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Shared wall save energy not because of lack of insulation, but because you're not trying to heat up a cold exterior wall. The wall is already warm from what your neighbors are doing, so your not fighting such extremes. And I think we've figured out how to make successful multi-tenant buildings, this noise thing is really only valid in buildings built in the 60s or something. We've figured out to sound isolate a unit, we live in the future. I'm pretty tired of all the condo hate in this thread for no reason other than "I don't want to live in one because I lived in a 50 year old apartment building and it sucked and also it doesn't perfectly fit my lifestyle so it can't possibly fit anybody else's."
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Jul 11, 2011 20:13
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Are there any good resources for trying to sell a home on my own? I'd rather save the 7% and am willing to do the legwork for myself. A bonus is that I can basically leave work at short notice to show the house if someone is interested. I thought about starting my own thread about this, and can branch off if it sparks enough conversation.
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Jul 11, 2011 20:18
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Nocheez posted:Are there any good resources for trying to sell a home on my own? I'd rather save the 7% and am willing to do the legwork for myself. A bonus is that I can basically leave work at short notice to show the house if someone is interested. First, you'd only be saving half that commission, because it gets split between buying agent and selling agent. I know there are some real estate companies that will charge you $1000 for some MLS stuff and then let you do the work, and let you take the seller's commission.
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Jul 11, 2011 20:24
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Nocheez posted:Are there any good resources for trying to sell a home on my own? I'd rather save the 7% and am willing to do the legwork for myself. A bonus is that I can basically leave work at short notice to show the house if someone is interested. If you're not in a rush, it may be worth a shot seeing if a sign out front or a craigslist ad will get some traffic. However, MLS is a POWERFUL tool that will drive traffic into any half-way decent home. As much as that 6ish% is tough to swallow, one could argue you will make up for it alone in effort/experience/resources and potentially command a higher price for the home to offset the fee, assuming it appraises. When I was shopping for a home, I would see FSBO and think, sweet, I can negotiate at least 5% off that price...
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Jul 11, 2011 20:27
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cstine posted:You're paying someone to do the yardwork for you. (HOA Fees) The difference in my HOA fees for my SFH neighborhood and Site Condos we saw while shopping was more than what it'd cost to pay someone to mow my lawn and fertilize by a long shot. There is no free lunch people... you pay for what you get!
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Jul 11, 2011 20:28
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TraderStav posted:If you're not in a rush, it may be worth a shot seeing if a sign out front or a craigslist ad will get some traffic. However, MLS is a POWERFUL tool that will drive traffic into any half-way decent home. As much as that 6ish% is tough to swallow, one could argue you will make up for it alone in effort/experience/resources and potentially command a higher price for the home to offset the fee, assuming it appraises. When I was shopping for a home, I would see FSBO and think, sweet, I can negotiate at least 5% off that price... That's basically what I was hoping for. My house is worth around $110K, I'd be very happy to sell for $105K. I'd like that more than getting $110K for my home and having to cut a check to a realtor. A year ago I was thinking about buying another home, but was concerned with depleting my savings to make it happen. That same house is still for sale and has dropped in price by $20K. I'm fairly certain I could get it for 5-10K less than the listing price, since it's owned by the builder. They had a lease-to-own person live there for a year but they weren't able to buy, so they moved out. I got married last month and my wife and I have managed to put away an extra $25K, so I would like to sell my current home and not take too bad of a beating on it.
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Jul 11, 2011 20:56
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You almost always take a beating selling real estate, especially in a market like this. So if your house is worth 110K, and you want to sell you'll be lucky to walk away from the table with 95K or so. Figure you sell for 105, and 6% realtor commission and 4% seller concession for buyers closing costs, leaves you 94.5K. I mention the seller concession because in this market you'll have a hard time finding a buyer not asking for it.
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Jul 11, 2011 21:33
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FISHMANPET posted:Shared wall save energy not because of lack of insulation, but because you're not I don't hate condos, but I have lived in multiple places touting sound isolation, including one place built in 2007 with supposedly the height of technology, and I could still hear even the smallest of sounds (small pets running, babies crying, people walking, etc). This is something I am going to have to see to believe.
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Jul 11, 2011 23:28
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archangelwar posted:I don't hate condos, but I have lived in multiple places touting sound isolation, including one place built in 2007 with supposedly the height of technology, and I could still hear even the smallest of sounds (small pets running, babies crying, people walking, etc). This is something I am going to have to see to believe. For quiet, look for no one above or below, and for units to be offset in a staggered diagonal pattern; in that no common area walls adjoin. Converted apartments will rarely have this.
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Jul 11, 2011 23:35
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I live in a condo and i loving hate it. All the negatives people have mentioned are true. I will never buy one again. Oh, and next week i get to pay a supplemental payment to the HOA of $894 because somebody sued the association and they don't have the reserves to do maintenance.
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Jul 12, 2011 02:15
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I owned a condo in a 4-story building built in 1988 that was originally built as an apartment building. I could hear my neighbors above and below me when they talked in their bedrooms. I'm pretty sure they could hear me as well in my bedroom. However, in high-rise buildings there's a greater structural need to have 12+ inches of concrete between each floor absorbing and dampening the sound and supporting everything, so when I've stayed in friends high-rise apartments 40+ years old in NYC, Chicago, etc. I haven't heard the neighbors. Apartment -> Condo conversions should be avoided like the plague.
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Jul 12, 2011 02:30
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I have some friends that lived in a 25 story apartment -> condo conversion and he had zero sound problems.
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Jul 12, 2011 16:15
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LloydDobler posted:Nonsense. The thing is it is easy to rent an apartment similar to a condo. You can find nice, upscale rentals in most areas with condos. Sometimes even the exact same condos if an owner is renting out their condo. As for your points: No yardwork - Same as renting. No snow shoveling or plowing - Same as renting. Low cost of entry - Renting is substantially lower. Shared walls lower heating/cooling bills - Same as renting. No restrictions on interior decorating or remodeling - This is certainly true on decorating, but even remodeling you can be limited in what you can do. Equity - Are you kidding me? Instead of calling this 'equity' it would be better called 'equity risk'. Sure if it appreciates you gain, but if it tanks you lose, it should be considered a benefit to be shielded from this. Also the appreciation is almost certainly going to be lower the the market so from a pure investment stand point the lower risk higher return is to rent and put money saved into the market. Security from eviction - If you are a good renter your chance of eviction is extremely slim, also an HOA can still gently caress you in the rear end. The lifestyle afforded by a condo isn't really that different than an apartment. Rather than burden yourself with the heavy transaction costs, market risk, substantial down payment or PMI, just pay rent. A home however affords you activities than you cannot do in an apartment or condo (jam band, working on your car in the garage, structural remodeling, gardening). If these are important to you it may be worth it to pay the costs to purchase a home. Of course it would still probably be cheaper to rent a home, but often home rentals are sparse and you may not find what you are looking for.
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Jul 12, 2011 16:54
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alreadybeen posted:Equity - Are you kidding me? Instead of calling this 'equity' it would be better called 'equity risk'. Sure if it appreciates you gain, but if it tanks you lose, it should be considered a benefit to be shielded from this. Also the appreciation is almost certainly going to be lower the the market so from a pure investment stand point the lower risk higher return is to rent and put money saved into the market. There is a mistake here. If you buy with say 20% down and your house appreciates 3% in a year then you have made 15% on your investment, whereas in the stock market if you make 3% you just get 3% since most people are not leveraging their money.
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Jul 12, 2011 17:26
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alreadybeen posted:The thing is it is easy to rent an apartment similar to a condo. You can find nice, upscale rentals in most areas with condos. Sometimes even the exact same condos if an owner is renting out their condo. As for your points: In some markets it's not possible to find the same lifestyle as a condo in an apartment, though the market is shifting now and new properties coming online are rentals and not condos. And you can do structural changes to a condo, my friends knocked out a kitchen wall and put a laundry room off the bathroom in their unit.
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Jul 12, 2011 17:52
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I was replying to a post that said there are none of the advantages of apartments or houses in a condo. I listed some. That's all. You can keep listing the disadvantages, and you're not necessarily wrong, but everything has advantages and disadvantages. Condos are NOT a pile of cons with no pros. And HOA eviction is a downside of an HOA, not of a condo. If you follow the rules of your HOA which you agree to before you move in, you have zero risk of getting kicked out of your condo. Not true with apartments or even rental houses. LloydDobler fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jul 12, 2011 |
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Jul 12, 2011 17:52
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Carleton posted:There is a mistake here. If you buy with say 20% down and your house appreciates 3% in a year then you have made 15% on your investment, whereas in the stock market if you make 3% you just get 3% since most people are not leveraging their money. You're glossing over a major problem here. Only 12 states are non-recourse with regard to mortgage debt. Your potential downside with your real-estate investment is up to five times (with 20% down) the amount you're leveraging in the other 38 states. That is an added risk which you are, for the majority of long-term market investments, shielded from. You cannot lose more than your input investment for a normal stock purchase. (You may say that a house will never lose ALL its value, to which I'd say to check out Detroit and other parts of the rust belt.) I agree with your leverage comment, though I'd also note that those are unrealized gains until you manage to liquidate the house, which also entails extra fees and closing costs which will eat into your earnings as well. Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jul 12, 2011 |
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Jul 12, 2011 18:30
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Sundae posted:You're glossing over a major problem here. Only 12 states are non-recourse with regard to mortgage debt. Your potential downside with your real-estate investment is up to five times (with 20% down) the amount you're leveraging in the other 38 states. That is an added risk which you are, for the majority of long-term market investments, shielded from. You cannot lose more than your input investment for a normal stock purchase. (You may say that a house will never lose ALL its value, to which I'd say to check out Detroit and other parts of the rust belt.) It doesn't cost 6% to exit a stock position. Houses are not investments. DO NEVER BUY (for these lovely reasons) vvv to be sure: quoting you didn't mean I was directing at you 
TraderStav fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jul 12, 2011 |
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Jul 12, 2011 18:41
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TraderStav posted:It doesn't cost 6% to exit a stock position. That is exactly my point.
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Jul 12, 2011 18:46
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If I get preapproved through Wells Fargo, do I then have to use them for the actual loan? The foreclosure I'm trying to buy REQUIRES preapproval through them but I don't want the actual loan through them. Is that possible or am I stuck with them?
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Jul 12, 2011 19:45
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We looked at a few places like that and were told only the preapproval was required, it was fine to use our actual lender.
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Jul 12, 2011 19:50
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A preapproval is not a contract, for either party. You're under no obligation (and neither are they).
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Jul 12, 2011 20:18
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Something else to be said about condos, most of them don't let you work on your car. I live in an apartment and can do some stuff but a condo I think would be riskier what with having a HOA. This came up in AI: discstickers posted:The problem being is that I'm both mechanically stupid AND I live in a condo so I can't work on it myself. So, I'll guess I'll call around to other BMW shops to get quotes. The shop he took it to quoted him $1,000 to get some fairly simple stuff done, with another $500+ expected (brakes and a power steering leak that I guess they didn't quote) Parts to do the stuff yourself, $100 max excluding the grill (which could be found at a junkyard anyway). So for those mechanically inclined, I would say there is an implicit cost in having to have other people work on your car rather than having your own driveway or garage. (Of course, this assumes you don't have a friend or a parent willing to loan you a driveway for a few hours)
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Jul 12, 2011 20:30
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CornHolio posted:Something else to be said about condos, most of them don't let you work on your car. I live in an apartment and can do some stuff but a condo I think would be riskier what with having a HOA. There's a place here that charges you to use their garage space and tools. Of course there's no way in hell I'm ever doing anything to my own car, so that doesn't matter. I'd much rather just not have a car.
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Jul 12, 2011 20:32
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FISHMANPET posted:There's a place here that charges you to use their garage space and tools. It is my understanding that places like that are incredibly rare due to liability reasons.
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Jul 12, 2011 20:47
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CornHolio posted:It is my understanding that places like that are incredibly rare due to liability reasons. It's also better in my experience as an amateur to not be on the clock. I like to take many breaks especially if it's a warm day. Rushing to get something done would be too much like work.
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Jul 12, 2011 20:48
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FISHMANPET posted:And I think we've figured out how to make successful multi-tenant buildings, this noise thing is really only valid in buildings built in the 60s or something. We've figured out to sound isolate a unit, we live in the future. We may have figured out how to sound isolate a unit, but we aren't doing it. In the fourplex condo I lived in, built in the late 80's, I could hear everything through the walls, when the neighbors talked in a normal volume I could hear it. I would say the opposite of what you're saying, that it's the older buildings which are probably quieter. Some old 1920's building, built with extremely thick walls, will be better than anything they're building today for sound issues.
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Jul 15, 2011 03:10
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Orange Sunshine posted:We may have figured out how to sound isolate a unit, but we aren't doing it. To be honest, I wouldn't trust anything stick built without doing some actual testing and talking to neighborhoods, or seeing how the building was actually built. An older brick building, or a newer poured concrete building (which means 5+ stories) I'd trust a lot more. Basically, masonry and cement are way better than wood. It's possible to do with wood, but I'm guessing most people don't go through the effort to do it right.
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Jul 15, 2011 03:22
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Orange Sunshine posted:We may have figured out how to sound isolate a unit, but we aren't doing it. Every shared wall place I've lived in I could hear my neighbors, except for the only oldest building I ever lived in which was erected in 1978. That was a peaceful apartment.
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Jul 15, 2011 03:23
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TraderStav posted:It doesn't cost 6% to exit a stock position.
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Jul 15, 2011 06:08
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Kneel Before Zog posted:aren't as safe in my opinion. Did you somehow miss the entirety of the housing bubble bursting? Because missing it is the only possible reason you could make a statement that silly. Stocks are more volatile, but since most people don't take on leverage when they go in on them, at least they limit their loss to 100% of their stake. That said, if you're going to make any money in real estate, you're going to make it on the buy. If you can find a fantastic deal, RE can do you good, but frankly that can be said about pretty much anything.
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Jul 15, 2011 07:42
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Kneel Before Zog posted:I read somewhere that expensive houses arent good investments but inexpensive ones were. Stocks are better investments as they are better at beating inflation and return more but they aren't as safe in my opinion. Plus if you can use your rent to offset your mortgage payments I don't see why houses can't become excellent investments. When you rent out real estate, you have to deal with maintenance, potential liability actions, and just the headache of dealing with tenants. You have the potential of extended periods of vacancy. Exposure to increasing property taxes, insurance costs, and god knows what else. Put your money in a low-cost index fund (obviously as a part of a multi-asset class diversified portfolio) and you will outpace any potential real-estate investment with significantly less headaches. Why does everyone want to do things the hard way?! Investing is easy. Spend less than you earn, invest the rest into a low-cost diversified portfolio, watch your net worth grow faster than everyone else...
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Jul 15, 2011 14:22
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Residential real estate is a terrible investment because of: -Illiquidity -Giant transaction costs -Large costs of ownership (taxes and maintenance and insurance, and if you're renting it, vacancy risk and even higher taxes) Add in that few people can afford to diversify when buying real estate, meaning you're exposed not just to the broad market's risk but also a local market risk. If you must invest in residential real estate, do so via a financial vehicle, e.g. REITs or something. (I don't know anything about REITs.) You'll be liquid, your transaction costs will be comparitively tiny, and (I assume) you'll be able to invest in a basket of properties spread out across a wider geographical area. Of course, the value of the investment will still be affected by all the costs I listed. Read this. quote:Robert Shiller shows in his book "The Subprime Solution" that over time property values have done little more than keep pace with inflation. That's meant about 3 percent annual appreciation over time. Home prices have traditionally been high enough to give builders some margin over what it costs to build them, but that's it. That's Shiller of the Case-Shiller Index, something anyone buying property should at least be aware of. Obviously, shorter-term volatility has allowed some people to get very, very wealthy investing in real estate, but why should any of us believe we'll get to be one of the lucky ones? If we're merely average, our "investment" will track inflation, and we'll lose money steadily on transaction costs and maintenance and taxes. That means that, once you count those things in, and also add in interest (unless you're buying in cash), the average buyer will lose money. Lots of it. Assuming, of course, that the last 100 years is any indicator of the future, which of course it may not be. The point is of course that house buying shouldn't be treated as an investment at all. No more than buying a fancy car or an expensive vacation. It's a decision one should make for lifestyle reasons. Quality of life is worth paying for. I have, and I don't regret it (at least not yet, 1.5 years in). Someone will counter that you can't look at it on its own, you have to compare buying to renting... but that's comparing two costs of living options. By that comparison, for a lot of people, buying may well be the better financial decision (depending, a lot, on the details... which is part of what this thread is for). But that doesn't make residential real estate in general a great "investment" any more than, say, a mid-80s Lamborghini Countach with 120k miles on it; in the end, when you sell it (if you sell it), after all the costs of keeping it up and driving it and etc., you'll be lucky to get back what you put in. It might be better than renting one (or it might not be), but nobody should think of that kind of purchase as an investment. I think housebuying is quite similar.
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Jul 15, 2011 19:32
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Leperflesh posted:
This may not be a great idea either, as REITs must distribute 90% of their gains, which means high amounts of taxable dividends each year. Make sure this is in a retirement account. On another note, REITs are effective as a part of your diversified portfolio, I would never go greater than 10% (stick closer to 5%) of an allocation to them however. It's a good asset class to invest in due to being less correlated to other markets, but the reward/risk balance is not high enough to over-weight your portfolio over the long run. If you think you're a savvy real estate investor and can outsmart the market to make big monies, what the hell are you doing here? Go back to figuring out what the next season of Celebrity Apprentice is going to be like...
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Jul 15, 2011 19:50
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I need some help smart Goons. My sister is trying to buy a house: 1. They find a great foreclosure. It has two MLS listings. One from 30 days ago and one 5 days old. Both say that no offers will be accepted for 7 days. The instructions ALSO say that a 10% earnest deposit MUST be wired within 48 hours of any accepted offer. Once the money is wired, then the listing will go to "pending". 2. My sister and her husband put a full price offer on the house. Their realtor talked to their realtor before this and he said there were no offers. 3. As soon as the offer is submitted, the realtor says there IS an offer that was accepted previously, sorry about that. He says they can be the backup offer but the main offer looks good. 4. The MLS listing still shows as active 24 hours later. 5. I call him the next day and ask him if there are any accepted offers. "Yes". When was it submitted? "Last week." Are there any backups? "No." If it was submitted last week then the 48 hour earnest deposit should have been up and the house should be pending OR back on the market. And why are there no backup offers when my sister submitted one? WTF! This house is BEAUTIFUL and WAY BELOW market value already. The conspiracy lover in me gets the feeling this agent is pushing away offers so that he can have someone else he knows can come in with a super lowball offer later and flip the house. Any thoughts on this? This is the ONLY house in the area my sister likes. Is there anything an attorney could do? Anything we can do?
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Jul 15, 2011 21:17
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Socratic Moron posted:I need some help smart Goons. My sister is trying to buy a house: The adage "If you have to ask, it's a scam" is perfectly valid here. If you have any misgivings about this house, whether with the house itself or the seller's agent or anything at all, keep shopping. Yes, the house is awesome, and your sister may have fallen in love with it and it's the only one in the entire county she likes, but this is a Big Time Trap. DO NEVER BUY. Tell her to keep looking. Trust me, good things come to those who wait (and keep looking).
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Jul 15, 2011 21:46
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daggerdragon is right, but I'll add: If you fail to convince your sister to walk away, then you need to convince her to get a real estate lawyer immediately.
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Jul 15, 2011 23:30
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Orange Sunshine posted:We may have figured out how to sound isolate a unit, but we aren't doing it. FISHMANPET posted:Basically, masonry and cement are way better than wood. It's possible to do with wood, but I'm guessing most people don't go through the effort to do it right. It was perfectly possible to build sound isolated units even 50 or more years ago out of wood or block, the problem is they almost never do it today or ever really is because its expensive and has to be planned into the initial construction most of the time to be effective. This is why even most condo/apt units built today or even in the future, even out of concrete or block, will still have sound penetration issues no matter what. TraderStav posted:Put your money in a low-cost index fund (obviously as a part of a multi-asset class diversified portfolio) and you will outpace any potential real-estate investment with significantly less headaches. PC LOAD LETTER fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jul 16, 2011 |
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Jul 16, 2011 03:09
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:It was perfectly possible to build sound isolated units even 50 or more years ago out of wood or block, the problem is they almost never do it today or ever really is because its expensive and has to be planned into the initial construction most of the time to be effective. This is why even most condo/apt units built today or even in the future, even out of concrete or block, will still have sound penetration issues no matter what. I did not say buy high risk stocks. I said a diversified portfolio of assets. Stocks (Domestic, international, emerging market, small cap, large cap) fixed income (treasuries, corporates, tips, preferred stock, municipals) and real estate trusts. Impatience leads to high risk, high risk leads to wipeouts. There are many people who survived the dot com bubble because they were diversified. Do not equate stocks with buying the hot stuff on CNBC. (don't watch CNBC for editorial, it's garbage) The slow way to building wealth is chasing high returns and constantly having to start over. This is the fallacy with focusing on one or two investment classes. (ie real estate or tech stocks)
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Jul 16, 2011 13:25
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:This is the long slow way of earning wealth via investments, most people want to get at least moderately wealthy while they're still young. Also lots of folks have had their wealth wiped out in the .com and credit bubbles on Wall St. too over the past decade. Stocks aren't really any guarantee of wealth accumulation in the long run either it seems. Stocks aren't a guarantee of wealth accumulation in the long run, but still, the lowest S&P 500 30 year annualized return from 1928-2009 is 8%. That ain't horrible. Though I would not be surprised if we have entered into a Japan-like lost decade(s) situation, where our rotten banks drag down the economy for years.
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Jul 16, 2011 15:52
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