomes.com/Kansas-City/5828-Harrison-St-Kansas-City-MO_64110/1872270.aspx

House in question.


Homeowner states they are addressing the areas of the inspection that failed. I will look over the house again in a few days before I decide if I am or am not going to be purchasing a house.

[Godson]

Fuck it, I am going to wait to purchase as I have said in the past. I am not going to put myself into a financial stress for the sake of moving out.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Huh? What happened?

[Godson]

Just don't feel the time to purchase for me is now

[Crazed_Insanity]

Hmm..., your sub-conscious mind must've just decided to pull the brake? ;)

Anyway, it is a big purchase. For sure you shouldn't rush into it if you feel not ready for whatever reasons.

[George]

Stonecutter membership is hereby REVOKED! :eek:

Good luck. You'll know when the time is right.

[novicius]

:up:

[Random]

Tyler: Post up some pics, y0! :)

[GB]

He's too busy picking out curtains.

[Godson]

More like packing and trying to piece together a decent layout.

[Godson]

Currently looking for a refrigerator. I was planning on a scratch and dent place. But I may have found exactly what I want on CL.


http://stjoseph.craigslist.org/app/4743502613.html

I'll call them tomorrow after work.

[Random]

He's too busy picking out curtains.

Make sure they resemble female genitalia.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Wait, so you finally pulled the trigger on a purchase? Congrats!

[Godson]

Yup. I think I am going to pass on the fridge I posted. I just did a search for reviews and it turned up a bunch of negative reviews. Things like not maintaining temps, etc.

[George]

Refrigerators with in-the-door water and ice dispensers have the potential to leak anywhere from the unit itself to wherever the water source is. The same is true of ice-makers inside the freezer. Dispensers also reduce available cooling/freezing space inside, and they will shoot ice over the side of your glass onto the floor more often than not. And you pay more for this feature!

I suggest the plainest of the plain-jane 'fridges you can find, and some ice cube trays for inside the freezer. Check out used appliance stores and find a good old Made In America refrigerator like whatever Sears used to sell back when Sears could be trusted. Kenmore, I think. Get the good stuff like that for your house before you get married and your wife starts buying stuff based on color and gimmicks.

Our experience with Chinese appliances has been terrible. They simply do not last.

From the CL ad posted above: "The only issue it has is the ice maker arm valve is broken off. Ice maker works perfectly, just have to empty some ice if it gets full."

So you go away for the weekend and come home to the freezer door open and melting ice all over the kitchen floor. Nice. And they think they'll get $450 for it?

[thesameguy]

I've bought most of my appliances new from us-appliance.com - they ship, are cheap, and carry everything.

[21Kid]

Be careful to stay off of George's lawn.




;)

[George]

That would be a good idea. :D

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/12/12/movies/12torino.large1.jpg

[21Kid]

Nice car. :D

[Random]

I was planning on a scratch and dent place.

We bought our previous fridge and our current washer/dryer from Sears' scratch-and-dent outlet--worked out nicely. :)

[JoshInKC]

Yeah, in my former life rehabbing homes, I bought a lot of scratch & dent appliances. It is definitely the way to go if you aren't time crunched and aren't planning on appearing in better homes and gardens.
Often, you can pick them up super cheap with dents on a side that won't be visible in your installation for hundreds off.

[Random]

Tyler: Post up some pics, y0! :)

*ahem*

*looks at watch*

*taps toes*

:mad:

[Godson]

Sorry. Ill see what I can do on Friday. Might as well plan on that being zI have the day off ;)

[Random]

:toast:

[G'day Mate]

So, I'll almost certainly be making an offer on a smallish three-bedroom place at the very base of the Adelaide hills next week. As it turns out, the back neighbours have been featured on the Australian version of the TV show "Grand Designs"! They're in the big red box, if all goes well I'm the little guy below.

http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo193/insaneogram81/granddesigns.jpg

Season 4, episode 3 if anyone is curious. Pretty cool bragging point either way if you ask me ;)

[21Kid]

Make sure the people in 12A are cool. ;)

[G'day Mate]

;) The two houses don't actually share a wall, which is good. But yeah, close proximity!

[G'day Mate]

Oh yeah ... linky (http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-sa-torrens+park-118622747)

http://i1.au.reastatic.net/456x342/51289cc2ae2eeec8e7b7c65ff66805a42e09af5c09b834678e 81f03dd3dcacb2/main.jpg

http://i4.au.reastatic.net/456x342-resize/302a653bbd1850fd2def3e543d3f0935a94ec5ab1914c151da edd79922fa9db9/floorplan1.jpg

[thesameguy]

Looks like a nice place! Is that solar on the roof?

[G'day Mate]

I believe it has solar, yes, but I ... oh there it is in the aerial view. Good spotting :)

[Random]

Casual Living *and* a Lounge!

[21Kid]

I never understood having the main bedroom in the front of the house like that, personally.

[G'day Mate]

I've got to make an offer tomorrow. Can anyone come up with an interesting number between 500,000 and 520,000?

For example, I paid $246,810 (two-four-six-eight-ten) for my last place ;)

[Godson]

501,432

[21Kid]

511,115

[G'day Mate]

$512,800 was the winning answer

I am now officially a property tycoon.

[Random]

:up:

[speedpimp]

Nice.

[thesameguy]

I think you have to get to Level 10 Slumlord before Property Tycoon.

[G'day Mate]

Hmmm, the building inspection report has come back quite bad. I've got until midnight tomorrow (32 hours) to decide whether or not to jump out of the contract. The problems are:

- The foundation has a (small) crack all the way through it
- The firewall between it and the adjoining property sucks
- There are termites in a retaining wall between this house and the neighbours
- The roof has shifted and will continue to shift

I wasn't there for it so I sent my parents and partner. Mum and dad seem to think "get out", I'm not sure what my partner thinks yet but I suspect she's emotionally invested in it (as am I). As it turns out my sister is an architect so she's trying to line up an engineer to have a look.

[thesameguy]

Man, #1-3 sound not so terrible, things that be dealt with reasonably even if they might cause you to revise your offer.

#4 sounds bad. I don't actually know what a "shifting roof" is, but anything dealing with a roof means thousands of dollars.

Swing a VERY low ball at them and see if they go for it?

[G'day Mate]

I don't really know either - it's all Greek to me.

The current status is that I have made an offer which the vendor has accepted, but I can simply withdraw it during this "cooling off" period.

I'm pretty much stretched to the limit budget-wise on this one, so fixing these problems straight away will be difficult for me.

[Yeti]

I'm currently on the hunt for a hause, but I've got something extremely specific in mind.

Several neighborhoods in this town are made up of tiny post-war cottages that all follow a similar floor plan. One bedroom, one bath, about 5-600 sq. ft, no basement, tiny utility room for laundry/mechanicals, nothing but a wall furnace for heat (literally a furnace in the wall that heats one room and leaves the rest of the house freezing) wood construction, etc.

Here's one priced at much more than they usually go for because it's on a double lot:

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1500-Illinois-St_Racine_WI_53405_M87033-60937?row=51&source=web

Since they're so worthless as family homes, most of them just belong to landlords. One property investment entity in town owns about half of them (and calls us when their heat is out).

(yes, I live in a dump of a town with no property values to speak of)

One just needs to come up for sale :x Preferably not on a big corner lot though.

Once I have one, it'll be on me to install a proper split system and ductwork to heat/cool the joint, re-do the plumbing in pex, insulate the place, knock the chimney down below the roofline and patch the roof, install an electric water heater, etc. Not very hard, especially in a shack like that. Me being able to get furnaces/AC's/water heaters/pretty much everything at wholesale cost helps. Would be a very efficient house by the time I was done with it.

And I will pull a permit for all of that...promise.

Perfect home for the single cheapskate.

[thesameguy]

I don't really know either - it's all Greek to me.

The current status is that I have made an offer which the vendor has accepted, but I can simply withdraw it during this "cooling off" period.

I'm pretty much stretched to the limit budget-wise on this one, so fixing these problems straight away will be difficult for me.

I would get a quick & dirty quote on repairing all of the items and then revise your offer to deduct 80-120% of the cost of the repairs. If they go for it, hey great, if not, you've lost nothing. Now that the owners know there are actual problems with their house, they may be more flexible on the price. ;) You can then either address the issues right away with the savings, or endure them for a little while as you recuperate financially. ;)

I think major hole in that plan is really the foundation. Foundation cracks are not unheard of and aren't necessarily end of the world scenarios, but they totally can be. Unfortunately since the issue was not disclosed to you, chances are the owners didn't know about it and haven't been monitoring it. If the foundation was poured and then cracked it's probably not worth worrying about. If the crack appeared recently, perhaps as part of a shift in the ground below, then you may have a problem. You'd really need an expert to render an opinion on the severity and potential remedial measures to know anything. The things I would immediately be concerned about is whether the foundation crack resulted from a shift that also damaged the roof, and whether those termites might use the crack do gain access to the house. Neither of those sound like win. :(

Of course, if you don't *need* to buy a house now, there is no shame in just walking away and finding a place that suits you better. If you found one place that works, you'll find another. :)

[thesameguy]

Perfect home for the single cheapskate.

Hell yeah it is!

What is monthly rent on a place like that?

[G'day Mate]

I don't normally do this, but TSG ... those are some good thoughts so I'm going to go through your reply bit by bit with what I know ...

I would get a quick & dirty quote on repairing all of the items and then revise your offer to deduct 80-120% of the cost of the repairs. If they go for it, hey great, if not, you've lost nothing. Now that the owners know there are actual problems with their house, they may be more flexible on the price. ;) You can then either address the issues right away with the savings, or endure them for a little while as you recuperate financially. ;)
You're right, they might go for a lower offer, however they will more likely turn it down as there's probably some other chump who'll buy it without looking properly <cynicism> and live happily ever after with no future problems </cynicism>.


I think major hole in that plan is really the foundation. Foundation cracks are not unheard of and aren't necessarily end of the world scenarios, but they totally can be. Unfortunately since the issue was not disclosed to you, chances are the owners didn't know about it and haven't been monitoring it.
Apparently there is some engineering report that the real estate agent is trying to get a copy of. She didn't mention it to me but she mentioned it to my parents who were present during the inspection.


If the foundation was poured and then cracked it's probably not worth worrying about. If the crack appeared recently, perhaps as part of a shift in the ground below, then you may have a problem.
This suburb is on a fairly active but very minor fault line. All the houses have cracks, but according to my sister (an architect) there's no way a house that's only 20 years old should have a cracked foundation.


You'd really need an expert to render an opinion on the severity and potential remedial measures to know anything. The things I would immediately be concerned about is whether the foundation crack resulted from a shift that also damaged the roof, and whether those termites might use the crack do gain access to the house. Neither of those sound like win. :(
Apparently the roof is damaged and will probably need continual repair as the foundation continues to shift.


Of course, if you don't *need* to buy a house now, there is no shame in just walking away and finding a place that suits you better. If you found one place that works, you'll find another. :)
I keep telling myself that too :)

[G'day Mate]

So, I'm now paying for an engineer to do an assessment and give his opinion tomorrow. What I want to know (regarding the cracked foundation) is how bad it is now and whether it will get worse. If really is a major concernt then I need to know if it can be fixed and, following that, when that needs to happen and how much it will cost. If it's only a minor thing then I need to know what the consequences of ignoring it are.

[G'day Mate]

Actually, if I do need to reduce the offer by a significant amount it gives me the opportunity to put forward $456,780 - not a bad concession, although probably slightly insulting to them. They'll just go with one of the other offers instead.

[Yeti]

Hell yeah it is!

What is monthly rent on a place like that?


I want to say it was around 6-700 a month, the last time I talked to a tenant that lived in one.

Or, well more than double what the monthly payment/utility costs would be for the owner. :lol: I imagine they don't come up for sale that often because of exactly that reason.

[Crazed_Insanity]

Unless you really absolutely love the place... or you know current market conditions won't allow you to find anything better anytime soon, I'd just walk away from a cracked foundation. If I were the homeowner, sure, I'll try to fix it, but why buying into someone else's problem? Cracks will only grow.

Only 2 reason why you'd have a cracked foundation. Poor workmanship/design or land has shifted. Do you really want to own a home built by somebody who wouldn't design or lay the foundation properly? And shifted land can't really be fixed. I live in earthquake prone area. I can understand sometimes shaking may cause cracks around the house, but if the foundation is cracked, that'd be a deal breaker for me.

Never even heard of shifted roof before. Wish roofer's still around to chime in on something like this...

[George]

I would run away from that house if I were in your position, G'day. Why complicate your life like that? I say keep looking, and listen to your sister. Good luck.

[21Kid]

This suburb is on a fairly active but very minor fault line. All the houses have cracks, but according to my sister (an architect) there's no way a house that's only 20 years old should have a cracked foundation.

Apparently the roof is damaged and will probably need continual repair as the foundation continues to shift.

I wouldn't even entertain the option after hearing these two, without them being fixed prior to purchase. Even if you discount the house $50k, are you going to have $50k available to make fixes if something happens a few years down the road?

[IMOA]

I was going to say walk away but george is right, run away. Seriously, you don't need that shit and you will find a better place.

[21Kid]

I'm currently on the hunt for a hause, but I've got something extremely specific in mind.

One just needs to come up for sale :x Preferably not on a big corner lot though.

Once I have one, it'll be on me to install a proper split system and ductwork to heat/cool the joint, re-do the plumbing in pex, insulate the place, knock the chimney down below the roofline and patch the roof, install an electric water heater, etc. Not very hard, especially in a shack like that. Me being able to get furnaces/AC's/water heaters/pretty much everything at wholesale cost helps. Would be a very efficient house by the time I was done with it.

And I will pull a permit for all of that...promise.

Perfect home for the single cheapskate.
Sounds like a good plan, if that's what you are looking for. :up:
Most realtor sites let you set up email notifications when a specific type of property comes up for sale. Just be patient. Or you can contact a local realtor to do it for you. They may be able to notify you when one is coming up on the market soon (before it does), if it's going to be listed with them.

[Yeti]

Actually, if I do need to reduce the offer by a significant amount it gives me the opportunity to put forward $456,780 - not a bad concession, although probably slightly insulting to them. They'll just go with one of the other offers instead.

That house needs to be somebody else's problem, not yours.

RUN.

[Conman]

It's been said, but I'll throw my version in too.

RUN.

Even if they are going to "fix" those problems, there are too many questions for me. Will it happen again? (most likely, yes). Will their repairs be up to your long term standards? (most likely, no). Is the work guaranteed, and for how long.

Too many unknowns in this deal. Even if you get the house for a steal as is, do you have the funds to make the repairs? The foundation crack is livable with. The roof - depends on how much damage underneath it. Are there leaks? Is there structural damage to any load bearing areas, etc. The termites, ugh, left untreated it can become a huge issue for the whole house and not just that firewall.

Too much risk, not enough reward for my taste.

[Random]

The combination of the foundation and roof would give me serious heartburn.

FWIW, we ran from a place with foundation issues. They can be really expensive.

To speak to Conman's point, one of the reasons we ran was because the contractor that worked on the foundation didn't give us the warm fuzzies.

[G'day Mate]

985

[Kchrpm]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1RChZk1EU

[21Kid]

:up:

Did you even get estimates back?

[G'day Mate]

Yep, and when they were deducted from the offer they weren't interested

[thesameguy]

Well, there you go. Let some idiot fall into that trap! :)

[G'day Mate]

Such a shame though - I really wanted that place, but I was at my limit of affordability.

[G'day Mate]

So in two hours I'm signing the contract on this place (www.realestate.com.au/property-house-sa-belair-118885443)

http://i1.au.reastatic.net/456x342/bbc9be6cb145631d6369c0b26f87ea7103e586e1d721932ea9 565b3072ba5793/main.jpg

http://i2.au.reastatic.net/456x342/82e9f9def1f85c78ce5b8948e57e3790dd60c2fd78511266d5 bea6bf2d66e70a/image5.jpg

http://i1.au.reastatic.net/raw/fae58f8ee86cffbbd262d9e1b44bfb48ff2f4a289e2a5661bc ed068cb5493491/floorplan1.gif

That adds a 300m climb to my current commute - good times :)

[George]

Wow! Congratulations.

You know, Park Tool makes a bench-mounted bicycle repair stand that would look great bolted to that kitchen counter, to the left of the sink.

[Random]

The new Fresh Prince of Belair!

...I'll show myself out.

-----

It's got a garage! No need for bike work in the kitchen. :cool:

Looks very nice, the ominous/gloomy HDR notwithstanding... :lol:

:toast: :up:

[Kchrpm]

:up:

[G'day Mate]

It's got a garage! No need for bike work in the kitchen. :cool:

That's mislabeled - it's actually a brewery.

[Random]

Surely 36 sq m is enough for both? :D

Don't forget to build your jet-powered beer cooler back there...or is it only Kiwi blokes that do that?

[Kchrpm]

So G'day, can I come stay with? :D

[G'day Mate]

All are welcome ... to a point :p

[Kchrpm]

Not too long, just a few decadeys.

[JSGeneral]

Congrats G'Day! :up:

Now practice this phrase... "Get off my lawn."

(Nice yard by the way.)

[Random]

Having the park across the street is pretty nice, too. :up:

[G'day Mate]

Building inspection came back A+ :)

[Yw-slayer]

You need that 300m climb as a finisher, BRO! Congrats.

[Random]

Sweet. :up:

[21Kid]

much better. :)

[Drachen596]

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/432-Arcadia-Ct_Fort-Wayne_IN_46807_M43120-93365

that's two blocks away and used to be where a guy i was friends with from before elementary school through high school lived. i'm pretty sure its a foreclosure and is likely going to need work based on the fact that there don't appear to be any appliances in the kitchen.

also not sure how i'd go about getting a loan for this place.

[Kchrpm]

There was nothing special about getting a loan on my place just because it was a foreclosure, if that's what you mean. You get it appraised, as long as the appraisal isn't less than the loan amount you should be right where you'd be with a normal sale.

[Drachen596]

its more of a "would a bank or lender really want a mortgate on a sub 40k house?" type deal than anything else. especially if the house needs work.

they're not exactly going to hand me the 40k AND whatever the difference between that and the assessment is to use for fixing it up and getting appliances and such i'd imagine.

[Kchrpm]

Actually they would. They stand to make a profit on that. You just have to sell them on that. All they care about is trusting that they will get their money back, either from you or from selling the house. Show them that A) you can make the payments and B) the property is worth more than what they're giving you, and they'll be happy to sign on the dotted line.

[Crazed_Insanity]

That neighborhood is funky. I checked on zillow and showed a range of recently sold homes priced from $5,000 to nearly $100,000?!?!?

Zillow also doesn't show that it's on the market and says that address has 2 units?

Considering that it's be sitting around for so long, surely there are some problems lots of folks can't deal with...

[Drachen596]

fwiw that particular street is supposedly a historic neighborhood. there's a few around here from way back. a lot of the houses aren't that old or that big. unless some changes had been made that house is a single family house and always has been.

that house was built in 1925 and i already see some things that have changed since my friend lived in it. the garage door seen from the front used to have a back garage door as well, the pushout on the back of the house used to be all glassed in with tilting multipane windows.

[tigeraid]

So. Dredging up an old thread.

Tara and I were thinking of moving in the next year or so. But then our dream house popped up for sale.

Right on Lake Erie, 2 acre property, Victorian style exactly how we like it, all recently renovated, hot tub, two car garage AND a gigantic work shop.

Even the price is right.

Some of our concerns are financial and to be expected. The shop would need work to be properly winter-proof, as well. But whatever.

Here's something that SORT of concerned us, but only because I have no experience with it. We went to look at the basement, as the realtor is reading off all the new renovations that have been done (roof, siding, insulation, drywall, floors, bla bla)... And also new furnace, new water heater, and the basement is nice and dry! .... Then he opens the door and the basement has 1.5" of water in it.

NOW.... Right off the bat, we noticed the sump pump had been accidentally unplugged. So he plugs it in, it fires up and starts pumping away. I notice (and he mentions as well) that it's only in like a 6"-8" deep hole. Most sumps I've seem are at LEAST a foot down in the cement.

Should this be a major concern to us? It's a very old home, but again, in great shape. Foundation is concrete, looked solid, no cracks and such. Basement didn't show any real signs of water damage that I could see. Another buyer had a home inspection and apparently it passed fine (though I'm sure the basement was dry at the time.) Is 1.5" of water understandable given that the sump pump was unplugged? It had been after a few days of rain, as well.

My thought was, when I we make our offer, add it in as a condition of sale that they get a professional out there to dig down and install a correct sump pump too. Is that a reasonable request?

Suggestions welcome.

[Phil_SS]

1.5" of water should be a huge concern. Even with the sump pump unplugged you should not being seeing that kind of water in a properly sealed basement.

[JoshInKC]

An inch and a half is a lot, but really might not be a big deal at all - faulty french drain, gutter spout fell off & started dumping right on the foundation, etc. Make the sale contingent on a proper basement/drainage inspection and mitigation of possible issues the inspector turns up.

[Godson]

An inch and a half is a lot, but really might not be a big deal at all - faulty french drain, gutter spout fell off & started dumping right on the foundation, etc. Make the sale contingent on a proper basement/drainage inspection and mitigation of possible issues the inspector turns up.

This.

[tigeraid]

Well should the home inspection not find issues like that?

I guess my wording should have been "I see the sump pump is done poorly/halfassed, and I'm comfortable fixing/improving it. But should the wet basement scare me away from BUYING the house."

[JoshInKC]

Home inspection *should* figure out the issue, but not all inspectors will catch /know everything. If your regular inspector doesn't have an answer, that's when you call in a specialist, ideally one recommended by the original inspector. (these types of people get a lot of work through referrals, so it's in their best interest to not screw you too badly.)
The specialist should be able to give you an answer, along with a possible solution, or cost estimate on the solution.

[tigeraid]

I called the home inspector that we plan to use (fully accredited, well-known, etc) and he sounded like he was confident in inspecting it and knowing whether it would be a long-term problem or just a stupid mistake. He echoed my thoughts, that a 100 year old home is going to most likely have a wet basement sometimes, and if a sump pump is properly installed, it's nothing something to worry about. So I guess if we go forward with this, we'll wait and see what he says about it.

The difficulty here is, the gutter system is buried. Each downspout empties into a big plastic tube that's buried and runs under the driveway, and presumably down a slope at the edge of the property. It sure is a clean install, and it looks new (one of the renovations) but it's kind of annoying not knowing where they go, or whether they're plugged or not. I thought about just dumping a hose down one and seeing what happens....

[tigeraid]

Funny little issue on the side too, which I'm researching, and it may be nothing.

The house is situated thusly:

https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Wallacetown,+ON+N0L/@42.5790077,-81.5001994,607m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x882e4c0cd94bc351:0x7bc98 dcf725dc14c


The distance to the road from the lake bluffs is roughly 500 feet. In OTHER places on Lake Erie, I've been hearing horror stories about bluff erosion, the land falling into the lake, etc.

I've been calling around to various people in the area. Only one person has said "I wouldn't buy there because of erosion." Everyone else has said nah, it's not really a short-term (~100 year+) problem, and in fact there's a big new subdivision opening close to the lake as well, and no one in the actual neighbourhood has said anything about it. I'm not worried about my house falling into the sea, but I am worried about the property values 30 years from now.

[JoshInKC]

Not knowing anything at all about the local geology or currents, I probably wouldn't worry about it unless there's a lot of erosion right in that area. This is all based on how a similar situation would function in America, but the fact that there's a road between the house and the lake is a good thing - If local erosion is a big problem then the County/Army corps of engineers/state/whoever will be pretty likely to try to mitigate the issue in order to save the road. I probably wouldn't worry about it in your lifetime, home values could drop over the next 30 years, but if they did, I doubt it would be terribly precipitous.

Roughly how tall are those bluffs out of curiosity?

[speedpimp]

What's up with the ring of trees at the back of the property?

[tigeraid]

I've talked to a LOT of people today about the erosion issue, and basically everyone says that one guy is overreacting and there's no amount of erosion that can occur within MY lifetime to worry.

I would GUESS the bluffs are around 30 feet? Maybe?


speed: My property would actually look like this:

http://cdn.realtor.ca/listing/reb13/highres/6/558986_30.jpg


So that stuff in the back is all owned by the farmer who owns the big field around it. Kinda looks like a little pond, I dunno. And with a hand-shake agreement, the farmer uses that little triangle of farm field in "front" of the house, and allows us to use the "rest" of the backyard.

[tigeraid]

Looks like we're fucked on this anyway. There is NO internet whatsoever there. Except Satellite. Because it's 1994. :smh:

[George]

Does it have a nice boat ramp?

That might be a fair trade-off if so.

Fishing & water skiing > world wide web

[TheBenior]

I'm guessing that water skiing season is fairly limited up there.

[George]

Well, how about Ice Fishing & Beer Drinking season?

[tigeraid]

Ice fishing definitely would've been nice. :(

[tigeraid]

Put an offer in! Nice 4 bedroom ranch in Melbourne, about 30 min outside of London. Pool, hot tub, big shop, apple orchard, a little under an acre, and private. as. fuck.

Wish me luck selling this old turd.

[speedpimp]

Pics or it didn't happen.;)

[tigeraid]

http://www.realtor.ca/propertyDetails.aspx?PropertyId=15507030

Outside and Landscaping need work, it's some crazy old lady Dutch shit right now, vines everywhere, fucking cedars planted, it's a disaster unless you're a crazy ol' Cat Lady.

Inside's pretty sweet tho.

[speedpimp]

Looks pretty nice.

[Kchrpm]

Nice 4 bedroom ranch in Melbourne, about 30 min outside of London.
But those are on different continents :(

[tigeraid]

Spoken like a true 'murrican. :finger:

[21Kid]

But those are on different continents :(
And he's not on either of them. :lol:

[Kchrpm]

Screw you guys, I'm going to Athens this weekend. Or Lima. MAYBE BOTH.

[tigeraid]

Mortgage all good to go, home inspection is tonight, and our house goes on the market tomorrow. Fuck I hope it sells quick.

[George]

Best of luck to you sir!

[tigeraid]

Well it could really use a breaker panel (old fuse box, poorly wired) but otherwise seems fine.

[tigeraid]

And now we wait. All conditions met except the sale of our current house. It's been eight days, we've had about ten viewings. Anyone wanna buy a house? Please? :p

The anticipation is killing me.

[George]

Ten viewings is eight days sounds pretty promising. How about having your realtor schedule an Open House this weekend?

Our last house was on the market for six weeks with no offers. We were about to fire our realtor when she suggested an Open House. We got two offers that weekend. The realtor told the second interested party that we had just received one offer and so they had better make a good one. We accepted the second offer, which was higher that our asking price. :up:

Good luck.

[tigeraid]

Man. Maybe it's something about Canada, but I've been told by a few realtors AND the wife's research that Open Houses are a waste of time and rarely result in a sale, and are mostly just a networking seminar for the realtor.

Maybe we'll look into it after a few more weeks, if it hasn't sold.

[tigeraid]

The open house was a waste of time, btw. Three couples, no useful feedback.

45 days into the sale, no bites, and only about 20 viewings. This blows.

We have an option to extend our 60 day term to 90 days. Looks like we'll have to. :mad:

[tigeraid]

Finally got an offer and accepted. Only a home inspection to go now! :hard:

[thesameguy]

80% of the time it works 100% of the time!

[thesameguy]

Report from the front: It appears my garage was built based on non-Euclidian geometry. Not sure at this point if that's by design or not.

[JoshInKC]

Having spent several years in home remodelling, that's not nearly as uncommon as you might think...
I've floored rooms that had four sides and four corners which I'm certain did not add up to 360* Sometimes I was reminded of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House -
“No Human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.”

[thesameguy]

Man, I loved that book.

And now I am terrified to work on my garage. :)

It appears the pad was laid in two stages, and then the garage built on an angle relative to the pad, and walls constructed of varying heights. Because of the "design" (used loosely) nobody will install an overhead door* so I resolved to install sliding ones. I measured out the position of the track hangers last night and if you just look at that track vs. the cross beam it looks like a drunk person did it. But if you measure from track to floor, it's within 1/8" all the way across.

It's going to look goofy for sure, but it's better than the garage filling up with leaves every fall, so full steam ahead.


* They will install one, but only after an engineering review and a center support is added. I don't want to add a center support as I really enjoy having a 20'x24' unobstructed space. Someday... someday... it will be awesome for painting a car. :)

[tigeraid]

Buyers called at the fucking 11th hour.... have cleared financing... And then requested a 3 day extension to do a home inspection. :mad:

Oh well. 3 more days isn't gonna kill me. Here's hoping.

[thesameguy]

Wait, banks there don't require a home inspection before a sale?

[tigeraid]

No. They strongly, strongly advise it though, of course. Almost no one does without it.

[Random]

Wait, banks there don't require a home inspection before a sale?

We bought our first place without a formal inspection. City inspection (for code, not condition) and pest inspection are required.

[thesameguy]

Weird - my bank required an inspection. Maybe a change in the post-crash rules? Everything tightened up after that.

[Random]

Could be. :)

[21Kid]

None of the banks I've worked at have required an inspection. Since '99... and not at my current one.

[tigeraid]

House is goddamn sold.

They want to me to replace the water supply line into the house because it's galvanized. I ain't even mad.

T-minus 39 days 'til the Ranch! :rawk:

[thesameguy]

Load lifted, eh?

[21Kid]

:cool::up:

[Random]

:toast:

[Phil_SS]

Only 13 days til my old house is sold as well. Can't wait.

[Kchrpm]

I didn't know you guys moved. I don't pay enough attention. I need to come over for fried chicken and Kool Aid :D

[tigeraid]

Moved the whole house with the Ford all by ourselves. Took our time over the course of a week. Fucked up one leg in the process, but whatever, we saved money. Lots of little things wrong with the place now that we've moved in--as usual, you never notice these things. Lots of minor plumbing bullshit to be fixed. The dryer vent was clogged absolutely solid with lint and would've caught on fire any fucking moment, I'm happy we noticed it. Fixed all that. Hot tub was crap, so we solid it, will buy a new one later. Pool was great, for the week we could use it, now it's too cold.

Half-done picking the apple orchard. Jesus fuck that's a lot of work. Got my shop halfassed-together and put doors on it. The wireless 4G internet is surprisingly not bad! It's a little slow during peak hours, but usually pulls 8-9 Mbit otherwise, and torrents work great when they're un-throttled overnight. Cautiously optimistic that it will go well on that front.

Slowly putting together the workout room and the library, will post some pics at that point.

[thesameguy]

When we last moved we did the whole thing with the Suburban except for a cal king bed and a 1000lbs antique armoire that we paid someone to handle. We had 20-some-odd days and it felt really leisurely. A tank of gas and $150 to the movers was a deal. :up:

[tigeraid]

I would hesitate to call ours "leisurely," but I'm one of those "get shit done ASAP" guys, so I probably pushed too hard. Still, I only spent maybe $180 total on gas.

[tigeraid]

Anyone a plumber or have good plumbing experience? Just looking for a second opinion on something...

[thesameguy]

I have plumbed a thing or two.

[tigeraid]

I'm a little perplexed by the washing machine setup, as I've always had a laundry tub arrangement in the past. In this new house, the laundry room is a finished portion with the unfinished basement, and all the plumbing, directly behind it. Everything is above the main sewer line out EXCEPT the washer and dryer, because the main sewer is maybe 3 feet off the basement floor.

Excuse the awful doodle, but this should get the point across:


http://blinkerfluid.org/gtr2/index.php?dir=Odds%20And%20Ends/&file=20151019_094701.jpg

Now, when we originally moved in, the washer drain, using a big long extension, emptied into the 2" PVC pipe as shown in the sketch, which is sloped correctly. It joins a second sloped pipe, which in turn dumps into the main. However, the washer drain (the hook-shaped part) was just sort of shoved into the open end of the pipe, with a rubber sleeve limply holding it in place.

This setup would drip, occasionally. Coincidentally, we had a clog at the main not long after moving in, and the first place it flooded out of was where the dryer outlet sat. After fixing the clog me, being the super smart feller, thought that setup looked halfassed, so I got an adapter to go from the 1" washer drain to the 2" PVC, tightened her all up nicely, and done.

Now I browse around and see that, apparently, the washer drain is SUPPOSED to be loosely hanging in the 2" pipe, rather than tightened up, so that it's an air vent. So the way I have it now is kinda wrong anyway.

So basically, I'm questioning the setup, and what changes I should make. Everything appears to work GREAT, right now. There's no noticeable backwash in the washing machine, no bad smells, no leaks, and it all appears to drain correctly. But a) I don't have an air vent, at least not on this particular line... There are other ones elsewhere in this system... and b) There doesn't appear to be a P-Trap, which apparently it needs too?


The machine seems to have the power to pump the waste properly, so that's not an issue... But with no p-trap and no air venting, it seems like this thing could suck sewage back in from the main outlet, in theory.

Or, maybe I could just do the second option I doodled here:

http://blinkerfluid.org/gtr2/Odds%20And%20Ends/20151021_114427.jpg

[Random]

IIRC, ours has a p-trap near the floor level and then a lengthy extension to get the opening above the washer. Past the trap is a normally vented drain line (shared with the garage sink).

Drain line from the washer is a cheesy 1" plastic hose, which I have ziptied into the PVC drain after a minor flooding incident due to the drain line popping out. Derp.

I'll see if I can dig up the picture my f-i-l took before he closed up the wall.

[thesameguy]

The p trap is a new thing - back in the day nobody considered sewer gasses or other noxious stuff as a real concern, and *generally* speaking something has to go pretty wrong to clog up a proper washing machine standpipe with lint or whatever else comes off your clothes. Like, really wrong. Anyway, in modern times what with safety and all it's washer -> pipe -> p trap -> standpipe -> sewer. The p trap has to be vented or you can indeed have negative pressure problems. In places that aren't here you can use a cheater valve to vent the p trap, but it has to be vented no matter what. The standpipe has to be taller than the water level on the washer. If your p trap is properly vented, you can seal the drain to the standpipe. Otherwise, the drain->standpipe has to be vented. There are rules that I don't know for the slope of pipe - it's x" down for every y" long. There are also rules for the vent size on the p trap that I don't know.

My house is old and just has a standpipe. When we first moved in I was going to modernize it and looked into how it's done. For packaging reasons, I decided to do nothing and see how it performed. Since it's been as it is for 40 years I thought there actually wouldn't be any sewer problems, or someone would have done something by now. Turns out it's no problem at all. :lol:

I would look into the original clog problem to figure out what truly went wrong, but that sloped standpipe is generally undesirable. The standpipe really wants a vertical section to prevent backflow and give air a quick escape. With an old washer the drain pump might not flow enough to be a problem, but newer appliances are pretty aggressive. :)

[tigeraid]

It is a relatively new washer and I can hear all sorts of water rush into the sewer main when it empties itself, so I don't think it has a problem moving the water.

The clog was resolved... I just meant that I found out about how this WAS plumbed when it backed up.



So, to clarify.... "Standpipe" is the big vertical pipe on the other side of my wall, which then empties into that sloped 2" pipe along my ceiling?

The doodle in the second pic on the LEFT would be okay, then? Washer drain into a small length of pipe, as long as it's HIGHER than the water level of the washer.... P-trap near ground level, cheater valve right after the p-trap, and then all the way up the standpipe to the 2" sloped pipe along the ceiling?

[Random]

Picture on the right looks more correct to me, since it will prevent siphoning back into the washer.

[thesameguy]

I am going to need some scale here, as we're getting into details. Typically speaking washers are designed to drain to a sewer line that is no more than 3' above the washer's drain. Anything higher than that and you risk the pump being insufficient to pump, or drain water flowing back into the washer. Both are bad. You can get around this with an external ejector pump and check valve.

In your first drawing, the issues you'll face are twofold: One, even given the washer pump can evacuate water to that height you're going to end up with x' of water in a pipe that is permanently trapped there or will eventually make its way back into the washer. That is bad. Two, the drain pipe from the washer is emptying into a mostly horizontal pipe, which creates the potential for drips or leaks because the connection from drain to sewer is indirect (vented), as it must be. Sticking the drain in much further into the pipe will mitigate that, however.

In the second drawing, left side, your AAV is properly placed for a normal discharge, but now you have the potential for water from the vertical pipe to push against and leak from the AAV, no good.

In the second drawing, right side, your AAV will probably not be the source of a leak, but now you've got a "floor level" indirect connection between the drain hose and the standpipe, so water in the sewer line could overflow from the standpipe unless the standpipe is quite tall - you'd need to do the math there.

We don't have a lot of basements in California, but I am pretty sure what you need here is basin and ejector pump. I think that's the only proper way to plumb it. Short of that, the way it is now is the only way to get it done.

[thesameguy]

https://www.plumbingsupply.com/drainsystem.html

For $250, I think it's worth having a Drainosaur in your house.

[overpowered]

5 acre island in Maine with 4 cottages, $565,000:

http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/brown-island-maine

[tigeraid]

tsg: Yeah, my previous house used a laundry tub, with a tub pump similar to that drainosaur, to push the water back up.

I dunno, I almost think, at least for NOW, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" might be an okay mantra. I agree that the drain pipe above is "too horizontal," which explains why it would occasionally drip on the floor. It actually has like a 30 degree-ish elbow on the end where the washer hose was shoved in.

Along those more simple lines of thinking... Maybe I could just extend the length of the washer hose and shove it further down the pipe...

[tigeraid]

Alright, took some pics because I'm just too restless not to care.


http://blinkerfluid.org/gtr2/index.php?dir=Odds%20And%20Ends/&file=20151021_193908.jpg


http://blinkerfluid.org/gtr2/index.php?dir=Odds%20And%20Ends/&file=20151021_193919.jpg


http://blinkerfluid.org/gtr2/Odds%20And%20Ends/20151021_193934.jpg


And then, because I'm pretty paranoid, I took the adapter out and just loosely shoved the washer hose into the elbow, like he originally had only a bit more stable, I hope:

http://blinkerfluid.org/gtr2/Odds%20And%20Ends/20151021_194412.jpg

[Random]

Found it!

http://gtxforums.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1506&stc=1
The cleanout below the triple junction is probably a foot or foot-an-a-half above the invert of the sewer pipe.

Anyway, you can see the p-trap for the washer and the extended drain pipe so that the pipe is above the water level in the washer. Center vertical pipe is a 2" air vent that goes out through the garage roof. That single vent pipe serves the washer, garage sink, and kitchen sink/DW.

[thesameguy]

I would strongly consider a pump. 6' is well beyond what a washer drain pump is designed to handle, and you have 6'x2" of water always hanging around in that pipe, acting against the valve in the washer. Short term, meh. Long term, I would be concerned about that water ending up in the bottom of the washer again. Maybe recover a little from the purchase and put that on your to-do list. :)

[21Kid]

5 acre island in Maine with 4 cottages, $565,000:

http://www.privateislandsonline.com/islands/brown-island-maine

We could create our own GTX Enclave! :D With a racetrack around the perimeter. :rawk:

[tigeraid]

I would strongly consider a pump. 6' is well beyond what a washer drain pump is designed to handle, and you have 6'x2" of water always hanging around in that pipe, acting against the valve in the washer. Short term, meh. Long term, I would be concerned about that water ending up in the bottom of the washer again. Maybe recover a little from the purchase and put that on your to-do list. :)


Blargh. Finding a place to put the thing would be the problem. :mad:


So if I get the pump arrangement, I don't need a laundry sink above it first? Just install that, and run it sealed up into that 2" pipe along the ceiling?

EDIT: never mind, I see it says using a basin or sink. So that makes it difficult, because I have very little ROOM for a sink. Argh.

[thesameguy]

The Drainosaur may not be the right answer. They do sell ejector pumps with integrated reservoirs. You just need to be sure the reservoir is large enough to handle the discharge from the washer. I suspect (don't know) someone makes a "clothes washer ejector pump."

[tigeraid]

According to their tech line, the Drainosaur 509268 will do it, because it flows 80gpm. So no sink is required.

But it'll be nearly $500, even through my plumbing guy. So a pump+sink is probably still my best option.

[thesameguy]

Costwise, I don't think you can beat the tub approach, and having a tub you can totally mess up is always a nice thing. It's one thing I really miss from my old house that there just isn't a place for in my new one - there is just no place where there is empty room and sewer access. Bums me out.

[Godson]

Joys of homeownership. Breaking and entering and Burglary.

[Random]

Did you get some good stuff?

[Leon]

Oh no :( It's horrible feeling when that happens.

[Godson]

Did you get some good stuff?

I forgot to lock my safe. I'm estimating 4k in goods. 3 guns, a decent amount of ammunition, Xbox, ps3, 600$, laptop.

[Random]

Ignoring my attempt at a joke, I see. :p :toast:

That's about what we lost when we got robbed--PS2/wheel/games, some cash, and Naomi's wedding ring. They tried to take my chop saw and then discovered that it's really heavy. :lol: They also took our laundry basket to carry everything in. :rolleyes:

Really makes your house feel a little weird knowing that someone was rummaging around in it, though, doesn't it? We, being California hippies, lit incense in each room to chase away the bad ju-ju. :)

[Godson]

I'm buying more guns and getting my ccw. Fucker didn't get to my roommates room, I'll bet he will come back.




I pray he does when I am home.

[thesameguy]

Bust a cap?

[Godson]

Or 30

[TheBenior]

Well... shit.