Buying A House: C or D?

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.

http://www.whitehut.com/

"relish the experience"

i really should investigate springfield more. but there are no record stores there! so that makes it hard to entice me. i think they have a few latin/rap cd stores and that's about it.

Which, my parents'? Yeah, it's so nice. We moved into it when I was about 6 and they did so much to it over the years/put a lot of work into it. The backyard is like a tiny personal forest! It's also right by the water too.

I just feel so bad for them with all that's happened now. I mean they're retired and really can't afford to pay two mortgages, two property taxes etc. I pretty sure that if they don't sell it by the spring they're going to have to drop the price DRASTICALLY. It's really stressing my dad out. He's on the phone to the realtor every day asking for updates. :/

WHITE HUT LOOKS AWESOME. :)

Sorry about your folks. I was happy to sell my house in NJ, i just lost quite a bit of money on it. No big deal, because i still walked away with cash after paying off my mortgage. But it was a long, slow frustrating process.

I'm moving to Atlanta from New Jersey. The house i was going to buy failed inspection miserably so I killed the deal. Still, housing prices are much lower than where im coming from, so that's a good thing. Very much looking forward to moving south.

yeah that sucks. we kinda/sorta went through something like that last year. long arduous story and i won't go into it. and the process of buying the house we bought this year kinda made me want to jump out a window, but i lived and we love it, so all is well.

x-post

x-post - Good luck Bill Magill!

Yeah - I just hope it sells sooner rather than later. Also, I'm glad you guys found someplace you love!

I've actually never been to your part of Western MA which is why I was asking. I need to change that someday. We used to stop in Springfield on the way back from Vermont when I was younger because there is was a German restaurant there and my dad knew the owner, Ruprecht. Other than that I've only been there for work a couple times. It's a pretty depressed town one where most storefronts are empty but you get glimpses of what it might have been like at one time when things were better.

x-post - Good luck Bill Magill!

^thank you!

lol this is totally that German place in Springfield: http://www.studentprince.com/

i do want to go to the german place. i've heard good things about it!

this is our spot. gonna stay here forever.

http://images.neighborcity.com/source_3/massachusetts/greenfield/d8158f81b395cfa4dc9453cce031dcc4_0.jpg

Oh, I love it. PORCH!!

lotsa great porches in greenfield. so many of the houses in town are 50+ or 100+ years old.

i never want to buy a house, and this thread is not making me change my mind

its kind of a nightmare.

that house looks great! i want to buy one so bad. so many things i hate about renting. i don't think anyone's going to accept a 3% down payment though, but that's about all the money i've saved so far!

i never want to buy a house, and this thread is not making me change my mind

house next to ours is for sale. come share a driveway with us!

http://www.trulia.com/property/3080203081-71-73-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301?ecampaign=con_day_propertysearchforsale_bk&eurl=www.trulia.com%2Fproperty%2F3080203081-71-73-Pierce-St-Greenfield-MA-01301

2 family house. have someone pay your mortgage for you! the garage is as big as a house. you could make it into another house.

I inherited a house. It needs a lot of work but I love it too much. Old houses are great.

A 6-bed house for $189,900?! Is that common where you are?

we're looking right now, and if only we were happy to live far far far from a BART station, we could live in a semi-mansion for under 300k.