That is an awesome looking place. For first time home buyers you’ve done well.
AFAIK the reason for the whole no basement thing is because of earthquakes or whatever.
Let’s hear the price and financing arrangements. How many square feet? Who’s the builder? What city? How much is insurance and property tax?
Of course, if it’s mindless happytalk you want, you already got that.
Buying a house should be a business decision, not an emotional one.
Nice picture! My wife loves the look of the house and she now covets it. :)
Nice looking place Xpav, I’m envious. Unless we’ve got a rich relative on their deathbed I don’t know about I think we’re a couple of years off being able to afford to buy.
I can wire up phone jacks, crimp ethernet cable
Sounds like a plan before you start sticking carpets and furniture in. Place I was in last time we had a bit of a redecorate and took the time to ethernet up the house. not as tidy as it could have been if we’d been doing plastering, but you can hide a multitude of sins under the floorboards. But that was in an old stone cottage where wireless didn’t work that great (and we were too snobbish to try and run two gaming PCs over wireless).
I’m surprised if that’s not the case in the UK too. It’s cheaper.
Nah, easier just to use shoddy bricks and a thin layer of plasterboard as walls, I loved being able to hear next door’s presumed pet elephant stomping up the stairs and them getting down and dirty.
There does seem to be a move towards the prefab stuff from Germany when people are building their own but property developers, by and large, are still using brick.
Why are you trying to be such a huge wet blanket?
Because he hates clownifornians?
(and the English language)
Why are you trying to be such a huge wet blanket?
Just ignore him.
Believe it or not it’s about 38%. That probably includes retirees and investors. That number also skews the average mortgage payment to $684 a month because the average payment adds in people who have no payment.
Yeah, paying cash is certainly possible it just requires having to wait longer and to save like crazy. My wife and I have decided we’re never going to have a mortgage again so when the time comes to move to a bigger place, we’re going to make sure we have enough money saved to make up the difference between the market value of our current place and the price of the new place. That’ll mean when the old place sells, the new place will be paid off.
Sure, we might carry a mortgage for a few months until the old place sells but that’s no biggie.
Paying cash for your first house is tougher but, again, it just means waiting longer and becoming dedicated to the task. A few years of sacrificing and saving every cent you can find will put you into a modest starter home for cash.
I have to wonder how much of that 38% is retirees and investors though. I feel like first time home buyers paying cash must exceptionally thrifty, exceptionally rich, or are choosing to buy in the cheaper parts of Detroit.
He’s a self-styled “populist” and has been predicting the collapse of modern society for years now, so he has a huge emotional investment in the housing market doing badly and people who buy houses getting screwed.
I’m glad you asked. Are you not aware of the current housing price collapse that’s been going on for 15 months now and shows no sign of slowing? Why buy when the trend is down and looks to continue down for the foreseeable future? Wouldn’t it make more sense to rent and save up for the true bottom?
That’s not a wet blanket, that’s good money management.
(Of course, most people have no clue since they’re in debt up to their eyeballs, like Stanley Johnson.)
Modern society? Nope. Emotional? Vulcan, baby! No good deed goes unpunished, though. I did manage to talk several people out of making stupid decisions in real life in my area and they were very grateful. But I understand that when it comes to CA, IT’S DIFFERENT HERE!!
Wouldn’t it make more sense to rent and save up for the true bottom?
Depends, over here house prices are falling and rent is going up as more people wait or simply move into rented accomodation while they wait for the prices to bottom out before buying another place.
I’m chucking nearly $20,000 a year at someone else with nothing to show at the end of it on rent. In some respects it’s a moot point as I don’t have the $30-40k saved that we’d need for a deposit on a house anyway but seems to me that unless you’ve got a good reason not to buy a house that you intend to live in for more than a couple of years that you’re probably better off buying it than renting another six months because the price might drop another 5-6k.
I’m sure there’s a simple equation to work out that cutoff point
People don’t have to wait for it to hit absolute bottom (if such a thing can be meaningfully defined for such a broad market) before people are allowed to start buying again… Waiting another year and saving $10,000 might optimize somebody’s efficiency, but it might also mean missing out on a great house in a good location.
And XPav’s house does indeed look great – grats!
Midnight Son, everying is going to be okay. Just show me where the bad mean housing market touched you.
Sadly, I sold all my rental properties at the top of the bubble. Dammit!!
Anyway… Case-Shiller still loves me!
With the good touch or the bad touch?
Happy ending?
There’s certainly something to that, but
-
If XPav didn’t get himself into a stupid loan (ARM, balloon, interest-only, something else gimmicky), plans to stay in the house for several years and is comfortable with the price, than this was a good purchase for him.
-
Second-guessing his decision to buy when he’s done so already and just wants homeowner-type advice is kinda troll-y.