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Weatherman posted:How's the housing market in Auckland and Wellington? The wife and I are looking to move there by 2020 or so (just got to milk this job for experience/certification a bit longer), but we've been spoiled by eight years of deflation and no rent increases. I'm a bit scared of having to pay 50% of my salary in rent, for example. Auckland has the big city effect and the prices are very high and disproportionate compared with renting. Renting in Auckland is good with money. Wellington varies by area but renting or buying can be good with money. You'd be stunned by the mortgage rates here though. One of my friends who moved back here last year had been on 2% interest for his mortgage and was quite surprised at the increased interest cost. There are more expensive places to live though. ^ the bubble can only really survive a few years at best. Either everything will stagnate in Auckland leaving people stuck with expensive properties or it will collapse. If it collapses you'll be able to get cheap property.
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May 5, 2015 10:50
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Weatherman posted:How's the housing market in Auckland and Wellington? The wife and I are looking to move there by 2020 or so (just got to milk this job for experience/certification a bit longer), but we've been spoiled by eight years of deflation and no rent increases. I'm a bit scared of having to pay 50% of my salary in rent, for example. Auckland is busy inflating to NY/SF/Sydney/London levels of insanity. Wellington is going up but isn't nearly so bad and of the two is by far the nicer city to live in. [e]Kiwi's love to talk about home haha
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May 5, 2015 11:33
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Weatherman posted:How's the housing market in Auckland and Wellington? The wife and I are looking to move there by 2020 or so (just got to milk this job for experience/certification a bit longer), but we've been spoiled by eight years of deflation and no rent increases. I'm a bit scared of having to pay 50% of my salary in rent, for example. I live in Wellington, specifically near the waterfront in Petone, it was much more financially feasible to buy a house out here than in Wellington city itself as (dunno if you're a kiwi and know but) due to the millions of loving hills and historically shoddy building practices (now rectified), half the houses are dank, damp shitholes with asking prices of $600k+. As it is we paid $560,000 for our 3 bedroom house in Petone and that was considered a good deal, and because we're trying to pay off the mortgage ASAP we're shelling out $850/week on that. We could probably rent it out for about $500-$550 a week. Rent for the central city is steeper, for a shitbox 1bdrm apartment you'd looking at $300/week as a starting point. Agree with Saros, Auckland is not great and the prices are obscene, and they don't have the public transport infrastructure to support the level of suburban sprawl so traffic is just ridiculous. I travel there for work and have to get all the bloody way up to the North Shore from the airport and it just sucks.
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May 5, 2015 11:59
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Saros posted:Auckland is busy inflating to NY/SF/Sydney/London levels of insanity. Wellington is going up but isn't nearly so bad and of the two is by far the nicer city to live in. So did Americans until the major home topic became "how far are you underwater?"
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May 5, 2015 12:37
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TLDR: do not get a roommate I'm sure roommates come up a lot here... ugh. If at all possible, please please please please please get a place to live by your loving self. Roommates, even your friends who you care about deeply, will do nothing short of everything to piss you off. I'm currently unemployed. No, not on unemployment. Just another goon looking for a job. I've got some prospects but nothing has panned out yet. Technically I do have a job but it's an entertainment job and a bit on call (fill in for the trivia guys at bars) so it doesn't pay the bills. Now, today is the fifth, and everyone with an apartment knows what that means: the rent is due today or it's loving late, and I had to wait until today to pay the loving thing because roommie had to get his check. Keep in mind here... I have my rent money ready, and my bill money set aside (we have three more utility bills). This is our conversation... >"Here you go, here is rent." <"From both of you?" Roomie has an SO who lives here as well. >"Yeah." <"Awesome, how much is here?" >"370." <"Okay that works." Our rent is 545, this is more than a third each, so that's fine. Usually when this happens I take note of the difference and then just pocket the rest; reason being some bills I have to pay online and they charge me an additional out the rear end fee for using my card, and also I consider it an rear end in a top hat tax." >"So when are the rest of the bills due?" <"Uhhh... electric is due in three days." >"How much is it?" <"Like... 54? I don't remember. It's 18 each." It's exactly 54.71 >"Oh okay, I could swing that." First indication SOMETHING is wrong... <"And the cable is 88.04, like it always is." Bonus BWM story: gently caress ATT, gently caress them gently caress them gently caress them and their high goddamn prices. And gently caress Google Fiber for not coming here. Also, gently caress me for moving from a place that had awesome FiOs. >"What's that come to each? I dunno..." <"Like thirty bucks each, basically." >"I can't do that." <"What...?" The flattest what I have ever said in my life. I have said a flat what upon finding out my now ex girlfriend slept with two other dudes. I have dropped one finding out the rear end was stripped out of my POS Ford. I didn't think it could get any flatter when I found out I could be fired for not voting for Romney (spoilers: I didn't, didn't get fired either). But that was the one that made me said it so flat it almost didn't come out. He can't do that? He works five days a week in a call center. He gets paid weekly, sure, but... how the gently caress? Turns out he only made a little over $200 on this last check! I'm in confusion, which is where we pick up from. <"How in the gently caress..." >"VTO." VTO stands for voluntary time off. Basically when things get slow they take volunteers to go home. And our friend Mr. Roommate is always on the VTO list to go home. So he's not getting a solid forty hours a week. <"Ah huh, okay... well..." I don't even know what to say, find out why in a moment. >"Don't worry, I'll take care of it. Hey, [significant other]?" >"Yeah?" >"You know how you owe me fifteen bucks?" >"Yeah?" >"I need that, also can I borrow fifteen bucks?" >"...sure?" >(to me) "Problem solved, gonna watch Daredevil and go to sleep." I want to point out something here, SO in the other room works third shift at Walmart, makes 9.50 an hour, and works a 40 hour work week. I am technically unemployed, with no real job, doing bar room trivia occasionally and making a chunk of my money from selling art online (shameless plug: buy from my Redbubble account please!) and doing odd jobs for friends. We both have made more money in a week than Roommate has. He's scheduled for 40 hours, and by my math has done probably half of them. I will seriously end up making more money working four days a week in a gas station stocking, which is a job I hope to get. We, being his SO and I, never take days off (well by default I'm technically always off, but I'm still filling out job applications and going to interviews, so there's that). Roommate constantly finds reasons not to go to work ("I'm sick." is a common phrase I hear whenever he conveniently wants to stay home and play video games). Also, I currently have the only vehicle. Now, SO got a job close to home (Walmart is literally across the street) where he could just walk to work. Guess who works 15 - 20 minutes away based on traffic and constantly needs a ride to work? I at least got him in the habit of getting a ride home. He complains all the time about how hard is job is because "when you work at a call center you just get yelled at all day!" Yeah, you get yelled at. For about four hours apparently, then you bolt out of there, I don't want to hear it, ya know? Now I say all this to say this, dude has technically never missed a payment. He constantly borrows money to make those payments and USUALLY pays the person back (I believe he still owes a friend 85 bucks for a cell phone, but that guy is canadian so gently caress him) but it's a real loving pain in the rear end to have roommates because this is ALSO the gigantic dildo who thinks that without him and his SO I can't do this, and you know what? He's probably right, but I could move someone else with a 40 hour a week job making $15 an hour at a factory and like him a lot more than your lazy 20 at $10 call center rear end. So in conclusion, seriously, never get a roommate ever ever ever oh god. Get a small efficiency space or if you're awesome enough to have a good paying job a simple one to two bedroom will do (when I used to have a good job I could afford this two bedroom by myself). Yeah, splitting the bills is awesome, but you have to deal with all of the headaches, and I'm only listing the financial ones here! Never mind the fact that he cranks his music at 3 am (while I'm trying to sleep) or that his idea of cleaning his room is "throw all of the trash in the hallway" so he could invite some broad over for the weekend. Yeah, thanks for trashing the apartment, but your loving room looks great, stupid rear end in a top hat... EDIT: oh yeah and leases are loving stupid, get caught in a lease you can't get out of and deal with this kind of poo poo? I'd rather smash my cock with a jagged rock. Skunkrocker fucked around with this message at 14:00 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 13:55
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the lesson I would take away from this is more, vet your roommates and their employment history, insist on references, and take a deposit if you're going to be on the hook for their bills when they don't pay n
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May 5, 2015 15:31
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It sure looks like you, Mr. Unemployed Online Art Selling Man, would be pretty hosed without the four hundred sixty six dollars you received from your bad-with-money roommates.
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May 5, 2015 15:40
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Your rent is half of what I pay for a 1BR  I'm just going to move back in with my parents and mooch off of them.
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May 5, 2015 15:52
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Skunkrocker posted:
If he makes rent why do you give a gently caress?
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May 5, 2015 15:58
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I don't think I would pay $90 on cable if my take-home pay was less than 2k, and it sounds like your collective take-home for three people is. I think you're all not that great at money, even if you're the least bad. Go down to basic internet with netflix and as a household you save $50 a month, which is like 2.5% of your net income.
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May 5, 2015 16:03
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It sure looks like you, Mr. Unemployed Online Art Selling Man, would be pretty hosed without the four hundred sixty six dollars you received from your bad-with-money roommates. He's having to borrow the money constantly and is always broke. Keep in mind, this means that: - I pay for ALL of the gas to run him around (we never eat at home; I swear the stove only gets used when I cook, which is rare because I can't cook) - He constantly has to borrow money (something I mentioned; if that ever stops he won't be able to pay his part of the bills) - His SO is about to leave his rear end (and has already told me if that happens, he goes and they stay) - Has a habit of impulse buying and needing me to "cover him" temporarily (note this is a one way street, I asked him once to cover me and he flew off the handle, and right then I almost told him to get the gently caress out. I ended up getting some work at the time through a temp agency and didn't need his help after all and he was not appreciative) - Also he has a vape habit, which despite claims to the contrary is waaaaaaaaaay more expensive than smoking cigarettes, which doesn't help The other roommate, his SO, is great. Always has been. Sometimes has to borrow money from me, the unemployed online art selling man (you also forgot trivia DJ  ), to pay bills because low and behold I find out later that my dickhead roommate has borrowed money from them to buy some poo poo he didn't need. He once bought a GPU for his PC when his worked fine only to find out it wouldn't fit in his case meaning he had to buy a new case and didn't like the way his old keyboard worked and long story short resulted in him spending over 350 bucks. I'd find out later part of that money was from the SO, and that's why the SO had to ask ME to cover them until their next check. Not to mention that I wouldn't be hosed; again, no, I'm not making a steady income, but I can make all of my bills every month no problem.Renegret posted:Your rent is half of what I pay for a 1BR PCjr sidecar posted:If he makes rent why do you give a gently caress? Because it's a loving hassle to get the bills paid because of his lovely spending habits, which then fucks with me. I like to have my bills paid ASAP. I always have to wait until the last second to pay my bills because of him. If I were making the money I did before, I would just pay the poo poo and have them pay me back later, but since I'm not I have to wait. His borrowing money constantly because he doesn't budget/keeps taking time off work isn't going to pay off in the long run and eventually I'm going to get screwed. I've already told him I don't need him and the bills will get paid without him, and if he ever misses a payment he's out on his rear end. It's just a headache and I recommend not doing it. It saves money, I guess, which maybe on one hand makes it bad for this thread, but I would much rather be living in an efficiency right now. I only got the two bedroom so these two could move in and now I regret it. I felt like maybe other goons could appreciate the advice; same time and money, get an efficiency apartment. You don't need roommates, you really don't. Nail Rat posted:I don't think I would pay $90 on cable if my take-home pay was less than 2k, and it sounds like your collective take-home for three people is. I think you're all not that great at money, even if you're the least bad. Can't. Locked in a contract, sadly. At the time when I got it, it was supposed to be $75 but I didn't realize there were going to be other charges (franchise fees, etc). So with all of that it's $88.04. At the time when I got it, our take home was above 2k, and I'm just trying to get another full time job to get back to that level. Which hey I've interviewed with the same company four goddamn times maybe I'll actually get the job.
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May 5, 2015 16:47
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Go make your own thread if you're just going to post walls of E/N text about your crappy roommates.
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May 5, 2015 16:51
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Oh Reddit: "I am 22 and looking to propose soon. Should I cash in the small amount in my 401k, or leave it alone and finance the ring?"
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May 5, 2015 17:06
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I'm on a separate lease from my housemates. It loving rocks.
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May 5, 2015 17:13
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Alternately, be me and have a stable, modest career and live with a roommate who also has a stable, modest career. And also if your roommate has a well off family that really helps in case they experience unexpected unemployment. Then gently caress it all up by living in the Bay Area and paying almost $1000 a month each. Weather's great, though. When I was in community college I lived in a cinder block duplex under a freeway by the homeless shelter in Stockton, CA. I had four roommates and our rent was $900. I remember selling a tangerine clamshell iMac on eBay to pay rent once because turns out being an unemployed community college student in a depressed area sucks. Also I was an rear end in a top hat who spent all my money on booze and repairs to my horrible car. We were late on rent like four times in six months. Basically, don't co-rent with anyone under the age of 26 or who works less than 40 hours a week mandatory.
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May 5, 2015 17:27
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Horking Delight posted:I'm on a separate lease from my housemates. It loving rocks. I can understand why most complexes wouldn't want that to individually account each persona wholly accountable for the rent, but how come these aren't more common? Maybe I answered that though.
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May 5, 2015 17:56
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Having a roommate(s) is a great way to save money by sharing living expenses. For instance, groceries! Oh wait you eat out all the time.
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May 5, 2015 18:24
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dietcokefiend posted:I can understand why most complexes wouldn't want that to individually account each persona wholly accountable for the rent, but how come these aren't more common? Maybe I answered that though. If the lease is segmented then the landlord has to be the one to chase down all the tenants for late rent. If everyone is on the hook for the whole balance then the roommates have to chase each other down for late rent. Much easier on the landlord's part to do the former.
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May 5, 2015 18:25
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pig slut lisa posted:Having a roommate(s) is a great way to save money by sharing living expenses. For instance, groceries! Oh wait you eat out all the time. But he's unemployed and broke! How can he possibly find the time to learn to cook?
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May 5, 2015 18:32
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pig slut lisa posted:If the lease is segmented then the landlord has to be the one to chase down all the tenants for late rent. If everyone is on the hook for the whole balance then the roommates have to chase each other down for late rent. Much easier on the landlord's part to do the former. Yeah it sounds like a deal I'd jump on as a tenant but would need to receive a hefty premium for as a landlord. Playing debt collector sucks.
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May 5, 2015 18:34
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dietcokefiend posted:I can understand why most complexes wouldn't want that to individually account each persona wholly accountable for the rent, but how come these aren't more common? Maybe I answered that though. This is all the trend where I live, mostly in big developments marketed toward student renters. They obviously have the resources to bother with it as opposed to the slumlord who might have one building.
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May 5, 2015 19:35
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pig slut lisa posted:Having a roommate(s) is a great way to save money by sharing living expenses. For instance, groceries! Oh wait you eat out all the time. That actually doesn't work at all if your eating/spending habits differ (vegan/gluten-free, organic food only, etc). dietcokefiend posted:I can understand why most complexes wouldn't want that to individually account each persona wholly accountable for the rent, but how come these aren't more common? Maybe I answered that though. My apartment's owned by a person, not a company, and we replace people who move out one at a time instead of moving out all at once as a group, which makes it very low-effort on our landlord's part so long as everyone pays rent. And no one wants to live with someone who can't make rent, even if they're not on the hook for it, so that's self-selecting too.
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May 5, 2015 20:24
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I would be happy to live with someone who was on an individual lease, and sometimes chose to pay our shared bills instead of rent if they couldn't make both. That's...probably not how it turns out in reality though.
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May 5, 2015 20:35
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MJBuddy posted:So did Americans until the major home topic became "how far are you underwater?" This does lock people into staying in their house. In NZ people mostly won't sell unless they can get their money back so house prices tend not to that badly. When the NZ economy crashes I'll be interested to see how many people lose their homes.
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May 5, 2015 20:56
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dietcokefiend posted:I can understand why most complexes wouldn't want that to individually account each persona wholly accountable for the rent, but how come these aren't more common? Maybe I answered that though. Because the landlord doesn't want it to be his/her problem to shake down each occupant of the apartment. The only places I see that do individual leases are student oriented complexes where you can fill the entire place with 4/4s and rent them out at $500-600 per room.
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May 5, 2015 21:23
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Saros posted:Oh Reddit: cash out the 401k for a 3% FHA down payment on a condo, take out a loan on the mortgage for a ring, marry your horse
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May 5, 2015 21:24
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paperchaseguy posted:marry your horse Will likely die before divorce happens, good with money.
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May 5, 2015 21:43
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Can I file jointly with my horse? Can my horse get ssdi?
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May 5, 2015 22:12
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I need to know more about horse alimony
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May 5, 2015 22:18
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Today at the bank I watched someone have a meltdown because (as she claimed) the ATM didn't give her all the money she withdrew and now she'd have to pay a late fee cause today is the 5th and she doesn't have enough money left in her account to do another withdrawal and she can't afford the late fee so she'll probably be kicked out and GAWD
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May 6, 2015 00:11
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Renegret posted:Your rent is half of what I pay for a 1BR Yeah, I've been forced to do just that because housing prices over here are even worse. I'm earning what would normally be a solid middle-class salary, but I couldn't reasonably afford anything more than a studio apartment (the cheapest of which I've seen was $800 a month). It also doesn't help that the local job market in my field (mechanical engineering) is total crap, and employers elsewhere seem to have little interest in interviewing anyone outside their local area.
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May 6, 2015 02:05
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Nocheez posted:But he's unemployed and broke! How can he possibly find the time to learn to cook? Some people can cook a PB&J without following a recipe, but I'm no Bobby Flay, give me a break over here. Nearly burned down the house last time I tried to make cereal with milk or yogurt and fruit. You can't trust that oven for nothin'! These things should be left to the professionals at fast food joints and sandwich shops. Did you know some of them attended an institute called Hamburger University? That's what this wondrous modern age of job specialization has to offer. SpelledBackwards fucked around with this message at 02:47 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 6, 2015 02:39
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I'm not sure if this deserves a special thread because this could very well turn into a lengthy story. Today, someone called me saying I was in collections for a parking ticket from February 2013, in Chicago, on a Dodge. There are two things wrong with this story: I've never owned a Dodge and I didn't live in Chicago in 2013. It was spooky enough, however, to make me do a credit check and get a credit report to make sure they didn't badly gently caress up my name. I didn't see any tickets in collections (so it was probably just a scam), but I did see a brand new credit card taken out last month. There is one thing wrong with this story: I didn't apply for a credit card. The agency listed had no number associated with it, but when I Googled for the name, I found someone else's credit report which was accidentally uploaded for public viewing, giving me a PO Box. The PO Box my friend traced to Bank A. (I'll replace the name for the sake of privacy.) I called Bank A and asked about the card. They were kind enough, but didn't have much in the way of access to the info I needed. One person asked, "Could I get the credit limit of the card?" "I don't know. I never got the card and never signed up for the card." There was some back and forth before I was transferred to the fraud department, an extension which was disconnected. (Seriously.) I decided to leave work early because the sudden appearance of a $20,000 credit card in your name makes it hard to focus. I ran across the street to a branch of Bank A and laid things out. I found out they'd only put around $18,000 on it. Yay. They were also kind enough to give me the credit card number and the number to call. So how the gently caress did this happen? Well, the guys at the bank were also able to give me the people who owned that specific branch of the card. Bank A didn't give out the cards directly, but they funded and supported the card distributor. The name they gave sounded like home renovation. I knew my father was getting the roof fixed on his house, so I gave him a call. Seems he used me as a credit reference (not a cosigned or a join owner of the account). Somehow, though, I became the primary account owner for a credit card I'd never known about, with him as the secondary. I'm probably going to file a fraud report, but I feel I should call the company first. Maybe they just hosed up BADLY. It doesn't seem like the correct procedure, though. Maybe they're incompetent rather than ill intentioned. My father didn't seem to know there was a card in his name. It doesn't even seem reasonable that a business would take out a credit card for someone for home repair. tl;dr: My father used a construction company to fix his roof. They took out a credit card in my name (as primary) with him as a secondary. They've been using it without our knowledge and have added around $18000 worth of stuff to it. How can I unfuck this situation without landing my father in jail? He says, "I didn't know they were going to open a credit card, but it might have been explained to me in a way I didn't understand." Is it actually a common practice for a company to take out and use a credit card on someone's behalf? EDIT: Should I post this as its own thread? Might be in the wrong place. Jo fucked around with this message at 02:55 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 6, 2015 02:45
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Jo posted:I'm not sure if this deserves a special thread because this could very well turn into a lengthy story. People can open credit cards in other peoples' names but whether that's a company or your father, it's fraud. Sounds like the company got your father to open an account in your name with him as an authorized user.
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May 6, 2015 03:01
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Once I financed some home improvements through the company that performed them, and the way they did it was to charge the full amount to a new credit card with a 0% interest rate grace period. It wasn't what I was expecting, and I sure as hell paid it off before the grace period expired. (I assume the credit companies are hoping people will forget about the new card and let the grace period expire, getting an immediate six months of interest added.) I'd have a serious talk with your dad about how he paid for his renovations. If the card is in your name then somebody hosed up bad, but it's hard to tell yet exactly who.
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May 6, 2015 03:10
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pig slut lisa posted:Today at the bank I watched someone have a meltdown because (as she claimed) the ATM didn't give her all the money she withdrew and now she'd have to pay a late fee cause today is the 5th and she doesn't have enough money left in her account to do another withdrawal and she can't afford the late fee so she'll probably be kicked out and GAWD
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May 6, 2015 03:12
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Jo posted:So how the gently caress did this happen? Well, the guys at the bank were also able to give me the people who owned that specific branch of the card. Bank A didn't give out the cards directly, but they funded and supported the card distributor. The name they gave sounded like home renovation. I knew my father was getting the roof fixed on his house, so I gave him a call. Seems he used me as a credit reference (not a cosigned or a join owner of the account). Somehow, though, I became the primary account owner for a credit card I'd never known about, with him as the secondary. This is fraud. If your father had no intent to defraud you of money there is no issue because there is no intent. You being put down as a "reference" doesn't sound right though. Either your father made a mistake or someone misled him. You can't be put down as a guarantor without your signature on the document. Which means someone has signed a legal document on your behalf, which is either an accident or a crime. A company cannot apply for credit in someone else's name and then charge money to it. You need to discuss this with the fraud department of the company that issued the card and they will likely request that you file a complaint with the police. If what you have stated is 100% accurate the "roofer" has committed a crime.
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May 6, 2015 03:14
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Thank you all for the replies. Should I try contacting the company that took out the card before calling the fraud department?
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May 6, 2015 03:27
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There is no way to undo any of this at this point without involving a police report. Someone forged your signature and the bank is going to go into crisis mode if they aren't involved in the scam. "Sorry we didn't know it was wrong, can we setup a payment plan to you to slowly pay this balance off over time?"
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May 6, 2015 03:49
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Jo posted:Thank you all for the replies. Should I try contacting the company that took out the card before calling the fraud department? Contact the fraud department ASAP. Don't contact the dodgy roofer as they will flee so the police have difficulty tracking them down.
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May 6, 2015 04:09
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