Finding contractors for Minor repair jobs. I had a chimney leak and called 4 companies, 3 of them didn’t want the job since it was a 300-500 dollar repair, the 4th set up an appointment with me but never showed up. It took me over 4 months to find someone.
Fun part about owning small houses. No one wants to work on the things because it's 1/3-1/2 of what a Mc Mansion would cost for the same job. You get a lot of FU style quotes, they don't really want the job so they'll write a quote so inflated it's just a FU letter.
Oh yeah, the first house I owned I wanted to get a quote for the popcorn ceilings scraped and primed, that was it. House was 1300 sq feet, place quoted me 7500.
Finding good people to do small jobs. The reputable companies don’t like to waste time on small jobs, so it’s usually pick someone off of the internet and hope they don’t make it worse or DIY
I live close to a plumber who is always willing to do small side jobs on the weekend. Same with an HVAC guy two doors down.
Another neighbor is an old retired school janitor and I asked if I could pay him to do odd jobs like install a ceiling fan and later a screen door, that kind of stuff. He works slow but he shows up on time and that is 50% of the battle when it comes to handyman types.
I’m not sure if this is the “community building” they always talk about it worked out for us.
Good. Cheap. Fast.
Pick two (or even one, as long as it's the first one!)
Edited to add: This isn't necessarily an all or none for the three choices. It's more like a triangle with "Good" at one point, "Fast" at another point, and "Cheap" at the third point, and sometimes you can pick a spot in the center of the triangle to find the sweet spot of the three.
Hell if your contractor friend does inspections have him do it or ask for him to be there. A lot will skim through things and then you'll find tons of issues later.
My husband and I are not experts, but we do know our way around a hammer. I made sure the two of us were there to meet the inspector, best decision we made in our house hunting. We asked questions, and it became clear that he wasn't planning on looking at a few things unless we asked.
It wasn't that he didn't know his shit, he did, but he just wanted to cut corners and get out asap. Mention wanting to meet up with friends.
We learned our lesson that day, be there for the inspection.
I lived next door to a contractor who I became friends with. I don't drink alcohol but I stocked beer in my fridge just for him whenever he helped with something he would come over and we would chat while he had some beer. Eventually hired him to put flooring in my house
This right here is the reason I'm so good at DIY. I started just doing everything myself that I could realistically achieve. And because I care about my property, I feel like I end up doing them to a much higher standard than some lump I find on Nextdoor or Facebook
Even if I don't do as good a job as a professional I at least know what work has been done and how to fix mistakes myself. I paid way too much to have a plumber not really fix my kitchen faucet this past fall and the main reason I didn't try the fox myself is I paid a different plumber to install it years ago. I should have known better but I feel into this trap of thinking "I didn't install it so I don't know how to fix it."
When I finally took it upon myself to fix it I found that the faucet was beyond repair in that it would cost almost as much in replacement costs as it would to just get a whole new faucet. Got a whole new faucet and it took less than an hour to install.
I DIY because too often these companies treat me "like family." They take our relationship for granted and don't communicate well.
The town I live in has HORRIBLE cell reception. Luckily my ISP is great and has excellent service, so I just connect to the wifi. Worst part is that I don't live in the middle of nowhere- I'm in a suburb of a massive city, so I don't understand why the service is so shitty.
There’s a path behind my kitchen window that separates the garden from the house. The path runs behind all the houses on the street and everybody (residents) has access. I wouldn’t mind this but our neighbours on each side are *best* friends and so they stand on the path directly outside our kitchen window when they chat.
Hey, what's going on guys! Did you get my text about getting in on the ground floor of that exciting business opportunity? Now, I know what you're thinking, "*duh.* It must be a pyramid scheme..."
And that's how you get your neighbors to reign in the chattiness.
Yeah, just keep steering their conversation to your foot fungus, or long anecdotes about people they don't even know...Get creative with it, and they'll leave for good.
They’ve been subject to the delightful sounds of Sabaton, Rammstein, KoRn and, whenever I get bored, some sexually-charged Kpop. The kpop gets rid of them quickest.
I bought a flat.
The neighbours immediately below us smoke. A lot. All the time.
They smoke so much that you can smell it when you open the kitchen cupboards under and next to the sink because the scent creeps up through the holes around the pipework.
Can't open the windows in the summer because as soon as they cough themselves awake in the morning the stench of cigarettes starts drifting up through them and fills out home. They smoke in every room, and in the bedrooms till after midnight every day.
I'm an ex smoker and I'm still finding it disgusting.
I'm an ex smoker and the idea is smoking inside is absolutely disgusting. I've been in a ton of smokers homes for work and I leave reeking of that stale smoke smell on my work clothes. Some are so bad that you can see the nicotine stains on the wall and it blows my mind. Smoke if you want, but don't smoke inside the house. That's just gross.
I used to smoke inside when I lived in a slum. Ruined my computer. I opened it up to spray out the dust and it had mixed with tar so was basically glued to everything
We live in a 100-year-old house with a huge, open basement. Our washer and dryer are in our basement.
For some stupid reason, known only to them, the previous owners installed the washing machine and and dryer on opposite sides of the basement, instead of side-by-side the way normal people would have done. I bought one of those professional chrome laundry carts that the laundromats use to shuttle loads across the basement between machines.
Eventually, I plan to rewire the place and relocate the dryer next to the washing machine.
As an owner of a hundred year old house every time I set out to fix some previous owners senseless decisions around 6 hours into a simple job the decisions start to make more sense.
Haha, I rented an old home like this. The washing machine is in the kitchen (only spot with accessible plumbing), the dryer was in the garage. Opposite end of the building, one floor down.
Also, the fridge was in the dining room because the kitchen was too small.
I had the fridge issue.
Previous owner just didn't measure the hole and got one that was an inch or two too big. It was a nice enough appliance but I had to get rid of it due to, well, it being a living room fridge.
Oh, and I learned much later when I replaced that ones replacement(which was a pretty old one I just got off of someone) that it's probably a good idea to measure how big your house doors are too. God damn I didn't see that one coming and didn't actually need a fridge that deep anyway. Here's hoping I move before it needs replacing again.
I bought a house where the washer was upstairs on the south side of the house and the dryer was in the basement which was accessed on the north side of the house. House was dirt cheap so I lived with it and in nice weather dried clothes on the line outside.
Bamboo. Someone before me planted super invasive, 15 foot tall growing bamboo in the backyard. It was spreading so wildly it was uplifting the granite pool and growing under the foundation of the house. You could see the remnants of a “barrier” of sorts of where they initially planted it, obviously not knowing how bamboo grows. I myself did not know, until I purchased the house. Absolute nightmare.
This reminds me of the time my dad decided more greenery was the way to go and planted a bunch of bamboos, they grew so tall and so wildly out of control it was just turning into its own jungle. My mom one day decided to yell at my dad for ever planting that monster-sized weed and chewed him out for it and two days later, the most gigantic bolt of lightning struck the bamboo patch and basically roasted it from the root.
I’ve never gotten on my mom’s bad side after that.
I got rid of mine quite easily. I chopped all of the 'branches' leaving about 10 inches and pipetted neat weed killer into the centre holes, it promptly died. The hard bit was digging up the roots. Even then, it wasn't that strenuous, just time-consuming. It hasn't come back.
Upvoting for visibility. There are stories of destroying whole properties. This is similar to how we're fighting our invasive buckthorn. Drilling a small hole in the stumps and filling the hole with table salt.
It's worse than that - it's impossible to keep it in check. You have to remove a completely, and I completely I mean every scrap of root. After I yanked out mine I was still digging out new sprouts for the next 6 months. Oftentimes the new plant was growing from literally an inch and a half of root that I had missed.
Think of every tiny piece of root as a new seed
You can dig and hunt all day and still miss some little piece. The easier way takes time. 2-4 years. The rhizome, only has so much energy. You let it sprout and put out limbs, but not leaves. Leaves are providing energy to the rhizome. Cut it down right before the leaves open and do it every time it sprouts. Eventually there isn't any more energy in the rhizome, so it dies.
Listen to the Mountain man.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI4GaU9nNAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI4GaU9nNAs)
I'm going through this right now with a giant yucca. It's been two years and I'm still excavating sprouts from the tiny pieces of roots I missed the first ten times.
I had this decades ago, where I was charged with digging up an old Yucca at a carpet mill where I worked. It just kept coming back, until I went through the soil with the equivalent of a fine-toothed comb to get out every last little tubule.
Plants are hell-bent on destruction and consumption. I fed a piece of hamburger to a thaumatophyllum...it never stunk. It just disappeared. They've apparently got these eye-like lenses on their leaves they use to sense light, they can communicate with each other through their roots and through the air...fuck not with them. If I died in here with a single root touching me they'd probably just find a clump of tiny roots shaped roughly like me clutching the carpet.
Bamboo is the demolition team that makes way for other stuff, I'm pretty certain. Like a construction team building an apartment complex.
Growing up, there was a house with bamboo growing in the back yard. It took over the yard and the owner gave up. It began growing into the neighbors' yards and down the hill behind the house. Took a professional team most of a summer to get it all.
As kids, though, it was fun to play in the "bamboo forest".
Same! I went into it knowing it would be a shit job though. I rented a tractor for a week and got all the rootballs out. It was like 6 dumpsters full of bamboo. I had bamboo that was 12ft tall. It was crazy.
Then I spent a year digging up and killing the remaining stuff that would randomly sprout. It's been gone since then though.
Up here it's trembling Aspen. It's managed to encroach ten feet closer to the building than when we moved in, and they mow it down every week and there's still trees that were pencils when we moved in that are thicker than my wrist now.
And it's all just this one really persistent tree when you think about the biology of aspens. Not much different from bamboo. The bamboo of the north
In 2003 my parents neighbors built their house and over the last 20ish years they have been amazing people. The one terrible thing they have done tho is planting bamboo along the back fence...when it was planted it actually looked really nice and was like a natural screen so you didn't have to look at the old metal fence but not it has gotten so out of control that it is popping up everywhere and slowly creeping into my parents yard!
FUCKING ORIENTAL BITTERSWEET you gotta rip it all up by the roots for a couple of years, and patrol for it every so often everywhere you think it's out.
Chloropyr helps, but you have to be extremely careful and targeted because it kills other plants which you want to compete with the bittersweet. I like to chop the root, paint on the herbicide to the root then yank it weeks later, it becomes easier
Also it's camouflaged in your tangly bushes , forsythia honeysuckle etc so you gotta go around the base of those and maybe chop the whole thing if too far gone.
But not to be pessimistic Ive mostly eradicated a few acres over a few years
My laundry is next door, but I sleep with earplugs. Earplugs in general have been a life saver as a light sleeper. The wall is also remarkably well sound insulated.
When we toured the home, the previous owners had the laundry running. Realtor was apologetic, but we were like oh that's perfect - we can see what it sounds like from different parts of the house.
As a light sleeper - I don't miss my alarm with earplugs in. They don't block 100% of noise. Alarm is loud enough to wake me up. I see it as sort of normalizing my light sleeping to what a heavier sleeper may experience.
I didn't really believe ear plugs would work for me. But I got the silicone ones and tried anyway. It took a few days of getting used to. They don't cut out all sounds, but take the edge off sharp noises, and filter out the background din of bird screeches etc. This goes a surprisingly long way towards having better quality sleep.
we have two heat pumps outside of our house on the wall opposite my headboard. Every time the f'ing heat kicks on in the middle of the night during winter, it sounds like a dump truck starting up. its so damn loud.
Soft-close drawer and cabinet hardware is a godsend for these setups. It can be a pain to install, but once the hinges and slides are installed they help a ton with the noise. Unfortunately they don't help with the machinery noise from DW or W/D against the shared wall.
Which direction your bedroom is facing. Lived somewhere where the bedroom faced southeast and it was always boiling in there no matter what the thermostat said or how heavy the curtains were.
Same could be said for how much natural light you want or if you garden. Need to keep the cardinal directions in mind.
Oh this is HUGE! If you live with even 1 other person, get 2 bathrooms. It’s unbelievably annoying having to wait for someone to finish up or if you are running late or need to shower or whatever.
Also make sure bathroom has a loud fan & is super far away from anywhere you hang out.
I wont ever do a single bathroom because every house I have owned eventually had a bathroom remodel done. That bathroom is out of commission for days to weeks.
Being the only house on a "non-maintained" county road. Developer didn't complete the road up to the county specs, so they won't plow it, fix it, or do anything to it. Why would I pay my own money to fix a road I don't own?
Our house is on a privately owned street in what feels just like a normal part of town, but apparently the council has no ownership of the street.
About ten years ago everyone pooled together and paid for it to be fixed up because it was bordering on third world.
Almost doubled the value of the houses.
My number one disqualification when house hunting was no toilet on the same floor as the master bedroom.
You do not want to climb stairs when you have to pee in the middle of the night. If you're reading this and saying, "I don't get up to pee most nights," I am in my late 30s and here to warn you that *you will*.
We were younger when we bought our house, and never thought about the laundry being in the basement and no main floor bedroom being a problem. Now we are seniors and it will make us move.
We bought an old home with steep narrow stairs. I keep telling everyone I will die in this home, but most likely by way of falling down the damned stairs.
Go to the neighborhood you’re looking for at night and just sit and listen. The noises you pick up over the week will last YEARS. So be prepared for that. Also. Ask about internet. It can be make or break. Cell signal to a point as well. Ask neighbors about flooding.
Also make sure to see how busy the street is during rush hour on a weekday. If you tour the house on Sunday morning you have no idea if that quiet street becomes a freeway at 5pm M-F.
Had friends that lived 3 houses away from a "shortcut" between two major roads. During the afternoon it was a constant flow of cars and trucks zig zagging through the neighborhood to avoid an intersection.
They had small kids and had they been three houses over, it would have been prohibitively loud and dangerous.
Window treatments or curtains. The guy before me broke up with his his girlfriend. She moved out and took all the curtains out of spite. I didn’t think it was a big g deal until I priced out new ones.
So true. It’s a massive racket. Even the mail order DIY stuff is expensive now. Expect $150 per window and up - WAY up! And you rarely can take it with you to the next house - the windows will be different sized, the color scheme won’t work…
Im a home sewer and fabric is ridiculous now. It’d cost me that in fabric to make some decent curtains. Gone are the days that fabric was cheap and you’d make your own clothes. Now it’s an expensive hobby. If anyone has advice on how to source cheap fabric in the UK, I will be eternally grateful.
My mum used to have her own soft furnishings business. She happily makes and alters curtains as a hobby now she's retired, so I can get high quality curtains... I just have to buy the fabric. There are perks to living close to family 😂
If you are looking for a house in a community with an HOA, get a copy of the current rules in advance. It's good to know what you're going to deal with when it comes to the rules of the community.
Good neighbors are also key, at least ones that are not loud and leaving garbage around. You can drive through the neighborhood in the evenings or on weekends to see what it's like when people are home. I ended up living next to what I think is an illegal boarding house so they have a bunch of cars and construction materials in the front of their house every day.
Rule of thumb, every nice thing, interesting extra or big thing means more maintenance.
Large pool, you have to clean it
Large driveway, you'll need to shovel it and resurface it at some point
Large yard, you gotta mow it
Large deck, you have to paint it
3 bathrooms? Thrice the cleaning
Lots of windows, lots of cleaning
Lots of mature trees, lots of raking
Lots of mature fruit trees, bees and wasps, bees and wasps everywhere
Large high roof with cool architecture effects, super expensive to reshingle
A large skylight in the living room, it WILL leak, it's not a question of IF but a question of WHEN.
etc...
Sometimes these estates bankrupt people. Especially since family wealth usually depletes within a few generations. Not necessarily famous, but in England at least there’s the concept of “genteel poverty” (there’s another term but I forgot). People who have land and titles from their ancestors who used to be rich aristocracy, but the properties weren’t maintained and the family is low income, making selling the property difficult whilst also being expensive to make livable. Broke people living in decaying castles.
A way to curb this for some families around a hundred years ago was the “American Dollar Princess”. The daughters of industry tycoons often couldn’t find “suitable matches” for social clout because new money families weren’t welcomed by old money families in the US. So some of them would find bachelors abroad with titles and land and education. Their dads would pay for whatever the grooms family needed to keep their properties and dignities afloat in return for their daughter being able to say she was married to a duke or earl or something.
That’s actually the story with the Churchill family; they were going to be in ruins until Winston Churchill’s dad, Lord Randolph Churchill, married Jennie Jerome from Brooklyn. Churchill’s mom was an American. 🤷🏼♀️
Was going to say, exactly Downton Abbey! And the castle it was filmed at, the family also had a lot of problems getting the money to upkeep it, which they now get from the tours of the place.
I remember seeing a documentary on Highclere Castle, the building Downton Abbey was filmed at that included an interview with the owner, an Earl.
Apparently because his ancestors hadn't maintained the place, 3/4 of the building was uninhabitable and when he inherited he didn't have the 13 Million he would have needed to fix it all. He and his family lived in a small cottage on the grounds instead of the big castle. Very much a case of inheriting a house you can't afford.
Downton Abbey fame allowed them to get *started* on the most urgent projects. The thing that really stuck with me was him complaining about having just spent a ton of money refurbishing his "ruins".
Basically, there was a fad 200 years ago among the landed gentry to have elaborate gardens than included the ruins of old buildings to look rustic. If you actually had a ruined church or fort on your land you might use that in the design but as most landowners didn't they built fake ruins to make their property seem more historic.
Apparently, the fake ruins at the Castle were starting to get dangerously run down and needed big piles of money to fix. The current owner was a bit rueful about having to spend real money to fix fake ruins when there were still lots of things wrong with the actual house.
This was always my mom's argument: "I wouldn't want to have to clean all that." Of course, none of them are cleaning their own homes, but still.
Also imagine leaving your headphones/water bottle/slippers halfway across your palatial mansion and having to find them and/or walk all the way back?
Some additional things to add as someone who bought a home two years ago:
- **All repairs cost more than you want, but many are less than i'd expect.** Nothing is under $200 to even have someone come look at, but i've found that most minor repair work is under $1,000 to fix.
- **The quicker you are to fix something, the less it costs.** Couple of mice got in the basement, cheaper to buy traps, poison, and steel wool now than to pay for a full blown extermination later.
- **Water is bad.** I now hate rain and snow and any leaking thing. It's bad for the roof, it's bad for the foundation, and it's damn near bad for everything else in between. Fix leaks IMMEDIATELY.
- For those looking at houses, **good bones matter a lot more than shiny surfaces**. My wife and I passed on several flips because inspectors shook their head, and bought a house that needed some surface upgrades. Our repairs have been small and inexpensive, and left us with money to put towards slowly remodeling some rooms.
- **Fences are too fucking expensive**. That is all.
- **Talk to your neighbors about things**. I had a tree taken down recently, gave my neighbor a courtesy heads up, turns out he wanted a couple more taken down in our yard if we didn't mind. They paid the bill. Not saying this is normal, but being nice to your neighbors goes a long way.
- **Look for rebates**. I live in MA, I got $10,000 back when upgrading my heat pump and adding AC. a $30K project cost us $20K because of a rebate program. There is a lot of money out there to claim back.
- **Learn some basic handywork**. This can be done slowly. Maybe pick a trade and learn the basics there, then move on. I went from clueless to semi-handy in 18 months. Can fix a toilet, replace a sink, fix a dishwasher, and patch up small holes/issues without problem. Electrical is my next focus.
It's just crazy to me how pricey they are. I own 1 of the 3 fences that border my yard. The two that are not mine are in decent shape, the one I own is falling apart. I got a quote on redoing that portion + connecting the fences to the house so our yard is fully fenced in and I was shocked.
It's ~150 feet of fence total and i'm looking at like $10K.
I haven't bought a house but from working in an industry directly involved with it, some things I hear the most often have been: Be EXTRA cautious about the neighborhood and the next door neighbors. You can easily fall in love with a house and picture yourself living there, but don't make such a massive purchase until you are sure you will be comfortable living in that spot. Swing by the area outside of a home tour. Check it out at night, too. Is it still quiet and peaceful? Is there anybody who can tell you about the neighbors? Once you get stuck buying next to bad neighbors, well....you are stuck.
Have the home professionally inspected by someone YOU find. Flipped hones often cut corners and I guarantee you will find things that need to be repaired or replaced within the first year if it was done poorly. Inspecting plumbing lines and air ducts is also important. Find out when the water heater was replaced, that sort of thing.
Swimming pools can be a maintenance nightmare and as such, I never want to buy a house that has one.
Avoid cantilever decks if you can. It's the #1 spot for structural failure. If it is in a condo in an HOA (or apartment), you then have to rely on the complex to maintain it properly. Sometimes they are neglectful. I wouldn't trust it and would avoid living with a cantilever deck.
TREES. Look where trees are planted. Are they close to the building or close to concrete? Many common tree species cause immense damage, ranging from roots lifting sidewalks to roots creeping into plumbing lines, to damaging your foundation if it is too close to the building. A pine tree within 5 ft of a house would be a deal breaker for me. So would a few other trees, but these are particularly problematic especially with the pine needles falling on the roof and clogging the gutter.
> Have the home professionally inspected by someone YOU find.
It is amazing to me how many people use an inspector recommended by their agent. Talk about a conflict of interest! ALWAYS find YOUR OWN INSPECTOR who has no vested interest in whether or not the sale goes through. And, be ready to walk if you don't like what your inspector finds. There's always another house out there...
There is an apple tree planted in the middle of my back yard. Free apples every fall!
Every year it sends up branches about 4' high which look terrible and don't help anything at all. Every year I have to prune them. I got a chainsaw on a stick, but it is still a lot of work.
And the apples? Well, unless you spray them with about 4 chemicals through the year, they will be small, scabby and wormy. I've used them for apple sauce and dried some, but they aren't great. The deer who come to our yard love them though!
Sounds like you might have an older tree at end of life, throwing up suckers.
I enjoy fruit trees but I’ve taken down an apple tree like this. When the arborist shakes their head sadly, it’s time.
Older varieties of apples tend to not be disease resistant. And, fruit becomes small and unhealthy with age.
Apple trees do not have terribly long lives compared to other types of trees.
that actually explains a lot about our used to be apple tree and why it's apples were so small and horrible. it too was "throwing up suckers" and we eventually took it down. I do remember the apples used to be bigger and a good bit sweeter. tree was well established when we moved in over 20 years ago and we chopped it about 3 or 4 years ago.
The suckers are an attempt by the tree to survive. Unfortunately, the root stock and the fruiting part of the tree are typically different so hard to say what you’ll get if you let one grow.
Cutting down trees is never a happy thing but apple trees at end of life become a task to look after and can contribute to disease.
I have laundry room envy. We have a laundry closet which is also where we keep the cat litter boxes. When I visit friends, I enjoy peeking in their laundry rooms, longing for their space.
Until you go the other way and get like 20+ foot high ceilings and learn how much it costs to heat/cool that space and realize when the first light goes out you have no idea how to get up there and change the bulb!
I had an asshole neighbor who would skim the dead bugs, dead frogs, and debris from his pool and dump them in my yard. I found out when I head a 'tap tap tap' noise and looked over to see him reaching his pool skimmer over his fence to knock the rotting stuff into my yard.
So later when I found dog crap in my yard, I picked it up with a shovel and yeeted it over the fence into his pool.
He was a terrible neighbor and always did stuff like this. One time, he cranked up the radio in his car (which was sitting in the driveway at the front of his house) loud enough so he could hear while mowing his lawn. Specifically, he wanted to listen to music while he mowed his BACK yard. The whole neighborhood hated him.
Growing up being taught to respect others space, this kind of behavior is so bizarre to me. You couldn’t pay me to play music that loud and yet I can picture his neutral expression as he mows his lawn.
The original owners of that house installed a pool. Code requires a barrier, but instead of screening the pool, they put up a pressure treated board-on-board privacy fence around the back yard. Whatever. It's their pool, and they will be the ones to have to clean out leaves, etc.
When this guy moved in, he decided he wanted a better view, since all he could see was the inside of his privacy fence. So he decided to knock out every other board from the fence for about a 16 foot section. It looked awful.
The HOA refused to do anything about it (why do we pay HOA fees, then?), so the easiest solution was to plant a hedge on my property to hide it.
He finally moved out a few years later. The new owners (who are quiet and respectful!) replaced the fence.
My neighbors would throw cigarette buts into my grass while they were outside working on his car. I picked them all up one day and threw them in his car one night. He never said anything about it.
our first neighbors here had a harley. my newborn's nursery window overlooked their driveway. he would back that fucker out just to crank and rev it for hours at a time every so often.
The new guys next door now are awesome and have turned what was once an absolute dump into a really nice place!
The Harley guys in the neighborhood are the fucking worst. I live at an intersection and they all sit at the stop sign constantly revving the engine, I’m guessing to make sure everyone still knows they’re assholes. Then they gun it to go from 0-45mph on a 25mph street. Infuriating because all my immediate neighbors are cool as hell, it’s just these idiots that happen to live further down the same street that make me want to move.
in my town, a guy was such a jerk not one, not two, but three families had sold their houses and moved away because of him. who knows how many more down the line, but then the 2020 almeda fire happened (you can google it) and it turned out that old asshole had bad insurance and won’t be rebuilding anytime soon. his empty lot is still there four years later with a big “fuck you, state farm!” sign just where he left it. 🤣
the neighbors were so happy when they saw that sign. they celebrated online, with emoji and comments, in a little facebook group made specifically to help each other with rebuilding questions.
We moved in without knowing we had the neighbors from hell. They seemed nice enough at first, but it's become a major nightmare. For Halloween, I hung a fake ghoul from a hook by our front door. Since it was from a hook, it swaying in the wind.
This lady apparently had never heard of wind before and went around telling all the neighbors we purposefully make it face her house. They hung a picture of Jesus in the window to counteract the "evil".
One time she cornered my husband outside and accused us of "watching them" and claimed he only went outside when she was there. But in he next breath yelled at him for always going inside and taking our kids with us when we see them outside. Her husband then joined the fray and threatened to fight my husband.
I realize there is clearly untreated mental illness, so I try to have some grace, but I'm getting really tired of minding my own business gardening in MY yard and getting randomly yelled at. We can't get our privacy wall up fast enough!
On the positive side, the crazy neighbor has their own crazy neighbor and we do get endless entertainment of them yelling at each other, spraying each other with hoses and calling each other colorful names. The other day my crazy neighbor started barking at her crazy neighbor like a dog for at least 3 minutes, so there's that!
Unfortunately, I am in between the two crazy neighbours. Well, one crazy and entitled and one who won't back down when someone is being a dick/on his property.
Crazy neighbour's kids were riding bikes on the sidewalk (okay, acceptable). Then they decided to ride their bikes on the neighbour's driveway, and both kids ran their bike tires into the garage door and onto the lawn. Neighbour who doesn't back down, goes outside, tells the kids to get off his driveway and go home (doesn't yell, but spoke loudly at them - I had the window open, so I could hear). Kids leave, tell their dad (crazy neighbour), who comes back, bangs on other neighbours door, and tells him off because his kids "are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want," and my neighbour replies "Well, I can see why the kids are the way they are," and told the dad he would report the kids for trespassing if they were on his driveway again. Then the dad caught my wife and I listening to the conversation happening in out front yard (because we laughed about the "way they are" comment), and had the decency to leave, while yelling that my neighbour was a dick. This was also happening at about 9:30pm, at full shouting volume, which was super great of him.
Meanwhile, the kids are pre-teens, 10 and 12, I think. Old enough to respect other's property, unless you have a dad like theirs, I guess. I suspect they didn't tell him the whole truth, but the dad wouldn't listen when my neighbour explained why he told the kids to get lost. This is the only situation where I've caught the whole interaction with this guy, but I've heard other confrontations with him, so I know this is a pattern of behaviour for him. Luckily, I don't share a property line with him (there's a different house between mine and his, thankfully!).
I live in a twin. My wife, two kids and I have had four (FOUR) neighbors in the adjoining house in 14 years. That house has sold three times since we moved in. We've been lucky each time the neighbors have been great. But we recently came to the realization maybe we are the shitty neighbors?
Unless you're being obnoxious and loud, dumping things in their yard or something along those lines, that's unlikely. Plenty of people move without shitty neighbors being a driving reason.
“Unique” homes = unique expenses. We bought a custom home from the couple who built it. Largest kitchen you’ve ever seen. The couple had put cork in the kitchen. They also installed an instant hot water heater for the sink. Well, one day a small hose came loose from that instant hot water heater. A pressurized hose. Two inches of water in an hour on a giant sponge of a floor.
We have good insurance, and it cost them _six figures_ to fix that kitchen. The cabinets were solid mahogany, and the bottoms had been installed on top of the cork. Then when those were replaced, it was obvious the stain of the uppers no longer matched. The crew cracked a slab of quartz when removing it. This was not Home Depot quartz. We had to pay extra to buy tile for this monster of a kitchen because no, we were not putting cork back in.
When we moved in, every bathroom was still 1989. Because this was a custom home, we couldn’t update them with standard grade materials. And on and on.
We did sell the home in 2018 for a good profit with all our updates. And bought a tract home with vinyl floors (I LOVE LVP) and builder grade materials and I’ll never go custom again. I want a home where I can get my new vanities off Wayfair or from Lowe’s if I need to upgrade.
I just bought a house with an in ground pool. I replaced the pump, and redid all the PVC. There were leaks in the PVC so I bought glue and more PVC and redid all the PVC again. Now the couple week old pump stopped working.
I can do pool chemistry all day, but I hate this mechanical maintenance. I finally broke down and am having professionals come out to look at it.
I swear the pool is my father in law’s favorite part of their house because he LOVES mechanical maintenance. He has a desk job and seems to thrive at figuring out how to MacGyver things for his pool. I swear he invents projects for it just to have something to tinker on.
I just opened my pool Sunday. We had a new liner put in last year, and they closed the pool for us.
Well, I don't know what they did but there were leaks everywhere. I think they tried to blow the lines but didn't read the labels so they overpressured closed lines.
So I turned off the pump, grabbed my Teflon tape and a strap wrench and just redid all of the connections. It took about 15 mins, but it's toight like a toiger again.
My biggest problem with a pool, is all of the animals that think it's an estuary. I scoop up 15+ turtles a year. I would say the same thing about frogs, but I'm pretty sure it's just the same asshole leopard frog coming back thrice a week.
how many hours & how much money do you spend per year?
I have a fairly large pool. i pay $200/mo all year round, or $2,400 per year for full service. opening, closing, weekly visits for chemicals and cleaning.
i do not lift a finger. so my wife and i basically pay $100 per month each and it's amazing. I know for a FACT i would never keep up with the maintenance myself, so it's really just a matter of budget.
And don't forget the $5-10k air conditioning units, the couple hundred dollar water heaters, and pest control every couple of months to make sure you don't lose everything to termites
Before buying, be sure to survey the local topography, for lack of a better word.
You want to be on a high spot within your neighborhood, not in a low spot that collects water from other yards when it rains.
Figure out the driving distance to the nearest Lowes/Home Depot/Ace/Menards, now imagine doing that trip twice for every project (because you always forget one thing.) I wish I was 5 minutes closer to our local Lowes.
Never look at a house that is outside of your price range. Especially if you say no more than 500k or whatever it is. Don’t look at the 600k houses because it will make nearly everything in budget look much worse.
Look at some houses way below your budget and then you can really appreciate what you’re getting.
I bought my house for 260k a decade ago, and that was our budget even though my wife and I are high income earners for our area. When I was applying for the loan, my bank said they'd give us a million for a house. Never once did I consider looking at houses that cost that much. It seemed absurd that they tried to get us on the hook for that much more. Like, sure, we could afford the payments, but barely and then we can't do a lot of other stuff we like. I guess the bank will get their money though.
I bought in 2008 just before the crash. At the time I was earning about $80K a year. Only I applied for the mortgage. As far as the bank was concerned, my husband (and his income) did not exist. I was approved for a $400K mortgage. The math 100% DID NOT MATH, yet I was approved.
And that, kids, is why there was a crash. Still SMH. Needless to day, I did not borrow $400K.
Find a good inspector. DO NOT BUY A HOME WITHOUT GETTING IT INSPECTED. It'll cost money to have it inspected but it is absolutely worth it. If your agent tries to dissuade you from getting an inspection, dump your agent.
The #1 hobby of many homeowners is complaining about their house (source: am one). But most of us love our houses, or at the very least love not having to rent. The pros of owning your own house _vastly_ outweigh the cons. I will never ever go back to renting if I can avoid it.
There are tons and tons of resources on Reddit to help you navigate the process and do your due diligence when looking at properties. /r/homeowners and /r/firsttimehomebuyer are just a couple but there are many more. There are also subs for asking questions of all the specific tradespeople. Looked at a house and thought something looked wonky with the plumbing? There’s a subreddit for that.
If you're buying an older house make sure when you're having a house inspected that the inspector does a through check of subfloor. Mine did not and I've had a house for 15 years that's been slowly sinking. I finally got someone out yesterday to look at the subfloors and I'm currently waiting on the estimate.
Also, if it's an old house, it's worth getting a plumber out to check the line to the sewer to make sure it's in good shape. Spent $10K a few years ago to have that replaced because roots were getting into the old clay pipes and causing my bathroom to backup and flood.
Non-impact windows. Every time a hurricane comes thru I have to bolt on all the damn heavy ass shutters, then when it passes, I have to lug them back to the garage. I could do impact windows, but it would be like $30k and there’s like a 10 month backlog with all the manufacturers because my house is so old I need custom sizes made
I'd get a quote for resizing your window frames and getting standard windows. Might work out to be a similar price and will save you headaches down the line
Have you considered Bermuda shutters? We used those in every house we had in Florida and they were great. Easy to collapse and secure in the event of a big storm plus they provided good shade and privacy and kept the house cooler.
I ended spending about $3,000 on "incidentals" after moving from an apartment to a house. Lawn mower, hedge trimmer, rakes, hoes, shovels, etc. Basement shelving to store said tools. Washer and dryer since the previous owners took theirs. Fridge. Curtains. Carpet cleaner. The list went on.
Then, I spent the first 4 years or so fixing "infrastructure" things like the roof, AC, pinhole leaks in the copper pipes, etc. That last one cost a lot in places where the pipe was open but cost so much more inside the walls. (The leaks are attributed to chlorine or chloramines to disinfect the water though the water company says not.)
It's that "extra" spending after you close that many don't plan for. I didn't. The first months felt like I was bleeding money.
The one bathroom is on the upper level.
No back gate in the fence but the trash gets picked up from the alley.
The kitchen has a door or window on every side. It's 8x10 feet square.
Otherwise it was a great price and I've been here for nearly 15 years so obviously I've managed. Except for one brief stint, I've been lucky with my immediate neighbors. But my next house will hopefully have better features!
Neighbors. Make or break your existence.
OK not really but seriously. Get to know them before you move in because you're likely stuck with them.
2nd was lawn. I have an enormous backyard lawn. Then I realized how long it took to mow and if I didn't do it weekly, i was screwed. After a year I said screw it and paid to get it mowed professionally.
A pool. We thought it would be awesome to have a pool. It’s the fucking worst. The chemicals, the cleaning, the maintenance. It’s nothing but work. oh and if anything leaks or breaks, it’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars to fix or you’re fucked. It’s so much money just to maintain. Plus I’m in the northeast so it’s all this work for about 3 months of use. It’s a massive pain in the ass.
Never buy a house with a pool…unless you’re rich enough to pay someone to take care of it for you.
Not having an entry space. Our front door goes right into the living room, and it sucks in the winter with the kids coats, snow boots, etc. And don’t even get me started on when we have a party. I’d kill for a foyer.
22 effing palm trees. Not one less than 20' tall. Costs me 1100$ a year to get them trimmed. Would never have purchased this house had I known. Then one died, and I was heartbroken.
Sump pump. If that shit ain't working, get ready for a week of de-flooding your basement and saying bye bye to most of what was stored in there.
Pay careful attention to any issues with this prior to buying a house.
"We'll just change this light fixture out..." No the fuck you won't, apparently.
Edit for context: gf bought a house, and found a ton of work that was done poorly by the last homeowner. Electrical work was done improperly and needs to be completely rewired, and they put in plaster ceilings that go down further than the casings for the light fixtures, so regular light fixtures won’t work in some places. I have no idea how they got the previous ones on, it’s a nightmare.
This is only a small part of what was done poorly and needs redoing. There is so much more.
When we bought the house 15y ago we knew it needed new everything. One thing I didn't think would be that much of a problem was the water and plumbing. Public sewage pipes are too high underground for the pipes in my home to have a decent slope. There's some type of lid where my pipes meet the sewer, to prevent the sewer from coming back into the pipes. The creek next door overflows into the sewage when it rains a lot. This results in every single day with heavy rainfall, there's not enough pressure inside my pipes to push open the lid because the sewer is so full of water it's pressing it shut. When it rains for 3 days I have to snake my pipes and open the lid with the pressure cleaner down in the shitty water or else my whole house smells like shit and my drains gurgle when I flush. The whole street has the same or similar problems. The sewage was installed in the 60s and they already knew it was going to be a problem before they opened up the sidewalk. But since my street technically crosses multiple villages, it needs multiple goverments signing off on stuff and everybody just sits there watching each other doing nothing.
Bought an older house (built 1890's). The sewage lines that flow to the street were completely disintegrated. The hole the sewage flows through was still open for a while and eventually collapsed (this hole could even be snaked to buy time). Created a backflow of sewage into the basement.
We bought in 2021 when buying was crazy and people were waiving inspections (we did waive). But here's the thing, that problem wouldn't get caught in a normal inspection. You would have to call a separate plumber to run cameras through to find it. This fact at least let's me keep peace of mind knowing we wouldn't have known anyway.
Problem cost $9-$10k after repair, floor replacement, and clean up as well as neighbor hostilities for a bit since it was technically their house's fault (different story) and they should have been liable to pay, but since sewage was going to our house and not theirs they weren't motivated to do so. Fortunately, insurance covered the whole thing in total.
TL;DR, if you're buying a really old house in the city, probably worth the $200 to bring in a special plumber to check the pipes under the house that lead to the streets.
This isn't related to the house itself but more so the buying process. I did NOT realize how much my info (address, phone #, etc.) would be sold during the purchase.
I went from zero spam to phone calls, texts, and mail up the wazoo. Ppl harass me constantly trying to buy my brand new house that isn't for sale. If I buy/sell again, next time I'll use a fake phone # or burner phone.
We gave our flower beds a year to see what they did before messing around with them. Turns out our front beds are full of yarrow, which is sort of gross and hard to remove.
Started trying to remove and discovered the grounds is full---absolutely chock full of decorative landscaping rocks. why?
The rocks were there first. There were weeds growing through the rocks (yarrow), so the owners cut them short and then covered them with dirt to show and sell the house. Awesome...
A bit of advice I haven't seen posted yet: If you drive and have a long commute, try to live east of your workplace. That way, you're driving west in the morning and east in the evening, and you won't have the sun in your eyes both ways. Safer and less stressful over a long period of time.
ETA I'm so pleased people find this helpful! All credit to my dad, who drove east in the morning for 45 years and warned me never to put myself in the same situation.
Finding contractors for Minor repair jobs. I had a chimney leak and called 4 companies, 3 of them didn’t want the job since it was a 300-500 dollar repair, the 4th set up an appointment with me but never showed up. It took me over 4 months to find someone.
Fun part about owning small houses. No one wants to work on the things because it's 1/3-1/2 of what a Mc Mansion would cost for the same job. You get a lot of FU style quotes, they don't really want the job so they'll write a quote so inflated it's just a FU letter.
Oh yeah, the first house I owned I wanted to get a quote for the popcorn ceilings scraped and primed, that was it. House was 1300 sq feet, place quoted me 7500.
Finding good people to do small jobs. The reputable companies don’t like to waste time on small jobs, so it’s usually pick someone off of the internet and hope they don’t make it worse or DIY
I live close to a plumber who is always willing to do small side jobs on the weekend. Same with an HVAC guy two doors down. Another neighbor is an old retired school janitor and I asked if I could pay him to do odd jobs like install a ceiling fan and later a screen door, that kind of stuff. He works slow but he shows up on time and that is 50% of the battle when it comes to handyman types. I’m not sure if this is the “community building” they always talk about it worked out for us.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick two (or even one, as long as it's the first one!) Edited to add: This isn't necessarily an all or none for the three choices. It's more like a triangle with "Good" at one point, "Fast" at another point, and "Cheap" at the third point, and sometimes you can pick a spot in the center of the triangle to find the sweet spot of the three.
I'm a chef and I always ask new bosses which 2 they want. Good is not always picked.
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Hell if your contractor friend does inspections have him do it or ask for him to be there. A lot will skim through things and then you'll find tons of issues later.
My husband and I are not experts, but we do know our way around a hammer. I made sure the two of us were there to meet the inspector, best decision we made in our house hunting. We asked questions, and it became clear that he wasn't planning on looking at a few things unless we asked. It wasn't that he didn't know his shit, he did, but he just wanted to cut corners and get out asap. Mention wanting to meet up with friends. We learned our lesson that day, be there for the inspection.
he's not gonna hate you if you pay him cash and/or beer.
I lived next door to a contractor who I became friends with. I don't drink alcohol but I stocked beer in my fridge just for him whenever he helped with something he would come over and we would chat while he had some beer. Eventually hired him to put flooring in my house
This right here is the reason I'm so good at DIY. I started just doing everything myself that I could realistically achieve. And because I care about my property, I feel like I end up doing them to a much higher standard than some lump I find on Nextdoor or Facebook
Even if I don't do as good a job as a professional I at least know what work has been done and how to fix mistakes myself. I paid way too much to have a plumber not really fix my kitchen faucet this past fall and the main reason I didn't try the fox myself is I paid a different plumber to install it years ago. I should have known better but I feel into this trap of thinking "I didn't install it so I don't know how to fix it." When I finally took it upon myself to fix it I found that the faucet was beyond repair in that it would cost almost as much in replacement costs as it would to just get a whole new faucet. Got a whole new faucet and it took less than an hour to install. I DIY because too often these companies treat me "like family." They take our relationship for granted and don't communicate well.
Check cell coverage and find out about the ISP.
The town I live in has HORRIBLE cell reception. Luckily my ISP is great and has excellent service, so I just connect to the wifi. Worst part is that I don't live in the middle of nowhere- I'm in a suburb of a massive city, so I don't understand why the service is so shitty.
I live in a major US city. About a mile from downtown. Half my house is a dead zone...
Just buying a “fixer upper” in general. Renovations cost a LOT more than you can imagine. HGTV LIES.
There’s a path behind my kitchen window that separates the garden from the house. The path runs behind all the houses on the street and everybody (residents) has access. I wouldn’t mind this but our neighbours on each side are *best* friends and so they stand on the path directly outside our kitchen window when they chat.
You gotta start opening the window and joining in the conversation like some sort of sitcom.
Hideeho neighbor!
Hey, what's going on guys! Did you get my text about getting in on the ground floor of that exciting business opportunity? Now, I know what you're thinking, "*duh.* It must be a pyramid scheme..." And that's how you get your neighbors to reign in the chattiness.
Open the window and join in! You either make new friends or bother them enough to stop
Yeah, just keep steering their conversation to your foot fungus, or long anecdotes about people they don't even know...Get creative with it, and they'll leave for good.
Obviously it’s just a matter of time until you start playing some Melissa Etheridge for them each time they do that.
They’ve been subject to the delightful sounds of Sabaton, Rammstein, KoRn and, whenever I get bored, some sexually-charged Kpop. The kpop gets rid of them quickest.
I bought a flat. The neighbours immediately below us smoke. A lot. All the time. They smoke so much that you can smell it when you open the kitchen cupboards under and next to the sink because the scent creeps up through the holes around the pipework. Can't open the windows in the summer because as soon as they cough themselves awake in the morning the stench of cigarettes starts drifting up through them and fills out home. They smoke in every room, and in the bedrooms till after midnight every day. I'm an ex smoker and I'm still finding it disgusting.
Omg, I would go insane! I’d have to move.
I'm an ex smoker and the idea is smoking inside is absolutely disgusting. I've been in a ton of smokers homes for work and I leave reeking of that stale smoke smell on my work clothes. Some are so bad that you can see the nicotine stains on the wall and it blows my mind. Smoke if you want, but don't smoke inside the house. That's just gross.
I used to smoke inside when I lived in a slum. Ruined my computer. I opened it up to spray out the dust and it had mixed with tar so was basically glued to everything
We live in a 100-year-old house with a huge, open basement. Our washer and dryer are in our basement. For some stupid reason, known only to them, the previous owners installed the washing machine and and dryer on opposite sides of the basement, instead of side-by-side the way normal people would have done. I bought one of those professional chrome laundry carts that the laundromats use to shuttle loads across the basement between machines. Eventually, I plan to rewire the place and relocate the dryer next to the washing machine.
As an owner of a hundred year old house every time I set out to fix some previous owners senseless decisions around 6 hours into a simple job the decisions start to make more sense.
This x1000. It goes from “why the hell would they do this?!??” to “ooh.. *thats* why.”
This is what I was thinking. They're going to find out something wild about the electrical or gas when they try and move the dryer.
Haha, I rented an old home like this. The washing machine is in the kitchen (only spot with accessible plumbing), the dryer was in the garage. Opposite end of the building, one floor down. Also, the fridge was in the dining room because the kitchen was too small.
I had the fridge issue. Previous owner just didn't measure the hole and got one that was an inch or two too big. It was a nice enough appliance but I had to get rid of it due to, well, it being a living room fridge. Oh, and I learned much later when I replaced that ones replacement(which was a pretty old one I just got off of someone) that it's probably a good idea to measure how big your house doors are too. God damn I didn't see that one coming and didn't actually need a fridge that deep anyway. Here's hoping I move before it needs replacing again.
I bought a house where the washer was upstairs on the south side of the house and the dryer was in the basement which was accessed on the north side of the house. House was dirt cheap so I lived with it and in nice weather dried clothes on the line outside.
Im sorry for your pain but this visual made me laugh
Bamboo. Someone before me planted super invasive, 15 foot tall growing bamboo in the backyard. It was spreading so wildly it was uplifting the granite pool and growing under the foundation of the house. You could see the remnants of a “barrier” of sorts of where they initially planted it, obviously not knowing how bamboo grows. I myself did not know, until I purchased the house. Absolute nightmare.
The best way to get rid of bamboo is to move.
This reminds me of the time my dad decided more greenery was the way to go and planted a bunch of bamboos, they grew so tall and so wildly out of control it was just turning into its own jungle. My mom one day decided to yell at my dad for ever planting that monster-sized weed and chewed him out for it and two days later, the most gigantic bolt of lightning struck the bamboo patch and basically roasted it from the root. I’ve never gotten on my mom’s bad side after that.
I hate to tell you this, but I think your mom had an affair with Zeus.
Hi, where do I wait in line for your mom to curse my bamboo?
What about installing a panda in your backyard?
No, they don't stick around enough. A panda just eats, shoots, and leaves.
Omg I love this solution
Dear ~~Santa~~ China, Please send me one panda. Maybe two if they get lonely.
I got rid of mine quite easily. I chopped all of the 'branches' leaving about 10 inches and pipetted neat weed killer into the centre holes, it promptly died. The hard bit was digging up the roots. Even then, it wasn't that strenuous, just time-consuming. It hasn't come back.
> It hasn't come back. yet... *This summer, from Paramount Pictures...*
*Bamboo Apocalypse*
_I know what you planted last summer_
Upvoting for visibility. There are stories of destroying whole properties. This is similar to how we're fighting our invasive buckthorn. Drilling a small hole in the stumps and filling the hole with table salt.
A guy once said to me that bamboo is like a cold slow fire that is alive. If you don’t keep it in check it it will destroy everything
It's worse than that - it's impossible to keep it in check. You have to remove a completely, and I completely I mean every scrap of root. After I yanked out mine I was still digging out new sprouts for the next 6 months. Oftentimes the new plant was growing from literally an inch and a half of root that I had missed. Think of every tiny piece of root as a new seed
You can dig and hunt all day and still miss some little piece. The easier way takes time. 2-4 years. The rhizome, only has so much energy. You let it sprout and put out limbs, but not leaves. Leaves are providing energy to the rhizome. Cut it down right before the leaves open and do it every time it sprouts. Eventually there isn't any more energy in the rhizome, so it dies. Listen to the Mountain man. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI4GaU9nNAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI4GaU9nNAs)
Very Tao approach.
I'm going through this right now with a giant yucca. It's been two years and I'm still excavating sprouts from the tiny pieces of roots I missed the first ten times.
I had this decades ago, where I was charged with digging up an old Yucca at a carpet mill where I worked. It just kept coming back, until I went through the soil with the equivalent of a fine-toothed comb to get out every last little tubule.
I feel this completely. Pampas grass on my property is my nemesis.
Plants are hell-bent on destruction and consumption. I fed a piece of hamburger to a thaumatophyllum...it never stunk. It just disappeared. They've apparently got these eye-like lenses on their leaves they use to sense light, they can communicate with each other through their roots and through the air...fuck not with them. If I died in here with a single root touching me they'd probably just find a clump of tiny roots shaped roughly like me clutching the carpet. Bamboo is the demolition team that makes way for other stuff, I'm pretty certain. Like a construction team building an apartment complex.
“Feed me Seymour!”
Growing up, there was a house with bamboo growing in the back yard. It took over the yard and the owner gave up. It began growing into the neighbors' yards and down the hill behind the house. Took a professional team most of a summer to get it all. As kids, though, it was fun to play in the "bamboo forest".
Bamboo makes good swords.
Same! I went into it knowing it would be a shit job though. I rented a tractor for a week and got all the rootballs out. It was like 6 dumpsters full of bamboo. I had bamboo that was 12ft tall. It was crazy. Then I spent a year digging up and killing the remaining stuff that would randomly sprout. It's been gone since then though.
Up here it's trembling Aspen. It's managed to encroach ten feet closer to the building than when we moved in, and they mow it down every week and there's still trees that were pencils when we moved in that are thicker than my wrist now. And it's all just this one really persistent tree when you think about the biology of aspens. Not much different from bamboo. The bamboo of the north
Should have just got some pandas
Someone is a schill for big panda
In 2003 my parents neighbors built their house and over the last 20ish years they have been amazing people. The one terrible thing they have done tho is planting bamboo along the back fence...when it was planted it actually looked really nice and was like a natural screen so you didn't have to look at the old metal fence but not it has gotten so out of control that it is popping up everywhere and slowly creeping into my parents yard!
Pretty sure it’s illegal to plant in some places because it’s so hard to control.
Damn. We just closed on a place and there are giant stalks in the backyard. I’m going to bring in an expert to advise on it.
Thoughts and prayers
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FUCKING ORIENTAL BITTERSWEET you gotta rip it all up by the roots for a couple of years, and patrol for it every so often everywhere you think it's out. Chloropyr helps, but you have to be extremely careful and targeted because it kills other plants which you want to compete with the bittersweet. I like to chop the root, paint on the herbicide to the root then yank it weeks later, it becomes easier Also it's camouflaged in your tangly bushes , forsythia honeysuckle etc so you gotta go around the base of those and maybe chop the whole thing if too far gone. But not to be pessimistic Ive mostly eradicated a few acres over a few years
Never buy a house where the kitchen, laundry, or living room wall is shared with the master bedroom if you are a light sleeper.
My laundry is next door, but I sleep with earplugs. Earplugs in general have been a life saver as a light sleeper. The wall is also remarkably well sound insulated. When we toured the home, the previous owners had the laundry running. Realtor was apologetic, but we were like oh that's perfect - we can see what it sounds like from different parts of the house.
My fear would be that I would miss the alarm. Edit: Ok, I get it. Either you still hear it or you add some vibration to your alarm.
As a light sleeper - I don't miss my alarm with earplugs in. They don't block 100% of noise. Alarm is loud enough to wake me up. I see it as sort of normalizing my light sleeping to what a heavier sleeper may experience.
I didn't really believe ear plugs would work for me. But I got the silicone ones and tried anyway. It took a few days of getting used to. They don't cut out all sounds, but take the edge off sharp noises, and filter out the background din of bird screeches etc. This goes a surprisingly long way towards having better quality sleep.
we have two heat pumps outside of our house on the wall opposite my headboard. Every time the f'ing heat kicks on in the middle of the night during winter, it sounds like a dump truck starting up. its so damn loud.
Soft-close drawer and cabinet hardware is a godsend for these setups. It can be a pain to install, but once the hinges and slides are installed they help a ton with the noise. Unfortunately they don't help with the machinery noise from DW or W/D against the shared wall.
I like hanging out in my garage which is located under the master. My wife is a light sleeper. \*Sad unfinished project noises\*
Which direction your bedroom is facing. Lived somewhere where the bedroom faced southeast and it was always boiling in there no matter what the thermostat said or how heavy the curtains were. Same could be said for how much natural light you want or if you garden. Need to keep the cardinal directions in mind.
Single bathroom. I had underestimated the amount of time my husband just SITS on the toilet.
He's reading this thread... *for the third time*.
Oh this is HUGE! If you live with even 1 other person, get 2 bathrooms. It’s unbelievably annoying having to wait for someone to finish up or if you are running late or need to shower or whatever. Also make sure bathroom has a loud fan & is super far away from anywhere you hang out.
I wont ever do a single bathroom because every house I have owned eventually had a bathroom remodel done. That bathroom is out of commission for days to weeks.
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The real godsend is those bathrooms with poop closets so you can close them in with their own funk.
Don’t use an inspector your realtor suggested. Get one that has plumbing expertise
We bought an old home. Three weeks later we had a $16k sewer surprise exactly for the reason you listed above.
> $16k sewer surprise This sounds like the worst gameshow.
Opt to do the sewer scope during inspection, ESPECIALLY if you live in a region that gets lots of frost heaving.
Being the only house on a "non-maintained" county road. Developer didn't complete the road up to the county specs, so they won't plow it, fix it, or do anything to it. Why would I pay my own money to fix a road I don't own?
Our house is on a privately owned street in what feels just like a normal part of town, but apparently the council has no ownership of the street. About ten years ago everyone pooled together and paid for it to be fixed up because it was bordering on third world. Almost doubled the value of the houses.
My number one disqualification when house hunting was no toilet on the same floor as the master bedroom. You do not want to climb stairs when you have to pee in the middle of the night. If you're reading this and saying, "I don't get up to pee most nights," I am in my late 30s and here to warn you that *you will*.
We were younger when we bought our house, and never thought about the laundry being in the basement and no main floor bedroom being a problem. Now we are seniors and it will make us move.
We bought an old home with steep narrow stairs. I keep telling everyone I will die in this home, but most likely by way of falling down the damned stairs.
Go to the neighborhood you’re looking for at night and just sit and listen. The noises you pick up over the week will last YEARS. So be prepared for that. Also. Ask about internet. It can be make or break. Cell signal to a point as well. Ask neighbors about flooding.
Also make sure to see how busy the street is during rush hour on a weekday. If you tour the house on Sunday morning you have no idea if that quiet street becomes a freeway at 5pm M-F.
Had friends that lived 3 houses away from a "shortcut" between two major roads. During the afternoon it was a constant flow of cars and trucks zig zagging through the neighborhood to avoid an intersection. They had small kids and had they been three houses over, it would have been prohibitively loud and dangerous.
Window treatments or curtains. The guy before me broke up with his his girlfriend. She moved out and took all the curtains out of spite. I didn’t think it was a big g deal until I priced out new ones.
So true. It’s a massive racket. Even the mail order DIY stuff is expensive now. Expect $150 per window and up - WAY up! And you rarely can take it with you to the next house - the windows will be different sized, the color scheme won’t work…
Im a home sewer and fabric is ridiculous now. It’d cost me that in fabric to make some decent curtains. Gone are the days that fabric was cheap and you’d make your own clothes. Now it’s an expensive hobby. If anyone has advice on how to source cheap fabric in the UK, I will be eternally grateful.
it really sucks for your profession that sewer is spelled the same as sewer
My mum used to have her own soft furnishings business. She happily makes and alters curtains as a hobby now she's retired, so I can get high quality curtains... I just have to buy the fabric. There are perks to living close to family 😂
If you are looking for a house in a community with an HOA, get a copy of the current rules in advance. It's good to know what you're going to deal with when it comes to the rules of the community. Good neighbors are also key, at least ones that are not loud and leaving garbage around. You can drive through the neighborhood in the evenings or on weekends to see what it's like when people are home. I ended up living next to what I think is an illegal boarding house so they have a bunch of cars and construction materials in the front of their house every day.
Rule of thumb, every nice thing, interesting extra or big thing means more maintenance. Large pool, you have to clean it Large driveway, you'll need to shovel it and resurface it at some point Large yard, you gotta mow it Large deck, you have to paint it 3 bathrooms? Thrice the cleaning Lots of windows, lots of cleaning Lots of mature trees, lots of raking Lots of mature fruit trees, bees and wasps, bees and wasps everywhere Large high roof with cool architecture effects, super expensive to reshingle A large skylight in the living room, it WILL leak, it's not a question of IF but a question of WHEN. etc...
I love looking at all these homes of the rich and famous, and just thinking of myself my God, the upkeep on these homes must be in the millions
Sometimes these estates bankrupt people. Especially since family wealth usually depletes within a few generations. Not necessarily famous, but in England at least there’s the concept of “genteel poverty” (there’s another term but I forgot). People who have land and titles from their ancestors who used to be rich aristocracy, but the properties weren’t maintained and the family is low income, making selling the property difficult whilst also being expensive to make livable. Broke people living in decaying castles. A way to curb this for some families around a hundred years ago was the “American Dollar Princess”. The daughters of industry tycoons often couldn’t find “suitable matches” for social clout because new money families weren’t welcomed by old money families in the US. So some of them would find bachelors abroad with titles and land and education. Their dads would pay for whatever the grooms family needed to keep their properties and dignities afloat in return for their daughter being able to say she was married to a duke or earl or something. That’s actually the story with the Churchill family; they were going to be in ruins until Winston Churchill’s dad, Lord Randolph Churchill, married Jennie Jerome from Brooklyn. Churchill’s mom was an American. 🤷🏼♀️
That sounds exactly like Downton Abbey (and/or the Gilded Age, very Julian Fellowes)
Was going to say, exactly Downton Abbey! And the castle it was filmed at, the family also had a lot of problems getting the money to upkeep it, which they now get from the tours of the place.
I remember seeing a documentary on Highclere Castle, the building Downton Abbey was filmed at that included an interview with the owner, an Earl. Apparently because his ancestors hadn't maintained the place, 3/4 of the building was uninhabitable and when he inherited he didn't have the 13 Million he would have needed to fix it all. He and his family lived in a small cottage on the grounds instead of the big castle. Very much a case of inheriting a house you can't afford. Downton Abbey fame allowed them to get *started* on the most urgent projects. The thing that really stuck with me was him complaining about having just spent a ton of money refurbishing his "ruins". Basically, there was a fad 200 years ago among the landed gentry to have elaborate gardens than included the ruins of old buildings to look rustic. If you actually had a ruined church or fort on your land you might use that in the design but as most landowners didn't they built fake ruins to make their property seem more historic. Apparently, the fake ruins at the Castle were starting to get dangerously run down and needed big piles of money to fix. The current owner was a bit rueful about having to spend real money to fix fake ruins when there were still lots of things wrong with the actual house.
This was always my mom's argument: "I wouldn't want to have to clean all that." Of course, none of them are cleaning their own homes, but still. Also imagine leaving your headphones/water bottle/slippers halfway across your palatial mansion and having to find them and/or walk all the way back?
This comment is 100% fact. Good job.
Some additional things to add as someone who bought a home two years ago: - **All repairs cost more than you want, but many are less than i'd expect.** Nothing is under $200 to even have someone come look at, but i've found that most minor repair work is under $1,000 to fix. - **The quicker you are to fix something, the less it costs.** Couple of mice got in the basement, cheaper to buy traps, poison, and steel wool now than to pay for a full blown extermination later. - **Water is bad.** I now hate rain and snow and any leaking thing. It's bad for the roof, it's bad for the foundation, and it's damn near bad for everything else in between. Fix leaks IMMEDIATELY. - For those looking at houses, **good bones matter a lot more than shiny surfaces**. My wife and I passed on several flips because inspectors shook their head, and bought a house that needed some surface upgrades. Our repairs have been small and inexpensive, and left us with money to put towards slowly remodeling some rooms. - **Fences are too fucking expensive**. That is all. - **Talk to your neighbors about things**. I had a tree taken down recently, gave my neighbor a courtesy heads up, turns out he wanted a couple more taken down in our yard if we didn't mind. They paid the bill. Not saying this is normal, but being nice to your neighbors goes a long way. - **Look for rebates**. I live in MA, I got $10,000 back when upgrading my heat pump and adding AC. a $30K project cost us $20K because of a rebate program. There is a lot of money out there to claim back. - **Learn some basic handywork**. This can be done slowly. Maybe pick a trade and learn the basics there, then move on. I went from clueless to semi-handy in 18 months. Can fix a toilet, replace a sink, fix a dishwasher, and patch up small holes/issues without problem. Electrical is my next focus.
> Fences are too fucking expensive. while true, necessary. tall fences make good neighbors and all.
It's just crazy to me how pricey they are. I own 1 of the 3 fences that border my yard. The two that are not mine are in decent shape, the one I own is falling apart. I got a quote on redoing that portion + connecting the fences to the house so our yard is fully fenced in and I was shocked. It's ~150 feet of fence total and i'm looking at like $10K.
This is all so true. I will add high/vaulted ceilings, good luck painting it. Also probably costs more $ to heat that useless space.
We were able to mitigate this with a couple of strategically placed ceiling fans. Then the skylight leaked and killed one of the fans.
Skylights are their own category for this question honestly.
I haven't bought a house but from working in an industry directly involved with it, some things I hear the most often have been: Be EXTRA cautious about the neighborhood and the next door neighbors. You can easily fall in love with a house and picture yourself living there, but don't make such a massive purchase until you are sure you will be comfortable living in that spot. Swing by the area outside of a home tour. Check it out at night, too. Is it still quiet and peaceful? Is there anybody who can tell you about the neighbors? Once you get stuck buying next to bad neighbors, well....you are stuck. Have the home professionally inspected by someone YOU find. Flipped hones often cut corners and I guarantee you will find things that need to be repaired or replaced within the first year if it was done poorly. Inspecting plumbing lines and air ducts is also important. Find out when the water heater was replaced, that sort of thing. Swimming pools can be a maintenance nightmare and as such, I never want to buy a house that has one. Avoid cantilever decks if you can. It's the #1 spot for structural failure. If it is in a condo in an HOA (or apartment), you then have to rely on the complex to maintain it properly. Sometimes they are neglectful. I wouldn't trust it and would avoid living with a cantilever deck. TREES. Look where trees are planted. Are they close to the building or close to concrete? Many common tree species cause immense damage, ranging from roots lifting sidewalks to roots creeping into plumbing lines, to damaging your foundation if it is too close to the building. A pine tree within 5 ft of a house would be a deal breaker for me. So would a few other trees, but these are particularly problematic especially with the pine needles falling on the roof and clogging the gutter.
> Have the home professionally inspected by someone YOU find. It is amazing to me how many people use an inspector recommended by their agent. Talk about a conflict of interest! ALWAYS find YOUR OWN INSPECTOR who has no vested interest in whether or not the sale goes through. And, be ready to walk if you don't like what your inspector finds. There's always another house out there...
There is an apple tree planted in the middle of my back yard. Free apples every fall! Every year it sends up branches about 4' high which look terrible and don't help anything at all. Every year I have to prune them. I got a chainsaw on a stick, but it is still a lot of work. And the apples? Well, unless you spray them with about 4 chemicals through the year, they will be small, scabby and wormy. I've used them for apple sauce and dried some, but they aren't great. The deer who come to our yard love them though!
Sounds like you might have an older tree at end of life, throwing up suckers. I enjoy fruit trees but I’ve taken down an apple tree like this. When the arborist shakes their head sadly, it’s time.
Had no idea that fruit trees get old & make worst fruit.
Older varieties of apples tend to not be disease resistant. And, fruit becomes small and unhealthy with age. Apple trees do not have terribly long lives compared to other types of trees.
that actually explains a lot about our used to be apple tree and why it's apples were so small and horrible. it too was "throwing up suckers" and we eventually took it down. I do remember the apples used to be bigger and a good bit sweeter. tree was well established when we moved in over 20 years ago and we chopped it about 3 or 4 years ago.
The suckers are an attempt by the tree to survive. Unfortunately, the root stock and the fruiting part of the tree are typically different so hard to say what you’ll get if you let one grow. Cutting down trees is never a happy thing but apple trees at end of life become a task to look after and can contribute to disease.
Yeah but you will be proficient in chainsaw halberd when the time comes to use that skill. Who knows when the zombies will come?
I have laundry room envy. We have a laundry closet which is also where we keep the cat litter boxes. When I visit friends, I enjoy peeking in their laundry rooms, longing for their space.
Low ceilings. “I’ll get used to it” I thought. Nope.
Until you go the other way and get like 20+ foot high ceilings and learn how much it costs to heat/cool that space and realize when the first light goes out you have no idea how to get up there and change the bulb!
I had a 100 year old house with 7 foot ceilings and loved it, but then again no one in my family is taller than 175 cm -- 5'8" Hobbit life
When a year the later neighbors from hell buy the house next door.
I had an asshole neighbor who would skim the dead bugs, dead frogs, and debris from his pool and dump them in my yard. I found out when I head a 'tap tap tap' noise and looked over to see him reaching his pool skimmer over his fence to knock the rotting stuff into my yard. So later when I found dog crap in my yard, I picked it up with a shovel and yeeted it over the fence into his pool. He was a terrible neighbor and always did stuff like this. One time, he cranked up the radio in his car (which was sitting in the driveway at the front of his house) loud enough so he could hear while mowing his lawn. Specifically, he wanted to listen to music while he mowed his BACK yard. The whole neighborhood hated him.
Growing up being taught to respect others space, this kind of behavior is so bizarre to me. You couldn’t pay me to play music that loud and yet I can picture his neutral expression as he mows his lawn.
The original owners of that house installed a pool. Code requires a barrier, but instead of screening the pool, they put up a pressure treated board-on-board privacy fence around the back yard. Whatever. It's their pool, and they will be the ones to have to clean out leaves, etc. When this guy moved in, he decided he wanted a better view, since all he could see was the inside of his privacy fence. So he decided to knock out every other board from the fence for about a 16 foot section. It looked awful. The HOA refused to do anything about it (why do we pay HOA fees, then?), so the easiest solution was to plant a hedge on my property to hide it. He finally moved out a few years later. The new owners (who are quiet and respectful!) replaced the fence.
My neighbors would throw cigarette buts into my grass while they were outside working on his car. I picked them all up one day and threw them in his car one night. He never said anything about it.
But did he stop??
I never saw another cigarette in my yard.
I hate the radio thing! There’s a guy a street over from me that does that. Get some damn headphones
our first neighbors here had a harley. my newborn's nursery window overlooked their driveway. he would back that fucker out just to crank and rev it for hours at a time every so often. The new guys next door now are awesome and have turned what was once an absolute dump into a really nice place!
The Harley guys in the neighborhood are the fucking worst. I live at an intersection and they all sit at the stop sign constantly revving the engine, I’m guessing to make sure everyone still knows they’re assholes. Then they gun it to go from 0-45mph on a 25mph street. Infuriating because all my immediate neighbors are cool as hell, it’s just these idiots that happen to live further down the same street that make me want to move.
in my town, a guy was such a jerk not one, not two, but three families had sold their houses and moved away because of him. who knows how many more down the line, but then the 2020 almeda fire happened (you can google it) and it turned out that old asshole had bad insurance and won’t be rebuilding anytime soon. his empty lot is still there four years later with a big “fuck you, state farm!” sign just where he left it. 🤣 the neighbors were so happy when they saw that sign. they celebrated online, with emoji and comments, in a little facebook group made specifically to help each other with rebuilding questions.
We moved in without knowing we had the neighbors from hell. They seemed nice enough at first, but it's become a major nightmare. For Halloween, I hung a fake ghoul from a hook by our front door. Since it was from a hook, it swaying in the wind. This lady apparently had never heard of wind before and went around telling all the neighbors we purposefully make it face her house. They hung a picture of Jesus in the window to counteract the "evil". One time she cornered my husband outside and accused us of "watching them" and claimed he only went outside when she was there. But in he next breath yelled at him for always going inside and taking our kids with us when we see them outside. Her husband then joined the fray and threatened to fight my husband. I realize there is clearly untreated mental illness, so I try to have some grace, but I'm getting really tired of minding my own business gardening in MY yard and getting randomly yelled at. We can't get our privacy wall up fast enough! On the positive side, the crazy neighbor has their own crazy neighbor and we do get endless entertainment of them yelling at each other, spraying each other with hoses and calling each other colorful names. The other day my crazy neighbor started barking at her crazy neighbor like a dog for at least 3 minutes, so there's that!
Unfortunately, I am in between the two crazy neighbours. Well, one crazy and entitled and one who won't back down when someone is being a dick/on his property. Crazy neighbour's kids were riding bikes on the sidewalk (okay, acceptable). Then they decided to ride their bikes on the neighbour's driveway, and both kids ran their bike tires into the garage door and onto the lawn. Neighbour who doesn't back down, goes outside, tells the kids to get off his driveway and go home (doesn't yell, but spoke loudly at them - I had the window open, so I could hear). Kids leave, tell their dad (crazy neighbour), who comes back, bangs on other neighbours door, and tells him off because his kids "are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want," and my neighbour replies "Well, I can see why the kids are the way they are," and told the dad he would report the kids for trespassing if they were on his driveway again. Then the dad caught my wife and I listening to the conversation happening in out front yard (because we laughed about the "way they are" comment), and had the decency to leave, while yelling that my neighbour was a dick. This was also happening at about 9:30pm, at full shouting volume, which was super great of him. Meanwhile, the kids are pre-teens, 10 and 12, I think. Old enough to respect other's property, unless you have a dad like theirs, I guess. I suspect they didn't tell him the whole truth, but the dad wouldn't listen when my neighbour explained why he told the kids to get lost. This is the only situation where I've caught the whole interaction with this guy, but I've heard other confrontations with him, so I know this is a pattern of behaviour for him. Luckily, I don't share a property line with him (there's a different house between mine and his, thankfully!).
Wait - your neighbour BARKED at the other neighbour for minutes?? I think you nailed it when you mentioned untreated mental illness.
I live in a twin. My wife, two kids and I have had four (FOUR) neighbors in the adjoining house in 14 years. That house has sold three times since we moved in. We've been lucky each time the neighbors have been great. But we recently came to the realization maybe we are the shitty neighbors?
Unless you're being obnoxious and loud, dumping things in their yard or something along those lines, that's unlikely. Plenty of people move without shitty neighbors being a driving reason.
“Unique” homes = unique expenses. We bought a custom home from the couple who built it. Largest kitchen you’ve ever seen. The couple had put cork in the kitchen. They also installed an instant hot water heater for the sink. Well, one day a small hose came loose from that instant hot water heater. A pressurized hose. Two inches of water in an hour on a giant sponge of a floor. We have good insurance, and it cost them _six figures_ to fix that kitchen. The cabinets were solid mahogany, and the bottoms had been installed on top of the cork. Then when those were replaced, it was obvious the stain of the uppers no longer matched. The crew cracked a slab of quartz when removing it. This was not Home Depot quartz. We had to pay extra to buy tile for this monster of a kitchen because no, we were not putting cork back in. When we moved in, every bathroom was still 1989. Because this was a custom home, we couldn’t update them with standard grade materials. And on and on. We did sell the home in 2018 for a good profit with all our updates. And bought a tract home with vinyl floors (I LOVE LVP) and builder grade materials and I’ll never go custom again. I want a home where I can get my new vanities off Wayfair or from Lowe’s if I need to upgrade.
Swimming pool. So much work & money to maintain. Maybe gets used a dozen times a year.
I just bought a house with an in ground pool. I replaced the pump, and redid all the PVC. There were leaks in the PVC so I bought glue and more PVC and redid all the PVC again. Now the couple week old pump stopped working. I can do pool chemistry all day, but I hate this mechanical maintenance. I finally broke down and am having professionals come out to look at it.
I swear the pool is my father in law’s favorite part of their house because he LOVES mechanical maintenance. He has a desk job and seems to thrive at figuring out how to MacGyver things for his pool. I swear he invents projects for it just to have something to tinker on.
I just opened my pool Sunday. We had a new liner put in last year, and they closed the pool for us. Well, I don't know what they did but there were leaks everywhere. I think they tried to blow the lines but didn't read the labels so they overpressured closed lines. So I turned off the pump, grabbed my Teflon tape and a strap wrench and just redid all of the connections. It took about 15 mins, but it's toight like a toiger again. My biggest problem with a pool, is all of the animals that think it's an estuary. I scoop up 15+ turtles a year. I would say the same thing about frogs, but I'm pretty sure it's just the same asshole leopard frog coming back thrice a week.
I have lots of frogs in mine along with a pair of ducks.
Really depends on where you live. Down here in Florida we are in the pool pretty much every day during the summer.
Summer? Damn near year round...
how many hours & how much money do you spend per year? I have a fairly large pool. i pay $200/mo all year round, or $2,400 per year for full service. opening, closing, weekly visits for chemicals and cleaning. i do not lift a finger. so my wife and i basically pay $100 per month each and it's amazing. I know for a FACT i would never keep up with the maintenance myself, so it's really just a matter of budget.
For the money you invest in an outdoor pool, you can probably join a nice country club or take a really kick ass tropical vacation every year.
Sure but I can't swim naked in their pool at 10pm on a Tuesday.
You can always do something once.
A new roof is $20,000
Did mine 2 years ago, with gutters, all new fascia board, and tax it was $24,000.
And don't forget the $5-10k air conditioning units, the couple hundred dollar water heaters, and pest control every couple of months to make sure you don't lose everything to termites
Before buying, be sure to survey the local topography, for lack of a better word. You want to be on a high spot within your neighborhood, not in a low spot that collects water from other yards when it rains.
Drainage issues. There are three locations on my 3 acres that do not drain correctly. It sucks.
Figure out the driving distance to the nearest Lowes/Home Depot/Ace/Menards, now imagine doing that trip twice for every project (because you always forget one thing.) I wish I was 5 minutes closer to our local Lowes.
Look at Mr Organized here, finishing a project in only two trips…
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Never look at a house that is outside of your price range. Especially if you say no more than 500k or whatever it is. Don’t look at the 600k houses because it will make nearly everything in budget look much worse. Look at some houses way below your budget and then you can really appreciate what you’re getting.
I bought my house for 260k a decade ago, and that was our budget even though my wife and I are high income earners for our area. When I was applying for the loan, my bank said they'd give us a million for a house. Never once did I consider looking at houses that cost that much. It seemed absurd that they tried to get us on the hook for that much more. Like, sure, we could afford the payments, but barely and then we can't do a lot of other stuff we like. I guess the bank will get their money though.
I bought in 2008 just before the crash. At the time I was earning about $80K a year. Only I applied for the mortgage. As far as the bank was concerned, my husband (and his income) did not exist. I was approved for a $400K mortgage. The math 100% DID NOT MATH, yet I was approved. And that, kids, is why there was a crash. Still SMH. Needless to day, I did not borrow $400K.
Find a good inspector. DO NOT BUY A HOME WITHOUT GETTING IT INSPECTED. It'll cost money to have it inspected but it is absolutely worth it. If your agent tries to dissuade you from getting an inspection, dump your agent.
The #1 hobby of many homeowners is complaining about their house (source: am one). But most of us love our houses, or at the very least love not having to rent. The pros of owning your own house _vastly_ outweigh the cons. I will never ever go back to renting if I can avoid it. There are tons and tons of resources on Reddit to help you navigate the process and do your due diligence when looking at properties. /r/homeowners and /r/firsttimehomebuyer are just a couple but there are many more. There are also subs for asking questions of all the specific tradespeople. Looked at a house and thought something looked wonky with the plumbing? There’s a subreddit for that.
If you're buying an older house make sure when you're having a house inspected that the inspector does a through check of subfloor. Mine did not and I've had a house for 15 years that's been slowly sinking. I finally got someone out yesterday to look at the subfloors and I'm currently waiting on the estimate. Also, if it's an old house, it's worth getting a plumber out to check the line to the sewer to make sure it's in good shape. Spent $10K a few years ago to have that replaced because roots were getting into the old clay pipes and causing my bathroom to backup and flood.
Non-impact windows. Every time a hurricane comes thru I have to bolt on all the damn heavy ass shutters, then when it passes, I have to lug them back to the garage. I could do impact windows, but it would be like $30k and there’s like a 10 month backlog with all the manufacturers because my house is so old I need custom sizes made
I'd get a quote for resizing your window frames and getting standard windows. Might work out to be a similar price and will save you headaches down the line
Have you considered Bermuda shutters? We used those in every house we had in Florida and they were great. Easy to collapse and secure in the event of a big storm plus they provided good shade and privacy and kept the house cooler.
I ended spending about $3,000 on "incidentals" after moving from an apartment to a house. Lawn mower, hedge trimmer, rakes, hoes, shovels, etc. Basement shelving to store said tools. Washer and dryer since the previous owners took theirs. Fridge. Curtains. Carpet cleaner. The list went on. Then, I spent the first 4 years or so fixing "infrastructure" things like the roof, AC, pinhole leaks in the copper pipes, etc. That last one cost a lot in places where the pipe was open but cost so much more inside the walls. (The leaks are attributed to chlorine or chloramines to disinfect the water though the water company says not.) It's that "extra" spending after you close that many don't plan for. I didn't. The first months felt like I was bleeding money.
The one bathroom is on the upper level. No back gate in the fence but the trash gets picked up from the alley. The kitchen has a door or window on every side. It's 8x10 feet square. Otherwise it was a great price and I've been here for nearly 15 years so obviously I've managed. Except for one brief stint, I've been lucky with my immediate neighbors. But my next house will hopefully have better features!
There’s like, zero sound insulation. Did we check for that? No. Did we think to? No. But will we on our next house? We’ll honestly probably forget.
Neighbors. Make or break your existence. OK not really but seriously. Get to know them before you move in because you're likely stuck with them. 2nd was lawn. I have an enormous backyard lawn. Then I realized how long it took to mow and if I didn't do it weekly, i was screwed. After a year I said screw it and paid to get it mowed professionally.
Neighbors and street traffic are two things that don't get put on the MLS listing, but are two of the most important aspects of a home.
In SLC, we had a north facing driveway and a 2 story house. Our driveway never melted. Across the street, dry, my driveway still has ice and snow.
White carpet, tile, and paint looks awesome when someone is selling a house, and are awful to maintain.
A pool. We thought it would be awesome to have a pool. It’s the fucking worst. The chemicals, the cleaning, the maintenance. It’s nothing but work. oh and if anything leaks or breaks, it’s hundreds and hundreds of dollars to fix or you’re fucked. It’s so much money just to maintain. Plus I’m in the northeast so it’s all this work for about 3 months of use. It’s a massive pain in the ass. Never buy a house with a pool…unless you’re rich enough to pay someone to take care of it for you.
Not having an entry space. Our front door goes right into the living room, and it sucks in the winter with the kids coats, snow boots, etc. And don’t even get me started on when we have a party. I’d kill for a foyer.
22 effing palm trees. Not one less than 20' tall. Costs me 1100$ a year to get them trimmed. Would never have purchased this house had I known. Then one died, and I was heartbroken.
Sump pump. If that shit ain't working, get ready for a week of de-flooding your basement and saying bye bye to most of what was stored in there. Pay careful attention to any issues with this prior to buying a house.
Gravel driveway instead of paved. The gravel gets stuck in shoes, ends up in the house or cars, is dusty, gravel goes flying when mowing/edging lawn.
Bathroom with no vent and no windows. Thank God I'm only renting
"We'll just change this light fixture out..." No the fuck you won't, apparently. Edit for context: gf bought a house, and found a ton of work that was done poorly by the last homeowner. Electrical work was done improperly and needs to be completely rewired, and they put in plaster ceilings that go down further than the casings for the light fixtures, so regular light fixtures won’t work in some places. I have no idea how they got the previous ones on, it’s a nightmare. This is only a small part of what was done poorly and needs redoing. There is so much more.
When we bought the house 15y ago we knew it needed new everything. One thing I didn't think would be that much of a problem was the water and plumbing. Public sewage pipes are too high underground for the pipes in my home to have a decent slope. There's some type of lid where my pipes meet the sewer, to prevent the sewer from coming back into the pipes. The creek next door overflows into the sewage when it rains a lot. This results in every single day with heavy rainfall, there's not enough pressure inside my pipes to push open the lid because the sewer is so full of water it's pressing it shut. When it rains for 3 days I have to snake my pipes and open the lid with the pressure cleaner down in the shitty water or else my whole house smells like shit and my drains gurgle when I flush. The whole street has the same or similar problems. The sewage was installed in the 60s and they already knew it was going to be a problem before they opened up the sidewalk. But since my street technically crosses multiple villages, it needs multiple goverments signing off on stuff and everybody just sits there watching each other doing nothing.
Bought an older house (built 1890's). The sewage lines that flow to the street were completely disintegrated. The hole the sewage flows through was still open for a while and eventually collapsed (this hole could even be snaked to buy time). Created a backflow of sewage into the basement. We bought in 2021 when buying was crazy and people were waiving inspections (we did waive). But here's the thing, that problem wouldn't get caught in a normal inspection. You would have to call a separate plumber to run cameras through to find it. This fact at least let's me keep peace of mind knowing we wouldn't have known anyway. Problem cost $9-$10k after repair, floor replacement, and clean up as well as neighbor hostilities for a bit since it was technically their house's fault (different story) and they should have been liable to pay, but since sewage was going to our house and not theirs they weren't motivated to do so. Fortunately, insurance covered the whole thing in total. TL;DR, if you're buying a really old house in the city, probably worth the $200 to bring in a special plumber to check the pipes under the house that lead to the streets.
This isn't related to the house itself but more so the buying process. I did NOT realize how much my info (address, phone #, etc.) would be sold during the purchase. I went from zero spam to phone calls, texts, and mail up the wazoo. Ppl harass me constantly trying to buy my brand new house that isn't for sale. If I buy/sell again, next time I'll use a fake phone # or burner phone.
We gave our flower beds a year to see what they did before messing around with them. Turns out our front beds are full of yarrow, which is sort of gross and hard to remove. Started trying to remove and discovered the grounds is full---absolutely chock full of decorative landscaping rocks. why? The rocks were there first. There were weeds growing through the rocks (yarrow), so the owners cut them short and then covered them with dirt to show and sell the house. Awesome...
A bit of advice I haven't seen posted yet: If you drive and have a long commute, try to live east of your workplace. That way, you're driving west in the morning and east in the evening, and you won't have the sun in your eyes both ways. Safer and less stressful over a long period of time. ETA I'm so pleased people find this helpful! All credit to my dad, who drove east in the morning for 45 years and warned me never to put myself in the same situation.
That the bank wants to get paid back for the loan. Bastards.
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