Home buying thread

Burns said:

I rented a Townhome for a year, there was 4 to 6 foot between the houses at some spots, but never heard the neighbors at all. Of course it was a quiet area, and no one was having parties with loud music, so that would probably make a difference.

Do they call the buildings that share walls, Townhomes in other parts? We always called them duplexes or row houses (not that I have seen row houses in Texas).

Click to expand...

Here in MA they call it a townhome if it is one verticle section for one family and then another for another family. It's a duplex if its like you living on the bottom floor and someone else on the top. We do have row houses in Boston but they are pretty uncommon everywhere else and I don't think many have been built since like the 1890s. Rowhouse to me is more like a whole block being just one connected row but technically it is all separate lots just with walls touching. Really common in like England.

Townhomes are really popular for builders here, they sell for maybe 75% -80% as much as the single family houses of the same square footage and they can cram two on a lot, which is important when even a .25 acre lot with no improvements is worth 400k+. Everyone I know prefers single family but the only single families that get built are 3k+ sqft and going to 1.2-1.5M min or you buy a 60s ranch, probably as much per sqft as the townhome, and deal with an older home.

Lanx said:

also guarantee'd HOA profit

to me, theres no different between an apt complex vs a townhouse, you just pay more (townhouse) so that you have the luxury of not having to bang the broom on the noisey neighbor upstairs.

Click to expand...

HOA is still really rare here in MA. Most townhomes are a knockdown of one of the old houses that someone trashed too much to be salvageable so are just on stand alone lots in otherwise older neighborhoods.

I hope HOA never catches on here tbh they sound terrible.

My HOA recently dropped earthquake insurance because the deductible was so high that there was no conceivable way to pay it out if we ever actually needed to use our coverage. I've been sent a letter with a recommendation on where to get my own earthquake coverage through a company that has created a plan "specifically for my HOA" and the annual payment would be over $2,400. Is earthquake insurance the biggest scam, the fattest racket in the US? I'm in southern California so earthquakes are a danger here but not even my homeowner's insurance and my auto insurance combined reaches anywhere near that. Anyone have experience with earthquake insurance? Phazael maybe?

Kriptini said:

My HOA recently dropped earthquake insurance because the deductible was so high that there was no conceivable way to pay it out if we ever actually needed to use our coverage. I've been sent a letter with a recommendation on where to get my own earthquake coverage through a company that has created a plan "specifically for my HOA" and the annual payment would be over $2,400. Is earthquake insurance the biggest scam, the fattest racket in the US? I'm in southern California so earthquakes are a danger here but not even my homeowner's insurance and my auto insurance combined reaches anywhere near that. Anyone have experience with earthquake insurance? Phazael maybe?

Click to expand...

I'm in SoCal and don't carry earthquake insurance. I live in a pretty nice neighborhood and the online quote I just got from Geico was for ~$1300/yr with a 15% deductible (~$75k). IMO this is an insurance product looking for customers. If the risks were high enough that the policy works in your favor, the mortgage issuers would force you to carry it like they do for wildfires. While I absolutely understand hedging against catastrophies, I don't see how this is worth it when you need to experience a once-a-century or rarer event to exceed the deductible (unless your house is somewhere stupid or badly engineered).

Yeah, Mercury is offering to give me $100,000 of dwelling coverage with a 15% deductible for a much more reasonable annual price (I believe this is CEA). I'm considering that just so I have something in case a once-in-a-couple-of-decades earthquake occurs that damages part of my house.

Kriptini said:

My HOA recently dropped earthquake insurance because the deductible was so high that there was no conceivable way to pay it out if we ever actually needed to use our coverage. I've been sent a letter with a recommendation on where to get my own earthquake coverage through a company that has created a plan "specifically for my HOA" and the annual payment would be over $2,400. Is earthquake insurance the biggest scam, the fattest racket in the US? I'm in southern California so earthquakes are a danger here but not even my homeowner's insurance and my auto insurance combined reaches anywhere near that. Anyone have experience with earthquake insurance? Phazael maybe?

Click to expand...

We had earthquake insurance, with a $50k deductible. Think we paid about $500 a year for it, but it's been a long time.

Our house at the time was built in 1989. ~10 miles from the 7.1 and 6.4 (although they say the energy went more NE and we were SW), and we had some light cracking in the stucco. That was pretty much it. Oh, and some cans and shit fell in the pantry on the bigger one.

What we learned is that FEMA will typically cover shit like that if it's actually catastrophic. Now, whether you want to deal with FEMA or not is another question. But, my experience is that our house had no issues with the earthquake. Certainly not enough to meet the deductible.

Sanrith Descartes said:

You are forced by the bank to carry wildfire insurance?

Click to expand...

In areas within a certain radius of at-risk open land, yes.

Sanrith Descartes said:

A moving truck to Florida is a whole lot cheaper than earthquake insurance.

Click to expand...

Not sure we could've gotten a moving truck, but they were expensive as fuck.

Went with a Pod and just sold almost everything. Which in retrospect was a mistake, because we timed it with the supply chain shortages (stuff like furniture was 16 weeks delayed).

Sanrith Descartes said:

Jeebus.

Click to expand...

It's a few hundred bucks a year for the value of the structure, not that onerous. I did buy a house within a half mile of some wilderness, so if a little extra insurance is what it takes to get a tree-filled mountain neighborhood in LA, that's fine with me.

TomServo said:

Had to use boxes or something to sit on?

Click to expand...

We used lawn chairs for a bit.

We were able to find some clearance furniture while we waited.

Kiroy said:

Pretty sure fire is automatically covered (probably some regulation) which is why major carriers like all state are pulling out of the CA home insurance market in general. Glad i'm grandfathered in with them cause they have great prices.

Click to expand...

It's a separate policy for me.