Home buying thread

Gravel said:

It'll be interesting to see what happens in June. Hopefully they don't extend the forbearance another few months. July could be a bloodbath for real estate. Or not.

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I'm on track to list early June. It will sell the day of listing or the day after. Market likely will continue to climb, but it could also very well shit itself. I've already passed the point of being content with the returns I will get. I'm not going to chance $400k for a roll of the dice on getting $100k more in time.

Screw that.

GF found a house built in 1880's that she LOVES. I told her it would cost at least $750/mo to heat and cool it. Lovely house, but there's a reason why no one wants to buy it.

BrutulTM said:

I think people get carried away treating their houses as an investment. It is, but I would never landscape my yard or remodel with resale value in mind. It's the house you live in every day and who knows if you will even actually get a better price down the road for living with something you don't like? On top of that, home equity is hard to spend without moving to a cheaper area. I say treat it as a home first and an investment second.

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It depends on how long you are keeping the place. This place didn't have anything but grass when I bought it. I planted a bunch of trees, and it is now gorgeous. Trees are simple, cheap and easy DIY. I put cherry blossom trees beside the driveway and this place looks fucking tits when they bloom.

Fucker said:

I'm on track to list early June. It will sell the day of listing or the day after. Market likely will continue to climb, but it could also very well shit itself. I've already passed the point of being content with the returns I will get. I'm not going to chance $400k for a roll of the dice on getting $100k more in time.

Screw that.

GF found a house built in 1880's that she LOVES. I told her it would cost at least $750/mo to heat and cool it. Lovely house, but there's a reason why no one wants to buy it.

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That's why we sold and moved across the country when we did. I didn't want to chance it going into summer that the market would shit itself. It may have cost us some money, but oh well.

Lanx said:

ha, i'm letting home reno videos autoplay and i remember watching a few series like "1880s farm house remodel..."

have her watch that, the biggest hurdle for the girl isn't really money, it's finding "artisans" that can actually do period work from 2 centuries ago

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Money is a huge concern because a massive amount of work needs to be done, and none of it is cheap. The house my GF loved is $225k. 4500 sq ft. It is in nice condition, but at a minimum will need new windows and insulation...and plumbing and wiring. This is how you turn $225k into $750k without breathing hard. In the end, you have a $750k house in a $200k neighborhood and you'll never get a cent of that resto money back.

There's a reason why these things sit around at bargain prices or are torn down altogether.

The woman in that video you linked is from 8 months ago. I looked at her blog and she's made 0 progress. She probably wakes up every morning and wonders how she's going to get out of the financial black hole she jumped into without looking. A year from now she will have a room done (repainted, not fixed) and maybe part of the roof.

BrutulTM said:

It doesn't have to be money. You can do it with your own time too, if you have a lot of spare time and don't mind living in a construction site for the next 10 years. It would be very satisfying to fix up a place like that, especially if you can say you did it yourself, but you should definitely not underestimate the size of the project. It's a huge deal. I've been remodeling my house in my "spare time" for a year now and I'll be surprised if it's 100% done before another year goes by. I don't regret it, but it's hard to imagine the amount of time it's going to take, especially when you're doing things for the first time.

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This, but large project like was linked in that video and the house my GF loved still requires piles of cash. You can do a smaller old home on your own, but as you said....it burns a lot of time. Huge old houses burn wild amount of both time and money.

I'd do it if I was 30 again, but now? Fuck no.

I am selling this house, and I am happy I kept after its care. All I have to do is replace 4 faucets, clean up a bathroom...maybe paint it, and repaint 2 window sills. Well, and having the carpets cleaned.

My last house was old when I got it and needed: new roof, new coating for the exterior, new windows on the front of the house, refinished downstairs bath. Oh yeah, new furnace. And new front and rear doors. Oh yeah, new paint in the downstairs bedrooms. I think I broke even on that place and just barely at that. Flat RE market there...it is worth now what I sold it for 10 years ago.

Housing isn't an investment, boomers are squeezing the last sheckles out before they croak, fucking the rest of us over, at which point it will return to appreciating at inflation levels.

My wife and I built in 2013, paid $312k for a 3600 sqft house. Zillow says the house is worth $485k, I doubt we could get that much. Problem we're running into is houses that are half the sqft that we have are selling for what we bought our house for or close too it and building a comparable home would be over $500k. Market is fucky right now.

Tmac said:

Your house would have to be in terrible shape and in a terrible place to not sell for $500k right now. That's the market.

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We have two homes for sale in our neighborhood right now, out of around 400 total. One is for $550k, been on the market for 49 days, so really overpriced. The other one is coming soon, for $575k. Guess we'll see. Not sure we'd really want to move, basically paying 200k more for the same house. I keep trying to convince my wife to buy some land and move but no luck so far.

Lumber tarrifs from Canada doubling. That will lower the cost of lumber and housing.