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I also own a 3/1 and while it would be nice to install another bathroom somewhere, it's not like not having a second bathroom is going to be a deal breaker when/if you ever put the house back on the market again. Will it ever be worth as much as a house with two bathrooms? Probably not, but you're also buying it at a discount so it all kind of evens out in the end. That being said, I'd like to do some significant renovation in my single bathroom, and am honestly considering putting in a half bath directly above it on the 2nd floor first because removing my only toilet for any length of time is going to suckkkkkk
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Sep 26, 2023 14:57
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Cyrano4747 posted:Contact the management company and ask if they could pass a note along to the owners. Completely agreed, especially with the bolded parts.
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Sep 26, 2023 15:02
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If you don't think you can contact the owners, what does an appraisal do for you? You'll need to contact them anyway, it should be the first thing you do. Also, just be prepared if they are that hands off and just quietly making a good income stream with long-term tenants who obviously love the place then their price will probably be above market. You never know though.
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Sep 26, 2023 15:15
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I’m renting a 2br/2ba despite living alone and I fuckin love it. Master bedroom, master bathroom, office, cat litter containment zone. My situation is a little unusual due to an elderly and chronically ill cat, but I deeply appreciate separating my own cleanliness from my cat’s messes. Good way to gauge if I can handle buying a 2br/2ba, too.
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Sep 26, 2023 15:18
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Lockback posted:If you don't think you can contact the owners, what does an appraisal do for you? Someone intentionally separating themselves form the tenants to this degree is most likely to simply not respond at all. It's also unfathomable that they haven't had the idea "what if I SOLD this house?" in the last few years as prices rapidly increased. They chose to not do so.
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Sep 26, 2023 15:20
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Thanks for the input. The management company are useless, so I'm not willing to engage them on this until the last couple months of our tenancy which will be at least a year from now. E: didn't see this before Lockback posted:If you don't think you can contact the owners, what does an appraisal do for you? I would hunt them down through the assessor's report and write a cute little letter (I have excellent penmanship and I think they might be old) or have management pass to them. The first option is intrusive as hell so I'd avoid it unless I were very sure it's justified, and I'm not confident management wouldn't just bin (or lose) the second option. We really have no idea the approximate value of the property. The value and estimates for the work it may need change how and if we even approach them. The property tax assessment has been Prop 13ed to hell, and the comps kind of suck; the recent sales are very dissimilar properties, and the similar properties haven't moved recently. The neighborhood at least is cooling seasonally and YoY. Next door would be a good comp if it hadn't been flipped; it sold for over asking last summer and well out of our budget, but two months ago its comps sold for quite a bit less than that with price drops, and a beautifully maintained but older and smaller place down the street just had a big price drop (still too much for us). The area isn't cheap, but every house isn't plainly out of our budget. Obviously if they were looking to sell, they'd have listed it, so I'm assuming some level of reticence for whatever reason. Inspections and appraisal wouldn't put us out, and the info would be worth it to me no matter the outcome. I figured it might make the offer easier since we'd know about how much the bank would mortgage, and save everyone some time and friction. But I can see how people wouldn't have the same view, thus the sanity check. It definitely is easy money for them, but if I'm not mistaken it's part of a RE portfolio that includes the quadplex behind this parcel at minimum, so not their only rental income. I think this property might be kind of awkward to rent and the turnover seems to be a little high. The ADU is small and expensive and our neighbors have been trying to find something else basically since they moved in last summer (not our fault). The main house is cheap for the square footage, but it's still large and expensive to heat, and they've been churning through multiple-roommate households. I'm still getting semi-regular mail for at least 8 people and I think there were only 3 right before us. There also seems to be some sentimental attachment to it, unless there's a weird financial incentive to their upgrades that I'm not considering, but I don't think it's getting them higher rents. BonerGhost fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 15:22
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Tristesse posted: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. Same! It wasn't as bad as it could have been though . . . 3 of the 4 were Dad/sons, it was quite rural, and there were plenty of trees just a short walk from the back door 
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Sep 26, 2023 15:27
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Yeah, ours was 3/4 women and my sister liked to hog the bathroom for hours at a time multiple times a day.
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Sep 26, 2023 15:41
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I was seeing, like, 3bd/4ba or 2bd/3ba all the goddamn time when we were looking in Seattle. That just seems wasteful as hell to me.
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Sep 26, 2023 15:42
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Motronic posted:Someone intentionally separating themselves form the tenants to this degree is most likely to simply not respond at all. It's also unfathomable that they haven't had the idea "what if I SOLD this house?" in the last few years as prices rapidly increased. They chose to not do so. Maybe, but may as well ask. Listing is a hassle, dealing with realtors and a stream of people kicking the tires. One known entity could tickle the right spot.
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Sep 26, 2023 16:02
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Epitope posted:Maybe, but may as well ask. Listing is a hassle, dealing with realtors and a stream of people kicking the tires. One known entity could tickle the right spot. It could also put the idea of selling in their heads, and they could decide to list it in on the open market instead of selling it to the occupants.
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Sep 26, 2023 16:06
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Ham Equity posted:I was seeing, like, 3bd/4ba or 2bd/3ba all the goddamn time when we were looking in Seattle. That just seems wasteful as hell to me. How so? I guess you arguably don't need the 1/2 bath near the entry but they are nice so you don't trudge through the house if you need to use the bathroom. A full bath for the main bedroom and the guest/2nd bedroom is pretty great.
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Sep 26, 2023 16:17
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On the other hand using a property management company doesn't necessarily mean that they don't ever want to think about tenants it could just be that they don't want to bother with the day-to-day stuff because it really is kind of a pain in the rear end. I have heard of a lot of people who started out trying to do landlording by themselves and ended up hiring a property management company because dealing with everything was taking up so much of their time.
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Sep 26, 2023 16:17
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I'm moving halfway across the country later this week and am wrapping some final things up. I have a couple Blue Rhino tanks that are partially full, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with them. I thought I had read here that Home Depot would exchange for a voucher for the new location, but it seems that may only be for Amerigas tanks? Any idea what I can do with these, besides just eat the loss and give them to someone else in my building?
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Sep 26, 2023 17:06
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marjorie posted: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. I've had a few projects now in Portland to squeeze bathrooms into those old houses. It's always a jigsaw puzzle making things fit but as long as you don't go nuts modifying structure it's certainly cheaper than paying for a second bathroom when buying, and it's amazing the tiny eave spaces you can legally smush a toilet into.
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Sep 26, 2023 17:59
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Ham Equity posted:It could also put the idea of selling in their heads, and they could decide to list it in on the open market instead of selling it to the occupants. This is a big part of why I don't want to interact with them unless we're very confident we can afford it, and if we can't get concrete info on the value and costs, then only ask about it a couple months before we leave. Motronic, they didn't sell it before because I wasn't here to appreciate the kitchen their pappy built and swoon over the yellow bathroom. Obviously I can change them because I'm special. BonerGhost fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 18:42
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BonerGhost posted:This is a big part of why I don't want to interact with them unless we're very confident we can afford it, and if we can't get concrete info on the value and costs, then only ask about it a couple months before we leave. You won't know if you can afford it until you find out what their price is. Note that this may be highly correlated to or utterly divorced from the reality of what comparable houses in the neighborhood are selling for. If all you want is a gut check on how much the place costs, look for similar sized homes near you and see what they're listed at. If your place is a run down dump try to find a dump to compare it to, but otherwise just ballpark trim a bit off the top of what the not-dumps cost. That's the gut check you need before talking to them, and it will also give you an idea of whether or not they're delusional if they do give you a price. You're putting a lot of carts ahead of a lot of horses in order to avoid talking to these people. None of this matters, at all, until you have a conversation with them and find out that they are interested in selling.
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Sep 26, 2023 18:49
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It seems like OP really doesn't want to talk to their management company about this, which seems a little strange. What's the worst that can happen?
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Sep 26, 2023 18:56
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Sloppy posted:I've had a few projects now in Portland to squeeze bathrooms into those old houses. It's always a jigsaw puzzle making things fit but as long as you don't go nuts modifying structure it's certainly cheaper than paying for a second bathroom when buying, and it's amazing the tiny eave spaces you can legally smush a toilet into. In my place, I'm pretty sure it'd be doable to convert part of the living\dining area into another full bath (definitely a half bath). It's an open L-shape, so I could probably lop off the portion that sits above the basement laundry, wall it in, and shove some fixtures in there. No idea what the costs would be, but I'm guessing still relatively expensive since several years ago I got a mid-five figures quote for putting a bathroom in the semi-finished daylight basement of my last house that already had a toilet and sink in place, and was plumbed for a tub. Regardless, it's not worth it for me in this place, since it would significantly mess with my entertaining space (I have a sweet bar sitting there now and no other place for it). I wouldn't be surprised if a future owner did it down the road, though.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:00
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Tristesse posted: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. I bought a townhouse like this even though I live alone, and it's awesome. A bathroom attached to the office where I spend most of the day, a bathroom attached to the master bedroom for when I have to get up to relieve myself during the night, and a powder room downstairs so that guests don't have to regularly swim in my personal bathroom muck (stray hairs, shaving supplies, medications, etc). The downside is that it's a lot of square footage devoted to bathrooms, but at this point I wouldn't want it any other way. I've seen a lot of 3/1s in the Seattle eastside, most probably built in the 50s or 60s if I had to guess. Several of my friends grew up in them. Seems like hell to me if you've got more than two people living in the place. I was actually kind of confused by these houses when I was a kid, because my parents guarded their master bathroom with their lives.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:Note that this may be highly correlated to or utterly divorced from the reality of what comparable houses in the neighborhood are selling for. I'm aware of that, but I have this creeping suspicion that if it's ultimately appraised at twice our budget and the foundation quote later comes in at $80k or the roof is uninsurable, they wouldn't come down far enough anyway. I appreciate the advice, genuinely, the gut check info is helpful. I am literally trying to avoid talking to these people because 1. I am a goon 2. I don't want to stir poo poo up and end up with randos walking through my house while I'm trying to avoid the plague or worse, have to find a new place while avoiding the plague. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It seems like OP really doesn't want to talk to their management company about this, which seems a little strange. What's the worst that can happen? They could decide to list it while my husband is trying to finish up language and his master's and I or both of us would need to find a new place to live during that time and if it sells. We both had ongoing problems from our last covid infections we caught while staying in a hotel. If I get a serious infection I'm probably hosed because I've already experienced an alarming amount of medical bias while living here, and these people very well might neglect me to death. Clearly in any case the correct answer is not to broach the subject to the owner or management until we're ready to go anyway, but I was looking for a way to suss out specifics on this place in the meantime. I'll just keep my eye on Zillow until then. BonerGhost fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 19:12
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BonerGhost posted:I'm aware of that, but I have this creeping suspicion that if it's ultimately appraised at twice our budget and the foundation quote later comes in at $80k or the roof is uninsurable, they wouldn't come down far enough anyway. Step #1 is just going to be to fire up redfin/zillow and punch in your address and see what the algo says the house and the others in your neighborhood are worth. You can do that right now. Is it going to be a good or accurate assessment? Likely no, but it will be ballpark close-ish enough to give you a basic idea if you can afford your neighborhood. Like, maybe they tell you a $400k house is a $500k house, but they're not going to tell you a $500k house is a $1M house.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:15
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BonerGhost posted:This is a big part of why I don't want to interact with them unless we're very confident we can afford it, and if we can't get concrete info on the value and costs, then only ask about it a couple months before we leave. There's lots of better ways to ballpark a house than paying $700 for an appraiser to do it. Sell price may have nothing to do with appraisal either. If the appraisal comes back $550k and the sellers don't want to sell it for under $650k then the sell price is $650k. Find comparables that have sold. Neighborhood, sqft, bedrooms and bathrooms are the things that matter most, you should be able to dial in to a rough estimate pretty quickly. Then you'll need to have the conversation when you're ready. You can get pre-approved with a lender if you want, but it probably won't make a difference. I would assume the owners would not want to sell, but you never know and it's not particularly rude of problematic to ask if you are willing to accept no.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:16
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The management company does have a bit of conflict of interest in that they would prefer to continue being paid to manage the property. But I would hope they are responsible enough to pass on the message.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:23
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Thank you folks for chiming in, I will do what you do suggested (as long as I don't have to talk to my landlord until I move out).
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Sep 26, 2023 19:32
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Envelope sealed with wax, pressed with your signet
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Sep 26, 2023 19:33
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Zarin posted:I'm moving halfway across the country later this week and am wrapping some final things up. Do you have a Lowes nearby? I think BlueRhino is Lowes and Amerigas is Home Depot.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:38
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BonerGhost posted:Thank you folks for chiming in, I will do what you do suggested (as long as I don't have to talk to my landlord until I move out). You can check the local property records - many are available online. Typically they will list both a property address (the house you are renting) and a mailing address (where the state/county will send tax bills) so you can snail mail them a letter as last resort if the property manager is messing around.
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Sep 26, 2023 19:56
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Through an ironclad will and a series of hilarious deceptions the owner is actually a golden retriever, which is why you've never met them. Disney's PoochLord
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Sep 26, 2023 20:32
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Lockback posted:Through an ironclad will and a series of hilarious deceptions the owner is actually a golden retriever, which is why you've never met them. Not very hilarious if it deprives me of petting a dog, tbh
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Sep 26, 2023 20:38
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It's worth asking if they would sell it to you, but I would think most landlords would want to get top dollar for their unit and the best way to do that is to list it with an agent.
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Sep 26, 2023 20:52
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Just to fully close out this saga, I thought you'd want to know the epilogue, what happened with the $25,000. Some of you may have noticed I went a bit quiet about that when we were finishing things up, and the reason was the people we're buying from have a daughter who is into game design, so I'm not 100% sure she doesn't have an account here, and I didn't want to say that the attorney we hired to look over refunding the sellers the money from the holdback initially told us that if we gave them back any of that money, we would need to hire a new attorney; she was adamant that we were entitled to and needed to keep the entirety of the $25,000, in order to avoid falling afoul of the Department of Revenue. So, we scheduled a call, it ran for an hour, and we were going back and forth on things, I finally brought up the City of Seattle tenant protection laws, and that I thought we might have to refund the money given that part of the holdback is described as a "deposit," and in the city of Seattle a deposit is a term of art for something that is by its very nature refundable; if you describe something in your lease as a "no-backsies, never going to see this again, totally, 100% absolutely completely non-refundable deposit," it is refundable because you used the word "deposit" (I sued my landlord like a decade ago, so I knew a bit about this). She was more familiar with state landlord/tenant stuff than city landlord/tenant stuff, so she said she'd take a look and see what she thought, and we were fine with that. Well, she came back with "yes, you can contractually give them this money, and the DoR may ask about it, but you probably owe it to them and they can sue you if you don't." So, we cut them a check for a bit under $19,000 (their security deposit plus a pro-rated portion of their pre-paid rent). I expect the attorney to bill us between $1000-$1200, so we come out ahead by a little less than $5k, which is most of our closing costs. Their agent said they were hoping for the full amount minus attorney fees, and I was like "yeah, we would have liked to do that, but we had to argue with our attorney to get them that much." She was appreciative. Just as an FYI, if you ever want to feel like the world's biggest sucker, argue with your attorney who you're paying three figures per hour that you shouldn't keep a big pile of money that she's telling you you absolutely should keep. Oh, one other thing: their agent asked for a copy of our inspection report (since our report had a ton of stuff theirs didn't); is there any reason not to give it to her? She uses those inspectors regularly, and she was unhappy that they missed a significant amount of stuff, so she wanted to show it to them. Ham Equity fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Sep 27, 2023 |
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Sep 27, 2023 01:33
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So it was grifters running yet another grift and involving you in it, as predicted.
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Sep 27, 2023 01:40
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Motronic posted:So it was grifters running yet another grift and involving you in it, as predicted. At least they got a lawyer involved in the nick of time. It's not over yet, though, because the DoR absolutely is going to come calling. I wonder if the grifters were able to convert it to cash and spend it before the DoR noticed it hitting their account and grabbed it, but we'll never know. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Sep 27, 2023 |
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Sep 27, 2023 01:45
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I personally think the bigger story here is OP buying the house with two or more friends. Is there a contract governing ownership of the house? What did the lawyer have to say about the arrangement? I've only known one person that bought a house with her friend (because equity!) and of course it was great at first and then was a nightmare towards the end.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:02
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Eric the Mauve posted:At least they got a lawyer involved in the nick of time. Can't rule it out. We didn't want to be sued by them, though, and we weren't in love with the idea of people angry with us knowing where we live. I have our attorney advising us to pay them, and a contract, and the DoR never actually talked to us about not paying them (and I talked to the attorney on the case twice). None of us have cheated on our taxes, and that would be really hard for us to do given that the only state taxes any of us have paid are sales taxes (no income taxes in Washington State), so if they want to audit us it's gonna be a real fast audit. grenada posted:I personally think the bigger story here is OP buying the house with two or more friends. Is there a contract governing ownership of the house? What did the lawyer have to say about the arrangement? It's basically a commune without the hippie bullshit.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:24
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Ham Equity posted:
But that's the good part! The "hippie bullshit" is the only good part about a commune!
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Sep 27, 2023 02:40
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BonoMan posted:But that's the good part! The "hippie bullshit" is the only good part about a commune! I would argue that the hippie bullshit is the worst part of a commune, the shared labor, expenses, and equity are the good parts.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:43
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Ham Equity posted:I would argue that the hippie bullshit is the worst part of a commune, the shared labor, expenses, and equity are the good parts. I was just making a joke but also the shared labor, expenses and equity *are* the hippie bullshit... congratulations you're a modern hippie!
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Sep 27, 2023 02:45
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Eric the Mauve posted:At least they got a lawyer involved in the nick of time. Without an order from DoR to Ham saying to withhold funds, Ham doesn’t have grounds to withhold it just because maybe DoR wants it. If the money is contractually owed to the sellers, then Ham has to send it there. DoR can go after the sellers some more if they think they have some more money. But there’s no reason to blame Ham for not acting as some sort of tax withholding vigilante.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:53
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