Came across a lovely word describing all the materials you find along the way, aka "salvage", thinggummies, doohickeys, junk, 'parts', yard sale score, "it was just sitting there with a 'Free' sign", I could use that for something some day - "Obtainium".
Now I'm wondering if there is an antonym, for when you have too much obtainium and are downsizing. It's still good for something, but you have no room for it, anymore. We're going to be moving, it will be smaller, some of it can find new homes, other is just too "specialized" as to be easily "rehomed".
SMBO is wondering why we have such a big house (3600ft^2) but I remind her that she wants a formal dining room, a large kitchen and master bedroom, and space for a lot of tools. We really don't need five bedrooms but one is over the garage so doesn't really count.
Basements are hard to come by here. Hell, everything is hard to come by now. A realtor told her that there were only 27 homes worth buying in a neighboring county (don't know about ours). Three homes went up for sale in our neighborhood and were sold before the sign was planted.
pyotr filipivich snipped-for-privacy@mindspring.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I've started "decluttering" or "refilling my wallet." I'm finding new homes for things by posting them on Facebook Marketplace or eBay, sometimes getting more than I expected out of them and sometimes less.
You never know. I pulled out some old wire from the house and sold it after a few months. The lady might have just sold it for scrap, but I didn't have to strip it, clean it, and find a recyler, I just put it in a box....
My son is a real estate agent in Las Vegas. Bottom line is that if you don't put in a full asking price, cash offer with no contingencies your offer won't make the cut. Much of it is Covid related. Most people just don't want to sell at this time. He said that the normal 6 months worth of inventory is down to about 2 weeks. I'm hearing the same thing about my area.
The new normal is for the seller to put a date/time in the listing stating when all offers will be reviewed. Anyone interested puts in their offer, the seller and listing agent sit around a table at that date/time and pick the one they like the best.
My son just (this weekend) signed a contract to buy a house that he is going to turn into an Airbnb. It never really even hit the market. He spoke to the listing agent as soon as he got the alert and the agent said "Write up your offer and I'll get it right over to the seller for his signature." (My son already owns a house that is a full-time Airbnb and he basically hasn't had an empty night since November 2020. It covers all his expenses and still returns some profit.)
There's a trick to this "full asking price, cash offer with no contingencies" game. The laws, at least where he lives, heavily favor the buyer. Even though a buyer might not put a home inspection in the contract as a contingency, there are usually words related to "due-diligence" in the contract. Essentially, the buyer has (typically) 48 hours to get out of the contract for any reason. What my son did was have one of his inspector friends "on call" to be available within 48 hours of the contract signing.
His friend inspected the house and found some issues. My son sent a repair request to the sellers agent along with a request to extend the due-diligence period until "both buyer and seller agree that the repair request has been fulfilled". If the seller didn't agree to the request (he did) they could have negotiated further or my son could have walked away. Now it's just a matter of having the repairs done to my son's satisfaction or he can still get out of the contract. And of course there's the final walkthrough just before closing to ensure that the property is still the "same" as what he has contracted to buy.
It's a tough market right now, no matter where you live. It helps if you know how the game is played.
It's at least partially covid related. The other motivator is money at less than 2%. To your point, Clark Howard on his podcast said the
60% of home sales were over the Internet. Sight unseen. That's up from 50% last year and 40% from the year before. The buyer's attitude is that if they don't like the house, they'll just turn around and sell it.
I had more or less the same attitude when I bought this house in 2011. I needed someplace to live. I was working as a contractor at the time with some promise of permanent employment. The market in 2011 more than sucked and I bought a foreclosure so in the worst case I thought I'd lose less on the house than I would on the $1500/mo x 12months that I was paying for rent, if anything. My wife was still living in the old house because she needed to continue at her old job (that insurance thing).
No bidding war? In some places, once a full-price offer with no contingencies is made, the house is "sold". That rarely happens though.
Good deal if you can swing it. I know there a lot of those at beaches and such. Most are through VRBO, or some such. We've rented a few over the years. It's a whole lot better than a timeshare!
I'm surprised that with a market that hot, that the seller didn't tell him to put the offer where the sun don't shine.
When we sold our previous house, we sold with as a purchased house with a one-year lease. I had my attorney draw up the contract such that they bought the house but that were deferring full payment for a year (for a price $2500 x 12). An issue came up with a retaining wall (just a pile of boulders, really) washing down. They wanted to back out but I reminded the agent that we had a contract and that they'd already bought the house. We ended up fixing it, just as it was before (no requested improvements). Essentially, we had a "forever" warranty on it because it had come down once before after we were in a couple of crossfire hurricanes. ;-)
There is *so* much building around here right now that when the next bubble bursts it's going to make 2008-2012 look like a picnic in the park. I'm sure glad that I've already burned my mortgage.
It's happening all the time these days, at least where I live and in Vegas where my son works. Some people are submitting offers over full price, hoping to win when that specific date/time review of all offers is done.
My son put in an offer on a different house last week. Full price, no contingencies, pre-approved mortgage commitment letter showing about 10% down. He came in second to the exact same offer except their mortgage commitment letter showed
20% down. 20%, 10% or 0% down *shouldn't* matter to the seller since there was a commitment letter for more than the selling price in both cases. The fact that the other buyer's offer looked more "solid" (?) than his, was enough for his offer to be rejected. It was basically a toss up, so the seller had to use something to tip the scales. He choose the one with the higher down payment.
SWMBO and I stay at Airbnb's all the time now. She hates hotels. Family get- togethers for Christmas and vacations are all at Airbnb's too. SWMBO and I will sometimes get an Airbnb just a few hours away so we can spend the weekend hiking in some park or going to a museum, crafts show or concert. We recently stayed at a small-town church that has been converted to 4 Airbnb apartments, 2 up, 2 down. Based on the outlines of the pews that could be seen on the wainscoting, it was obvious that the bed was "on the alter". Yes, that was a little weird. ;-)
My son's place was recently featured in a VRBO Facebook promotion. Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com...you can list your property on multiple platforms.
Gorgeous Las Vegas home with RV parking
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The seller has already moved out and needs to sell. Obviously the selling agent wants to close the deal, so agent-to-agent, he let my son know that he wants to move this along.
Most of the repair issues are small enough that my son asked for $1500 off of a $350K offer. However, one was a big one - one that it turns out the seller knew about but didn't fully disclose. His disclosure doc had the "No" box checked for plumbing issues but a handwritten note in the "If any Yes box is checked, please explain" saying this:
"water leak outside seller fixed" (that's word for word, I saw the document.)
That confused both my son and the inspector, so they made sure to take a hard look at the plumbing. When they got to the house, the main shutoff inside the house was off. They turned it on and got no water into the house. They shut it off to be safe and went outside to check the shut off at the street. It too was off. The meter for the house is in between the street shut off and the inside shut off. When they turned the street valve on, the meter started turning. :-O Turns out that there is a leak between the street shutoff and the interior shut-off.
When my son mentioned this to the selling agent, he was told that the seller had already arranged for the leak to be repaired, not expecting the house to sell immediately upon listing. We'll see. My son stipulated in the repair request that the repair was to be done by a licensed contractor. He's trying to avoid a a duct tape fix that's going to fail right after he closes. As of now, we don't know if it's as simple as a leak in the irrigation system or if the driveway/ front yard needs to be ripped up.
Whatever they tear up has to be returned to at least the same condition as what my son signed the contract for. If it's not, he will negotiate further or walk.
I've got a small low-interest HELOC left on my house that I could pay off right now if I wanted to, but I'm making more on my investments than I'm paying on the loan. SWMBO's birthday is coming up in a few months so I'm going to have her sit down at the computer and click the button to transfer the payoff amount first thing that morning. That'll make her happy. ;-)
Some of the free stuff on Craig's List is worth getting if it's close enough. Most of the "bad" UPS units just need batteries. The last two UPS units that died here (true death, not batteries) were replaced with Craig's List freebies.
I've also gotten the occasional battery powered tool - guess some people can't find batteries at anything other than "List" price - on the other hand, I've also rebuilt some battery packs. There was this hand vacuum that used a 10.8 volt stack of Ni-MH cells and a 12.6 volt charger and I had a new laptop battery (3s3p lithium) arrive DOA. Seller replaced the bad laptop battery and I salvaged 6 cells from it for a 3s2p pack for the hand vacuum. A $2 BMS (20 Amps for the startup current to the motor) took care of the lithium battery voltage limits during charge and discharge and the new pack is twice the AH of the old one. The lithium pack is 11.1 volts nominal and the charge voltage is 12.6 so everything was close enough to work like new.
That makes perfect sense. I agree, it *shouldn't* matter but there is a higher probability of "shouldn't" happening to someone with more than 20% down. With the 80-10-10s. and all, there are three lenders to screw things up.
I've heard that putting it out on the curb with a $10, whatever price, is a good strategy. Some won't take free stuff. "If it's free it can't be any good." ...then hope they steal it.
I just threw away a bunch. I don't like NiMH batteries. I've had horrible luck with them. The rebuilt units have been the worst. The self-discharge is so bad that they're dead when I want to use them. A few recharges from there, and they're dead.
We're a few months in on using the re-batteried hand vacuum and it seems to be just fine. The "Charge" indicator is powered by the wall wart and the BMS disconnects the lithium pack from the charger when it reaches full charge so the "Charge" indicator indicates the batteries are charging and goes out when they're full but it's not the only product which does that.
I never cared for most of the nickel-based battery technologies - except that they could be allowed to go flat and could then be reharged with some level of capacity remaining.
I still use sealed lead-acid (AGM) batteries for the solar-charged backup system (8 to 20 hours of "Wait until daylight" level of power, with the time depending on the season. Also AGM's for the solar-charged lighting in the equipment shed out back - cheaper/easier than running conduit under a driveway.
Lead-acid batteries last longest at full charge. Some of the lithium technologies last longest at about half charge ("storage" level charge). For backup power, I want the batteries at full capacity when I need them thus the AGM batteries which are sealed, with no hydrogen released during charge or discharge and thus safe to have inside (rack in the basement) without special ventilation.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I want to hassle with it. Like I said, not much resale value in pallet wood. But I will keep it in mind.
If it works ... B-)
I'd been saving scrap brass & copper "cause I know I can find a use for it sometime." Well, some time came, and I sold it for gas money. "Okay, that works."
I heard a story of the guy who had one Jeep on a trailer behind his New Jeep. New Jeep engine seized, so he swapped jeeps and headed home. Gets in an accident, his jeep is totaled. Buys it back from the insurance company and parts it out. Files a claim for the engine (under warranty), gets a bigger engine installed. End of the month, he's got a bigger engine in New Jeep, he's parted out the old jeep and is ahead a thousand bucks.
Yep. The sort of stuff that if you knew someone who could use it, you'd just give it to them. Like the lawn mower engine, the portable propane fired generator, the son of hibachi, and the cardboard core from a shipment of enameled steel (for making white board.) The gas engine works, I don't know about the propane generator, I've two of the hibachis, and what do you do with a cardboard tube four feet high and two feet in diameter? I've got a 150% of my needed chisels, more pens that I can use, but I don't know where they all are. I just donated a set of high price strap on knee pads because the possibility of me ever doing any tile or other floor work is near zero. Oh, and anyone want several open packages of laminated flooring? Fnord, there's a lot of things I could use, but as step one is "Move everything out" -and if I'm going to do that, why move back?
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