Buying A House: C or D?

and anyway property is slavery

otm, especially when I have to mow it and weed the garden

for a second I thought you were still talking about the baby

Our baby has never been in her 'nursery'. She's 14 months now and has slept appx. 10hrs in her giant, expensive crib. I missed how old your baby was or if it was on the way, but you won't really need much room for the baby until the baby is walking and even then they are happy to walk around the coffee table. Don't force a move. Loving your wife and baby is providing enough for them. The stress you're adding to the situation is going to make everything less enjoyable. Give it time and the right situation will happen.

jon - feel like there's no way you haven't already considered this, but is renting the place you want to get out of an option?

rent for a year or two and then try to sell again. something like that.

Definitely considered that, but with what comparable houses are getting in our area for rent, it wouldn't be enough to cover the costs. We may be able to reasses that in six months or so though. But, tbh, the thought of being a landlord scares me.

ah, that's a bummer.

man K and I were talking recently about whether our house would be big enough if we decided to have one or two kids and after reading this thread i feel like an idiot and a spoiled dick :(

actually house ownership in general has to be the source of 90% of my first world problems when i really think about it, like i should hire somebody to follow me around and slap me every time i think something like "woe is me the roof damper for my fireplace is broken" or "the paint on my ground floor bathroom is cracking HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN YOU CRUEL AND UNJUST GOD"

very very otm

mine are about to become 45% house, 45% car

watching my property taxes go up while my value goes down thanks to idiots voting in a republican majority in my state is somehow a justifiable shake my fist at the heavens thing somehow though.

xpost see this is why i never learned to like cars

I used to work with a guy who put it best: "90% of the time, having a car is awesome, but that 10% when it's not is among the worst 10% of modern life experience"

See I don't get that worked up over car problems, because those are usually much less expensive to fix than house repairs.

gf's mom is saying she wants to sell 2000 sf house that is literally two blocks from carleton in order to finish paying condo five blocks from guthrie ... i am telling her she is craaaaaazy

wait what why?

please dont say that it is because the condo is a sound investment because uh i have seen the vacancy rates of those condos and no

I can't imagine buying a condo in the Twin Cities as my primary residence

unless of course it was like a condo the size of Mall of America

buying a house: dud

finally moving into house: classic

congrats!!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/mortgage-tax-deductions-may-soon-be-in-play/2011/08/08/gIQARA60AJ_story.html

I don't even want to think about this, though if it doesn't happen this year it's almost guaranteed to happen.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/mortgage-tax-deductions-may-soon-be-in-play/2011/08/08/gIQARA60AJ_story.html

I don't even want to think about this, though if it doesn't happen this year it's almost guaranteed to happen.

it's hard to justify both as an overall policy and in terms of who gets most of the $ from this tax break (rich ppls)

Well it would be a massive bummer considering the amount of prop tax we pay and the tax break I was expecting to get.

4 bedroom house two doors down from us is for sale for 99 grand if anyone wants to join us here in god's country:

http://www.trulia.com/property/3068816811-69-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

huge garage too. kinda envious of that garage. you could live in the garage. we don't have a garage. our next door neighbor's garage is as big as a house. he even has a nice deck on his garage!

Looks like a big house for the price!

But –

http://thumbs.trulia.com/pictures/thumbs_4/ps.36/4/e/6/c/picture-uh=41d6f2f4906a3fb82f7afc4a6cbe4c8-ps=4e6cb4dafd1cb287b598491ba561b11.jpg

that art is amazing; it's the drop ceiling that's giving me the shivers

might need a little work.

we just did the state home energy audit thing for our 100+ year old house and the guy came and looked at eveything and said we were good to go! apparently, the former owner took really good care of everything and reinsulated and we don't have much to do or spend right now. nice surprise. he kinda felt funny that he couldn't do anything for us, so he gave us lots of extra lightbulbs.

selling our house and buying a new one has been the most unpleasant, arduous, and stressful event of my life. it's really killing me. i think i'm almost done with process, but if our inspections don't go through it'll be just the latest bite of gigantic shit sandwich.

feel like if my family can survive this intact we've really accomplished something.

favorite part so far- getting contract written to sell our place, then having another bidder suddenly pop up and outbid us for the house we were going to buy. it looked like 75% chance of moving the family to apartment just before xmas, where we could chill out and wait for a house that suited us and our budget.

The year we bought a wonderful new house, but had to wait nearly eight months to sell the old one were some of the most stressful in our lives.

Earlier this year my parents finally sold their house in NY which had been on the market for 3+ years and while the sale was under contract they bought a house in Floriday and scheduled it so that the closing in FL would be about 5 days after the one in NY. Long story short the sale in NY fell through AFTER they'd moved to FL and bought that house so now they live there and their empty house in NY is on the market again. :( It's not a good situation at all.

terrible.

http://www.trulia.com/property/1075389366-122-S-Ocean-Ave-Bayport-NY-11705

I think that's considerably lower than the first asking price but I know that they're just going to keep dropping it until someone buys because they literally can't afford to keep paying for both houses. The property taxes on the one in NY as astronomical. Which is a) the reason they moved in the first place b) probably a big reason why nobody has bought it yet. It's a really nice house in a great area. I think the taxes are playing into it big time.

Decided in the last week that we are gonna do this thing.

99 grand! In our preferred neighbourhood in Toronto, houses begin around $400K. So.. it's gonna be a little while more.

Weird seeing decent houses like that one we could afford. Here it's just a unattainable dream

we four brothers messily kind of own the house i'm currently in, bought for 205k in 2005 current value prob 110k maybe, mortgage 170k lol

Scott what's Greenfield like? How far is it to Northampton? Nearest city would be . . . Springfield?

Basically wondering how in the middle of nowhere it is or isn't. 99,000 is just . . . unbelievable.

selling our house and buying a new one has been the most unpleasant, arduous, and stressful event of my life. it's really killing me. i think i'm almost done with process, but if our inspections don't go through it'll be just the latest bite of gigantic shit sandwich.

feel like if my family can survive this intact we've really accomplished something.

I hear this, although we've put it all on hold for a few months. Its just a neverending nightmare it seems. I'm sure it'll be great when all is said and done and we're in a new house that we love (no matter how much of a hit we have to take at this point), but going through it is a level of hell.

How about a two-story, 70-year-old house with 3,480-SF? The price is so low, we can't reveal it here. Just put in your cart for checkout.

i have to add, jjjusten upthread is right. i'm v. fortunate, i'll have a home pretty much no matter what, so if you see me with my by-now customary distraugt face, slap it.

"Scott what's Greenfield like? How far is it to Northampton? Nearest city would be . . . Springfield?"

greenfield is considered kinda the bad boy of the valley around here if you live in northampton or amherst. but they are snooty like that. 25 minutes to northampton and amherst. 25 minutes to brattleboro, vermont. close to new hampshire. an hour+ from hartford. two hours+ from boston. not far from providence. when the train station is finished in greenfield you will be able to take a train direct to nyc. excited about that.

i mean, it has its problems. its had its dog days. but we love it here. and we love the proximity to other places. a couple of hours to my brother in hudson. 3 hours or so to my parents outside saratoga. we love turners falls the town right next door. lots of great people. lots of great music. lots of great book stores and cool places to go. lots of forests and trails and mountains and lakes and rivers nearby. its a lot cheaper here than in northampton obviously. we bought an awesome huge house that has four bedrooms and a massive attic and basement that is in amazing condition for 142k.

oh and the house on our block that is 99 grand is probably so cheap because its being sold by the family of a very old couple that lived there (and who both passed away in the last couple of years) and i think they just want to sell it and be done with it. they don't want to mess around.

And it's close to downtown, PP! Must have a high walk score.

x-post

and, yeah, springfield is about an hour away. i can't say i spend a lot of time in springfield. unless its to stop at white hut on my to/from somewhere else.

http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/ae866fce-ad7d-4d67-9d5a-d18500db15c6.jpg

oooh what's white hut!? I like the look of it.

wow, erica, that house is swanky! beautiful spot there.