|
Motronic posted:Typical posting from you. Yip. I have horrible knees, and to get up and down those stairs safely I need a railing. (You wouldn't be inviting me particularly, but I'm used to that by now.)
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2023 21:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 12:58 |
|
|
Far enough. We do have a front door with a railing, and a side door level to the ground, so many other options for entry. And also, there is another smaller staircase with a railing on the other side of the deck. But I get that all staired entries need a railing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2023 21:40
|
|
|
Motronic posted:Typical posting from you. You're welcome, happy to raise the bar
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2023 22:06
|
|
|
Harminoff posted:But I get that all staired entries need a railing. Not all of them do. But for decks, you need a handrail if you have four or more steps. You'll also need a railing along the deck if it's more than 30" off the ground.
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2023 22:07
|
|
|
Motronic posted:Typical posting from you. first line: unnecessary and hostile posting about posters second line: good point please dial back the "first line" stuff ASAP
|
|
#
?
Sep 23, 2023 22:32
|
|
|
marchantia posted:We have some really big silver maple trees close to our house and had them trimmed and cabled by certified arborists to not only keep branches off the roof but to help keep the top weight down and help balance the weight of the tree so the likely points of failure in a storm are less likely to crush my house. They come out to check and trim every three years I think. We live in the Midwest and usually have a pretty big storm or two come through each summer that has the wind speed for potential significant tree damage. Not the cheapest way of dealing with it but it was well worth the money for peace of mind. Hard to tell from the angle of the photo if that tree is above the roof line or not. My cousin has a tree that splits into like four trunks at the ground. The one closest to the house is tied to another one so if something were to happen, it would swing away from the house.
|
|
#
?
Sep 24, 2023 01:18
|
|
|
My wife and I have been keeping an eye on our local housing market for about a year now, with a goal of buying a house in early 2024 when our current lease is up. One of our non-negotiables has been that the house *has* to have more than one bathroom. ...Until this morning, when I looked at houses with only one bathroom and saw that prices were $100k-$150k lower than the houses we were looking at before. That puts us solidly in 20% down payment territory, where with the other houses 20% would have been a bit of a stretch but not impossible. Do we want a second bathroom? Yeah, but not as much as we want one hundred and fifty thousand US dollars. It's just going to be the two of us and a couple cats, so we'll survive. If it ends up being too much of a hassle we can always add a second bathroom someday.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 22:36
|
|
|
Call around for estimates on adding a second bathroom to an existing house. Make sure you're sitting down and not drinking anything while you do that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 22:42
|
|
|
Undesirable houses are cheaper? And cost more to make desirable than a house that already is? Well I never....
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 22:52
|
|
|
The plan of just living with a single bathroom is pretty reasonable, especially if you don’t have kids, but yeah, adding one is a very expensive renovation unless the house is basically built for it already.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 22:55
|
|
|
Yeah, heard. Clearly there's a reason there's such a premium for a house that already has a second bathroom, but drat, what a premium.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 22:57
|
|
|
How many bedrooms? Because a 2 br/1 bath is attractive to a lot of people when you need to resell it: empty-nesters, no-nesters, people who prefer to live alone.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 22:58
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:How many bedrooms? Because a 2 br/1 bath is attractive to a lot of people when you need to resell it: empty-nesters, no-nesters, people who prefer to live alone. The flip side is that a 2br/2bath is attractive to people with families, people who might want to have families, and people who are single but want a roommate to help pay the mortgage. poo poo, through most of grad school I was a renter in the 2br/2bath that a friend (rich dude with parents who floated him a down payment) owned. Is there a market for a 2br/1 bath? Sure. But there is a larger market for 2br/2bath and an even bigger one for 3br/2bath. It's not something to search for in the hopes that it will be a hot commodity some day.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:00
|
|
|
Sometimes one large bath can be split into two smaller ones - or rather, a 1.5 kind of arrangement - for not nearly $150k. It depends on the home layout. Having a guest bathroom is a nice selling point vs. not, and it's OK if it's just a "powder room" style thing with a toilet and sink. If you want two full baths, though, you pretty much are going to have to do an addition on the house or convert a whole bedroom, which you'll have to tear down to the studs, you may have to do significant plumbing runs all over the place, bathrooms are heavy so what's going on in the floor can require reinforcement, you need at minimum a vent stack for the toilet and you might also very much want to do a second vent for the fan... yeah it can get really really expensive. Just... not necessarily horrific to add a .5 directly adjacent to an existing bathroom on the ground floor, perhaps.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:04
|
|
|
We're aiming for three bedrooms (bedroom for us + office for me + office for her), but there's probably a house out there that's considered two-bedroom and has enough rooms with doors and windows to meet our needs. E: and the desire to have second bathroom is more to have a second toilet than a second bathtub or shower, so the powder room approach would work for us, should the time come. Paper Tiger fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Sep 25, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:08
|
|
|
Paper Tiger posted:We're aiming for three bedrooms (bedroom for us + office for me + office for her), but there's probably a house out there that's considered two-bedroom and has enough rooms with doors and windows to meet our needs. Something to keep an open mind with re: offices is large spaces that can be kind of repurposed during the day. For example, a friend has a house that was built in the 50s with what at the time would have been billed as a "formal sitting room." You know ,the room with the couch covered in plastic your grandma never let you sit on. So the front of the house has this odd space that's off both the living room and the dining room but is located wrong to be a bedroom. Most renovations today would blow the walls out and make it part of the living room or the dining room, but in your case it's a solid little office without cutting into bedrooms.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:12
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Is there a market for a 2br/1 bath? Sure. But there is a larger market for 2br/2bath and an even bigger one for 3br/2bath. It's not something to search for in the hopes that it will be a hot commodity some day.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:13
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:Most people want two bathrooms, no question. But we had somebody in the thread months ago and wanted to buy a 3br/1bath, and that one sounded pretty difficult to resell. By contrast, 2/1 is "small pleasant house for a single or couple", while 3/2 or 4/2 is "Normal house, bring your kids/polycule/whatever." Smaller audience vs. no audience. And a 3/1 is just......nobody has built that in any volume since forever. So you're likely looking at either very old housing stock or 2/1s with additions. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it also explains part of the price differences.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:19
|
|
|
My entire hometown in extreme Rust Belt Pennsyltucky was 3/1s that were built in the early 20th century as far as the eye can see.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:20
|
|
|
Eric the Mauve posted:My entire hometown in extreme Rust Belt Pennsyltucky was 3/1s that were built in the early 20th century as far as the eye can see. Yeah, exactly. I've only seen it in 30s/40s housing and older. And they never were in the nicest of towns (or they WERE and the mine closed in the 60s) and are typically in pretty rough shape now. Also talking pennsyltucky so my opinion on them is based around that.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:22
|
|
|
Half of them are in such bad shape they'd be condemned if they were located in any municipality where people between the age of 18 and 65 lived.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:25
|
|
|
Paper Tiger posted:We're aiming for three bedrooms (bedroom for us + office for me + office for her), but there's probably a house out there that's considered two-bedroom and has enough rooms with doors and windows to meet our needs. yeah definitely look at 1.5ba homes, and depending on where you live, finished basements and attics, family rooms, etc. work great as offices. To qualify as an official bedroom in the US there has to be a built-in closet and, IIRC, fire egress e.g. a window big enough to climb out of. Also it's not ideal but my wife and I share one bedroom as office space. Our schedules partially overlap but on the rare occasion both of us need to do meetings, one of us goes to the living room with their laptop and zooms from there, it works... OK. Definitely not ideal but I would hate to dedicate two full bedrooms of our home to just office space.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:25
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:yeah definitely look at 1.5ba homes, and depending on where you live, finished basements and attics, family rooms, etc. work great as offices. To qualify as an official bedroom in the US there has to be a built-in closet and, IIRC, fire egress e.g. a window big enough to climb out of. I am still baffled how my house can have 1 2/3 bedrooms, but it does. Officially. On the tax records.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:29
|
|
|
Arsenic Lupin posted:It turns out the closet part is an urban legend, at least in my state! You are required to have a minimum floor space, a minimum ceiling height, and, as you say, a window you can climb out of. The closet thing, at least in some east coast towns, was urban legen'd to be "taxed based on the number of rooms and they counted closets". There's a similar one about counting the number of windows in the house for ta purposes. I don't think any of them are actually true.
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:31
|
|
|
HUD defines a bedroom as 'a room designed to be a bedroom'. Words like "officially" or "legally" aren't entirely appropriate here, but you will still run into requirements and definitions depending on what you're doing. Your city planning department might require a minimum 70 SF size in order to build it. The housing authority might have standards regarding door/window/ceiling height to let you use "3 Bedroom" income limits on an affordable housing rental. The county Housing Choice Voucher program might say "2 heartbeats per bedroom" to determine maximum allowable household size. It's still useful to have these heuristics, even if there isn't one true definition or authority. As a buyer, seller, or person disputing their taxes, you would want to know that a house is "3 BD + 1.75 BA + Den" and not a 4 Bed/3 Bathroom
|
|
#
?
Sep 25, 2023 23:51
|
|
|
GoGoGadgetChris posted:The county Housing Choice Voucher program might say "2 heartbeats per bedroom" to determine maximum allowable household size.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 00:01
|
|
|
Hello, 3/1 home owner here. I'm in Portland, OR, and they're somewhat common in established neighbourhoods (filled with turn of the 20th century Craftsman houses - mine is from 1910), though they're steadily getting renovated into 2 bath homes. For me, it was a great way to get a great house in my ideal neighbourhood at a lower price (the house was exceptionally maintained, and had some updates, just no recent addons), but even as a single person with no plans for kids, it gets old almost immediately when I have longer-term guests. Although, most of that issue for me personally is because of its placement - the bathroom is in the center of the house, so it's either sharing a wall with or about 2-3 feet away from all three bedrooms (the shared wall one is the room I use as my office), and interior sound isolation is not great here. So that's another consideration - might be more palatable if the one bath has better privacy. For me, it was an easy choice to get this place, but if I lived with a partner, I'd very seriously consider spending the extra cash for a 2 bath, especially since it sounds like you're not looking at being priced out, just waiting a little longer.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 00:04
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:yeah definitely look at 1.5ba homes, and depending on where you live, finished basements and attics, family rooms, etc. work great as offices. To qualify as an official bedroom in the US there has to be a built-in closet and, IIRC, fire egress e.g. a window big enough to climb out of. In our case "office" encompasses both our WFH space and our individual hobby space, which makes it easier to justify devoting whole rooms to it. A converted non-bedroom space would likely work for me because I just need room for a computer desk/chair and maybe a stationary bike, but she sews and definitely needs a room with a closet for her equipment and supplies. And early on in the pandemic we were in a 2bd/2ba apartment sharing an office room, we ended up moving to a rental 3bd/2ba house as soon as we could just so we could get separate spaces. This is good stuff, thanks for the feedback everyone!
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 00:12
|
|
|
Paper Tiger posted:My wife and I have been keeping an eye on our local housing market for about a year now, with a goal of buying a house in early 2024 when our current lease is up. One of our non-negotiables has been that the house *has* to have more than one bathroom. When we bought ten years ago, I had the exact same requirement: must have two bathrooms, bath and a half is fine. We ended up with a place with one bathroom, and a Pittsburgh toilet in the basement. I really, really regret not pushing for two actual bathrooms. It's only two of us living here, but getting ready in the morning is a huge pain in the rear end. And when we have people over, it would be sooooo much easier to have another bathroom that doesn't get the same amount of traffic where I don't have to worry about if there's hair in the sink or whether my husband left his underwear on the floor after his shower or whatever. He grew up in a single-wide trailer and then a house with only one bathroom for seven people so he doesn't see what the big deal is, but gently caress, life is so much easier with two. pastor of muppets fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Sep 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 00:19
|
|
|
If you live in an area with basements, finishing or adding a bathroom in a basement isn't horrid. Adding bedrooms can be tough because you need eggress but usually if you can run a vent and access the plumbing then it's a pretty doable. I had a basement bathroom with a large steam shower put in and it really was pretty reasonable, around 25-30k all in. We had an unfinished laundry room that didn't hold the laundry anymore to work with though, so it made it pretty straightforward.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 00:42
|
|
|
One of the houses I looked at had a tiny bathroom on the first floor. Like, just wide enough to fit a toilet and a small sink. It was accessed through a door in the dining room. Just laughed thinking about going to take a poo poo while having a party over for dinner.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 03:03
|
|
|
GoGoGadgetChris posted:HUD defines a bedroom as 'a room designed to be a bedroom'.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 03:21
|
|
|
Prior to buying our house we rented a 1940s ranch that was originally a 3/1. The owner converted an interior laundry closet into a full bath approximately the size of an airplane bathroom. But it was just functional enough to satisfy the need. All of our neighbors with nearly identical floor plans always oohed and aahed over the second bathroom. Several borrowed a tape measure and took notes. Another neighbor with a different floorplan added an en suite by bumping out an exterior wall. I think he said it cost him about $70k all in and he did some of the finishing work himself.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 04:39
|
|
|
I think I'm looking for a sanity check more than anything, but I also don't know anything about buying/doing work on houses in Monterey so I'd appreciate any peninsula- or California-specific things to look out for, too. I'm dimly aware that water hookups are an issue here, but I don't know how that allotment system works and haven't looked into it at all yet. We're trying to figure out where to settle down in a few years when my husband retires from active duty, and I've had a wild hair up my rear end about buying the place we're renting for a little over a year now. I figured the best way to put it to rest or do something about it would be to get a couple inspections and an appraisal, but I don't know if this would likely come off as batshit insane to the owners if we made an offer, or there's a better way. We have a pretty good idea of the issues with the place, but we'd need some pros to assess the severity and give estimates to fix what we can't. Fortunately we're not totally clueless about actually doing the work; we had a very instructive experience with buying and then abruptly selling a house a couple years ago. The story I heard has the old man building (or having it built) for his daughter; it was built mid-50s, and only one county-recorded sale in 1988. The owners have made some expensive changes/upgrades that are pretty much just for tenant comfort or curb appeal, but they charge well below market rate for the main house despite an impressive view of the bay. The ADU is a bit more run down and still goes for market rate, and some of the nearby properties I think might belong to the same person also go for market rate. If they're sentimental about the house, they aren't sentimental enough to maintain the really charming parts well enough that they can move back in without gutting them, unless they do it within the next few years. The kitchen and pantry are nearly if not completely custom, but the tile and grout probably haven't been professionally cleaned or sealed since they were installed. The cabinets need some TLC, and the cooktop is outdated and might require tile work to upgrade. There's a pretty yellow shower stall and wooden vanity that's also not going to make it much longer at the current rate. It's all stuff I would happily fix in a few weekends as a homeowner and be good for years if not decades later, but there's no way in hell I do it uncompensated as a renter. We don't interact directly with the owners, they do all the admin through a management company but still sign off on repairs/upgrades and lease renewal. If we had normal contact with them I'd just feel them out, and normally I'd think arms length means they're keeping it purely business, but I'm sensing some feelings or lack of cunning that I might be able to exploit.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 05:28
|
|
|
Uthor posted:One of the houses I looked at had a tiny bathroom on the first floor. Like, just wide enough to fit a toilet and a small sink. It was accessed through a door in the dining room. Just laughed thinking about going to take a poo poo while having a party over for dinner. My great aunt had one of these! And in keeping with this page's odd theme, it was in an old PA coal mining town... During dinnertime if you had to go you were sent to the main upstairs bathroom. Pretty awkward even apart from that, because the door was a thin sliding one without a whole lot of sound protection.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 06:22
|
|
|
3 bedroom / 1 bathroom / 1 poop closet
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 12:18
|
|
|
BonerGhost posted:
Just reach out to the owner. You must have some way of contacting them, just drop them a short and simple note asking if they would be willing to sell to you. Don't get your hopes up, but it doesn't hurt to ask. I wouldn't bother getting an appraisal or inspection or anything else until they express an interest in moving forward. It's likely wasted time on your part, and frankly a bit odd to be getting that done on a property that isn't your own.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 13:56
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:Just reach out to the owner. You must have some way of contacting them, just drop them a short and simple note asking if they would be willing to sell to you. Don't get your hopes up, but it doesn't hurt to ask. We literally don't have a way to contact them, they do everything through the management company. I'd have to get their names off the assessor's report. Clearly they don't want to be contacted by the rental scum, which was why I was hesitant to do it without being able to make a firm offer. Normally I'd assume no interest if they set everything up that way, but like I said, they're weird about the main house.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 14:36
|
|
|
I was also in team "I need more than 1 bathroom" when we were looking for houses. I grew up in a 2/1 with 4 people total and things would get nightmarish. The last place I rented was a 2 br condo where the bathroom was also the hallway to the master bedroom. I found a 2 bedroom 2.5 bathroom townhouse (2 full bathrooms and a powder room downstairs) and I will never stop enjoying the fact that if everyone in the house needs to pee we can all do so without having to wait for anyone else.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 14:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 12:58 |
|
|
BonerGhost posted:We literally don't have a way to contact them, they do everything through the management company. I'd have to get their names off the assessor's report. Clearly they don't want to be contacted by the rental scum, which was why I was hesitant to do it without being able to make a firm offer. Contact the management company and ask if they could pass a note along to the owners. Beyond that? Frankly they probably have reasons for not wanting to talk to you and most likely will just put it on the market if/when they decide to sell. The situation smells to me like someone keeping a spare house around as an income stream, what with the management company and doing minimal/no maintenance. I wouldn't get your hopes up about convincing them to sell. That said, repeating my advice to not get an assessment or inspection or anything like that done. Frankly it's not appropriate, it's not your property to have inspected. But if nothing else your first task needs to be to get in contact with the owner. Until you can ask them if they're interested in selling you don't really have a road forward.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2023 14:50
|
|