The Home Ownership Thread

[Lizard23]

For low voltage cable get a square flat shovel and cut line where you want your cable to go, lever the shovel to make a small V. Push cable into **** and then just use your feet side by side to close the V. No special tool needed and your grass will be undisturbed. If you have a lot of rocks it gets more annoying.

 

[brokencycle]

For low voltage cable get a square flat shovel and cut line where you want your cable to go, lever the shovel to make a small V. Push cable into **** and then just use your feet side by side to close the V. No special tool needed and your grass will be undisturbed. If you have a lot of rocks it gets more annoying.

Or you live in the shithole that is the south which is all clay.

 

[SirGrotius]

I saw a couple people posted back about having wood siding. We have wood siding for the first time, and it's very nice, but in a couple places I'm noticing some decay. My expectation is that wood looks good, but will require significantly more upkeep. Whom does one call for wood siding repair or upkeep? I'm not looking to wholesale replace, just fix a few pieces that are starting to look flimsy or susceptible to rot.

 

[NorCal]

Call a carpenter.

 

[double00]

we have board n batten on maybe 3/4 of our place, i finally got a look at the wood, it's old fine cedar and i don't think it's replaceable in a retail scenario.

 

[imatlas]

Our building needs a ton of siding and stucco work, and a few coats of paint. We’ll have a couple of thousand in scaffolding costs alone - I’ll be shocked if we can get a quote for under $40K for the whole deal. Any more than that and we’ll have to do a special assessment, which I would very much like to avoid.

 

[Gibonius]

Or you live in the shithole that is the south which is all clay.

+1. I live in clay country and digging suuuuucks. Most of my yard has been amended, but you never know when you're going to run across a section of impenetrable clay.

 

[jbarwick]

Thanks for the ideas on lighting. Will likely have someone out first to provide ideas and a quote. Spent the afternoon clearing our brush along our future fence line. Not as hard as I thought it was going to be. Mostly clearly small branches and overgrown other crap. Tomorrow should go pretty quickly as the rest is mostly clear to begin with.

 

[Omega Male]

Buddy of mine in Metrowest Boston is running into the suburban exodus buzzsaw trying to get out of his condo into a bigger family house. He put in an offer on a property today at $60K over asking and waived contingencies (because his agent says sellers won't even look at those in this market) and still lost out to another buyer who was also willing to waive appraisal and home inspection. Anything in the $600K - $700K range in that market is a bunfight right now.

 

[jbarwick]

We waived appraisal due to our mortgage broker saying we could if we put down $X on a house up to sub-$1M.

Still watching home sales and our price range is still going quick...glad we found a place and are moved in. Unpacked enough for a corkscrew and a bottle of wine.

 

[double00]

Buddy of mine in Metrowest Boston is running into the suburban exodus buzzsaw trying to get out of his condo into a bigger family house. He put in an offer on a property today at $60K over asking and waived contingencies (because his agent says sellers won't even look at those in this market) and still lost out to another buyer who was also willing to waive appraisal and home inspection. Anything in the $600K - $700K range in that market is a bunfight right now.

might be some real deals in urban markets soon enough

i love downtown la...

 

[Omega Male]

Keeping our powder dry for post-COVID, post-Hard Brexit slump in London. Or, as necessary, a Golden Ticket villa in Portugal.

I had a spectacularly unsuccessful foray in Boston real estate. Bought a house for $825K in 2005 and sold it in 2016 for $660K. We were overseas on an expat assignment from 2010 on and a friend of mine lived there rent free for years while recovering financially from a ruinous divorce, so some good came of it. Adding insult to injury, the family we sold it to in 2016 flipped it for $755K a year later. Zillow now values it at $827K.

 

[venividivicibj]

We waived appraisal due to our mortgage broker saying we could if we put down $X on a house up to sub-$1M.

Still watching home sales and our price range is still going quick...glad we found a place and are moved in. Unpacked enough for a corkscrew and a bottle of wine.

What’s the point of appraisal? I mean, you already know general range, + you’re doing my inspection for anything you might miss. Seems like a legacy thing

 

[Omega Male]

It's supposed to protect the lender. If you can put 20%+ down, they'll usually waive it and this now seems to be the expectation in hot markets.

Where it gets complicated is if you have to sell another property (like my buddy does) to make the nut on the downpayment. You used to be able to write that in as a contingency, but increasingly you can't. So you have to commit to buy and then stagger the closings to get out of your current place before coughing up for your next place -- which is a little precarious.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

we have board n batten on maybe 3/4 of our place, i finally got a look at the wood, it's old fine cedar and i don't think it's replaceable in a retail scenario.

We wanted local white cedar for our place but the quality and dimensions aren't great these days (because we destroyed all the big old trees already...) and the prices are high. We ended up going with engineered wood from a company which claims to use mostly reclaimed sawdust from mills. It's like cement board but lighter and more sustainable and it's moulded to look like wooden planks - people can't even tell the difference from close up. Lasts, well, indefinitely, and it's factory-painted so the colour is guaranteed for 25 years too.