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Leperflesh posted:They used to refer to the bonus room as a "den" and it often had a sunk floor. You're supposed to sequester your kids and their messy toys there for playtime, I think. That's just a regionalism. It's called a den in the Midwest. You'll also hear "family room".
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Apr 5, 2024 16:55
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Arsenic Lupin posted:That's just a regionalism. It's called a den in the Midwest. You'll also hear "family room". For midwest den vs family room are two different things and it's not unusual for a house to have both (family rooms are more common than dens though). Dunno how it is in other places.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:00
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Yeah, having lived in both MN and OH, family rooms and dens were different things. Put to the task of distinguishing between the two in hindsight, though, I struggle. In my homes, the family room was sunken and more open concept while dens were a bit more closed off. Neither overlaps with a living room, which was more formal. In my current home in NM, I have neither a den nor a family room but I do have a living room with a big TV.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:10
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For those of us who have only traveled through the Midwest can you tell us the difference between a family room and a den Is there a TV in one but not the other? Proximity to the kitchen? Are kids toys left on the floor but not the other? Where is the xbox? Where does Dad watch football? Is it related to the basement somehow
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Apr 5, 2024 17:34
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Hadlock posted:For those of us who have only traveled through the Midwest can you tell us the difference between a family room and a den From what I could tell as a kid with midwestern relatives, one is where the adults sat around and watched TV and one is where they exiled the kids to play with their toys and chase each other around. All of this, of course, separate from the living room which had chairs no one could sit in unless either the President or Pope was visiting.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:37
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Lockback posted:For midwest den vs family room are two different things and it's not unusual for a house to have both (family rooms are more common than dens though). Dunno how it is in other places. Huh. I grew up in Indiana, and I remember them being the same thing. Old age, man.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:39
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Living\Family room were always interchangeable to us. It's where the TV and people existed. "Formal" living room was the no touch chairs that grandma's house had. The den was more or less an office and extra room.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:39
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The way I understood the terms dens are more isolated (usually only one entrance), don't typically have an exit to the outside, and aren't large enough to have an open area that can be easily used for multiple purposes. The idea is a cozy room where two to four people can do an activity together in close proximity. Basically if you can sit on the couch reading while the kids build a city out of blocks on the floor without having to move furniture out of the room, it's a family room.
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Apr 5, 2024 17:49
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George H.W. oval office posted:Living\Family room were always interchangeable to us. It's where the TV and people existed. "Formal" living room was the no touch chairs that grandma's house had. The den was more or less an office and extra room. Pretty much. Den also can be "man cave".
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Apr 5, 2024 18:22
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Growing up in the Seattle area in the 90s, this is what I saw in houses large enough to have a separate "family room" and "living room": Family room = Large open concept space connected with the kitchen. Big TV, plenty of seating, and lots of space for kids to play with toys. This is actually where most of the "living" occurs. Living room = Formal seating area separated from the kitchen and family room. No TV. This is the part of the house that the parents get to keep nice. Typically only used for holidays, occasional adult gatherings, and maybe an older kid who wants a quiet place to read. Den = Smaller closed off room. Typically used as a man cave or a family computer room.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:01
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Duck and Cover posted:Pretty much. Den also can be "man cave". This is a big change in house-buying, by the way. Almost nobody wants a formal living room or a formal dining room. (That are separate from the everyday living spaces.)
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Apr 5, 2024 19:04
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Arsenic Lupin posted:This is a big change in house-buying, by the way. Almost nobody wants a formal living room or a formal dining room. (That are separate from the everyday living spaces.) The thing that kills me is these vestigial loving fireplaces. The gas ones are bad enough but the electrics, come the gently caress on. Just admit that you live in the 21st century, have central heating, and throw that crap out. Because if there's one thing I hate, it's having a TV plopped on top of the mantle for a fireplace that serves no purpose what so ever.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:10
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I thought gas fireplaces were worthless until I experienced electric fireplaces.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:26
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We have a real masonry fireplace and we use it almost once a week. Rather than watch tv we hang out in front of the fireplace it's glorious. Plus you get to poke at the fire. I don't think I could live in a house without a real fireplace after this. The fire is enough of a distraction the kid doesn't even think to ask to watch cocomelon.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:34
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The primary utility provided by my electric fireplace (which was here when I moved in) is that it's a flat space next to my desk, so it gets the printer and a small bookshelf piled on top of it.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:35
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I had a rental with a fireplace surrounded by brickwork. I never knew if it worked, so it was just an entire wall that I couldn't hang any pictures on. My last rental had a fireplace in one of the rooms, but the landlord told me she didn't know if it worked, so I had a corner of a room I couldn't use. My new house came with a portable firepit and some logs, but it's been winter. I'll definitely try using it (outside!) in a couple of months. I did briefly use it to burn some documents I wasn't comfortable tossing in the trash...
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Apr 5, 2024 19:41
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Hadlock posted:We have a real masonry fireplace and we use it almost once a week. Rather than watch tv we hang out in front of the fireplace it's glorious. Plus you get to poke at the fire. I don't think I could live in a house without a real fireplace after this. The fire is enough of a distraction the kid doesn't even think to ask to watch cocomelon. yeah a real actual fireplace is fine, although california wants us to get rid of them a gas fireplace can actually provide a heat source but doesn't look or especially smell like a real fire, and is far less efficient. Converting a wood fireplace to gas kinda makes sense to be more fuel efficient, if you can't or don't want to make smoke any more, if your flue and firebox is hosed and it's way cheaper, etc. electric fireplaces are just garbage, they don't remotely resemble a real fire, electric heaters are better placed elsewhere, I really dislike them too a nice compromise is cast iron stove positioned on the old hearth, using the old chimney to run the exhaust up. You're still allowed to put a new pellet burner in CA, they're very efficient, the pellets are made of basically wood waste so they're pretty environmentally friendly, and you still get a bit of the nice fireplace smell. I personally still want to poke at logs and hear the fire crackling and so on. And I can't legally because my fireplace has a hosed damper, flue, and firebox and getting them fully renovated and rebuilt is illegal in my county due to smog regulations meanwhile a million acres of forest burn down every year blanketing the bay area in smoke so thick and toxic you're not supposed to go outside, sure feels stupid to not get to burn a half-cord of wood a year against that, but sigh, CARB is doing what it thinks is best for us
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Apr 5, 2024 19:46
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There are multiple studies showing that wood fires and wood stoves emit large amounts of particulate matter, which is good neither for the residents of the house nor for the people living around them. Fireplaces arent banned during Spare The Air days because officials are prissy; they're banned because they emit significant particulate matter, making the air more dangerous to, say, asthmatics. The Bay Area, tragically, does not have an on/off switch for wildfires. It does for other sources of particulate emissions. Woodsmoke study in 2015 Woodsmoke study in 2022
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Apr 5, 2024 19:56
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Kefit posted:Growing up in the Seattle area in the 90s, this is what I saw in houses large enough to have a separate "family room" and "living room":
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Apr 5, 2024 20:03
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Leperflesh posted:the pellets are made of basically wood waste so they're pretty environmentally friendly, Oh man, have I bad news for you about that.
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Apr 5, 2024 20:17
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Arsenic Lupin posted:There are multiple studies showing that wood fires and wood stoves emit large amounts of particulate matter, which is good neither for the residents of the house nor for the people living around them. Fireplaces arent banned during Spare The Air days because officials are prissy; they're banned because they emit significant particulate matter, making the air more dangerous to, say, asthmatics. yeah in the rural Northeast (Northern New England, northern New York, and Quebec), where there is still considerable wood heat as a primary source, air quality in the winter is very much worse than in the summer. Wood heat is the source of something like 80+% of PM2.5 pollution in those areas.
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Apr 5, 2024 20:37
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QuarkJets posted:Sunken dens were a thing in the 70s I thought, it's like an indoor swimming pool but exclusively for loads I deem that this masterful description has been underappreciated by the thread
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Apr 5, 2024 20:43
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Arsenic Lupin posted:There are multiple studies showing that wood fires and wood stoves emit large amounts of particulate matter, which is good neither for the residents of the house nor for the people living around them. Fireplaces arent banned during Spare The Air days because officials are prissy; they're banned because they emit significant particulate matter, making the air more dangerous to, say, asthmatics. Yeah I looked into this There are on average fewer than 10 "spare the air" days each year in the bay area. Even on unusually cold nights, PM2.5 doesn't rise above like, 25, and that's probably generous. Looking on purple air. 75+ is borderline low end unhealthy for the most effected and 125 is when things start getting hazy at distances measured in miles. My neighbors purple air sensor is reading 0 right now and it's rare to see it go above 15, usually under 4 Wood fireplaces are a contributing factor in spare the air days but almost always spare the air days are a result of stagnant/inversion air trapping emissions in place for several days at a time If I were in cheek to jowl tenaments stacked on top of each other in London 150 years ago with everyone with a coal stove as their primary heat source it would be concerning. I'm like, 50-120' from my nearest neighbors and I'm pretty sure we're the only ones who use it on the regular, TL;DR it's a contributing factor to air quality in 2024 but it's so low it's literally almost within the measurement error, I will continue burning 3-4lbs of wood once a week Edit: this is for coastal northern California, where a lot of houses don't have real insulation, and "cold" is an overnight low of 39F
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Apr 5, 2024 21:05
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It's only such a small contributing factor because of how few people are doing it.
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Apr 5, 2024 22:58
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Shifty Pony posted:The way I understood the terms dens are more isolated (usually only one entrance), don't typically have an exit to the outside, and aren't large enough to have an open area that can be easily used for multiple purposes. The idea is a cozy room where two to four people can do an activity together in close proximity. we called that the loving room
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Apr 6, 2024 01:30
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Inner Light posted:I deem that this masterful description has been underappreciated by the thread namaste
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Apr 6, 2024 06:05
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I'm looking to get a pre-approval. Most of the money I would put toward a down payment/etc is in a brokerage account (tracking stocks, so relatively volatile, but a shift of like 5-10% won't tank me or anything). Question is, should I do anything with the brokerage account in preparation (before applying)? Move money into a safer investment or just take the tax hit and cash it out? My only thought was that if I don't find any house to buy in the short term I would want to keep the money in the investment account, so cashing it out and putting it back in seems like a bad idea.
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Apr 6, 2024 07:05
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Hadlock posted:Yeah I looked into this It's quite likely that at least one of your neighbors really isn't a fan. Wood smoke can really gently caress up people who have allergies or asthma, and one fire can render a huge outdoor area unusable until it dissipates (which can be a while when there is an inversion holding the smoke close to the ground). When our neighbor lights up their fireplace my wife can't even walk to the mailbox unless she just used azelastine spray. We have to come inside and be very quick about closing the door when anyone comes in because even a few seconds of open door will cause the PM2.5 and PM1.0 on the indoor monitor to spike. Fortunately they rarely use it during weather that we'd like to be outside in.
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Apr 6, 2024 14:06
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PRADA SLUT posted:I'm looking to get a pre-approval. Most of the money I would put toward a down payment/etc is in a brokerage account (tracking stocks, so relatively volatile, but a shift of like 5-10% won't tank me or anything). So your downpayment is invested, and not just in broad market index funds but individual stocks? This isn't even a house buying question, it's a personal finance question. Money you need to use now doesn't go into investments, it needs to be in cash equivilents.
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Apr 6, 2024 14:48
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PRADA SLUT posted:I'm looking to get a pre-approval. Most of the money I would put toward a down payment/etc is in a brokerage account (tracking stocks, so relatively volatile, but a shift of like 5-10% won't tank me or anything). It is mostly about your risk of loss and not having the down payment. You don't need to do anything now for the pre-approval. I was in the same situation in 2021. I decided to leave the money invested as it was questionable if we would ever win a place. In the 6 months leading up to the house buy I put new money in cash. Once we were under contract I sold ~$40k of vtsax for the rest of the down payment. I probably wouldn't have invested that money in the market if I had any idea we would be buying. It really wasn't on our radar at all though in the 5 years prior. Individual stocks would have me more concerned though.
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Apr 6, 2024 15:02
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PRADA SLUT posted:I'm looking to get a pre-approval. Most of the money I would put toward a down payment/etc is in a brokerage account (tracking stocks, so relatively volatile, but a shift of like 5-10% won't tank me or anything). Are investments in individual stocks or money market/mutuals? If individual stocks: Anything that is already paying long term capital gain should probably be moved and the tax hit taken, there's probably not a long-term impact on that. You'll have to pay the tax anyway and if you re-invest you'll only need to pay on gains. Your risk is on taking a loss later that might be difficult to realize other ways. Or you could move it to something less volatile. Basically, if you're talking about something like buying a house you really don't want to be at the whim of Tesla or Nvidia or whatever making GBS threads the bed and you not being slid back. Stuff on short term CG I'd not move if it creates a tax event until your ready for the down payment. If its in mutual funds or something: Then it's up to you. You don't need to move it now. When you get your big kid loan you'll need to move it and it may delay things while they verify. Most markets this is fine, possible you may run into a situation where you need to speed run a loan because a seller wants to move right now ohmygodmyrealtorsaidLETSGO but that's stupid anyway. Make sure your name is on all the accounts. If this is a Fidelity account your parents set up for you or something then you need to get that poo poo under 100% your name only.
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Apr 6, 2024 15:23
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The stocks are individual stock positions as part of my compensation from my employer (e.g., straight shares, not a money market etf or whatever). So my down payment would be some combination of cash and liquidating the brokerage account, though it's like 6:1 in favor of the brokerage. I don't mind taking the tax hit, I just want to make sure I'm not accidentally doubling-up on it or creating an issue if I don't find a place for like six months or a year or whatever and I should have kept the money a particular color. I can execute a trade Monday to cash out, but will that create any issue when I'm getting pre-approvals (e.g., looks weird in account history or something)? Motronic posted:So your downpayment is invested, and not just in broad market index funds but individual stocks? This isn't even a house buying question, it's a personal finance question. Money you need to use now doesn't go into investments, it needs to be in cash equivilents. I'm aware of the ramifications of holding this from a financial planning standpoint. I only decided to explore buying a house recently, so it wasn't like a brokerage/long-term savings account thing.
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Apr 6, 2024 17:37
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I don't even think they check balances for pre-approval, credit only at least in my case. it's really only an issue when you are looking to sign for the loan, at which point everything above applies.
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Apr 6, 2024 19:32
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We aren’t actively house shopping but we had a “let us know if you are ever interested in selling” lead come through from a friend’s neighbor for their lake house. We took a tour and are interested but there’s no selling agent or listing or firm asking price, just a mention of the Zestimate from the owner. Anyone here ever been in this situation? I guess it’s basically for-sale-by-owner which are generally bad but we could also get a good deal and not have to compete with anyone?
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Apr 6, 2024 19:35
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PRADA SLUT posted:I'm looking to get a pre-approval. Most of the money I would put toward a down payment/etc is in a brokerage account (tracking stocks, so relatively volatile, but a shift of like 5-10% won't tank me or anything). You don't need to move around anything yet, pre-approval isn't really going to care that you own stocks instead of something more stable. If you're thinking of making offers over the next 6 months you could think about moving money toward more stable and liquid investments. When you make an offer your down payment should already no longer be in stocks, basically
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Apr 6, 2024 19:48
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PRADA SLUT posted:The stocks are individual stock positions as part of my compensation from my employer (e.g., straight shares, not a money market etf or whatever). So my down payment would be some combination of cash and liquidating the brokerage account, though it's like 6:1 in favor of the brokerage. I don't mind taking the tax hit, I just want to make sure I'm not accidentally doubling-up on it or creating an issue if I don't find a place for like six months or a year or whatever and I should have kept the money a particular color. In general you should be diversifying anyway. Think of it this way, if that account is worth $100k, would you buy 100% your companies stock if instead you had $100k in cash? No? Then the cash is worth more. I'd suggest liquifying anything that doesn't have short-term capital gain ASAP, and be aware of the tax penalty since you'll need to keep that much aside. Then you can either keep that money liquid or (probably better) put it in a mutual fund or even a high yield account. If the company stock has been appreciating lately and you have stock that has a significant Short-term capital gains I'd probably say just let it ride for now, but I typically sold right at vest to avoid that. For pre approvals none of this will matter and when you actually lock in your loan as long as all those accounts are in your name it won't be a big deal, they just give you a window to liquidize it. smackfu posted:We aren’t actively house shopping but we had a “let us know if you are ever interested in selling” lead come through from a friend’s neighbor for their lake house. We took a tour and are interested but there’s no selling agent or listing or firm asking price, just a mention of the Zestimate from the owner. I just did this exact thing this past fall, except the guy who owned the house (and actually designed and built it himself in '77) was moved into assisted care and his son who lived 2000 miles away had POA. I got a great deal BUT it also needed a lot of work. I'm not sure why it would be a big risk FSBO, I still got an appraisal and a inspection, there are tons of services you can use that mimic what a realtor would do for closing at a fraction of the price, or you can get an attorney to do it if it makes sense for the price of the house. All you are losing is a Realtor which is a mixed bag in terms of advice and advocacy anyway. Whether you'll get a good deal depends on lots of factors but in my case it worked out as I was leveraging the risks we were taking to get a price that would have been impossible to get anywhere else. The family wasn't willing to go down the path of doing the work it needed and I knew how to use that to build it into the price, while still doing the legwork to get a very thorough inspection and so far the work has been considerably LESS than I anticipated. You can go two ways on this, either have them name a number or anchor low. I think in this case you probably have as much information as they do so I'd suggest figuring out a number that is low but not insulting and try to work from there, try to estimate any loans they might have as well. Typically in a situation like this the buyer will shoulder most of the closing costs and whatnot, so just be aware of that or negotiate it upfront. I'd also expect it'd be less likely that any issues you'd find would be repaired by the current owner, so you'll need to continually negotiate on that stuff. On a typical sale you might say "Hey, you need to get an electrician to fix the breaker box and get it certified", but with a FSBO you'd probably need to figure out how much it costs (Add 25%) and say "Hey, I'll need to redo that box, so let's take off $XX to do that". Adds some risk but again, if you navigate it right it can be a good deal. Good Luck!
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Apr 6, 2024 20:08
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But also don't be surprised if the son who probably grew up in that house somehow thinks it's worth $150k over market, and gives some reason like "build quality" to justify unpercieved biases
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Apr 6, 2024 20:17
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Hadlock posted:But also don't be surprised if the son who probably grew up in that house somehow thinks it's worth $150k over market, and gives some reason like "build quality" to justify unpercieved biases Yeah this is actually a great point. A significant amount of time either you or the seller (or both) will be wildly out of touch with the houses value. If that's the case you gotta just walk away.
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Apr 6, 2024 21:06
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Thanks, super helpful!
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Apr 6, 2024 22:22
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I would guess 80% of the time take the $/sq ft of the three houses that sold closest to you in the last six months, average that, and your ask price will be with 10-15% of that number. Adjust up or down if you have a view or live downwind of a sewage treatment plant. The other 20% of the time you have some weird wildcard situation like 40 years deferred maintenance, unknowable ownership situation, or the builder built the house on the wrong lot in rural Hawaii, and/or not enough homes have sold in your area in the last year to accurately blah blah Things get real weird when you start buying more than 10 acres more than 30 minutes from a Walmart
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Apr 6, 2024 23:18
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