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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What is the point of this? It cuts down on so much dirt and dust, and it's a pain to do it later because you need the garage empty for days while it cures.
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Apr 28, 2024 01:15
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Hadlock posted:If you paint the walls + ceiling, it still looks like a garage. If you do the epoxy coat floor suddenly it's an extra living room when your friends come over with their kids. Most of the houses in our neighborhood the garage is a second living room with a TV, couch etc Sounds like the classic suburbs I visit where there is a suburban and an F-150 parked in the street/in the driveway because they can't even for in the garage.
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Apr 28, 2024 02:30
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More like California where the houses were built small and the weather doesn't really require you to keep your car in a garage.
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Apr 28, 2024 02:44
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Lol cars go in garages they live there.
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Apr 28, 2024 02:47
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spwrozek posted:Sounds like the classic suburbs I visit where there is a suburban and an F-150 parked in the street/in the driveway because they can't even for in the garage. You'd be surprised. Most times it's not that the cars wont fit (unless it's an eary 60s or older house/development) it's because people fill their garage up with useless poo poo that that will never want again but can't bring themselves to dispose of.
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Apr 28, 2024 03:09
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Hadlock posted:If you paint the walls + ceiling, it still looks like a garage. If you do the epoxy coat floor suddenly it's an extra living room when your friends come over with their kids. Most of the houses in our neighborhood the garage is a second living room with a TV, couch etc What's the advantage of this vs a covered deck? I feel like a garage is going to get uncomfortable faster than a deck, unless your garage is conditioned for some reason. And then your cars don't have to be homeless
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Apr 28, 2024 03:23
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spf3million posted:More like California where the houses were built small and the weather doesn't really require you to keep your car in a garage. It's this It gets down to freezing like, maaaaybe twice a year, and only after dark. Also it basically never rains. The legend of "California car" classic cars is real nothing rusts here, it never snows, humidity is very reliably exactly 50% Also yeah it was built in the 1950s/60s/70s. For our neighborhood we have 2200 sq ft and it's a "large" house for the area. Across the street my neighbor has a nearly identical floor plan but it's only 1750 sq ft. Reclaiming 400+ sq ft of living area is like adding 20% sq ft to your house. Especially when you have teenagers living in the house He has a two car garage but it's 2x 1-car doors so he only has to open one for better privacy. And then it's got a "man door" that exits to the side yard. You can open that and get a pretty good cross breeze. He's got carpet in there (back half) and a full set of cabinets and shelving. Last night he hosted the neighborhood semi-monthly casual poker game/tournament and 24 dads showed up, we had three tables to start and we all played in his garage it was great. QuarkJets posted:What's the advantage of this vs a covered deck? I feel like a garage is going to get uncomfortable faster than a deck, unless your garage is conditioned for some reason. And then your cars don't have to be homeless I think the primary advantage is that the garage already exists, all you need to do is paint the walls and the concrete for $100-300. Covered deck sounds like an actual structural project None of my neighbors park their car indoors there's no need to It's like, 64-80f most days here (California) so no need to condition the space. We leave the windows open and the house naturally regulates to about 73-75 indoors, although occasionally we need to kick on the AC During Halloween in our neighborhood a lot of people open up their "gar bar" garages to the street and drink and hand out candy from their garage https://punchdrink.com/articles/secret-home-garage-bar-scene-suburban-maplewood-new-jersey/ Edit: this is probably over the top, but gives you an idea of how you can utilize the garage space if you take some baby steps like coating your bare epoxy floor, rather than only store leaky old cars and power tools in there, especially if weather permits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1yqdOJXo0U Hadlock fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 04:28
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Are there cost effective ways to roll other home buying related expenses (repairs, moving costs, furniture, etc) into a down payment or closing costs? I have a lot of my down payment in one of these (https://tos.ohio.gov/homebuyerplus/), which is my best option for keeping a down payment. It is state tax advantaged and pays above market interest rates, which means it beats any HYSA I can find. The rest of the home buying money is held in taxable investment vehicles, like my brokerage account and normal bank account. My market is cheap, thanks Ohio, and I have slightly below the projected 20%+closing costs in the Homebuyer Plus account for the lower end of my price range. I would prefer to keep using the Homebuyer plus account for house related savings, but the proceeds can only be used for down payments and closing costs. But if I keep putting money in to cover my entire price range, it is likely I will end up with excess, which I should find something to do with. My credit union said they pay out excess funds in the account at a penalty for the Ohio tax requirements, so that is the default and it is worse than a normal HYSA. I can just play it safe and keep money in excess of the lower bound of my target price range somewhere else, but could be suboptimal if I can put it toward other eligible expenses. Homebuyer Plus is a very new program, it started in January, so there is minimal guidance about it online.
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Apr 28, 2024 14:26
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When we bought our house, because reasons, we overpaid by ~$10,000 to roll the cost of the closing fees into the mortgage, and the "seller credit" went straight to the closing fees*. You might be able to setup a general contractor as a beneficiary on a fixed budget using the same scheme? This might be a better question for a tax lawyer and/or the tax thread *Although now I'm stuck paying ~6% on that $10,000 for 30 years
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Apr 28, 2024 17:30
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I was playing with a mortgage calculator and I’m just floored by the difference in payment between a 3% and 7% mortgage. Like for a $450K mortgage, it’s a $1900 payment vs $3000. Stupid compound interest.
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Apr 29, 2024 12:42
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Motronic posted:You'd be surprised. Most times it's not that the cars wont fit (unless it's an eary 60s or older house/development) it's because people fill their garage up with useless poo poo that that will never want again but can't bring themselves to dispose of. This happens a lot, but it's far from the only reason. We've got a fairly small one car garage that can't fit both our cars anyways. poo poo, it wasn't originally even a garage, when the house was built it was one of those semi-roofed car ports. Theoretically it would make sense to garage the newer of the two, but that would mean that I wouldn't have a workshop and I really, really wanted to have a workshop. I could convert a shed, but there's a ton of difference between even a clean shed and a garage that has a proper roof over it.
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Apr 29, 2024 12:52
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smackfu posted:I was playing with a mortgage calculator and I’m just floored by the difference in payment between a 3% and 7% mortgage. Yes, this, not some vague "corporate is buying all the houses" is that actual answer to the supply side problem int he housing market. Many, many people could not afford the house they live in today if they had to buy it today. So they are not gonna go anywhere unless they absolutely have to.
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Apr 29, 2024 13:36
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We park our cars in our garage but I dream of home gym and just using it as a place to hang out. Central Texas heat\weather and pollen demands you keep it covered at all times though.
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Apr 29, 2024 14:14
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smackfu posted:I was playing with a mortgage calculator and I’m just floored by the difference in payment between a 3% and 7% mortgage. Now use the calculator to show total paid over a 30 year mortgage.
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Apr 29, 2024 14:24
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Lockback posted:Now use the calculator to show total paid over a 30 year mortgage. yeah this transformed "hey we can probably stay in our neighborhood" at 5% to  at 7%
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Apr 29, 2024 14:41
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Motronic posted:Yes, this, not some vague "corporate is buying all the houses" is that actual answer to the supply side problem int he housing market. Many, many people could not afford the house they live in today if they had to buy it today. So they are not gonna go anywhere unless they absolutely have to. I mean, there's also a poo poo-ton of "nobody is building new affordable housing" going on.
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Apr 29, 2024 14:42
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I mean, there's also a poo poo-ton of "nobody is building new affordable housing" going on. Yes, but that's not the new issue that has put us here. Nobody has been able to turn a profit on affordable housing in places people actually want to live for a few decades and that's 100% zoning, permitting, fees, slowdowns, etc largely put in place by NIMBYism.
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Apr 29, 2024 14:59
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I mean, there's also a poo poo-ton of "nobody is building new affordable housing" going on. People keep framing it as "nobody is building new affordable housing," which is true, but it's just a subset of supply being low across the board. The greater the deficit in housing stock, the less affordable housing becomes.
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Apr 29, 2024 14:59
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I mean, there's also a poo poo-ton of "nobody is building new affordable housing" going on. Yes, but it's still the same supply side problem. And in general no one is going to specifically target "affordable", and in most places with any sort of density it's just not possible to build "affordable" outside of like small apartments which aren't very desirable anyway. If you increase the supply at all, stuff will start to fall into place. So yeah, more development would be a huge help. I'll also say just poking around in most areas (outside of Bay area or like Manhattan) there are small houses that still seem pretty affordable, they just aren't in the neighborhoods or have the specifics people want. Something I think people forget when talking about those houses built in the 30s/40s/50s is they didn't look like they did in TV shows, they were a lot of 2br/1ba that are labeled "undesirable" now.
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Apr 29, 2024 15:12
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Lockback posted:Yes, but it's still the same supply side problem. And in general no one is going to specifically target "affordable", and in most places with any sort of density it's just not possible to build "affordable" outside of like small apartments which aren't very desirable anyway. If you increase the supply at all, stuff will start to fall into place. So yeah, more development would be a huge help. They're undesirable because the people being pushed into looking at them aren't single people, childless couples, or young families with one kid any more. There are tons of people nearing the middle of their lives with multiple kids, some of them older and needing their own space, who are hunting that stuff for lack of better options. again, see the general need for more construction no matter what type. The notion of the "starter" home is kind of dead just because the people who traditionally bought those houses can't afford them any more. I mean, YMMV based on location. If you live in a dying rust belt city that has half the population today that it did in 1975, sure, there are affordable houses. But this isn't just an SF/NYC problem, plenty of mid-sized cities that aren't headquarters to a FAANG but still have a reasonably functional modern economy have the problem too.
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Apr 29, 2024 15:33
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I'm using my garage as a garage, but plan on doing some woodwork in there. Why would I want to hang out looking at an alley? Though I see places around me where they put porches on the top of the garage and that seems like fun! Just wonder if they shovel the snow off of them in the winter. Lockback posted:they were a lot of 2br/1ba that are labeled "undesirable" now. I'm so happy I found a 2 br/1 ba that works perfectly for me in the neighborhood I wanted to live in.
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Apr 29, 2024 15:43
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At least around me a lot of 2b/1ba get bought by people with the intent of immediately expanding them into a 3br/2ba, both individuals who are just going to do the work before they move in and flippers. You see a lot of houses sprout an extension where the back yard was .
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Apr 29, 2024 15:50
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In a lot of markets there's just nowhere to do more construction. I think it was this thread where there was a discussion about how empty lots are usually a terrible deal because if they weren't somebody would have already built there. That holds with my experience looking at housing in this area (eastern Massachusetts) over the past few decades. That means that if you want to build something denser, you need to buy existing lots, demolish the existing housing, and build an apartment building or condos. That temporarily decreases the amount of housing available. It also requires either eminent domain or finding a price that everyone is willing to sell at, when many of those people won't be able to afford a new house that's equivalent if they sell. There also needs to be some sort of entity with the money, risk-tolerance, and expertise in real estate to pursue this project. That's BEFORE you get into the issues with zoning, etc. Which definitely exist, but also reflect the desires and interests of the people who currently live in the area. It's a complex, lovely problem with no really good solutions on offer.
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Apr 29, 2024 16:05
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The problem I have with mine is the second floor is right up against the roof, so angled ceilings. About half the similar houses around me have additions where they "blow out" (sorry, don't know the correct term) the roof to open up the second floor and make more headroom/windows/etc. (this is a house near me)  Don't see a lot of these being built outward. There's a ton of bigger houses if that's what you want.
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Apr 29, 2024 16:11
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Uthor posted:The problem I have with mine is the second floor is right up against the roof, so angled ceilings. About half the similar houses around me have additions where they "blow out" (sorry, don't know the correct term) the roof to open up the second floor and make more headroom/windows/etc. Your photo shows a type of “shed dormer” typically called a “greedy dormer” due to its size compared to the underlying building.
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Apr 29, 2024 16:38
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Another California problem is that a lot of our housing stock is ranches built on crawl spaces or slab. No basements, little usable attic space. Want to store the Christmas decorations, sewing/knitting/woodworking stash? Garage it is. E: huh. I've always seen those called "full-shed dormers" and they're pretty common on, say, the back roof of a Cape. Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Apr 29, 2024 |
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Apr 29, 2024 16:46
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That's like where I was in NM. Flats on slabs. No basements, utilities taking up space in the garage.
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Apr 29, 2024 16:58
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There's been a massive population shift away from rural areas and into the cities for decades and it's still going on. That has put additional pressure on the cities and suburbs, even as overall population growth has trended towards flatline. https://wvpublic.org/rural-populations-decline-regional-patterns-shift/ The emptying out of america's rural counties has a huge impact on the demand for housing in especially the suburban counties, within commute distance of the job centers. This has coincided with the aging of the boomers, the largest generation, who are disincentivized from selling early because of the degree to which their total personal wealth - and therefore secure retirement - is concentrated in their home values. Lingering (racist) zoning policies intended to keep out the riffraff (black people) are now leveraged by people whose home values are essential to their lifetime financial security to prevent redevelopment, densification, and infill; and America's cities have mostly run out of undeveloped land within commute distance to suburbanize. Development is more expensive because land values are higher, homes need more features, labor is more expensive, and with the freewheeling cheap suburban land gone, developers have to navigate more tedious and expensive regulatory restrictions. Materials costs are higher too. We expect houses built today to have things like heating and air conditioning, triple the electrical capacity, insulation in the walls, double-paned windows, room for two cars to park, etc. etc.; in the 1950s when my house was built, none of those things were requirements. We're also slightly less willing to build houses where we know there's severe flood risk, or completely ignore fire risks, access to public sewers, impacts on traffic, etc. The factors all add up to a housing crisis and the only way we solve it long-term is address as many of the obstacles we can. "Just build more" is true in a simplistic way, but the devil is in the details.
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Apr 29, 2024 17:22
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smackfu posted:If you were moving into a new house, and you didn’t need to move in on the closing date, what stuff would you fix before moving in? Floors and painting seem like the obvious, am I missing anything? Anything that requires drywall patching, so you can get it done before painting. My downstairs living room is shaped like a long rectangle, and a switched outlet is the only thing providing lighting to half this space. I really want to change this over to overhead lighting, but running the electrical lines would require opening up a bunch of holes in the ceiling drywall so that I can safely drill through five or six joists. At that point I'd probably want to repaint the entire ceiling. I'm kicking myself for not getting this done during the one month period between close and moving in (floors + paint were done during this time). I would have been too overwhelmed at the time to install the lighting myself, but dealing with the aftermath would have been so much easier.
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Apr 29, 2024 21:33
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Hello thread, I was just pre-approved for a comically large amount of money that I hope nobody in my situation would seriously think about taking on more than half of as debt, but I understand this is normal-ish. Anyway. As I start touring places, is there a list of slightly-less-obvious things I should be looking out for/questions I should be asking? I have determined via osmosis that signs of water where water shouldn't be are a big one, but beyond that I feel like most of the important things are either easy to find online ("is this place sitting in a flood plane?") or you'd have to do something moderately destructive to get real information ("how drunk was the guy who did the original plumbing?").
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May 2, 2024 22:04
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Irony.or.Death posted:Hello thread, I was just pre-approved for a comically large amount of money that I hope nobody in my situation would seriously think about taking on more than half of as debt, but I understand this is normal-ish. Anyway. I was not successful in this but was told to try and buy a place with south facing driveway if you live in a snowy area.
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May 2, 2024 22:11
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my realtor keeps zeroing in on window quality and condensation especially which does seem smart because those things cost a surprisingly ridiculous amount
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May 2, 2024 23:10
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phosdex posted:I was not successful in this but was told to try and buy a place with south facing driveway if you live in a snowy area. Why?
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May 3, 2024 01:13
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Pollyanna posted:Why? Maybe because the snow is more likely to melt, due to greater sun exposure?
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May 3, 2024 01:17
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Pollyanna posted:Why? During winter, sun is on the south side of the sky, so the driveway will actually goddamn melt ever Why yes my house faces north, why do you ask (no idea if this is true in the southern hemisphere tho)
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May 3, 2024 01:17
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mistermojo posted:my realtor keeps zeroing in on window quality and condensation especially which does seem smart because those things cost a surprisingly ridiculous amount That's a good one. Not a full list but: Check around the foundation. Cracks or uneven spots doesn't mean disaster but it's good to look and know what will need good opinions on. Check water pressure in all the bathrooms In my state you can check how much the house has spent on utilities on average. Depending on your area this can vary wildly. Check age of mechanicals. Check how the ductwork is connected (duct tape is bad despite the name). If what you see is sloppy what you don't see will be too. Check roof. I don't know why but everyone loving lies about roof age, so ignore what they claim. Look at the shingles and if some are discolored or there are dark or sunken spots that's bad. Check to see if the driveway is level or if it's cracking. Pay close attention to the ceilings. If some ceilings are recently painted despite the rooms not being recently painted they are covering water stains.
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May 3, 2024 03:09
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I think learning something about electrical panels would be good. what type, how much space is left, etc. This might be more advanced but worth it if you can.
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May 3, 2024 04:25
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silvergoose posted:During winter, sun is on the south side of the sky, so the driveway will actually goddamn melt ever The opposite is true, the sun's path is in the north in the winter. But the southern hemisphere is less populated and the areas that are populated are, on average, warmer. Getting a north facing driveway may matter in the Southern Cone, parts of New Zealand, and Antarctica. Anyone buying a a house there should weigh in.
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May 3, 2024 04:33
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IIRC, the southern hemisphere is also slightly warmer just because of orbital mechanics. But yeah, the bigger difference is that people mostly live in warmer places there. Edit: I remembered this backwards; perihelion is during winter in the northern hemisphere
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May 3, 2024 04:37
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rjmccall posted:IIRC, the southern hemisphere is also slightly warmer just because of orbital mechanics. But yeah, the bigger difference is that people mostly live in warmer places there. Yeah learn orbital mechanics too, helps during inspections
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May 3, 2024 04:40
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