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    #16
    [QUOTE=deevergote;3264216][QUOTE=Crankshaft;3264201]

    I hope it'll be a return on the investment. I got the house for a great price in 2003, but the value has dropped quite a bit. The area lost its country club and a fair amount of downtown business. The hospital down the street is in danger of closing, or becoming a mental facility. The police station moved to the other side of town. There are a fair number of vacant houses on neighboring blocks, and the unexpected deaths of a few of my neighbors resulted in the rushed, low-price sale of their houses (driving the average price of the area down.) I'm hoping to list for 30% more than I paid, hoping to sell for 20% more than I paid. Depending on how we stand when we're ready to move, I may sell for exactly what I paid... maybe even drop to 20% below what I paid just to get out from under it. By my calculations, if we can find a place in my target price range that doesn't have obnoxiously high taxes (as I do here... $4300 in property taxes each year for my tiny place!), then two years worth of savings, plus the bare minimum profit we could see from selling 20% under purchase price could still land us with a similar cost of living for a much larger house. If we can do that once I'm making good money again, we'll be in a very nice position indeed!

    Come live next to me in Spring Tx, i pay about $2400 in taxes a year and as long as you are under 60 you can be the second youngest guy in the block. House next door is for sale for 110k but i would be surprised if anyone pays more than 65k for it, plumbing needs updating which is why my elder neighbor chose to default on the house.
    [url=https://flic.kr/p/2hFNC7Z]

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      #17
      I've never really been interested in Texas, though after visiting Dallas and Austin a couple years ago, I liked it far more than I thought I would! My brother in law lives outside of Dallas, and my wife has a good friend outside of Austin. I know a TON of Texas people from this site, too!

      We're probably staying in NJ, though. It's expensive to live here (though not so bad down south where we are... near NYC is obscene! We're near Philly.) Still, we're close to everything without being in the middle of anything. In 1-2 hours (or less), I can be at the ocean, in the mountains, in NYC, in Philly, in Baltimore, in DC, in tax-free Delaware, in the remote pine barrens, in farm land, or in wealthy historic areas dating back to the birth of this country. This area really does have it all!






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        #18
        haha, ya. My mom lives in a 130+ year old house and I've lived in many of these houses. The doors change how they fit from season to season as the wood warps, the floors creak, and you have to jack the house up every 10 years We always put plastic on the windows during the winter time, and there's always lots of mice. She had the same problem with her furnace too, same with the belts for it.

        Eventually we replaced everything in the house. Tore down the walls and found news paper for insulation (from 1940s etc.). Replaced all of the windows and insulation, and some of the doors on the inside. But the house will always be crooked and new doors need to be shaved to fit, and the old doors still have the old door knobs where the whole mechanism is iron. The electrical had to be upgraded of course but she still uses a fuse box type breaker box haha. (don't plug the heater into the plug in the livingroom). In time we replaced the furnace, hot water heater, the roof and other items. We'll continue to keep it as the land is awesome and peaceful.

        I've lived in other houses which were much worse. ie - had hot water heaters from the 60s, crooked, breezie, hard to heat, quirks. I think the only benifit of having a old house is the land it sits on IMO, example:

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          #19
          Yeah, new houses are crammed so close together. It's awful! Nobody wants land anymore. They just want the biggest house they can get on a tiny plot that needs no maintenance.
          My own house is a bit close to the neighbors (houses on either side of me are identical, and while old, much newer than mine.) For my next house, I want to be far enough from my neighbors that I can't hear them having sex!






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            #20
            [QUOTE=Raf99;3264224] The doors change how they fit from season to season as the wood warps

            My parents house is like that with their fancy front wooden door due to houston humidity etc. First and only thing i have done on this house is Reinforced Fiberglass doors with 41/2" screws to tighten them down; no swelling from climate change for me.
            [url=https://flic.kr/p/2hFNC7Z]

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              #21
              Now i've been in cottages with such properties and I wouldn't want it any other way. My dream is to own a nice cottage on a lake and I'd rather it be older and squeaky

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                #22
                Originally posted by deevergote View Post
                I've never really been interested in Texas, though after visiting Dallas and Austin a couple years ago, I liked it far more than I thought I would! My brother in law lives outside of Dallas, and my wife has a good friend outside of Austin. I know a TON of Texas people from this site, too!

                We're probably staying in NJ, though. It's expensive to live here (though not so bad down south where we are... near NYC is obscene! We're near Philly.) Still, we're close to everything without being in the middle of anything. In 1-2 hours (or less), I can be at the ocean, in the mountains, in NYC, in Philly, in Baltimore, in DC, in tax-free Delaware, in the remote pine barrens, in farm land, or in wealthy historic areas dating back to the birth of this country. This area really does have it all!
                Try NYC !!!!!

                600k for a 15' wide by 50' deep attached house on a block that has gunfire every other night

                Not for me

                214k for a place in NJ is not bad even if it is near NYC
                http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/d...82408002-1.jpg

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                  #23
                  OMG, we've been through this, too, with the doors. We can't use anything pre-hung as the walls are way too thick, some of the doorways are narrower at the bottom, and/or there's a very slight slant to the wall. Several of ours have the skeleton key lock but the mechanism is either seized up from age or being painted. Some day I'll take them apart and try and get them working again, but that's definitely not high on my priority list!

                  Originally posted by deevergote View Post

                  I have a feeling my house is from around 1920. That's exactly how mine is, too! Slats and plaster, odd-sized doors, skeleton key holes (never had a key... half the doors don't even line up with the latch anymore anyway.)
                  I dread having to replace a door. I hacked up my bedroom door one day because it wouldn't close. I regret that now, because it is solid wood, and a weird size. Now I have to find a way to patch up the jagged mess I made of the top of it when I filed it down!

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                    #24
                    Ya, and plaster walls suck! haha. I've lived in houses where the windows were so old they were painted shut. And you left them that way because it provided good sealant from the weather

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                      #25
                      My house is odd to say the least. No major issues, but since moving in I've had to do alot to seal it up and keep the heat in! Did blow in insulation in the attic, sealed up the crawl space door, fixed some exterior walls that didn't have insulation in them!! Just a bunch of hack work by the previous owners. Electrical is a nightmare, there's switches in odd places, the boxes aren't all lined up visually, and the wiring itself is janky as hell but I've inspected it and doesn't appear to be a fire hazard. Still have some more to fix like how the rear outside light switch is in the basement stairwell . Rooms are odd sizes, it used to be a cabin then was added onto so the new section has a basement while the old section is just a crawl space. it goes on and on. At least the roof doesn't leak! The house isn't really older than mid 60's but it's just hack work by several previous owners that needs to be remediated.
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                        #26
                        Originally posted by Raf99 View Post
                        Ya, and plaster walls suck! haha. I've lived in houses where the windows were so old they were painted shut. And you left them that way because it provided good sealant from the weather
                        Just bought a house 6 months ago, and mine are stained shut... House was built 1927, rebuilt late 80s.
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                          #27
                          Originally posted by deevergote View Post
                          The house my mom just sold was like that! Built in 1994, and things were falling apart already when they bought it in 2001. Fixed windows leaking and popping out of their frames, nail pops everywhere, linoleum kitchen floor buckling in spots... It wasn't a cheap place, either. It was in a fairly well-off neighborhood, in a desirable lakefront community. They fixed it up really nice 2 years ago, just in time to sell it and move to Florida.


                          I agree about modern homes feeling like products. I mean, you can go into a 60s development and see cookie-cutter houses, but somehow they seem less mass-produced than new stuff. Perhaps because they've been lived in and personalized for decades, or perhaps because new stuff really is just crapped out as quickly and cheaply as possible!

                          I'm hoping we can find the sweet spot... a house that's old enough to be made well, and new enough not to be suffering from archaic design or in need of major renovation.


                          I have a feeling my house is from around 1920. That's exactly how mine is, too! Slats and plaster, odd-sized doors, skeleton key holes (never had a key... half the doors don't even line up with the latch anymore anyway.)
                          I dread having to replace a door. I hacked up my bedroom door one day because it wouldn't close. I regret that now, because it is solid wood, and a weird size. Now I have to find a way to patch up the jagged mess I made of the top of it when I filed it down!
                          Houses are ultimately machines. Things have lifespans.

                          Roofs are often about 10 years, plumbing about 30, and wiring depends on when it was built, how good it was, etc. Even foundations, etc required maintenance over time, and while it is frustrating, imagine that your house may have had all of that stuff replaced 3 or 4 times like a timing belt... Except maybe the wiring, which usually doesn't get replaced until the house is either remodeled or burns down.

                          If you own a house, you will definitely have to repair and fix it over time. The hope is that it appreciates more than the amount you put into it!
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                            #28
                            I was never into houses like that but then my father at the time when I was living over there decided to fix up a couple of things in the house. For one we remodeled up the kitchen then did the basement.

                            The electrical's weren't a problem but we did manage to do the carpeting and delete the heating use for oil and go for central air. The oil to heat up the house was expensive as heck not to mention the roof-line needed to be insulated aswell as the siding needed to be replaced since it was aluminum heh made alot of money off that when we gave it to the scrapyard place.

                            Iv'e learned a great deal about houses and plumbing if the mechanics thing doesn't work out imma go straight into home-remodeling.

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                              #29
                              Originally posted by owequitit View Post
                              Houses are ultimately machines. Things have lifespans.

                              Roofs are often about 10 years,
                              The heat near you must do a number on roofs, ones around here typically last 15-20 years, with some people stretching them even further as needed.

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                                #30
                                Originally posted by AccordWarrior View Post
                                The heat near you must do a number on roofs, ones around here typically last 15-20 years, with some people stretching them even further as needed.
                                The heat may play a role, but I think it is likely more due to frequently high wind speeds and torrential downpours.
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