Drinsic
privileged excrementlord
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Makes sense. It's a great time to buy if you've got the cash to avoid interest rates.
Home buying thread
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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So what are the thoughts on remodel/updates vs buying a different house?
It seems like we're not going to return to sub 4% rates any time soon, so at some point the question is how much do you invest in a current home? While I like our current house, it could use a refresh in a few areas. At the same time, the next time rates become favorable we could choose to simply try and find a house that more closely matches our needs.
I think unfortunately most cosmetic things don't impact valuation very highly, so it seems like smart money is never update, buy newer.
It seems like we're not going to return to sub 4% rates any time soon, so at some point the question is how much do you invest in a current home? While I like our current house, it could use a refresh in a few areas. At the same time, the next time rates become favorable we could choose to simply try and find a house that more closely matches our needs.
I think unfortunately most cosmetic things don't impact valuation very highly, so it seems like smart money is never update, buy newer.
Which could be who knows how many years from now.
Many don't, but home maintenance and customization isn't a strict function of economic payback. The benefit of redoing your own house is that you get to live in a house with exactly the amenities you want, and you can do it right now without all the personal and financial friction of buying a new house. Transaction costs can easily weigh in on the order of significant renovations.
My personal theory is that the location is a lot more important than the current aesthetics of the house. Get something in the right place, well maintained with the right footprint, the proverbial "good bones", and the rest you can change if you decide to spend the money. Just don't do anything weird that will deter future buyers.
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sleevedraw
Revolver Ocelot
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I think it would depend on what exactly your unfulfilled needs are. For example, most people these days are very keen on having upgraded kitchens; ROI for kitchen upgrades tends to be very favorable. Paint is cheap and an easy way to make things look new.
In my personal opinion, doing ”functional” upgrades like water softeners, HVAC improvements is also a good move because even if for whatever reason you don’t decide to move, they can directly benefit your utility bills or quality of life. Speaking as a millennial, I want an energy efficient home. I don’t give a shit about virtue signaling, but I do want to save money on electric. For me personally, I absolutely would pay 10-20k more on a home that had an upgraded AC/insulation/etc.
Updates like reducing number of bedrooms to make suites is more subjective and may have bad ROI.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Are you saying most buyers aren't interested in converting the dining room to look like a DC6 first class cabin?
Palum
what Suineg set it to
- 27,159
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Nah it's all cosmetic really. The house could use new paint for entire interior, a few rooms need new flooring, few need wallpaper removed, lots of drywall touch up or redo.
That's where I'm struggling a bit, I have always kept up on mechanicals and utility work. Kitchen is OK only but not dropping money on that unless we get to the point of actually renovating.
Gravel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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When we sold our last house, I went through fixing all sorts of shit and when I was done I was sitting there like, "why the fuck didn't I do this earlier so we could actually enjoy it and not just do it for someone else?" Yeah, it helped sell the house, but it was kind of kicking myself in the nuts.
So with this house, I've said fuck it. If something isn't ideal, I'm going to fix it now. No reason to languish in a home that isn't making you happy.
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Sanrith Descartes
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Yes I am a bit pathological about this because my parents never did anything. I'm just mostly trying to figure out boundaries where it's just wasting money since contractor prices are a bit more reasonable in the area now. Basically next time the market stabilizes and rates are decent I'll probably do something, I'd prefer not to move right now but I just want to kind of set a $ cap in my mind where I should just stop and should look at other houses.
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My money is on one of two scenarios...
- Base level flippers, who will do basic renovation/remodel. And turn around and hopefully sell for a profit. You'll know because it will be sold.. then fixed up, then back on the market within 6 months at a jacked up price.
- Large companies that are quickly turning all suburbia into rental districts.
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I've said the same thing. Our last house, when we moved out had 100% new plumbing, 100% new electric, new roof, newly refinished floors, converted to no maintenance outside...it was absolutely perfect. Then I sold it. I've been working to make the house I live in now that good while we still plan to live in it for a while.
Burnem Wizfyre
Log Wizard
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House I bought in September for 200k (3 bedroom 2 bath 1480 sq foot, garage turned into man cave 4th bedroom 1730 square foot If you count the man cave (dry walled and AC going into it) they wanted 235k I simply kept saying no to all their counter offers until they caved for 200k.
Got a letter from the tax appraisal cunt saying my house is valued at 300k, showed them proof of what I paid and they based my taxes on that but showed me what other houses in the area are going for and last year they were all around 230-250 in my neighborhood. Now everything is nearly 100k more, I see the for sale signs pop up and get replaced with for lease. Someone is scooping the houses up and renting them out, my wife called and pretended to want to rent one and they want 2400 a month, 800 more than I pay for my mortgage.
Got a letter from the tax appraisal cunt saying my house is valued at 300k, showed them proof of what I paid and they based my taxes on that but showed me what other houses in the area are going for and last year they were all around 230-250 in my neighborhood. Now everything is nearly 100k more, I see the for sale signs pop up and get replaced with for lease. Someone is scooping the houses up and renting them out, my wife called and pretended to want to rent one and they want 2400 a month, 800 more than I pay for my mortgage.
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Fucker
Log Wizard
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Not me. First thing I do is make everything perfect and keep it that way. House in ID was as new inside and out when I sold it. Buyers had a full inspection done. Half dozen people came out and tested everything, took them all day. The only thing I had to replace were two exterior faucets I never used.
The house I bought after that...yeah, no one ever did shit to it except put down that cheapo "luxury vinyl plank" trash. I forgot when it was built. Mid - late 2k's. I remember looking at the listing pictures and wondered in the back of my mind why they had portable AC units and heaters all over the place.
I moved in, and it was blazing hot upstairs. AC barely wheezing through the vents. Bathroom downstairs next to HVAC had a vent over the toilet. You'd either get flash cooked or flash frozen when the HVAC came on.
I looked at the HVAC and there was a big dent in the main line feeding the house. The dent was exactly where a dent would happen if someone punched it to seat it into place. The dent also wedged the damper shut. Took me 10 minutes and $20 to fix, and I put in a damper on the line going to the bathroom. Presto! top floor was cool and comfortable. I don't know how long they lived in that house which was either TOO HOT or TOO COLD ALL THE TIME, but I'm guessing the house was BUILT THAT WAY.
To make things worse, they had a smart thermostat put in. It advertised save 30% on HVAC bills! I went to the website to get a bypass code so I could reprogram it, and that 30% savings shit was all over the place. It saved money by turning off HVAC after midnight until like 5AM with no way of disabling it. They lived like this for years. Their electric bills must have been killing them, too. Portable heaters and coolers are not cheap to run. Oh yeah, they put up a bunch of ceiling fans.
These people were really numb. The garage door didn't have a remote when they bought the house, so they opened the door by hand for years. It takes $10 and 5 seconds to program a remote. Also, it was pain to close because the top reinforcement beam on the door panel was bent. $135 to have it fixed and that included aligning the tracks. *click* whirrr....100% functional garage door.
None of the interior doors shut properly, and half the handles were put on backwards. Took me 6+ hours to fix them and swap out the handles. After that, they all shut with a click.
I hired a painter to repaint. The garage had all this hardware shit on the walls for hanging things. Instead of using a stud finder, they simply put screws in every few inches. They had 6 of those track things and it took me a few hours to pull them out. They hung some shelves in the master bedroom. Same story. Screws every inch and it was still wobbly.
I had it deep cleaned. Almost $600. Cost me what, $8k+ for new paint, random fixit stuff, door handles, fancy ceiling fans, but the place was almost as new and perfect inside. Still makes me wonder how people can live in a broken house for so long and do nothing to fix it and make it nice.
Another story of stupidity with that house. The previous owners left a huge treadmill in the 1st floor subbasement. Absolutely huge and heavy. New, too. Never got any use. I put it on CL for *free*. 3 50+ y/o burnout drunks came to get it. It took them over an hour to remove it, and one of them was just about dead from all the effort. One of them thanked me for it, because he was going to sell it and make "good money" off of it. I said, "you can't beat free" or something to that effect, and the woman shot me a dirty look because she was the only one of the three to catch the obvious. CL was full of the damned things, and mine was not the only free one there. How they thought they could sell it for anything at all is beyond me. Oh well. It would have cost me $150+ to have it removed.
Kiroy
Marine Biologist
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Property taxes on land/dwelling of primary residence should be federally illegal.
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Lanx
<Prior Amod>
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Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
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Wait, where do you live!?! Parents had a guy do that to one of their rentals trying to find the studs for the hood fan. My stepdads no tool slouch - he literally could have just asked for a stud finder since he was apparently clueless how to do anything. The drain pipe for the upstairs bathrooms is in that corner too, so if he would have kept on going - oof...where are your pics?
heres mine, 24 holess, he still missed the stud
I honestly want all of my places reassessed. The taxes here aint shit, comparably to Im sure some of you guys. But it adds up between all of them. Theyre valuing the condo's I own at 200+ as well, and I just bought one for 130k. Who cares if houses in the surrounding neighborhood are selling for that much, those condo's arent worth anywhere near that. No one in their right mind would pay that type of note for one of those places. Not that that'll stop me for renting them out for 1600+ a month.
Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
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You wait till the assess, and at least in virginia, you have a certain time period to dispute it. They have to give more evidence than "houses in your area are selling for a bajillion dollars, your cardboard box must be worth billions too!"
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I've fought my assessment in Dallas and had the assessed value dropped before. But it's becoming a more and more difficult fight to pick.
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Falstaff
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Yes we’re going through it now. Every 3 years you can appeal. For some reason they think our house has 3 fireplaces so that should be an easy win to get it appealed down, but have already been hearing stories of exactly what is being described above… houses assessed values are coming it at 100k over the price they were last time. I’m most likely just going to hire an attorney, they take a % of what they appeal and if they don’t get them lowered then you pay nothing.
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