The Home Ownership Thread

[HRoi]

This is Texas not NYC or NJ.

Which, along with AZ, is where they all get relocated for witness protection amirite!!

 

[Fueco]

Earlier, I filled 11 of those big paper bags earlier with leaves. Our trees have dropped about 1/3 of their leaves. I’ll be doing this next weekend and the following one as well.

 

[beargonefishing]

Earlier, I filled 11 of those big paper bags earlier with leaves. Our trees have dropped about 1/3 of their leaves. I’ll be doing this next weekend and the following one as well.

I don't understand, why doesn't your staff tend the fawna and floral? What kind of estate are you mismanaging?

 

[Fueco]

I don't understand, why doesn't your staff tend the fawna and floral? What kind of estate are you mismanaging?

I am the staff… For now. I’m going to find a lawn care company to use starting in the spring.

 

[Piobaire]

For the very long term members some might remember we were going to build our own house in 2006-7. Bought the lot, had the plans, completed soil perc test...and then the Big Short happened. Instead of being in a position where we could expect an instant 30% or so of equity over build cost the bank suddenly wanted 80%, yes 80%, down to finance the final 20%.

We sold the lot and sat on our hands until 2012.

 

[PhilKenSebben]

Really neat house for sale in Michigan

Pencil rock hauled from Oklahoma (600 tons) was used build this $4.8M Ann Arbor home

The home made with lots of raw stone walls was designed by the prominent Ann Arbor architect Carl Gilmore for an avid Frank Lloyd Wright fan.

www.freep.com

 

[Omega Male]

Fall feelings.

 

[SixOhNine]

The more you look at it, the worse it gets.

 

[Michigan Planner]

My wife and I have slowly been dipping our toes into the market and considering moving. On Thursday a house popped up on the market in a nearby neighborhood that we really love so we get our realtor on the phone and she gets us a viewing for the next morning. We go check it out and it checks off nearly everything on our list. Friday night we discuss it some more and we email the realtor and tell her that we think we'd like to make an offer. She emails us back that they've already got a stack of offers on the house so we'd probably have to come in quite a bit over asking. We decide to pass. We got an FYI from our realtor this morning that the scuttlebutt is that the $700k house is going to sell for about $850k. Oh well... that's definitely more than we were willing to shell out for it.

I had a coworker whose husband is an executive at Waste Management. They're rich as **** and she started doing a new build from scratch in Colorado. They bought some land and a rented a bull dozer/tractor to start clearing debris and trees. After a year of working on that ****, they gave up since it was too much work.

A few years ago, a coworker of mine and her husband, an exec at Ford, decided they wanted a vacation house "Up North" in Michigan. This was in 2018 and they started looking in the Traverse City area. They couldn't find anything in town they liked at a reasonable price and started looking at other vacation spots in the area but still no luck. So they decided to build new but got really picky about where the property was. They dilly-dallied long enough that they were now into 2020 and prices were skyrocketing for prime spots. Late last year they finally bought their "dream spot" (her words) and it's right on Lake Michigan. Come to find out, they took so long that they had to go from looking at spots a few hours from Detroit in the western Lower Peninsula to a spot in the extreme western Upper Peninsula about 8 hours away and it's actually on the Green Bay (not exactly known as a prime vacation beach area). Oh well... any vacation spot is better than no vacation spot?

It gets worse though: They cleared and prepped their spot (without the proper permits and got fined) then they ran into the great lumber shortage and price hikes of 2021 and now that lumber prices have come back to reality they cannot get an actual crew to work on it. The first contractor they had had to move on earlier in the year and now the few contractors that have agreed to take on the job say they have so much other work lined up ahead of them that they'll be lucky to start work before spring '23 (it's not like the labor pool up there is just bubbling over). I'm surprised they haven't just washed their hands of it by this point and just put it back on the market. My coworker doesn't seem to like my suggestion of trucking in a singlewide from across the border in Wisconsin but if they want to get some use out of this property before their 7-year-old graduates high school, that might be the best option.

 

[PhilKenSebben]

My wife and I have slowly been dipping our toes into the market and considering moving. On Thursday a house popped up on the market in a nearby neighborhood that we really love so we get our realtor on the phone and she gets us a viewing for the next morning. We go check it out and it checks off nearly everything on our list. Friday night we discuss it some more and we email the realtor and tell her that we think we'd like to make an offer. She emails us back that they've already got a stack of offers on the house so we'd probably have to come in quite a bit over asking. We decide to pass. We got an FYI from our realtor this morning that the scuttlebutt is that the $700k house is going to sell for about $850k. Oh well... that's definitely more than we were willing to shell out for it.




A few years ago, a coworker of mine and her husband, an exec at Ford, decided they wanted a vacation house "Up North" in Michigan. This was in 2018 and they started looking in the Traverse City area. They couldn't find anything in town they liked at a reasonable price and started looking at other vacation spots in the area but still no luck. So they decided to build new but got really picky about where the property was. They dilly-dallied long enough that they were now into 2020 and prices were skyrocketing for prime spots. Late last year they finally bought their "dream spot" (her words) and it's right on Lake Michigan. Come to find out, they took so long that they had to go from looking at spots a few hours from Detroit in the western Lower Peninsula to a spot in the extreme western Upper Peninsula about 8 hours away and it's actually on the Green Bay (not exactly known as a prime vacation beach area). Oh well... any vacation spot is better than no vacation spot?

It gets worse though: They cleared and prepped their spot (without the proper permits and got fined) then they ran into the great lumber shortage and price hikes of 2021 and now that lumber prices have come back to reality they cannot get an actual crew to work on it. The first contractor they had had to move on earlier in the year and now the few contractors that have agreed to take on the job say they have so much other work lined up ahead of them that they'll be lucky to start work before spring '23 (it's not like the labor pool up there is just bubbling over). I'm surprised they haven't just washed their hands of it by this point and just put it back on the market. My coworker doesn't seem to like my suggestion of trucking in a singlewide from across the border in Wisconsin but if they want to get some use out of this property before their 7-year-old graduates high school, that might be the best option.

Whoever said first world problems don't exist??

 

[Fueco]

My brother and his wife are building their dream home (in Fargo!!). A massive windstorm caused some destruction…

 

[Numbernine]

The more you look at it, the worse it gets.

I think the real question here is WHY

 

[sugarbutch]

My coworker doesn't seem to like my suggestion of trucking in a singlewide from across the border in Wisconsin but if they want to get some use out of this property before their 7-year-old graduates high school, that might be the best option.

Snark aside, some sort of modular prefab seems like a good option for a "right now" solution.

 

[Michigan Planner]

My brother and his wife are building their dream home (in Fargo!!). A massive windstorm caused some destruction…

View attachment 1695773

That’s a pretty ****** situation.

On a related note: When we were out trick-or-treating last night my 5-year-old asked why one house had a portable toilet in the driveway. I told her it was for trick-or-treaters who needed to make a pit stop and she suddenly decided that she needed to use the bathroom (we kept her out of it)

Snark aside, some sort of modular prefab seems like a good option for a "right now" solution.

I actually made that suggestion but she turned her nose up at it. That’s when I downgraded the idea to a singlewide.

About 20 years ago, my oldest brother “built” his own house. It was a 2-story modular home that looks like any other suburban colonial at the time. He had the basement dug and poured and then all the walls were pre-made at a factory and trucked in. He used a crane he rented and lifted them all into place and basically built it like a LEGO set. IIRC, the walls had the wiring, ductwork, and insulation already in them. All he had to do on the interior After he put in windows was drywall and paint. Seemed pretty much ideal for somebody who had a little bit of skill and didn’t want to mess around with contractors. 20 years later everything seems to have held up really well (probably a lot more solid than the million dollar “luxury” sh!tbox they put up next to me a few years ago).

I have to imagine that the modular, and pre-built technology has come a long way since then. I’ve always wondered why it hasn’t caught on a lot more. Maybe it has in areas other than Metro Detroit where there is some actual population growth?

 

[ValidusLA]

Planting update. Got 3 of my 12 trees and all the hydranegea planted.

On the negative side, the bear came back for my persimmons again. And much like last year, broke off a bunch of top branches falling through the tree again.

This time he fell onto an unplanted J maple.....broke off about 2 years of growth. Also damaged one of the gingkos.

TLDR - I hate bears.