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Motronic posted:Those maps can not. In fact, most of the local suppliers may have trouble telling you that unless you can place an order. Yes I know. What I want is people selling/listing the house to do the work instead of me (and anyone else interested) having to check every single place myself.
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Sep 11, 2021 21:20
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Duck and Cover posted:Yes I know. What I want is people selling/listing the house to do the work instead of me (and anyone else interested) having to check every single place myself. If you're buying make the realtor do it for you. Have them ask the seller what they currently have for internet and make them get specific. Same for renting but it's just different people you're asking. If no one can tell you and it's a multi-unit property just go ring a doorbell and ask. I specifically just popped open the telco box on this house when looking. Don't tell the realtors. 
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Sep 11, 2021 21:23
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Residency Evil posted:Well didn’t get the house. It was between our offer and another, except theirs waived every single contingency. A quick thing that I've been mulling over since we missed out on this house. If the house was sold as part of an executive relo package 2 years ago, that probably means there isn't too much wrong with the house, right? Should we have waived the health/safety inspection contingency in our offer? Still probably not, right?
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Sep 11, 2021 21:40
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Residency Evil posted:A quick thing that I've been mulling over since we missed out on this house. If the house was sold as part of an executive relo package 2 years ago, that probably means there isn't too much wrong with the house, right? Should we have waived the health/safety inspection contingency in our offer? lol what about someone else taking on part of the costs to relo an exec makes you think that? If anything the buyers probably cared LESS about anything other than "is it gonna fall apart before we move again?"
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Sep 11, 2021 21:42
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Motronic posted:lol what about someone else taking on part of the costs to relo an exec makes you think that? If anything the buyers probably cared LESS about anything other than "is it gonna fall apart before we move again?" Well, at least from my BIL/SIL's experience with a move, in order to qualify for whatever housing assistance they got as part of their package, the house they were buying had to meet some set of criteria. I'm not familiar with the details, but presumably "won't fall over tomorrow" was one of them.
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Sep 11, 2021 21:50
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Duck and Cover posted:I'm in no rush just looking at zillow at this stage discovering that listers don't understand it's 2021 and some people (me it's me) want to know exactly what kind of internet they can get. No not all broadband is the same but hey thanks for that poetic description of the land and drone shots that make it look like there's a view that may or may not exist. I did discover https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov which is nice and actually gives me an idea of where the fiber is. This site says that my house has access to fiber, but at a maximum download rate of 20 Mbps lol what the gently caress
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Sep 11, 2021 21:54
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QuarkJets posted:This site says that my house has access to fiber, but at a maximum download rate of 20 Mbps lol what the gently caress After the success of FIOS, the cable companies lobbied so much that they can now label any internet service that has fiber optic cable as part of its infrastructure as "fiber". So it's now a meaningless word because even telephone service uses fiber optic cables on the backend these days.
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Sep 11, 2021 21:59
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Residency Evil posted:Well, at least from my BIL/SIL's experience with a move, in order to qualify for whatever housing assistance they got as part of their package, the house they were buying had to meet some set of criteria. I'm not familiar with the details, but presumably "won't fall over tomorrow" was one of them. It's likely that it has to qualify for conforming financing. This isn't going to be a VA loan or something. Executives have money or contracts for problems to go away. I assume they gave a list of prerequisites to the agency, the agency sent back 3 houses, and the exec toured one maybe two and picked one. The next time they were involved was probably closing.
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Sep 11, 2021 22:01
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When I was house shopping, one of my biggest criterion was seeing a Verizon FIOS ONT on the side of the house. Even though my area has good FIOS coverage, there are some neighborhoods without it, and VZ has gotten hesitant about laying new fiber. I didn't place as much emphasis on natural gas service, unfortunately in retrospect. I'm about 500ft from a main gas line, yet the gas provider wants $30,000 and the commitment of me and 13 of my neighbors (at that same price) to extend into our neighborhood. It would've been much easier for them to just tell me to 'gently caress off' instead of proposing a cost that wouldn't make sense economically for hundreds of years.
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Sep 11, 2021 22:06
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How do you evaluate school districts? I don't even have a kiddo yet but we're futureproofing. I just like, don't want to use a website that's telling me test scores, because that seems like it's literally telling me current parents' income. Do I just not sweat it unless they're legendarily bad?
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Sep 11, 2021 22:10
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DACK FAYDEN posted:How do you evaluate school districts? I don't even have a kiddo yet but we're futureproofing. I just like, don't want to use a website that's telling me test scores, because that seems like it's literally telling me current parents' income. Do I just not sweat it unless they're legendarily bad? Honestly if you don’t have kids yet I wouldn’t focus too much on it. Good schools can turn lovely and lovely schools can improve depending on leadership and money and teachers. School culture probably matters a lot more than test scores, although I would say try not to be in the area for a title 1 school because although there is some extra money but the kids are way more resource intensive and the environment can be chaotic. I know someone who works at a title one middle school and there are fistfights in the halls pretty regularly and by 7th or 8th grade a lot of kids are already in gangs. Even the students that aren’t dealing with horrific trauma and have a stable home environment come in stressed out because of the environment at the school.
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Sep 11, 2021 22:23
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DACK FAYDEN posted:How do you evaluate school districts? I don't even have a kiddo yet but we're futureproofing. I just like, don't want to use a website that's telling me test scores, because that seems like it's literally telling me current parents' income. Do I just not sweat it unless they're legendarily bad? Greatschools and Niche, they're not giving you objective truth or whatever but you can get a broad sense of which schools within an area are excellent or fine vs not. The sad truth is that parental income/wealth correlates with school quality, but these sites do look at a little more than just test scores, for instance high schools with more AP courses tend to be rated higher and schools are also scored for things like "equity" (meaning "does this school have diversity, and are ethnic minorities receiving the same opportunities as the white kids?"). I suggest looking into the methodology a bit. A 5 and a 6 probably aren't meaningfully different, whereas differences should be noticeable between a 3 and an 8 From there, you can often look up what a school actually does with its students. What's the average teacher:student ratio? Are there extracurriculars, and what are they? Are there college prep courses? Are field trips a thing? Does the school look like a prison? Maybe drive by, does the exterior look fine or in really rough shape? Another thing to keep in mind is that the school district maps used by places like redfin can be out of date or simply wrong, you need to confirm which schools are served by a specific property. They may not even report the right district, plenty of houses with City X address have kids actually going to City Y schools for whatever reason and Redfin/Realtor/Zillow simply gives the wrong information. QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 22:47
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H110Hawk posted:If you're buying make the realtor do it for you. Have them ask the seller what they currently have for internet and make them get specific. You'd be surprised how many sellers either have no idea what internet they get today, or just plain make bad choices on it. The sellers on my place were getting point-to-point wireless, at less than half the speed of DSL and twice the price, from "a real nice family-owned business". If you're buying in a sufficiently urban/suburban area as to have internet infrastructure already, it really isn't hard to take the address for a house you're seriously considering, and stick it in the online portal for the local ISPs. If you're buying somewhere without that, consider whether 5G or Starlink are viable options.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:04
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IOwnCalculus posted:consider whether 5G or Starlink are viable options. By all accounts Starlink is not a viable option for anyone, anywhere at this point.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:07
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Yeah whenever we sell our place I definitely plan to have printouts of a speed test showing our gigabit connection on hand, since we are bordering on rural. I'd offer a guest network login but our wifi speeds are slow as gently caress compared to our wired, since I'm too lazy to upgrade my existing hardware and the speed is good enough for me...
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Sep 11, 2021 23:12
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I had to stop reading the elon thread because it made my blood pressure spike did starlink ever turn out to be a real thing
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Sep 11, 2021 23:13
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A MIRACLE posted:I had to stop reading the elon thread because it made my blood pressure spike did starlink ever turn out to be a real thing Limited beta in limited areas. It's spotty at best unless you can put the dish on a tower because they are so few satellites that you have to basically see horizon to horizon to get uninterrupted coverage. FYI, yes....fence posts, leaves, birds.....anything will make the signal drop. Also, the coax is permanently attached to the dish.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:16
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B-Nasty posted:I didn't place as much emphasis on natural gas service, unfortunately in retrospect. I'm about 500ft from a main gas line, yet the gas provider wants $30,000 and the commitment of me and 13 of my neighbors (at that same price) to extend into our neighborhood. It would've been much easier for them to just tell me to 'gently caress off' instead of proposing a cost that wouldn't make sense economically for hundreds of years. The fun part is that it costs even more than that because you would have to plumb the house and get the appliances. If they are the sole gas provider they probably have to provide you a quote and what they told you sounds like the "gently caress off" price.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:27
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Tyro posted:Yeah whenever we sell our place I definitely plan to have printouts of a speed test showing our gigabit connection on hand, since we are bordering on rural. I'd offer a guest network login but our wifi speeds are slow as gently caress compared to our wired, since I'm too lazy to upgrade my existing hardware and the speed is good enough for me... Step by step slowly modernizing the world. Then again these listings for property/houses don't even show the land boundaries most of the time so maybe they should start with that and work their way up to internet speeds.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:27
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IOwnCalculus posted:You'd be surprised how many sellers either have no idea what internet they get today, or just plain make bad choices on it. The sellers on my place were getting point-to-point wireless, at less than half the speed of DSL and twice the price, from "a real nice family-owned business". It allows you to set a baseline. At worst you are right where you started. If you have aerial service lines look at the poles and learn to tell the difference between fiber, copper pots, and coaxial. They are all at like 25' off the ground, with 240v being another few feet up, and the distribution are on top. Make sure the immediate neighbors have wires coming off of whatever you want to buy if the house you're moving in to does not. Also lol at betting on anything Elon musk does to be reliable / not burn your house down.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:47
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CongoJack posted:The fun part is that it costs even more than that because you would have to plumb the house and get the appliances. If they are the sole gas provider they probably have to provide you a quote and what they told you sounds like the "gently caress off" price. Yep. And of course, pay the monthly meter fee and pay for the gas. Our gas company and power company are the same, so I was tempted to just respond with a lower-price quote for oversized solar that would drastically reduce my electric bill. in the minimum, 30 grand would pay for burying a 1000g propane tank, all the piping, appliances, and fill the tank a few times.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:54
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Duck and Cover posted:That link is fantastic (I assume I haven't read it all), stories are what I want, not necessarily Vermont. As far as the rest, I live in New England. My parents have a vacation house on Stratton (skigod.us I don't think it's technically in Stratton but whatever)I myself no longer ski though. I don't think I'd be shocked by anything Burlington related. I mean its a factory for coats they should have some jobs right? If it's cold? They have coats. Burlington coat factory is Massachusetts, not Vermont. There's fuckall for choice of services in Burlington Vermont. Dean drove IBM out of Vermont, husky and Energizer were long gone. Your options are education and healthcare, and there's no competition so salaries suck. Goon speed, enjoy the well.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:56
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Residency Evil posted:Every month we don’t buy a house is one where we’re saving money! drat dude. I was hoping you got that one. It looked like a great house in an awesome location.
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Sep 12, 2021 00:51
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Alarbus posted:Burlington coat factory is Massachusetts, not Vermont. There's fuckall for choice of services in Burlington Vermont. Wait you're saying there's more than one Burlington? gently caress next you'll be telling me there's more than one Washington or something. Impossible. My options are I'm either a multi millionaire or I make my living online and the job market is irrelevant. Like who would look somewhere if they didn't have a plan for making a living? Plenty probably I'm like super duper smart so I already did. Sell cheap furniture discarded by college students. See? Easy. If worse comes to worse I can rob them at gun point. "Well officer it was a white guy wearing flannel". (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Duck and Cover fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 01:19
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Look. I grew up there. It was a nice place to grow up a lifetime ago, but there's no compelling reason to just move there, let alone build some place there from scratch. Either do or don't, but don't get pissy when people tell you it's objectively a bad idea.
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Sep 12, 2021 01:37
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Maybe in lucky but every house in my city has FIOS… On the other hand my family in NH have been quoted 20k to get high speed
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Sep 12, 2021 01:44
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Alarbus posted:Look. I grew up there. It was a nice place to grow up a lifetime ago, but there's no compelling reason to just move there, let alone build some place there from scratch. Either do or don't, but don't get pissy when people tell you it's objectively a bad idea. I just wanted people building house stories. That's all. The a reason I didn't want to give details because I suspected it would distract from what I wanted (I'm so smart). I'm sorry (not really) I value different things when picking a place to live. That doesn't make what your value wrong, it just means it's not an "objectively bad idea" as you seem to think.
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Sep 12, 2021 02:26
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I don’t know what to tell you dude, maybe watch some episodes of Grand Designs on YouTube? Building a house will cost you between several thousand (illegal shack in the woods with no sewage/power) and several million dollars. It will probably take between …3 months and 10 years to complete. And will be totally worth it/not worth it depending entirely on what you’re wanting out of building a house… which you haven’t told us. The actual nitty gritty of the experience/process is so highly dependant on location/requirements/motivation to build, that “general” information is likely to be useless to you anyway, even if you hadn’t put your sassy trousers on today and decided to be obtuse to anyone asking anything. A general rule repeated here is that if you find a space for a house, that doesn’t already have a house on it, there is likely a reason for that. Land that is perfect for development probably already belongs to a developer. ——— On a completely different topic- the market is still WILD over here (non desirable area in the north of England) we completed our house purchase… 20 weeks ago, our house is now “worth” 17k more, a house appreciating in value by £120/day is completely normal and regular… the previous owners owned it for 5 years and made £15k when they sold. Just gotta pull out the money for a re-finance from somewhere as rates have dropped as well as us dropping several LTV bands.
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Sep 12, 2021 07:18
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Duck and Cover posted:I just wanted people building house stories. That's all. The a reason I didn't want to give details because I suspected it would distract from what I wanted (I'm so smart). I'm sorry (not really) I value different things when picking a place to live. That doesn't make what your value wrong, it just means it's not an "objectively bad idea" as you seem to think. Not trying to be antagonistic here, but saying you "just" want house building stories as if that's some simple thing is not really going to get you anywhere. Both houses I lived in growing up were built, but the processes were pretty different between the two and very complicated (the first one my parents built themselves with some sub-contracted bits given to friends\family, the second one we used a custom home builder\contractor), so I'm not sure how I could talk about them as a story. I get that you don't want to give details of your interest because you're not wanting advice, but can you at least give us direction about the kind of stories you want? That being said, a lot of factors have already been addressed by others here. If you're wondering about the process of building a house, it's so location-specific (as in literal plot of land, not just region) that I'm not sure any first-hand stories would be relevant. Is there some other detail(s) you're curious about?
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Sep 12, 2021 08:27
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Closed on Friday and spent all day cleaning yesterday, the previous owners left it pretty dirty with dust caked grease on top of the cabinets and patio steps that haven't been power washed since who knows when. But have house now, 
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Sep 12, 2021 12:35
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Duck and Cover posted:I just wanted people building house stories. That's all. The a reason I didn't want to give details because I suspected it would distract from what I wanted (I'm so smart). I'm sorry (not really) I value different things when picking a place to live. That doesn't make what your value wrong, it just means it's not an "objectively bad idea" as you seem to think. This is not a thread for theoretical stories. Because the details actually matter when you're talking about housing. If you want to daydream go watch some HGTV show that I'm sure will satiate the dream of this being an easy feel-good story. Because in reality is messy and hyper local and specific. The whole reason you were asked where is the combination of the location mattering and the red-flaggy way you didn't seem to understand that is does, or even specify what type(s) of land you're looking for.
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Sep 12, 2021 14:37
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Duck and Cover posted:I just wanted people building house stories. That's all. The a reason I didn't want to give details because I suspected it would distract from what I wanted (I'm so smart). I'm sorry (not really) I value different things when picking a place to live. That doesn't make what your value wrong, it just means it's not an "objectively bad idea" as you seem to think. I can tell you a story about how arduous and difficult it is. aDecentCupOfTea's estimate of up to ten years would cover most cases, but not all of them. My dad spent like twenty years building his dream house in the middle of nowhere. Many of those years were spent on basic infrastructure, like building a mile of gravel road, well drilling and pipeline building, septic installation, and power pole installation by helicopter (it's hilly country). Foundation was poured when I was in second grade, pool went in my freshman year of college. There are many smaller stories of bullshit like contractor incompetence, mistakes, and the one time the cows broke in and shat everywhere (luckily it was still framing and concrete). If you are not already insane, a project like that will drive you insane (and could possibly strain your relationships - my mom nicknamed the house "the other woman"), and if you do not already know what goes into building a house from the ground up and the money on hand to make it happen, then you're in for an absolute nightmare of a time. So was it worth it? Ultimately yes. House is epic and it's on an epic (and large) piece of land with an epic view. And seeing as it's in the middle of nowhere, it has no internet, and if you want cell service you have to go stand in a very particular spot across the yard. Would it be worth it if you have a mediocre piece of land (unless you buy some cool old farm or something I'm betting an unbuilt lot is going to be mediocre at absolute best), don't know what you're doing (and/or don't have a hyper-competent GC you'd trust with your life), and don't have a substantial chunk of change lying around? Probably not. If you want a house within the bounds of existing civilization and not on a farm or in the wilderness, you'd most likely be better off buying a shitheap on a good lot and scraping it and building something better. In that case you get better land and the infrastructure part is already taken care of. But you still need a lot of money on hand, a willingness to dedicate years of your life, and the knowhow and/or a hyper-competent GC you could trust with your life. Still though, the vagueness isn't helpful. "Building a house" can mean anything from designing, planning and building a house and its infrastructure from nothing on previously undeveloped virgin land in the middle of nowhere to "building" a house in which you buy a lot in an unbuilt tract development and get to pick out enough superficial attributes and finishes from a catalog that you can call it a "custom build".
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Sep 12, 2021 15:47
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Motronic posted:the red-flaggy way you didn't seem to understand Lmfao
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Sep 12, 2021 15:58
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Duck and Cover posted:Wait you're saying there's more than one Burlington? gently caress next you'll be telling me there's more than one Washington or something. Impossible. There's even a Burlington, WA.
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Sep 12, 2021 16:14
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The best part of footing the bill for utilities on a remote piece of raw land is now developers will plop down a bunch of units all around you now that it pencils out. Thank you for your service! Your cabin in the woods now abuts the 280 unit Cascade Terrace Apartment Homes
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Sep 12, 2021 18:05
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My sister is building a house in Idaho, I will let you know how it goes. Just give me like a few years and it should be done.
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Sep 12, 2021 18:18
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Appraisal officially in at 12k over  Also has rental comps, appraiser agrees that the rented unit is underpriced even with some not great comps (eight blocks away but a world apart, yay cities!) Specific per unit rental comps prices range from $1100 (bad street in a different zip) to $3200 (same street, same zip) Because it’s a multi family the appraisal went into a lot of detail in usable life span on appliances and fixtures, shortest timeframe is 10 years on the water heater - everything else is 20+ Upgrade fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 19:03
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Upgrade posted:Appraisal officially in at 12k over
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Sep 13, 2021 20:16
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Oh yea I’m very aware (and I lived in Baltimore too!). In my city the neighborhoods have been stable for about 120 years and are divided by large streets - two of the comps fell into another “area” across a busy street, so they aren’t comparable.
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Sep 13, 2021 20:22
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Jesus Christ I got my home insurance renewal letter in the mail today and the quote was 35% higher than last year Reconstruction coverage of $226/SF, ha. Maybe if I lived in a warehouse.
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Sep 13, 2021 20:28
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