I've had these discussions with numerous friends, and neighbors. It's a tough time right now for everyone but sellers, and people already settled. Even for sellers, you're only making out if putting back into a fixer upper, or going to a reasonable renting situation or something (aka retirees).
We know people that are building and taking on 50 and 60k+ more than they would have in materials alone. It's kind of crazy to be honest, and I wonder if some of these folks will regret paying the prices they are, but it also depends on how long you plan to stay, and of course your overall money situation. If it's 20 years, fine, but if it's 5 that's hard to justify even for people that are well off. Unless it's necessary of course. If you've outgrown your house, need to be closer to work, school districts, etc it is what it is. Prices will eventually come down, but who knows when.
We're outgrowing it, but the need isn't so strong that it puts us in a position to bid on everything that comes along. It's more of a want than a need, so that's why we don't mind being picky... it would be our forever house. I could stand to be closer to work, but we like the neighborhood more than I like the job so I may end up finding something closer to home one day.
But thankfully, we're already in something that's saleable, so we're riding the wave on prices whether it goes up or down. The prices might change, but the actual cost to move doesn't. If what we want goes up by $100k, we'll get it back when we sell our current one.
Our new house has a supposed "two car garage" that was being sold "as-is" and I couldn't figure out why until I actually went there and looked at it.
For one, there is a pizza oven built into the side of the garage that goes back about six feet into it. So there's already no way you can park two cars in there.
Then, the AC unit (which is gigantic, must be some kind of industrial unit) is in front of the garage door, in such a way that you have to go around it a little bit to get the one car that would fit in there, in there. And I guarantee you if I got the car parked in there, I'd forget about it the next day, back straight out and destroy both my car and the A/C.
So we'll just be parking in the driveway, and that's fine. It's just one of those examples where in a normal housing market we probably would've moved on and looked at something else, but with the way things are now, you can't afford to pass up a house over one flaw like that, even if it's a real annoyance.
But hell man, I grew up in a trailer park, any house that doesn't have wheels and a trailer hitch on it seems f***ing amazing to me.
Yeah, I would have a hard time with that. But like I said, I'm pretty picky. This house didn't have anything like that, but it only had about six inches between the garage doors and the walls. The current owners have obviously given up on using it for cars... it's a combination man cave and storage area. We're stuck parking one of our cars outside in our current house (or both, depending on what I'm working on in the garage), so getting something that can actually accommodate both of them is on the wish list.
One day, I'd like to have a shop space and a space for cars. Whatever we buy doesn't have to have it already, but being able to build it one day is on the wish list. This one would be fine for a shop, but there's no room on that lot to build a place for the cars. It's a quarter acre, which is juuust big enough if it's laid out juuust right. This one isn't. Small driveway, too... can't hold more than two cars.
Do you feel over the long haul you’ve spent more than 3-4% of the home value per year because of all that stuff? My point is that I won’t know what it is specifically, but as long as it’s within an appropriate range over the long haul, I’m good for it.
I haven't done the math, but I'm sure we've hit that in our five years here. We've had to do the downstairs HVAC ($7k), painting (few hundred to DIY, several thousand to hire out), every inch of carpet ($7k), and a surprise bathroom renovation (about $20k for the master and other full bath, and that was doing it on a budget and managing the work ourselves). If we stay, we're looking at the upstairs HVAC and roof, which will be at least another $15k. The siding is Masonite and won't last forever. Replacing that with fiber cement is probably $25k-$30k. And that's before we get into fixing build quality issues and other maintenance that comes along when you're not looking... window rot, deck rot, fascia rot... really everything that's wood eventually rots. It just doesn't last in the southeast.
All that has taught us to look at the 5-10 year cost when we're looking at a house. If one comes along that's priced right, but will need $50k in systems and $75k in renovations, do we still want it? I'm an accountant, so I have a spreadsheet that ballparks the long-term cost of all the houses we've been into recently. Now that you're under contract (congrats!), it's a good time to look through everything and estimate its remaining useful life and what it'll cost to replace it. That will get you close on your bigger maintenance costs, but there will always be the silly little things too. Plan on maybe 1% for things like pest control, HVAC maintenance, lawn care, tools you didn't know you needed, and the stupid little things that pop up (broken garage door springs, leaky faucets, the microwave that stops working, stuff like that).
Because that's the nice thing: despite all the bullshit, it's still all yours at the end of it, and if you want to build a room that's for nothing but lavender ceiling mounted sex furniture, then you can do exactly that, and that is the awesome part. So long as you understand that you'll have to take all that stuff out if you want to resell it
Are you sure about this?
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2925-Debra-Dr-Raleigh-NC-27607/133702638_zpid/
