Posted: 8/15/2006 9:09:51 PM EDT
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After a thorough review of our property tax bill, the real estate market here, and our outlook for our business, looks like I gotta get a regular job. Anybody know anything useful about Metro Watch? They seem to have a good reputation in Vancouver. Gotta get in shape, too. Fat was OK as a real estate agent, but won't do well on my feet for 8Hrs+. Luckily, Danner boot outlet store is just across the river! 
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You read the article in the Columbian about this property tax bull shit? Clark is pushing to have everything assess at "Fair market value".. Which is going to fuck people over big time as taxes increase each year. These retards must want us all to live in the ghetto in a tiny apartment 
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Come on, you know you want to shout it out !
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Praying for armed conflict, you have no idea the misery you wish for. 
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+1 
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Sad that a post about me moving away from real estate back into private security brings out the MILITIA. After a while it's like watching a cow chew it's cud, it's just the same old jaw motions over and over. Or it's like hard core southerners and the "The south will rise again!" line: I've been asking these kinds of folks "When?" for so long I've given up. Lock this topic or delete it now before it goes too far, please. As for the rest of you, thanks for the kinds words. I appreciate it. Sounds like they would like to put me either as security at the hospital or doing patrol and alarm response. Should help keep me from being to bored. Besides, the hospital is where all the sick people are!    I know, wash my hands frequently. |
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Break out the tissue, folks. Actually, I will be working to pay the property taxes on the home we share with my in-laws. They are both quite elderly, although my father in law tries to get out and do a couple hours of work every day or so. He likes to use his chain saw to cut firewood for the winter. It is a big house, on 5 acres, in the Columbia River Gorge (just the western edge of it, nothing really to shout about, no view, as in 0 view), and I really should have seen this coming working in real estate. If there is any silver lining to this, I expect our taxes to stay very level or possibly even lower the next time they come around for assessments as long as the Gorge Commission continues allowing development in my area at the pace they have been (slowly but picking up). The sad part is that my father in law had a great job working for the .gov, has a great pension, made good decisions and investments earlier in life, and the squeeze gets tighter and tighter every day. The property taxes are just one thing that is doing it to all of us, my mother in laws cancer and other medical problems, while well covered by insurance, are taking their toll with costs that are not covered by medical insurance: Certain durable medical goods, gas to drive to different appointments around the Portland area, the effects of her cancer treatment on her mind and body, etc. She used to prepare taxes and ran library systems in the university of California system, and now her mind is about half what it used to be. The whole situation is what sucks, and having lower property taxes would only help our wallets, not our problems. Getting old is a bitch, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  ETA: Save money and prepare well for retirement/old age while you can, folks. You cannot predict what kind of economic conditions you will be dealing with in your old age, much less the costs of getting old, and they can be quite high. We'll be lucky to live in any kind of comfort when we get old, even though we are preparing as best we can. |
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OK, both of you, just go have a beer and shut up. Ya'll have ruined enough threads with this childish shit. Back to the subject. Is it even worth buying a house these days? It seems that buying one as an "investment" is a scam or fools errand. Sure you get a tax break, but does that offset the property tax? Not to mention the fact that you have to pay for al repairs and all utilities, plus maintain the property? With all the time and money you have to spendo nupkepp, maintenance and everything else, it almost seems that a condo or apartment is as good a deal. It seems that the only real reason to own a home is for more space and greater privacy. And you can get most of that by renting a house. Oh, wait, even when you "own" your own home, you are still sort of renting it from the state if you consider property taxes. |
You think that property taxes, maintenance, upkeep, and everything else are not factored into rent? Also, you more or less fix your monthly housing costs with a mortgage, assuming you have a set APR. As a renter, you are at the mercy of the market and the landlord. Then there is the greater freedom to do as you wish with your own home. I doubt that current rents would buy me as much house as my monthly mortgage does. All in all, I have NEVER regretted buying a house instead of remaining a renter. If anything, I wish I had purchased a home even sooner than I did. |
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Unicorn, your question is a good one. It's something that people really need to sit down, pencil, paper, calculator, and figure out. I advise folks to never buy the home they will be living in as an investment, but to treat it like one. For some, buying a house in good condition (needing no or very few repairs) is not an investment so much as it is an attempt at freezing a part of their housing costs. There are some factors that go into this: Your interest rate, distance from work, food/shopping, schools, etc., etc. For example: If someone used to pay $X rent, and they pay the same for the principle of their loan, taxes, and insurance, and the interest on the loan is deductible, than they are breaking even. Taxes really are a small part of most homes, we have a large home that can accommodate two families, so I'll admit we are higher up in value than a statistically median type home. Now, to live in this home on 5 acres, well, there aren't any rentals, period, so I gotta kinda chalk it all up to the price I pay to live right where I want to (mostly). Plus, many repairs I do myself, and they are not difficult with some care, a little guidance, and patience. If someone bought a home that was undervalued due to repairs (including remodeling a very dated home), and the sales price was under other comparable home values are for the neighborhood, they could be way ahead of the game. The first sale I made as a real estate agent was to a single guy that bought a home that needed a new roof, new flooring, new kitchen, and some paint. It was listed for $99K, we got him into it for $95K, and he did all the work himself. In one month, after lots of sweat, cussing, and wood polishing, the home's value had jumped by 35%. He still pays less for his home than he paid for rent, has approx 500 sq ft more than his old apartment, and has a great place to live with relatively fixed cost for the next 30 years, except for the occasional repair. We own some rentals. The rent we charge covers repairs, pest control, the water bill, and management costs. The tenants of the apartments we have share all of the common areas, there is absolutely no privacy outdoors, and not much more in the apartments, compared to a single family home. For not much more than they are paying in rent, they could have a slightly smaller home, with one bathroom, and a yard, and own it, but I guess that everyone has their own reasons for not taking that step. I don't blame them, and since I believe that everyone should be able to have decent housing, I don't charge more for rent than I need to cover my expenses (mortgage, a set expense; Taxes, changes annually, but so does the rent amount; repairs, which are easier to budget for than you think, plus I have damage deposits to help cover this; and water, which isn't very expensive until someone has a bad leak that they don't tell me about). We have a really nice duplex that we rent out. Brand new, quiet, AC/gas heat, gas fireplaces, gas stoves, all appliances, burglar and fire alarms, and we charge for rent similar to what the renters would pay to own a similar home if they had bought one. Not because I can get rich off their rent (I can't, and I won't), but because that what it costs. In this case, it is not cheaper to rent, it is only slightly less hassle, for some of the reasons you stated. Boomer said he has no regrets, and I have only met one person that did: He lost the house in a divorce. Can't win them all, right? He shoulda remembered he was married. So Uni, does that help answer your question(s) at all? |
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For me, the benefits of owning would derive merely from more absolute control of the property. Those benefits are minimal when you are stuck on a small lot with a HOA or myriad city codes and not enough room to shoot or do anything else enjoyable. To be honest, I have no desire whatsoever to own a home in an urban or suburban area. I like paying someone else to do the major maintenance and to replace appliances and such more than having to do it myself. I'd rather rent an older house than buy one of these new ones 8-20 feet apart from each other. That's just like a damned apartment. I never will willingly live in an apartment, however. I loathe most people, and being surrounded by them all the time with no space would make me come unglued.
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First thing that came to mind when I bought my house.. "If I want to, I can spray paint a big orange smiley face on the garage door if I wan to. And there would be little anyone could do/say about it" If I want the living room to be blue instead of apartment white, I can. If I want the front yard to look different, I can. If, one year I want my house to be Red, and the next year, I want it yellow, I can. it's MINE ALL MINE! |
As long it approved by the local CCR's...
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CCRs? |
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CC&R's: Good subject at this point. (Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions) - Not every neighborhood has them, especially older neighborhoods - Many new developments/neighborhoods have them, but there is no active HOA, or a somewhat active HOA, but no board or leadership. Without this, neighbors only have the right to sue another neighbor in court for violating CC&R's that are recorded with the county auditor (public information, you should have known the rules). - neighborhoods with an HOA that meets regularly can have the rules changed by whatever mechanism is in the recorded CC&R's, but if a change is made in your favor, make damn sure the changes get recorded before doing anything, or you may still find yourself in dutch with your neighbors. Good example: Our first home in Vancouver, the next door neighbor, who was later heavily medicated for being, well, a few cases short of a full load of soda, would never take care of her yard. The weeds grew shoulder high and the seeds blew into other folks yards to grow there. The gal was a renter, and the CC&R's said that property owners had to maintain their yards and not allow their yards to become an eyesore or grow wild. You either had to have a maintained lawn, a well maintained english style garden, or low water usage/drought resistant landscaping with no more than 1/3rd coverage of any rock product. A few neighbors hired an attorney to send the owner, who lived out of state, to bring the yard up to the standards in the CC&R's, or we may sue them. A couple of weeks later, their was a landscaping crew wiping out the old yard, then they put in a sprinkler system, sod was laid down, and then a few weeks after that, the crazy gal moved out, and a family moved in. Every week, a lawn crew would come in and mow, pull weeds, and clean it up a little. Now, I am all for private property rights, but the legality and validity of CC&R's means they are here to stay. If you are interested in a piece of property, you have a right to see the CC&R's before you finalize your purchase. If you don't want to live under those rules, you should be able to get out of the purchase for that reason. Even rural properties near suburban areas may have CC&R's, when a 10, 20, or 40 acre piece of land gets divided into smaller acreage for building, there may have been CC&R's recorded for the lots. You have to be sure you know what you're getting into. |
After my father retird form the PD he got a job that, eventually, transferred him to Enemy Territory. (Note to non-Michiganders: That means Ohio; in this case, even worse, Columbus, Ohio.) (Go Blue!) Anyway. They bought a house in a new development. Right after they moved in, there was a "homeowners association" meeting, at which the person who called the meeting started reading off "Proposed Covenants", yada, yada , yada. After about two of them Dad hears a voice in the back of the room yelling "Fuck you, it's my house and I'll paint it green and plow the lawn under if I want to!" Everyone turns around to see a full bird colonel in the Army--enemy ROTC or Defense Logistics Agency, I don't know--stomping out, dragging his wife by the hand. Dad turns to Mom and says "That's our cue" and they both led the ensuing flood of happy home owners abandoning any attempt at regulating their property. A couple of months later Dad caught some landscaper dumping "beauty bark" around one of the trees he had planted in the backyard; when challenged, the offender said that the lady up the street--who was probably the one who wanted CCRs--had some left over and "told me to spread it around." "Get the hell out of my yard." Edited to add: What I started to say, when I so rudely interupted myself  was that we just got our assesment, the value of the house went down a couple of thou, but the land is worth almost $20k more! Total is still about $50k less thna zillow says the place is worth, but I'll take the lower assesed value.
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We purchased our home new 10 years ago. No HOA or CCRs here.  I woud not buy any house in a neighborhood with an HOA or CCRs. Or do so only as an absolute last resort. Seen and heard way too many horror stories about Nazi neighbors. "Your grass is too long". "You can't paint your house that color." "No parking in the street." "Did you get permission for that shed/fence?" "Don't leave that trailer/RV in your driveway." My inlaws were once told that their Christmas lights had been up too long. On January 1st. 
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A lot of the stories from hell of nazi neighbors are really somewhat rare events and usually only happen in higher valued than median neighborhoods. Some of the things Boomer mentioned do happen, but are often just misunderstandings of laws or CC&R's. Idiot or asshole neighbors are to be expected wherever you go. You can pick your nose, and you can pick your neighbors nose, but you can't pick your neighbors. Some CC&R's are very simple: No mobile homes, no home based businesses that require clients to come to the neighborhood more than X times /day or week, an assessment for common areas or private community parks, etc. Some are very long, overdone, and horrible. I've seen CC&R's that fit on one sheet of paper, and some that take more than 50 pages. It's all public record, at least it needs to be to be enforceable. They run with the land, so unless all landowners get together and decide to vacate the CC&R's, or a judge throws them out (rarely does this ever happen), they are permanent. Just FYI, buyer beware. |
Actually it does pretty well. Thank you. I have met some people that have sold or rented out their homes and moved into apartments. Didn't want to be the ones cutting the grass, or painting the siding anymore. Either way though, a person is still paying a rent, either to a landlord, or the state. I still don't view a home as an investment, to me it's just a way to gain more room and privacy, plus the ability to change the interior to suit you. |
Suburban communites!  A developer buys the land and builds up the community, eight houses to the acre....  To accomodate the overcrowding, draconian rules are established.I bought a condo because I couldn't afford to build on the two and a half acres I bought on Camano Island. My disability ruined my dreams. Boo fuckin' Hoo. So now, if the lawn needs to be mowed, it ain't me doing it. I can live with the rules, but it ain't hardly livin'. I have learned that hanging a few guns on the wall really does keep the complaining down. LOL! |
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While I understand the purpose of CCR's. It bugs the crap out of me that home owners associations are often run by grumpy old men with nothing better to do than to cause problems for other people. For no other reason than entertainment. I know that Ceder hills in Beaverton OR. is run this way. |