Home Buying / Housing Market Griefing Thread - You're going to rent until you die.
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MichałDrzymała
kiwifarms.net
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If you're ever thinking of buying a fixer-upper take some time and do some serious self-reflecting.
Are you the sort to DIY? Are you the attention to detail sort, or do you say "eh good enough" when you do personal projects? Do you like getting your hands dirty?
If the answer to any of these is no, or even maybe not, ask yourself this: do I have the money to spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire people to fix this place up?
If that answer is no, do not buy a fixer-upper no matter how good the price is or how minor the problems look. It will not be worth it.
Even if the answer is yes to the first three questions, a fixer-upper is a lot of work and expense. Everything is worse than you think it will be, costs more than you budgeted for, and takes twice as long as you think it will.
Paint, carpets, wallpaper, ceiling fans, little things, etc is one thing - but anything bigger is a time and money sink. I really wish someone had told me that before I bought my house. It's super obvious when I look back now, but I was young and stupid (and broke).
Are you the sort to DIY? Are you the attention to detail sort, or do you say "eh good enough" when you do personal projects? Do you like getting your hands dirty?
If the answer to any of these is no, or even maybe not, ask yourself this: do I have the money to spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire people to fix this place up?
If that answer is no, do not buy a fixer-upper no matter how good the price is or how minor the problems look. It will not be worth it.
Even if the answer is yes to the first three questions, a fixer-upper is a lot of work and expense. Everything is worse than you think it will be, costs more than you budgeted for, and takes twice as long as you think it will.
Paint, carpets, wallpaper, ceiling fans, little things, etc is one thing - but anything bigger is a time and money sink. I really wish someone had told me that before I bought my house. It's super obvious when I look back now, but I was young and stupid (and broke).
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- Aug 28, 2019
Also, where the fuck are you going to live?
People terribly underestimate how much of a disruption these things can be. It's one thing if they're one-day repairs or small projects, but if the home in uninhabitable you're going to need to pay for a place to stay while you work on it, and lord help you if you can't and/or have to work from home.
Manul Otocolobus
kiwifarms.net
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The housing market will crash once they raise interest rates enough to calm inflation and make financing a house seem not worth while. I'm guessing maybe 10%?
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What are the disadvantages versus building a new home? I occasionally see very old houses (75-100 years old) on the market for decent prices which come with nice lots since they're old farmhouses, and I like the old rural architecture pretty much anywhere. It seems like you're lucky to get a new house built in the US for under $100K (unless you're in the middle of nowhere in Appalachia, Nebraska, etc.), but could you hire contractors and gut an old farmhouse for much cheaper?
Off the top of my head, I can think of the issue of loans for renovating versus loans for building, but just how bad is that issue? And I know personally I'd like to build a house since housing stock in the US is far too low and theoretically I'm playing my part in messing with some boomer's retirement via their housing value.
Live with the illegals at Extended Stay America or something. Or ask your family. There's nothing shameful about living with your relatives when you're a few months out from having your own place. When I was a kid, my parents did that for a few months, and they were fairly old and successful at the time.
Drachmata
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>not living in the river and scaring the hoes away by pretending to be a sea monster
Ngmi
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Honestly, I don't know. We have just been able to start fixing the stuff in our house. Basically we lived with everything and only fixed what we had to. Having said that, I'll share the things we've run into.
We leveled our house and mid-way through the process we were told a couple things came up that required taking out another several hundred/couple thousand dollar loan to fix. I think we paid about $6,000? For the whole thing. I can't remember for sure, and the floor still isn't completely level everywhere. They said to get it completely level would require doing something to the floor joists in the middle that takes a lot more labor and costs a lot more.
The roof needed to be replaced and when a roofer came out to inspect it, he told us we still had the original lathe and wood shake shingles on it underneath the asphalt shingles. Thankfully the roof was almost fully covered by insurance, because they had to strip it down to the rafters. Estimate was close to 20,000 all told. I think we paid a few hundred bucks.
We had the outside of the house painted, that gets more expensive the more details you have or the more stories you have. Probably the Sq ft too. For our single story, 2,000 Sq ft, with simple trims, it was $4,500. This project took the longest of all of them. Total time spent working was about two weeks, but he did it during the rainy season so some days he couldn't work a full day. But there's a lot of prep work first. Actual painting took two days, I think. The other projects were a day or two.
We need to have the whole house rewire, estimate on that is $8,000.
We had the AC/furnace replaced. Just the system, the ductwork was already there, that was $5,000.
Hot water heaters start at $1,000. Dishwashers, about the same. You want to put flooring in before you put the dishwasher in! Otherwise you can't get it back out.
We had the water lines replaced with PEX (awesome stuff) for $7,000.
We haven't done anything to the kitchen or bathrooms yet, but the shower unit I'm looking at is $3,000 (I'm disabled, looking toward the future when things get bad).
Contractors might steal your money or take forever to do the work. Things break. Or the wrong thing gets delivered.
I can't say for sure, but I suspect by the time you're done you've spent about as much as building new. BUT, there is definitely something to be said about the character of an old home. I love my houses quirks. The living room floor is beautiful unique hardwood. The rest isn't, and probably never will be, but I love my living room floor. There's a decorative floral metalwork grate in there too. The trees in my yard are old and give lots of shade. Those are things you don't really find in New homes.
So really it's a judgment call at the end of the day. Theres just as much frustration with building new. My friend just built a house and it took forever and things went wrong several times.
I know this is long, and it doesn't really give a solid answer, but there really isn't one, I don't think. Both building and renovating are challenging and expensive.
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- Aug 28, 2019
You know, for a site that doesn't powerlevel, I've learned more about "normal" family arrangements - and by extension, just how absolutely fucked orphans, foster kids, and people without families - truly are. Not to get too far off topic, but if that's what it takes to buy a home these days, they're probably the canary in the coal mine for the bugman-hellscape into which we are heading.
If you can't afford a place to live without renovating it, and you do not have family with which to stay (and I mean really don't have family, not "I'm a queer pansexual fairygender and my home is oppressive uwu") then there's not much you can do. There are housing programs for those in poverty and immigrants, but if you're a former foster-kid who makes too much money to apply for handouts you're kind of fucked.
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That sounds like such a mess it makes me think you'd probably save money and have some fun on the side by burning down your own home before actually renovating it.
Well let's just say there's a reason the powers that be seem to dislike stable families and glorify all relationships but stable families.
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Well, that's arson and that's pretty frowned upon in most places. Plus it's insurance fraud if you try to get them to pay for rebuilding. It's definitely been tempting though. But I do. not. want to go through the hassle of replacing all my stuff, which is what I'd have to do to make it look like not arson. Plus we're in a pretty bad drought here, so my neighbors would probably be affected...
It's just not worth the risk.
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Oh boy howdy do I agree on that one.
Persona Goodfamily
- Has a "family home" and the option to stay with parents to save money
- Has the ability to buy homes that are unlivable and fix them up since they can stay somewhere for free or reduced "rent"
Result = Money remains in the family and contributes to family financial situation.
Orphana Nofamily
- No home to stay in, has to pay rent every month
- Unlikely to be able to afford a place to live and mortgage payments on an unlivable home simultaneously
- Has to buy cheaper homes and/or can't buy a home at all
Result = "Contributes" more to economic movement. Raises GDP. Dependent consumer.
"Strange," mused the Director, as they turned away, "strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games." He interrupted himself.
- Brave New World, Chapter 3, Aldous Huxley
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Going to have to somewhat disagree with this as what you say not to do, I did and after awhile became a blue collar millionaire.
What you should have stated is IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN YOURSELF then either be a wage slave and have nothing in your life
or make stupid good money and have someone else fix it for you.
or believe in yourself and get the job done.
Because of GENERATION FAILS schemes in the housing market your chances of getting a "good house" are really low and if you do find that perfect house it is going to fucking cost you.
Yea their fucking speculative flipping houses (as well as flipping other things) is part of the reason why are we in this shit.
You are also forgetting that there is so damned much information now on how to fix your house that any noob has a greater chance now to succeed than those who DID NOT HAVE THE INTERNET.
I wished I had the ability back then instead of busting my balls in getting hands on work.
There are 10's of thousands of fix it videos that are really good. Just make sure that you look at several videos on the problems you have and go from there.
Houses not to buy if you are a complete failure with a hammer.
1. Foundations issues. ABSOLUTLY NO!!!
2. A LOT OF Black Mold. THROWING YOUR MONEY AWAY
3 A lot of Dry Rot on the building especially in the interior.
4. Depending on the state you are in PLUMBING. Always go for copper plumbing than steel. Steel on the average rots out between 50 and 70 years.
Plumbing is a fucking pain in the ass depending on the state you are in. If you are hooked into a public sewer system then you are overall ok. But I really do not like septic tanks. There are so many issues with it. It's a bacteria generation system that eats the sludge and crap and gets washed down the lines.
You Should NOT use any sort of antiseptic, like dish washing liquid that has chemicals that kills bacteria. You wash that shit down the drain and guess where it goes... to your septic tank. Yea over the years you will have problems of having not enough bacteria to break down the sludge. And that increases your maintenance on your septic tank.
Next when you are using chemicals where do you think this is going to end up??? Eventually in your yard as the sludge mix goes through your leech lines in a certain part of the property.
Remember I used to clean out porta potties and that included working on those miserable septic tanks as they need to be pumped out every 3 years or so in order to function properly.
So far all of the properties I own are hooked up to a public sewer system. For myself, unless I'm out on the boonies having a septic tank in your home is a deal killer for me.
Finally I became I blue collar millionaire because I had to learn so many different skillsets in order to survive.
You need to learn as many skills as possible both in blue and white collar environments to survive in this current environment.
Or you are going to be like those fucking assholes in Washington when they took over a section of a city and began to sprout up home depot gardens...
The choice is yours. You have the wealth of information out on the interwebs that I would have killed for back then 30+ years ago.
There is no fucking excuse for you to NOT to succeed. The only person that is holding you up is YOU.
But you have to put in THE WORK if you want to succeed.
And with a GENERATION FAIL it's about the participation awards they can get instead of manning up and doing the job.
And this one is rather funny.
Note: This fail mindset is cross generational , but it is really IHMO more in the Millennial Generation than anywhere else. As state before I'm putting my faith into Gen Z. Overall what I have seen I think they got a chance to do great things if given the chance.
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Devout Muslim
kiwifarms.net
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The disadvantage is that my wife wants a modern looking house.
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Why did you need to redo it all? Knob and tube wiring? I'm assuming if you were in an old house part of this was pulling out a panel with fuses and replacing it with breakers. Insurance companies won't even insure new purchases with fuses in my parts these days.
I'm very surprised at this one. That's a relatively simple job because pex just needs to be crimped as opposed to being soldered like copper. I've never done my whole house in one go, but I've done large sections. It's stupidly easy. I think the contractor may have taken you for a ride on that one, fren.
I have zero issue stripping something down the the studs myself and redoing it, and even I won't fuck with shit with a fucked up foundation. The foundation is the hardest part of building the house. Give me a good foundation and I can frame up a small house on it myself. If you don't have a good foundation you have nothing, it's just a pile of wood.
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Buying a project house so you can LARP like you're on HGTV is all fun...until you discover asbestos tile underneath 3 layers of vinyl cover and get absolutely robbed blind by an approved abatement contractor that the town forced you to use
Frog-Chomping Bat
kiwifarms.net
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- Feb 15, 2021
I live in an area where almost all houses are pre-WWII. Most in my neighborhood are from the 20’s and 30’s.
If you want to keep that house - Get a good inspector (we got $3500 back at closing because of required updates to electrical work). Insure as much of the ancient infrastructure as possible (replacing the original adobe sewer pipe was $10K). Understand the costs needed to replace appliances, doors, etc that may no longer be standard size. Make sure you can live with the basement as is, because renovating basements is insanely expensive and unlikely to add similarly to your home’s value. Never buy the older fixer-upper - either plan to gut it entirely, or buy from the people who already did some of the fixing up. Make sure it’s not actually designated as a historic property, unless you’re already rich.
On the plus side, if you keep the house - charm, no HOAs since the neighborhood predates those, and the homes are generally solid or they wouldn’t still be around.
Back to the main question here - Being near a major city, I can tell you what every Millennial I know who has bought a house did, and that was to rent the cheapest, safest, smallest possible place on a public transportation line during their twenties. All extra money from not owning a car, and not having a second bedroom, went to save for a house. Renting an apartment that is much larger and fancier than you need and that requires a car is not compatible with investing/saving for most people.