Homeowners

Cutlery_sl said:

I hate it, wife loves it.

What do you want to know?

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My experience with owning one has been fairly negative. Just wanted to see what other people thought about pool ownership. Guess I'm not alone.

Long story short, it requires constant maintenance, when stuff breaks or goes wrong it's costly and we rarely use it, even in a warm climate. It's more of a giant, expensive yard decoration.

Fuck lawyers, fuck condos, fuck condo fees and fuck special assessments. Also fuck condo boards.

Four assessments in three years totaling $18,300 (5000$ from my previous owner, I've paid another 5k and on the hook for another 8.3k). So one of these assessments happened before I moved in and my lawyer talked to me about it. I had asked (verbally, oh god I wish I had this written) quite a few times about the health of the condo corporation and whether another special assessment would be in the works. He gave me all these reassurances that it all checked out and in his words "Was one of the most financially healthy condo corporations he'd ever seen". Well that was horse shit, eight months after moving in there was another special assessment tabled that was on the books when my lawyer reviewed them. Conveniently this is also when he mailed me the condo papers that he supposedly reviewed. So because my building is older and packed full of retarded seniors on fixed incomes, it was tabled to raise the condo fees and take out a line of credit to pay for these repairs and any future repairs. Naw, old fuckers vote to pay an assessment.

So after that assessment all the young owners who obviously can't afford to get hit with this decide to start bailing on the property, and 1/10th of the units in my building are for sale and none of them are moving. My property value has probably dropped 20k since then (I bought for 158, and larger units are selling for low 120's), and with these new repairs coming on the books ($8300 for my unit) soon I can't only see it dropping down off even more especially if they go the special assessment route again.

The worst part of all this is that I have a stunning condo that's 21 stories up, floor to ceiling windows across the entire apartment (one wall is entirely glass) and it's simplify beautiful. I'm getting the point where I'm going to take a 30k hit (10k in upgrades, 20k in value) just to unload it all because of this stupid shit.

But yea, fuck anything condo related.

Congratz Salad. Houses are a never-ending money sink, but it's nice to have someplace to call your own.

My sister lives in a condo community. Seeing her deal with the HOA - why the fuck do people EVER buy condos?

Anyway, moving into our new home this weekend. Can't wait to start on all the yardwork (not).

Meh, my condo building is extremely well run. That's really the crux of it, is having a good condo board and property manager. And of course reviewing the hell out of everything before buying one. They can certainly be nightmares if the condo board is over it's head, or if it was built by a bad builder.

Brando_sl said:

For the pools, it depends on the type of pool. Ours is salt water so it's fucking easy to maintain, just throw more salt in the pool and that's about it. I pay someone to clean the filter every 3 months. I've had to shock it twice for algea in 6 months now and that was it. The only issue now that it's getting colder is it costs a grip to heat the fucking thing. Going to try the solar cover to see how that works as right now the pool looks great but it's so cold no one bothers, we just use the hot tub 2 or 3 times a week right now and that's it.

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Did you convert to salt water by choice, or was it like that when you got it? If you converted, I'd be interested in hearing how the process and costs were.

Filwen_sl said:

So the extra 4k was financed as a sort of an up front PMI?

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Yes, but only one bank offered it. Each banks offers a different array of PMI packages. I worked with Weichert Financial and they were the only folks with it. The wife and I have a credit rating of near 800 so it was available to us. We could of also spent ~4k up front to get rid of it as well, but with a interest rate of 4% it made sense to increase the mortgage for the same cost.

Fuck pools. That shit is a nightmare to run.

We have someone coming over tomorrow morning to discuss how we're going to spend 20-30k on a new master bathroom. Yay.

I just repainted mine. I'll be doing crown molding next month with some trim work. 20-30k is a lot.

I bought a house back in Feb, it's a fairly new home it was built in 08 but it had a huge downside... The backyard had never been landscaped and I have 2 dogs that are high energy and like to run. So until a week or so I've had this constant battle with dirt being tracked in by the dogs, it's not their fault but it was such a total pain in the ass. It would fucking coat everything in dust, I was constantly dusting and sweeping floors to keep it under wraps. Finally we saved up some cash and found a guy that would landscape it for 3k. It has a rock border near the fence and grass in the center with curbing separating the grass and rock. Sprinkler system installed and a dog run on the side of the house. Since the house was still pretty new I haven't had to do a ton of projects, just some painting and ceiling fans. We did buy all new appliances when we moved in though and that wasn't cheap.

I went with FHA and we're paying less than we were in rent, it's a nicer home and much newer. The only downside is the utilities in the summer are a nightmare, cooling a 2 story home in AZ just isn't cheap even with all the latest and greatest insulation, double-pane windows and separate AC units for upstairs and downstairs.

I did get lucky and bought at the right time, housing prices have been climbing ever since we've moved in and from what I can gather we already have a nice chunk of equity due to market conditions. If things continue the way they are I may stay here a few more years and then sell, take my profit and get something a little nicer.

P.S. Fuck pools, I live in AZ and damn near everyone has a pool and they're nothing but money pits. The money you spend to maintain it vs the enjoyment you get out of it just isn't worth it. That fucking thing will nickle and dime you to death.

And I don't know about places like Arizona or Florida where you can use a pool year round, but here in the midwest they add zero value to your home when you go to resell it. In fact, they often make your home harder to sell. Makes it hard to justify spending 30 grand on a pool that will do nothing positive to your property value vs 30 grand on remodels that will at least increase your home value that much, if not more.

I like pools, growing up we always had a pool in our houses, but as an adult I wouldn't want to screw with one.

I'm going to get this off my chest... fuck using Bank of America for anything.

The story is that we just moved into Western New York over the summer on the heels of a job opportunity for the wife. It's basically moving back home for us, since this is where she grew up, this is where we met, and this is where all our friends and family live. We do some preliminary feeling out of our financial situation and figure out we need to sell the house we had, cash out our 401ks and utilize some of the lower interest credit cards to make the move and then also be able to get a house up here. Most of the money we got from the sale and the 401ks went to eliminate our albatross CC, which was the only way we were going to get approved for a home loan. Also, since I didn't have a job when we moved (working now though), we decided to only use my wife on the FHA application. We found a house we both loved and worked fast to secure a contract. Then the real nightmare began.

So we decided to go with BoA because they've been our bank since before we were married. We figured things would be easier on us if they had direct access to our accounts. Heh. I will say this upfront though, the local guy we initially dealt with was awesome. He secured a conditional pre-approval letter to help us lock in the contract with the seller. But he wasn't the person we were going to deal with the entire time though. No, that went to someone else. So we got the paperwork from BoA, my wife signed everything and we sent everything back in. The other person sent us a list of things she though the underwriter might want information on, which I got together and sent in.

SIX WEEKS LATER we get a thing in the mail with SEVENTEEN conditions we had to provide explanations on. So I bust my ass getting everything together and BAM, Sandy hits and the office handling our paperwork gets shut down. They were out for a week. Paperwork goes back to UW. LAST WEEK I get an email about SIX MORE CONDITIONS. Four of them were shit I already provided paperwork on. Fine, whatever, I had the stuff already so I resent it. Now it's back in UW and we're waiting once again.

We secured early occupancy on the property because it's fucking winter up here and I sure as shit didn't want to unload a truck in the fucking snow, so we're in the property and will pay out rent at closing but who the fuck knows when that's going to be. My wife signed the paperwork for this back at the end of September. I honestly have no fucking clue why the hell this is taking so long but I know I will never work with Bank of America ever again for anything.

That said, the house is awesome. 2k sq/ft, two stories, huge ass master bedroom, living room AND family room. Basement. Seller had lived here for 26 years so it's been well loved. Neighbors seem pretty cool and there's kids around for my kids to play with. School is nearby and they're much more capable of dealing with my son's autism than some of the other districts in the area. Things are working out, but fuck, getting this mortgage approved is a pain in the fucking ass.

Draegan_sl said:

I just repainted mine. I'll be doing crown molding next month with some trim work. 20-30k is a lot.

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20-30 is definitely a lot imo. But I'm not dealing with this one. Having someone else do it start to finish and it needs to be gutted with everything moved around. I factored this cost in when we bought the house though so we knew it was coming. At least this way we get exactly what we want.

A lot of banks hassle you to explain a ton of shit on your bank statements. BoA is a shitty institution though.