Been crazy out there since COVID. I sold a home in Richland WA, right after I retired, summer of 2020, did well, but should have waited. Now just divorced and taking care of my 99 year old dad in the house I grew up in that he bought in 1958 for 26,000. We are getting ready to sell our 2,800 sq. ft. home on 13 acres in Haines, Oregon, one of the last fairly low priced areas of the state. I talked to a realtor who has a buyer from Idaho, and base on what she said we are asking 50 k more than the Zillow price. Compared to a lot of the west, Baker county Oregon is reasonable, although the day of the 80,000 house in town is over. As I used to say of Baker, "It's like Montana without the people." That was after moving there from Whitefish.
NFR How's the housing market where you live?
- Thread starter swimmy
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Non-fishing related
ThomasM
corvus ossifragus
Prosperity bomb 2.0? Bellevue passes Manhattan in housing prices
Some of what’s going on across Lake Washington right now sounds more like Park Avenue than Old Bellevue, writes Danny Westneat. It’s not just purchase prices soaring, with average rent more than $2,500 for a one bedroom.
www.seattletimes.com
My dad lives in Greer. Just yesterday he was saying to me, don’t come here to the Greenville area, we are all full up!
Ditto - we've talked about moving. Housing prices in this little town have skyrocketed but the median value locally is far less than most other places we've thought about. So stay it is. With our steep driveway, narrow halls, steps to the porches and the upstairs family room, we hope we can navigate those challenges as we get older. Shoveling snow from our driveway (steep, as you may remember) is a challenge, Corkers help me keep upright.
I saw that Charles Sullivan is going to build an ADU on his big lot. I had to look up the definition of ADU. I suppose the requirements for ADU's vary depending upon local building codes. I'm curious about ownership of these four "houses" on one lot and what the city laws are for ownership.
It looks like house 1 has a single car garage and house 4 has a driveway. What are the requirements for parking? The homes don't have to have off street parking? I can only imagine the increased volume of cars added to the neighborhood?
@Seaalki has provided some great advice.
In a normal market November - January is the best time to buy. Less competition, people want to stay where they are for the holidays and tax refund money is not flowing yet. Plus IMHO it is when the place will look the ugliest because of no flowers or leaves on the trees.
Everyone knows the market is crazy. Getting a deal is totally off the table. Sellers think they have a gold mine and they do! Why add to it? The Montana market is hot and has been for sometime. I could not even get an agent to list my acreage just past Bridger Bowl in 2019 because they were too busy with homes and could not represent my property properly.
If the market is like crazy now it will be even worse because people buy right after the kids get out of school (May) or just before they start school (August). If you think you can sell now and buy a little bit later - what are the chances it will be a better market?
What is the compelling reason you have to buy now? Job change to a new locale? House burned down? You should have a pretty good reason to make a poorly timed investment where you could be 'under-water' for some time if the market declines at all... By selling 10%+ of the proceeds go to taxes and fees unless you also have Capital Gains. Then it is even more out of proceeds/pocket.
In a normal market November - January is the best time to buy. Less competition, people want to stay where they are for the holidays and tax refund money is not flowing yet. Plus IMHO it is when the place will look the ugliest because of no flowers or leaves on the trees.
Everyone knows the market is crazy. Getting a deal is totally off the table. Sellers think they have a gold mine and they do! Why add to it? The Montana market is hot and has been for sometime. I could not even get an agent to list my acreage just past Bridger Bowl in 2019 because they were too busy with homes and could not represent my property properly.
If the market is like crazy now it will be even worse because people buy right after the kids get out of school (May) or just before they start school (August). If you think you can sell now and buy a little bit later - what are the chances it will be a better market?
What is the compelling reason you have to buy now? Job change to a new locale? House burned down? You should have a pretty good reason to make a poorly timed investment where you could be 'under-water' for some time if the market declines at all... By selling 10%+ of the proceeds go to taxes and fees unless you also have Capital Gains. Then it is even more out of proceeds/pocket.
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I am going to present another point of view.
I haven’t owned a home in 25 years. When I got divorced 25 years ago, I wanted to travel and he wanted the house so it worked out well. After 2.5 years of international travel, it was time to put down some roots and work the rest of my life. Or, so I thought.
I was looking for houses to buy and one of my BFF’s suggested an alternate life strategy. She knows me well and knew that I would not want to sacrifice my time to fish, camp, paddle, ski, etc. by staying home and doing yard work. She loaned me a book (I can’t remember the title) in which the author maintained that home ownership wasn’t for everyone and that if one rented cheaply AND invested the difference, that by retirement, they would be in the same financial place or better than if they’d purchased a home. In the meantime, they would have a lot more flexibility and more free time. So, that is exactly what I did.
For me, it has worked out well. I seriously thought that I would be working for the rest of my life but was able to retire at 61. My job required me to work very long hours and do a lot of traveling. As a renter, I was then able to spend my free time playing! I don’t have a pension and my last company of over 17 yrs didn’t even offer a 401k. But by being frugal, investing and being lucky enough to find decent cheap rental situations*, I was able to retire. Now, I am free to travel and fish to my heart’s content and live anywhere I want. If I had a mortgage, I know there is no way that I could have retired when I did. I realize that for most people, home ownership may be the best way for them to build their net worth. But, it's not the only way so I wanted to throw this out there for those people still young enough to consider an alternate path.
* As a single professional woman with no kids and who was a former home owner, I have actually had prospective landlords begging me to rent their place! One couple called me back three times and said “We want to know what it will take for you to rent our house?”. I am currently in the process of moving to live closer to friends and family. In this very tight rental market, I was recruited by the landlord and am getting a screaming deal. I said no for a while as although the place is ok, it wasn’t exactly where I wanted to live (but it will just be a crash pad as I don’t plan to let any moss grow). But the landlady persisted, offered very reasonable rent including one month free, is totally remodeling the place, and offered a month-to-month lease as she knows I want to travel and play.
I haven’t owned a home in 25 years. When I got divorced 25 years ago, I wanted to travel and he wanted the house so it worked out well. After 2.5 years of international travel, it was time to put down some roots and work the rest of my life. Or, so I thought.
I was looking for houses to buy and one of my BFF’s suggested an alternate life strategy. She knows me well and knew that I would not want to sacrifice my time to fish, camp, paddle, ski, etc. by staying home and doing yard work. She loaned me a book (I can’t remember the title) in which the author maintained that home ownership wasn’t for everyone and that if one rented cheaply AND invested the difference, that by retirement, they would be in the same financial place or better than if they’d purchased a home. In the meantime, they would have a lot more flexibility and more free time. So, that is exactly what I did.
For me, it has worked out well. I seriously thought that I would be working for the rest of my life but was able to retire at 61. My job required me to work very long hours and do a lot of traveling. As a renter, I was then able to spend my free time playing! I don’t have a pension and my last company of over 17 yrs didn’t even offer a 401k. But by being frugal, investing and being lucky enough to find decent cheap rental situations*, I was able to retire. Now, I am free to travel and fish to my heart’s content and live anywhere I want. If I had a mortgage, I know there is no way that I could have retired when I did. I realize that for most people, home ownership may be the best way for them to build their net worth. But, it's not the only way so I wanted to throw this out there for those people still young enough to consider an alternate path.
* As a single professional woman with no kids and who was a former home owner, I have actually had prospective landlords begging me to rent their place! One couple called me back three times and said “We want to know what it will take for you to rent our house?”. I am currently in the process of moving to live closer to friends and family. In this very tight rental market, I was recruited by the landlord and am getting a screaming deal. I said no for a while as although the place is ok, it wasn’t exactly where I wanted to live (but it will just be a crash pad as I don’t plan to let any moss grow). But the landlady persisted, offered very reasonable rent including one month free, is totally remodeling the place, and offered a month-to-month lease as she knows I want to travel and play.
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Could be investor who will remodel.
When mom went to the hospital in 2018 and then moved into an independent facility, I sold her house. The house had a lot of issues
1.) sinking corner of house 9” drop.
2.) cracked walls on both floors with sticking doors from 9” drop.
3.) cracked sewer line under the house from settling.
4.) outdated appliances
Investors came with a bid to my agent for 440,000.
We were not going to be able to afford the remodel ourselves.
they added a MIL apt downstair.
it took two years for the remodel because I think they got shutdown trying to do it on the sly without permits. I just checked permits and they were dated in 2021.
House was sold for $1.2 million in 2021.
According to parcel viewer and taxes they only sunk $60,000. (From photos they had to have spent much more to remodel in the area of over $100,000 in labor, repairs and materials..
Investors are buying property at an alarming rate.
Part of me hopes they lost on the deal,but the new owners may have over paid also.
majpreal
Steelhead
In the city of Seattle, they lifted/removed the parking requirement for DADU/ADU's (The first "D" in the acronym stands for "detached"). The only thing you can't do is remove off street parking for the existing structure if that parking is already in place; in other words if there's a driveway/garage, you can't eliminate it. The city code is making it easier and easier to add density to existing lots. Typically ADU's are on the same lot as the original house and would be sold with the other house (two structures on one lot), however there is a way to sell them separately by "condominiumizing" the lot and classifying each dwelling as a Condo so each can be owned separately with a "share" of the dirt underneath the structure.
Yeah, real estate has been a lifesaver for me as far as my current situation. But it is absolutely dwarfed by my crypto portfolio I started when I got divorced in 2016.. i mean, by many multiples of 10. So yeah, finding investment opportunities and stepping out of conventional wisdom to swing for the fences is damn near necessary for my generation anymore. Retirement benefits are barely offered by most employers anymore, and the ones that are offered are too weak to really mean much. My wife's 15yr old 401k is enough to live on for maybe a year or two.
Lots of paths to financial wellbeing. But it's definitely time to look past just real estate.
With your wife’s 401k, she might read a book by Steven Bavaria called “The Income Factory”. He rejects the normal method of investing (buying equities and then spending your life having anxiety attacks as the market swings up and down) and instead, focuses on investing in various types of more stable investment vehicles that produce income almost no matter what the market is doing. If one reinvests that income and repeatedly buys more, by the time they retire, they will hopefully be generating enough income that they can live on it and not have to touch their principal.
That strategy is what i'm doing in the blockchain/crypto world. I actually have an LLC for my "node farm" that generates a good income each month that I reinvest. To say it's done us well is an understatement. But this is all long term money to maybe think about retirement, because it's literally our only hope.
I hate every word of this, unfortunately, I am very afraid there is a lot of truth in it.
HOG
GOTY’s mum’s favorite ghillie
Person who said time is 120% correct. Chelan County, Chelan and Leavenworth in particular are insane, to put it mildly. Just thankful my grandparents and parents purchased houses and land in the 80s. Could always knock some trees out an orchard and build, once lumber prices straighten out…
Thanks very much for sharing this!/Patrick
Like many, I have said time is on our side…
Are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
