Frugality ends in a stucco exterior

[Walt34]

Those are of course still available:
http://www.lehmans.com/store/Natura...___Home_Queen_Wringer_Washer___32901100?Args=

Now, why anyone would want one is another issue....

 

[ls99]

Slightly used but not abused, for a little less $.

No it is not DW's

WRINGER WASHER MAY-TAG - $35 (BEAVER,PA 15009)

A vintage unit but it works great just need the room it was a extra used to wash drapes and larger items it has a square tub bring a truck make it a new home

Sorry about the diversion. Please resume.

 

[Moemg]

I would not be surprised if the aging population drives some changes in the building industry. Just as we see newer homes with 2 master bedrooms on the first floor because people no longer want to climb stairs, we may soon see builders offering smaller homes that are finished to a higher standard. Let's hope so, anyway.

Amethyst

That change is already in place in Florida . There are lots of smaller (1700 sq,ft ) homes with all the bells and whistles .

 

[WM]

DH and I have been working on our small house over the years. It was built in the 70's, reasonably solid but generic construction. An older guy I met said our neighborhood was where the bus drivers used to live when he was in high school. It's a nice little neighborhood but if you want a nice house you have to upgrade for yourself. There's quite a range in terms of how much people have done with them.

The house is just over 1200sq ft, 2br/1ba plus an office, which feels the right size for two of us and the occasional overnight guests. But it's smaller than a lot of people are used to - my MIL visited for the first time recently and although she was too polite to say so, her overall impression seemed to be "wow, this is a small house!"

 

[brewer12345]

I can understand not wanting to live in a house you do not like, and 10 years is far enough out in the planning horizon that the difference between 10 and 13 years is hard to be sure about. We briefly considered upgrading when a large, highly upgraded house in our hood came on the market cheap, but decided to stay put because we like our house. But if this had not been our move-up place from a condo (our first owned home), I imagine we might have made a different choice.

 

[W2R]

DH and I have been working on our small house over the years. It was built in the 70's, reasonably solid but generic construction. An older guy I met said our neighborhood was where the bus drivers used to live when he was in high school. It's a nice little neighborhood but if you want a nice house you have to upgrade for yourself. There's quite a range in terms of how much people have done with them.

The house is just over 1200sq ft, 2br/1ba plus an office, which feels the right size for two of us and the occasional overnight guests. But it's smaller than a lot of people are used to - my MIL visited for the first time recently and although she was too polite to say so, her overall impression seemed to be "wow, this is a small house!"

Given that the median size of single, detached homes in the U.S. is 1769 square feet, a 1200 square foot house sounds like a perfect size for just two people especially since you say that it feels like the right size.

And really, your MIL isn't living there so the size of your house really shouldn't matter to her, as long as she knows you are happy with it.

 

[Alan]

Given that the median size of single, detached homes in the U.S. is 1769 square feet, a 1200 square foot house sounds like a perfect size for just two people especially since you say that it feels like the right size.

And really, your MIL isn't living there so the size of your house really shouldn't matter to her, as long as she knows you are happy with it.

I second these comments. We've been living in a 2 bed 2 BR 1,200' apartment this last 2 years and it has been ample. The 2nd Bedroom is normally "the office" where the PC, scanner and printer reside, but when we have occaisional guests to stay the futon expands nicely and it reverts to a bedroom.

 

[WM]

And really, your MIL isn't living there so the size of your house really shouldn't matter to her, as long as she knows you are happy with it.

Oh yes, I don't mean to imply that she was being critical, more just surprised. She was wondering where all our "stuff" is, too, but she wrote that off as "well, it's because you haven't been married that long" - only 14 years

I second these comments. We've been living in a 2 bed 2 BR 1,200' apartment this last 2 years and it has been ample. The 2nd Bedroom is normally "the office" where the PC, scanner and printer reside, but when we have occaisional guests to stay the futon expands nicely and it reverts to a bedroom.

I think it's perfect - enough room for someone to stay, but not too long unless you all really like each other

 

[Alan]

I think it's perfect - enough room for someone to stay, but not too long unless you all really like each other

I remember an episode of A Prairie Home Companion advertising lawn chairs that were "as comfortable as the pughs in a Lutheran church." With these chairs you can be sure your guests won't stay long

 

[Kronk]

At least we're figuring the 4,000 square foot houses are a little too large for just the two of us...

 

[Kronk]

We're putting an offer in today on that first house we saw. We really like it. We loved it the first time we set foot into it, and seeing other houses has just confirmed to us how well this house fits us.

We've been feverishly trying to get the current house ready for market. It is coming together, but boy is it a lot of work. And the expense of new flooring, carpet, and professionally painted interior isn't inconsiderable, either.

If this house purchase offer falls through, I'm sure we'll step back and take our time with the whole process. That's the problem with really liking one particular house -- we weren't necessarily ready to begin the process of moving, so we caught ourselves by surprise.

In an isolated financial perspective, this is not the ideal move to make. But, you choose your battles and go from there -- make sure your spending patterns support your core values. We personally place a huge value on house comfort and "nesting", so it makes sense for us to spend money on a great home. We'll continue to be cheapskates in other areas.

One funny thing is that we're kind of reversing our field on having a mortgage versus having savings. We paid off our current house's mortgage as soon as we possibly could. This time around we're planning on putting less money down on the new house than we have equity in the current one. Effectively, borrowing to invest. With interest rates low, we're willing to take a chance that over 15-30 years the equities markets will outperform our sub-5% mortgage.

 

[audreyh1]

When we sold our house we avoided the whole new flooring, carpet, new interior paint, etc. mainly because we didn't want to take the time and we were skeptical about whether the expense was worth it. External upgrades had been done a few years earlier. I guess our house had been "gently used" as we had no kids. The house interior really didn't show its 20 year age (well, except for fixtures, etc). I don't know that it hurt us any as we pretty much got what we asked for which was what a similar comp down the street sold for even though I think that comp had some upgrades.

One of the three realtors we interviewed strongly urged "updating" the house, but the other two thought it should sell fine as is and it did.

Audrey

 

[Nords]

When we sold our house we avoided the whole new flooring, carpet, new interior paint, etc. mainly because we didn't want to take the time and we were skeptical about whether the expense was worth it. External upgrades had been done a few years earlier. I guess our house had been "gently used" as we had no kids. The house interior really didn't show its 20 year age (well, except for fixtures, etc). I don't know that it hurt us any as we pretty much got what we asked for which was what a similar comp down the street sold for even though I think that comp had some upgrades.
One of the three realtors we interviewed strongly urged "updating" the house, but the other two thought it should sell fine as is and it did.
Audrey

I share your opinion. You wouldn't happen to also be an engineer, would you?

However if there's one thing I've learned from HGTV, it's that the vast majority of homebuyers can't look at a home's structure and imagine the possibilities. They certainly won't be impressed by our foresight in choosing long-lived components or our stellar maintenance records. They have to see specific furniture layouts (staging), respond to sensual cues (interesting landscaping, simmering potpourri, baking bread & cookies, soft jazz, a fountain gurgling away in the atrium, lush carpeting), have plenty of [-]supervision[/-] advice from "their" experts like realtors, home inspectors, & decorators... and generally be [-]railroaded[/-] marketed into making a decision.

Financial incentives like "carpet funding" or "painting allowance" are even met with skepticism. We think we're empowering the buyer to do it their way. They're thinking "Gee, if they can't even carpet & paint the place, then how bad must it really be?!?"

The problem is that it's difficult to separate the effect of random luck from thoughtful preparation. Either you maximize the opportunity for random luck to occur by spending up front to attract more customers, or the seller has to hope that one of the first prospective homebuyers to walk through the door is a fellow engineer with enough cash to make the deal go through.

 

[NW-Bound]

You would think that it is better to reduce the sale price and leave the money to the buyer to put in the new carpet or improvement of her choice. But it may not work out like that.

When my brother sold his house, he was advised by his realtor to do a few things to his house that cost somewhere between $5K and $10K, if I remember correctly. The rational? His realtor said that your typical home buyer had no such cash to pay for such upgrade after he moved in, but if it brought up the price of the house, then it would be buried in the financed mortgage and more palatable to the buyer. And his realtor knew what the buyers were looking for at that point, so gave advice to my brother on what to do.

I don't flip houses, and have sold only 1 and bought only 3 in my life, so do not have a lot of experience in real estate. The story was plausible to me, however. Joe and Jane Blows do not think the same as people here in this forum.

 

[Brat]

Stucco houses are easy to maintain . Just have them power washed regularly and they are good to go .

Not in a wet climate. The 'good old guys' who really knew how to apply stucco did a great job but most have passed away. The building envelope failures that I have heard about are often stucco, or stucco looking applications.

Give me cementitious lap siding over tar paper or one of the better building wraps, on plywood underlayment, any day.

 

[Nords]

Not in a wet climate. The 'good old guys' who really knew how to apply stucco did a great job but most have passed away. The building envelope failures that I have heard about are often stucco, or stucco looking applications.
Give me cementitious lap siding over tar paper or one of the better building wraps, on plywood underlayment, any day.

Was stucco ever intended for a damp climate?

 

[audreyh1]

I share your opinion. You wouldn't happen to also be an engineer, would you?

Yes, you've got me pegged. EE (computers)

Oh and I don't know if the buyer was and engineer, but he was an older fellow whose realtor son lived in the neighborhood (so his commission got knocked off the selling price) and it was indeed an all cash deal. We closed in 10 days and the house had been on the market less than a week. Good thing we had already removed everything from the house except for the "staging" furniture.

Audrey

 

[Meadbh]

Was stucco ever intended for a damp climate?

I grew up in Ireland where the climate is like the Pacific NW and most houses are stucco. However, underneath the stucco, there's concrete block, brick or stone. The stucco stays on. But the houses and their occupants tend to be damp unless well heated.

 

[Brat]

EIFS is what some builders have been using in recent years. It takes skilled applicators and maintance of the weep-holes. It can be done right but in my observation the odds are against you.

 

[Kronk]

Everybody likes thread updates, right?

We closed on the stucco house in early May. We closed on our old house the following week. We rented a truck and moved just about everything (with the help of half a dozen friends) in a day.

Getting the old house ready to go was a pain in the posterior. We ended up hiring a painter to paint 4 rooms. We had the floor replaced in the kitchen and laundry room (really needed it). The carpet in the family room was replaced, I replaced the storm door, and a number of other niggling things were fixed. We rented a 10'x10' storage area and moved our overflow there to declutter for showing the house.

Once all of that was done, the house looked much nicer. And we still didn't want to live there. The process of having the house shown was a bit of a hassle, having to clear out of the house for hours at a time. We had a couple of nibbles early on, though those faded away. The feedback we got was that there was still too much to be done to the house. After about a month on the market we got an offer, countered, and eventually settled on a price.

We got the new house at a price lower than we were prepared to pay, which kind of offset selling the old one for slightly less than we'd hoped.
I might have the ugly numbers at some point, but I think we probably put in nearly $10k into the old house for fixups, including a couple of things that showed up in inspection. Nearly $20k for real estate agent fees. $9k in title transfers, and a few more thousand in various mortgage fees and stuff. This is why you don't buy a house and then sell it after just a couple of years.

Property taxes are much higher here, though we're having our rate appealed. Lawnmowing is slightly more expensive. We had a huge 10 kW solar array installed on the roof last month, so that'll significantly reduce our utility bills and also pay us cash though SRECs (Solar Renewable Energy Credits), though propane heating won't be cheap.

We do not regret our decision in the slightest. We've been in the house for over two months now and while there are still a number of things yet to be done, we do love the house. Hopefully (at age 36) this is the last home we buy.