Octopus Overlords

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:50 pm

Madmarcus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:17 pm The retirement question will be interesting. We certainly won't really need 5 bedrooms / 3000 square feet at some point.

People have questioned us about why we built a four bedroom oversized house when we had no children and no plans to have anyone live with us. Thirty-seven years later we are having a hard time finding room to park my wife's new mobility scooter since there is so much stuff in the house . I'm in occasional negotiations with her over whether I can start putting bookcases in her office while she wants to keep playing furniture Rubik's Cube.

After living in an overstuffed 1,100 sq ft house for the past 32 years, we look forward to retiring into a bigger house. Wife wants to hold classes there, I want an office that isn't a closet, and we dream of having a second bathroom and being able to host guests. We might be the only retirees looking to upsize.

You don't realize how much you miss having multiple bathrooms until you don't. And you suffer from IBS or urinary urgency due to a medication you're on. I lived in a string of seven 2-3 bathroom homes and apartments for the first 30+ years of my life, until a few years ago. Fortunately it's only myself and Mrs. Nym here, but I've still tracked down an empty Starbuck's cup or Gatorade bottle for #1 a couple of times.

And I never tire of telling the story of getting norovirus along with my wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law in their single-bathroom home. How we survived those couple days without requiring a professional carpet cleaning I'll never know.

We have two bathrooms for three people. Twice is the number of times I've pooped in my back yard in the past six years.

OK, you win.

But only because my backyard is a balcony overlooking the apartment's main entrance.

Sudy wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:13 am You don't realize how much you miss having multiple bathrooms until you don't.

I tell folks who ask that the secret to a long and happy marriage is separate bathrooms .

We have 3 bathrooms and 3 kids. Thankfully, I've never had to poop in the backyard. The dogs leave enough out there anyway.

If I could afford rent I would absolutely rent. Houses are just one unexpected cost after another. But on my small income there's nowhere that I could afford rents.

I would buy a condo to rent as well assuming I had the income. Better to be a landlord and a renter, since all the costs associated with the rental can be written off. Big time tax savings.

EvilHomer3k wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:52 am We have 3 bathrooms and 3 kids. Thankfully, I've never had to poop in the backyard. The dogs leave enough out there anyway.

Having dogs adds a whole other complexity level to pooping in the backyard.

I have deer crap all over my freaking yard. Occasionally a bear is nice enough to leave some as well.

So apparently a bear does not shit in the woods.

Octavious wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:43 am I have deer crap all over my freaking yard. Occasionally a bear is nice enough to leave some as well.

Same I actually couldn't believe how much there was this year. No bears by me but deer, foxes, etc.

I have RedGreen Syndrome. I can repair anything that I can lift, so home maintenance is not a factor for me, hence the rush to save for the solar roof (minute electrical bills), the EV (why go to the gas station, when you plug in at home), and a more functional kitchen (I need to run proper ducting anyway).

I have the complete set of Red Green.

Kraken wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 1:40 am We might be the only retirees looking to upsize.

After living in a single-family home for the last 17 years I'm sure I could never go back to shared walls. I can deal with the upkeep (well, paying someone to do the major repairs) and the lawn work just to not have to share walls with other people.

We've been pondering buying an intermediate home once the 15 year old leaves - not the house where we'll retire but a house my wife can have some say in picking. My daughter and I were already settled here when I met my wife who was renting at the time. It only made sense for her to move in here since her rent was more than my mortgage payment but this isn't the house she would have chosen.

The current place is a ~1,700 square foot ranch with 1.5 bathrooms and three bedrooms. Our ideal post-kid house is two bedrooms and 1.5 baths but I know most people want more space so it's going to be hard to find a house that size. We also want an open floorplan and a single story New construction is out of the question and older neighborhoods in the city proper are out of our price range. There's a pretty narrow band of "close enough to the city but far enough out that we can afford" that we'll be choosing from.

Our dream is to retire to an Oregon coast home with an ocean view.

Exodor wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:42 pm Our dream is to retire to an Oregon coast home with an ocean view.

Nice dream!

I'm increasingly running out of energy/motivation to maintain the house (and no job means I can't hire someone to do it for me). Wife is currently into 2 condos in Manila, as well as land for her chicken farm in the province so that looks to eventually be where I'll go to die. I have 1/3 acre land, mostly weed-infested lawn that requires regular mowing and increasingly pointless expense to TruGreen where they fail to limit the weeds. Indoor work is necessary, especially in the basement where I'd like to put down some sort of floor paint but just don't have the energy to do it. I certainly have the time, and I have the materials to get started, but the profound lack of energy is a huge problem.

Jeff V wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:32 pmI have 1/3 acre land, mostly weed-infested lawn that requires regular mowing and increasingly pointless expense to TruGreen where they fail to limit the weeds.

I fired Trugreen last year for this reason. The lawn kept getting worse and the last straw was they did an aeration and re-seed in the 3rd week of November without telling me for $200+. It properly should have been done in August. I called to cancel the service and the manager berated me for not giving him a chance to fix "our relationship". I said - ok - refund the useless $200+ aeration. He tried to gas light me about its efficacy, he didn't give me anything back so I fired them. He personally had the nerve to cold call me last month to try to get me back by offering a 10% discount for the first service ($5 savings). LOL - I was nicer than I should have been.

Jeff V wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:32 pm I have 1/3 acre land, mostly weed-infested lawn that requires regular mowing and increasingly pointless expense to TruGreen where they fail to limit the weeds.

HA! I got that for free! 1/4 acre weed-infested with regular mowing. No way I was paying someone to do something with it. I don't even want to put any weedkiller/fertilizer on it. About 200-300 feet to the lake and I have well water. I keep thinking anything I put on my lawn that I shouldn't put in my body is a bad idea because it will wind up in my body sooner or later.

Zenn7 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:10 pm

Jeff V wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:32 pm I have 1/3 acre land, mostly weed-infested lawn that requires regular mowing and increasingly pointless expense to TruGreen where they fail to limit the weeds.

HA! I got that for free! 1/4 acre weed-infested with regular mowing. No way I was paying someone to do something with it. I don't even want to put any weedkiller/fertilizer on it. About 200-300 feet to the lake and I have well water. I keep thinking anything I put on my lawn that I shouldn't put in my body is a bad idea because it will wind up in my body sooner or later.

As long as it's green and doesn't mind periodic mowing, I don't care what grows in my lawn. Fortunately my immediate neighbors are of the same mind.

That said, if your climate supports it zoysia is a slow-growing, drought-tolerant grass that's dense enough to suppress most weeds. Its downside is that it turns into a mat of straw when dormant and it's slow to green up in the spring. It's low maintenance and looks nice during its season.

Madmarcus wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 8:00 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:49 pm

Crazy. My entire payment is less than your escrow amount. Of course I'm in a cheap suburb of a low or moderate cost of living metro area with an older home (from the eighties). It suites me just fine but like buying older houses in the rust belt or rural Midwest it is hard to generalize to others trying to live in more desirable suburbs in more expensive metro areas.

My property taxes (with levys and Mella roos) are over 7K Living in CA comes with a price

naednek wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:08 pm My property taxes (with levys and Mella roos) are over 7K Living in CA comes with a price

As a NJ resident, I would love to pay ~7K in property taxes.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:20 pm

naednek wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:08 pm My property taxes (with levys and Mella roos) are over 7K Living in CA comes with a price

As a NJ resident, I would love to pay ~7K in property taxes.

Seriously. ~7K is just my cut of the School Tax portion alone.

I just paid $80 for my personal property and real property together.
It would have been less but my idiot stepson is living on the property too.

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:35 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:20 pm

naednek wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:08 pm My property taxes (with levys and Mella roos) are over 7K Living in CA comes with a price

As a NJ resident, I would love to pay ~7K in property taxes.

Seriously. ~7K is just my cut of the School Tax portion alone.

You know what's going to blow your mind? Since Boston's residential exemption is 60%, my total property tax bill for 2021 is ~$2,100. For a 1,000 square foot condo, but still.

My property taxes for a 3 BR house are ~$2,800. Prop 13 power!

Edit: I was thinking of the 6 mo. payment. Annual is more like ~$5,000.

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:35 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:20 pm

naednek wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 12:08 pm My property taxes (with levys and Mella roos) are over 7K Living in CA comes with a price

As a NJ resident, I would love to pay ~7K in property taxes.

Seriously. ~7K is just my cut of the School Tax portion alone.

does NJ have sales tax as well?

naednek wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:37 pm does NJ have sales tax as well?

Yes, except for most food, most clothing and prescription meds. We also have road tolls. Living in NJ = pain.

My property taxes are ~8K but since my income is less than $45K a year they get rolled into my house.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:39 pm

naednek wrote: ↑Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:37 pm does NJ have sales tax as well?

Yes, except for most food, most clothing and prescription meds. We also have road tolls. Living in NJ = pain.

We also used to have the nation's lowest gas tax. The only tax that wasn't one of the highest in the nation. We had terrible roads. Then they raised them ~40% and 3-years later the ASCE recently graded NJ's roads at a D- (which is the same ranking as before the tax hike). NJ = pain is an understatement.

Exodor wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:42 pm Our dream is to retire to an Oregon coast home with an ocean view.

We have had that idea. We have loved our trip traveling that coast and while an ocean view would be nice just being able to be close to the ocean would be enough. And I think there are places we could afford. I mean the California coast is way out of the question. I am not sure I could take the rain though.

My property tax is/was around $1400/year I think. ~1100 sq ft.

Today's home ownership sucks item is the furnace has quit work altogether.
We knew the inductor motor was going - bearings were making a bad noise a month or so ago, got them oiled, better for a while, then a worse noise a week or two ago. I was hoping it would last a couple weeks longer (probably won't need the furnace again in 2-3 weeks; but today the high was 49, likely to get down to 31 overnight in in the next day or two). Then, it'd be a month or so before we needed it for Central Air.

During that time, my construction guy/neighbor was going to replace the furnace and the water heater (it's rated for 6 years, more than 6 years old; probably doesn't absolutely need to be replaced now, but probably not long off either) and install a water softener in this closet the furnace/water heater are in. He was talking about how he could probably work it in. Thought if I need to fix the furnace, now might be good time to replace it all and let him have the whole closet to start fresh with, make his job easier and cheaper (yes more expensive overall, but no labor just taking out and putting back in the water heater and moving the furnace around; take it all out, put new stuff in, hopefully not have to deal with any of it for at least another decade; maybe 15 years when the house is paid off, assuming the stupid refi ever goes through).

Was also hoping to get some assessment of the mold issue and likely cost of dealing with it before I commit to investing money in the house. Probably staying here anyway, but if the mold is 20k alone, and roof is a few 1,000, and likely at least 2-3k for all the furnace/water heater/water softener exceeds what we have to invest in this and doesn't even start touching anything else we wanted to do besides the water softener and the new issues since we started looking into this last year.

I could sell the house to the neighbor, but even if he gave us the mid-zillow price, it puts at $150,000 tops to buy a house in Oakland County, MI that's not in a bad neighborhood and needs 0 work (or we'd have less to spend, using whatever less we spent to do work on the new house).

I hate this house. And being a home owner.

My wife (who takes care of these things) says our property taxes are ~$1800/year. In Florida we do have a state sales tax (6%) but no income tax. This pretty much is thanks to all the tourists who pay that bit extra on their hotel bills, etc.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 12:48 pm
Aren't tract houses infamous for shoddy construction?

It depends on the builder. We did a lot of research on the builder before we bought, and we got to see the house as it was constructed. They build each wall in a giant jig and then send it to the building site so all of the studs are where they should be. We saw some of the other builders in our development building absolute crap. On the plus side, other than the AC we haven't had to do any real repairs to the house in 20 years.

Kraken wrote: ↑Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:28 pm
That said, if your climate supports it zoysia is a slow-growing, drought-tolerant grass that's dense enough to suppress most weeds. Its downside is that it turns into a mat of straw when dormant and it's slow to green up in the spring. It's low maintenance and looks nice during its season.

zoysia

My property tax is somewhere around $2,500 a year. I live in a school district that passes a new bond every couple years so it is always rising.

My favorite part of living in NJ was when I bought this place and they increased my property taxes by $1200 every single year for five straight years. Eventually NJ passed a law capping increases at 2% but towns immediately found loopholes and just invented fees that you have to pay (but which aren’t deductible). And now not even the property taxes are deductible.

The idea that I have to pay taxes on money that I’m paying in taxes is enraging.

I remember one year the IRS charged a surtax on you taxes for that year. Yes, you paid taxes on your taxes. Probably had to do the the Vietnam war.

RunningMn9 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 30, 2021 2:35 pm My favorite part of living in NJ was when I bought this place and they increased my property taxes by $1200 every single year for five straight years. Eventually NJ passed a law capping increases at 2% but towns immediately found loopholes and just invented fees that you have to pay (but which aren’t deductible). And now not even the property taxes are deductible.

The idea that I have to pay taxes on money that I’m paying in taxes is enraging.

Not sure about your town, but the one guy I work with has to pay to get his garbage taken. He's in Boonton I think. I wonder how long before every town does that will still charging more in taxes.

Madmarcus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:17 pm
The retirement question will be interesting. We certainly won't really need 5 bedrooms / 3000 square feet at some point. Both my parents and my MIL stayed in bigger houses into their late 70's

my parents moved into a _bigger_ house years after my brother and i had moved out, and they're still there

Home ownership is a pain and a financial drain, sure, but I cannot tell you how much I despise "associations" and "management companies" and all the other crap that's associated with condo/apartment/rental living.

Basically, the freedom to do what I want, when I want (barring major construction work or draining the "protected wetland" out back) is worth it for me. Not to mention that I'm only pissing away a percentage of my monthly payment on interest, rather than pissing the whole thing away on rent.

A few examples:

I forgot to swap the laundry from washer to dryer, and only remembered right before bedtime. In a condo/apartment, I'd have people crawling up my ass about "quiet hours" and "regulations" and "other people need to use the washer". And that's assuming I could find an available washer/dryer in the first place. And let's not forget having to pay 3-5 bucks per load of laundry. Here, I just go to the basement at midnight, put my stuff in the dryer, then go to bed.

Whoop, it snowed again. In a condo/apartment, I have to get up when the plow guy comes (at some indeterminate time), shovel my car out, including the snow the asshole piled up when plowing that initial narrow strip out, move the car to who knows where while the plow guy throws sparks and scrapes half the grass off the lawn, then move it back. In my own house, I can shovel out whenever the hell I want.

Condo/apartment: lawn mower guys show up on Saturday at 7 in the morning, and circle around outside my bedroom window for at least an hour. Which is great for you morning people, but I'm not a morning person. My house: I mow the lawn whenever I want. Especially useful when I need a break from the swarm of screaming banshees that inhabits the house.

Walking the dog: I have to drag the poor thing off the condo/apartment territory, unless I want some asswipe to complain about me walking the dog to the condo association. Sorry I forgot my goddamn bag that one time and had to go back inside for five minutes to get one. In my house, I can play with my dog in the yard and nobody can say a damn thing about it. And if they do, I've got a middle finger for them.

Living with other people: in a condo/apartment, not only do I have to live with my family, but there are also neighbors within "I can hear you stomp and watch TV" distance. Between the family downstairs watching Bulgarian soap operas at all hours of the day and night, Chinese mistress drama guy, and the woman with an "active dating life", it's a wonder I didn't wind up on the five o'clock news.

Moving out: Ok, this one's a little harder because it takes longer to sell the house and you have to have somewhere else lined up to live already.

Morale of story: I hate people and would rather spend a bunch of extra time and money wrangling inanimate objects.