cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Sheeer luxury!
The house we just sold was almost 4000 sq ft. We dumped and decluttered and moved down to a 2400 sq ft house.
After 6 more months of decluttering and selling, we now do not use 3 of the rooms of this house. I gave the girls the formal living/ dining rooms for a media room (put a futon in there), and use one of the bedrooms for storage!
I will never have a house that big again; I want a smaller house and a bigger RV!
Very nice place Want2retire (way better than "dollar store" in my view). I assume that you are outside levy system on higher ground??
Nice. Here's the one we downsized to -- we really liked the rock exterior (no painting the house!), but in a 64-year-old house there are a few upgrades that needed to be made. The bent antenna is no longer there (replaced by a satellite dish).My home is a 1558 square foot, 3 bedroom 2 bath, brick house built in 1972 on a 5,000 square foot lot in one of the nicest/safest of New Orleans neighborhoods. Here are some old photos (though it still looks much the same) showing the house from the front yard, and a shot taken in the back yard:
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I do wish it had a garage, so when we move north that will be on my "wish list". I will hate to leave it, but as always, logic must prevail.
Texas has a high property tax rate (but no state income tax), which is why such a small and cheap place has a $1200+ property tax. The first year we were here we inherited the tax bill from someone with both a senior and disabled exemption and the bill was about $200!Ziggy, I LOVE your house!! It is just beautiful. I especially love the arches and the way the stonework was done around the top of them.
I have never known anyone with a rock house, and houses are sometimes made of rock in my future ER location. Do they present any special problems or advantages, in your experience? You mentioned not having to paint it, and that sounds great. Is it drafty?
Maybe you could have laundry hookups installed somewhere inside your home. I do want an attached garage too. I hate getting caught in the rain bringing in groceries, and getting soaked. A carport would solve that, but there isn't room for one.
You got a great price on that house! Congratulations and I hope you enjoy NOT paying rent on the first of the month.
My property tax last year was $551, which is considerably less than before Katrina. I expect it to rise to about twice that this year (won't know exactly until it happens, though the assessor sent out a letter warning everyone to expect a hike).
I'm not really sure what the rock is, but I know it was quarried locally.Ziggy, what type of rock is that? I thought South Texas had nothing but limestone.
Right. We're in the Hill Country.Ahhh...central, not south. Big difference.
Texas has a high property tax rate (but no state income tax), which is why such a small and cheap place has a $1200+ property tax. The first year we were here we inherited the tax bill from someone with both a senior and disabled exemption and the bill was about $200!
I do enjoy the first of the month rolling around and not having a mortgage or rent payment. It's that much more that can be plowed into FIRE savings and other home projects.
Actually, the rock is a great insulator, particularly in the summer. I was surprised at how low our summer cooling bills have been, even with the smaller space. We do want to replace the windows with something more efficient eventually. My wife's dad has done some of that work in the past (he's a very handy guy who is a retired elevator mechanic), so when he visits us in March he'll get all the measurements so we can order the windows which he and I can install in his next visit after that. I think with the rock and new efficient windows together with a heat pump cooling at 15 SEER, we'll really get our cooling bills down.
As for laundry hookups...I wish there was room in here, but I don't see where it would be possible unless I convert the closets in one of the two bedrooms. We'd pretty much have to add on to do that.
I'm not really sure what the rock is, but I know it was quarried locally.
Actually this part of central Texas has an abundance of granite. A lot of granite is quarried in this area even to this day.
2000 square feet, 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath. When we clean, it feels like entirely too much. We have a living room that is almost never used. The dining room is a music room. Master bedroom is obviously used. One bedroom is an office, another is a guest room that is primarily used to air out my martial arts gear, and the fourth bedroom will be a library for our nearly 2000 books once we finally finish it.
Relative to this house, our ideal early retirement house wouldn't need to be any bigger than this. Ideally it would be slightly smaller yet have a layout that reflects how we actually live.
3400 sf, 3 bedroom that I built mostly myself in 1994. Too big for the 2 of us, but I like the house and lot. I'm upgrading a few things before we fully retire.
Back then I had no issue workin 30+ ft up on the eaves or clinging to a 10/12 pitch, this last fall was a different story
the house is small, just under 2000 sf, but was sufficient to raise 5 children (most of the time only 3 at home (plus 7 cats , 2 Newfoundlands and 2 "slightly" addled adults)). now it's just me and 2 cats ... have "closed off" more than half the house, living comfortably in about 600 sf.