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Come to my [house], be one of the comfortable people
SporkAndrew
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Own a house? Great! Rent somewhere? Great! Moving? You poor sod.
As with the old thread share experiences of times spent with your biggest monthly expenditure.
I'm re-making the thread because my house is currently being encased in scaffolding in preparation for the roof coming off.
They've also ripped both the pitched and flat roofs off the "studio" out back and are just waiting on a pallet of tiles arriving to put that all back.
I'm starting to freak out a bit because they're taking our roof off. You need a roof on a house, right? What happens in the mean time? Tarps?
As with the old thread share experiences of times spent with your biggest monthly expenditure.
I'm re-making the thread because my house is currently being encased in scaffolding in preparation for the roof coming off.
They've also ripped both the pitched and flat roofs off the "studio" out back and are just waiting on a pallet of tiles arriving to put that all back.
I'm starting to freak out a bit because they're taking our roof off. You need a roof on a house, right? What happens in the mean time? Tarps?
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
SporkAndrew on
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Become one with the rain and snow.
We have to pack the rest of our stuff this weekend though.
Ugh. UGH.
Cautious Yay.
Meanwhile I had to sign something for my current mortgage that amounted to "yes, I know I'll be paying for this well past retirement age"
Hopefully next year when we can remortgage we'll be able to get that term down a bit.
Somehow, this is cheaper than my current basement bachelor suite with ancient broken appliances and holes in the linoleum that the landlord refused to fix
I hope the place has air conditioning.
https://imgur.com/gallery/CbwDc
So uh... you gotta replace your whole sewage stack now eh?
Not yet... The part that was pulled out was everything in the pipes so it's cleared for now. But it'll come back and it means there's probably a larger issue under the subfloor. Unfortunately I have a concrete slab so it's not going to be cheap or easy to fully resolve, and no way of knowing how bad it is.
Also late 1960's construction so relatively recent, plus with a concrete slab it's less likely in general... but oh man yeah if it had been a hole in the pipes I'd be screwed.
thank god for that then
Do your plumbers have a camera to mount on the auger they can cram down there to see how bad the pipe is?
My last place had a similar issue where a tree had roots going into the pipe blocking off all the water trying to exit. Came home to a flooded basement on too many occasions (in this case that's any number larger than 0). They were able to run a camera down there after snaking it out and determine exactly how far out the break in the line was.
In other news, I got to cook on my new cooktop last night. It finally arrived on the weekend and my neighbour installed it on Monday. After 10 days of mostly eating out and bought work lunches, it's so good to have something home-cooked again.
The HOA doesn't permit street parking. So we have to hope that the driveway accommodates 3 cars. It'll also suck as it means no visitors, essentially.
Thread title made me think of this video. So I googled "Our House" and it was the first result, which I love.
Yeah if the bylaws don't say they can't be parked on the lawn that's certainly an option.
Or just make the driveway larger by paving part of the lawn.
But they probably have a set driveway width too.
I would 100% be okay with parking a car on my lawn to stick it to a snobby HOA
But I don't want my parents to get into trouble for it, hah
Life hack: have your parents become board members of the HOA so they get to create rules that suit themselves.
The one were looking at has an asking price of over £250,000.
This will be our first house purchase and we want to get it as close to £250,000 as possible.
The house has already been reduced in price and three of the rooms will need new carpets.
How much do you think the house is worth?
Never get so invested in a place that you aren't willing to walk away, even at the last minute, if someone starts jerking you around or if they aren't willing to come down in price.
I'm guessing you're dealing with a realtor, so they should be able to help guide you in negotiating. If you told them that your limit is $250K and they're showing you homes that are way above that or can't get close to that number then they're not doing a very good job for you.
I'm not in a rush to buy, just that this house seems the most promising so far. Compared to similar houses in the area it's a good price.
If me and my wife like it we'll do a second viewing with my father in law whose a builder/painter/decorator and if he doesn't find anything worrying we might make an offer.
If it's been reduced, the vendors are keen to sell and maybe a sign you're dealing with an estate agent who likes to inflate prices as well. An estate agent has to pass that offer on, regardless of its perceived chance of success.
If the vendor doesn't like the price, they won't say no and tell you to get lost. Its just where the negotiations start. Putting in that wiggle room allows you to appear to be conciliatory whilst still paying the price you want.
Right?
There is nothing wrong with putting in "cheeky" offers. It's why the previous two houses we've sold we've put the asking price at 10-20k over what we actually wanted to give people the satisfaction of talking us down. We sold our last house for exactly the amount we wanted after making a show of coming down in price.
As others have said, if the house has been reduced twice already then the sellers are getting desperate -- you can use that to your advantage. You can usually check Rightmove to see how long a property has been on the market, although some sneaky estate agents will take the property off the market a few times and then bring it back on at a different price to avoid the "reduced" banner displaying on the listing and push it back up to the top of the "recently for sale" list. But then there's a Rightmove "premium" service you can pay for which allows you to see previous listings for properties. We used that to see what our house used to look like when it was painted pink in the 90s.
As a real-life example - our house was on the market for £300k but we paid £264k and got the sellers to cover the stamp duty. In our case it had been on the market for a year and a half, was empty because it was the result of a divorce and both parties moving into their respective partner's houses and was just costing the sellers money as they still had a mortgage on it. I also paid for a proper "homebuyer's survey" by an accredited company. It was about £800 for the top-tier survey but they went into much greater detail than the standard survey and if it brought up anything major then £800 up front was a lot better than £000s down the line to fix something unexpected.
As it turned out the survey threw up a number of issues like mouldy carpets in every room, rising damp in every room downstairs, the roof being a giant sieve and only 15% of the house being double-glazed. I could see all of these issues myself on viewings, but having it written down by a professional helps your case. They included an estimated cost to rectify all the issues which I gathered together, took to the estate agent and said "the seller can either fix these or take it off the cost." The estate agent verified the company that did the survey and then presented the offer to the seller.
Of course, some of the issues pulled up by the survey were non-events and could be ignored, like the condition of the paths in the garden, or the condition of the outhouse roofs, or the fact that the decoration was outdated. There was also one that was factually incorrect based on an assumption (he thought that all the upstairs walls were brick and would need replacing with studs)
PSN : Bolthorn
Maybe look into an outdoor LED light? They are low energy (like 8-15 watts) and it'd cost you maybe $20 to run it all year dusk-dawn. But if you like motion detection still, here's one of the better rated ones:
https://www.amazon.com/1000Lumen-Solar-Motion-LED-Flood/dp/B01D11N02O/