So I have been on CL the last 3 days looking for a new place to live when I found....

danke said:
I hope this thread is just a typical internet fantasy thread...

Have you even paid a power bill on over 3,000 sq ft? Especially if you're security conscious and need the outside lights on all night in certain areas... And the central air? Fuck me... That's at least another $500 a month right there.

Because renting and paying utilities on 4,000 sq ft when you're just living with the girl like the one you've been posting is just retarded.

And considering the furniture you have in your rental now, it's obvious she's not exactly Candy Spelling. Have you even imagined how much it takes to properly furnish over 4,000 sq ft? Or how lonely it feels in a place that big when you're home alone?
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I think this all depends where you live. Rates for electric vary wildly all around.

My home is 3440 sq. ft and I honestly leave all the lights on in my house 24 hours a day pretty much. The outside lights are on 24-7 for sure and the inside lights seems to always be on b/c the kids turn them on and then don't turn them off until I find out like the next morning all around the house. Lets not forget 6 televisions going on 24-7 and laptops and desktops, etc.

Luckily, some of the light switches in my house are actually power cut offs for the rooms they are in, so I can just hit a light switch and cut off all the power to that room if need be when I walk by ( half of the electrical outlets are controlled by the switches, I know it sounds odd as I had a hard time getting use to it at first ).

Even with this, my electric bill is barely $180 a month.

RE: the furniture statement. We bought all new furniture when we moved into our home and left the old furniture at the old house. We by no means buy the top of the line shit, but the stuff we have is high quality though ( no plywood/pressboard/ikea shit ). 3440 sq. ft with 2 adults and 3 kids came out right about $25k for us in furniture. This is the type of furniture I could see going into one of the homes Ly2 posted above too ( no troll ).

I would ask the renter/home owner for prior electric and water bill statements so you can see what your getting into. My only pains with owning a home is taxes/insurance/upkeep expenses. If your renting though, your paying the insurance and taxes built into your rent pretty much anyways.
 


eliquid said:
I think this all depends where you live. Rates for electric vary wildly all around.

My home is 3440 sq. ft and I honestly leave all the lights on in my house 24 hours a day pretty much. The outside lights are on 24-7 for sure and the inside lights seems to always be on b/c the kids turn them on and then don't turn them off until I find out like the next morning all around the house. Lets not forget 6 televisions going on 24-7 and laptops and desktops, etc.

Luckily, some of the light switches in my house are actually power cut offs for the rooms they are in, so I can just hit a light switch and cut off all the power to that room if need be when I walk by ( half of the electrical outlets are controlled by the switches, I know it sounds odd as I had a hard time getting use to it at first ).

Even with this, my electric bill is barely $180 a month.

RE: the furniture statement. We bought all new furniture when we moved into our home and left the old furniture at the old house. We by no means buy the top of the line shit, but the stuff we have is quality though. 3440 sq. ft with 2 adults and 3 kids came out right about $25k for us in furniture. This is the type of furniture I could see going into one of the homes Ly2 posted above too ( no troll ).

I would ask the renter/home owner for prior electric and water bill statements so you can see what your getting into. My only pains with owning a home is taxes/insurance/upkeep expenses. If your renting though, your paying the insurance and taxes built into your rent pretty much anyways.
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Jesus, $180 a month for power on that? That's nothing.

Last month I paid $260 for a 1400 sqft condo, 1 TV (though it's a 55), 2 laptops & a desktop. That's ... about it. Lights stay off half the day at least. It's the AC that's a fucker.
 
Benji49 said:
Not to sound like a dick (okay I will sound like a dick) but the reason most rental housing is not luxury ie looks shitty is that tenants are pigs and are protected in a lot of states/provinces by really stupid landlord/tenant regulations.

Like if you have a really nice house, the last thing you want to do is rent it out. Because there's a good chance that people moving it won't take of care it and quite possibly trash it.

For example, I am living in a rental here in Vancouver while my house is being renovated. The carpets reek of cigarette smoke, the plastic covers on the electrical outlets have been ripped off, the baseboard heating doesn't work. I could go on and on.

I knew the tenants. They packed the house with adoptive kids and their own kids who obviously just didn't give two bleeps about the house. When they finally left, I had to beg to rent the place (trying finding a four bedroom in central vancouver, especially one in my neighbourhood) because they were going to renovate and sell it off for big dollars.

I was briefly a landlord myself for about 18 months and totally got tired of the bullshit. I had tenants ask me to do thousands of dollars in renos to the basement suite while they were paying $800 a month, utilities included. Like seriously fuck off.

Oh well I guess that was a rant. Thanks for letting me share.

P.S. One reason why nobody builds smaller luxury houses is because outside of kitchen/bathroom, square footage is cheap. What is expensive is the storm/sewer/water planning and the endless round of inspectors for electrical, plumbing, structural, earthquake, blah blah blah. I suspect the difference in cost between building a two bedroom, two bath one kitchen home and a five bedroom is way less than you would think.
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I agree with this. I had a rental and got lucky with my tenants, but i know plenty others in my area that did not. Several of my neighbors and friends have rentals and I have gone into the houses once they left and I would almost always be shocked at what I seen. A lot of us talk back and forth so we know which people to NOT rent to.

I can honestly say at least in what I have seen, about 7 out of 10 homes end up needing major repair when the tenants leave for some reason or another. You wouldn't believe what people ( or people's kids ) will do to your home when your not there watching them. I have seen too many nail polish spills damage wood floors, markers all over the drywall, and mold and mildew take over bathrooms to ever want to rent again myself.
 
Bofu2U said:
Jesus, $180 a month for power on that? That's nothing.

Last month I paid $260 for a 1400 sqft condo, 1 TV (though it's a 55), 2 laptops & a desktop. That's ... about it. Lights stay off half the day at least. It's the AC that's a fucker.
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Mine is prob so cheap because Kentucky powers a large portion of the USA with its coal mining, etc. We also have some large hydro units here as well and I personally sit on top of one of the largest natural gas wells in this region too right in my backyard.

Areas of the country where coal, Nat. Gas, or hydro is "light" might be more costly though.

I think my water bill is cheap too, its only like $50 a month tops.
 
Modern homes are pretty damned energy efficient. With good insulation and high seer heating/cooling units your bills should stay low. The guy I used to work for had a 6000 sq ft. home, 3 A/C units to cool it and his bills rarely exceeded $350/mo. Granted he had the most efficient everything but it can be done.

My current home is roughly 3000 sq ft and even through Texas summers it never exceeds $250 for electric and it was built in 1983. All I did was spray in an extra foot of insulation in the attic and replace the exterior A/C unit with an 18 seer.
 
makethatgreen said:
Sounds like you are a nasty skank living in a shithole. I hope you're not paying anymore than $700/mo for your dumpster...
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LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

I'm paying $2500 a month for a 4 bedroom in the heart of Vancouver. Hopefully my reno will be done by end of summer and I can move my family back in before school starts.

"Nasty skank." Sure I will wear that label. You shoulda heard what I called my tenants when they were late with the rent...again. Thank God I was able to quit that gig.
 
Any particular reason to stay in the US? Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, Peru, Croatia, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, etc. It's a big world out there, why not check it out? You make your money online.

Or you're ballin, goto Dubai:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahdfA_DJ-0A]Piers Morgan: The Luxury Life of Dubai & A Luxury Tour Of Dubai - YouTube[/ame]
 
i dont care about any above posts.

Fucking do it.

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nuff said.
 
ly2 from WF said:
I have bad credit, otherwise I'd buy.

And yes, they are too big. The issue is, I wanna move to the mountains and it's impossible to find a 2 or 3 bedroom house in the mountains that isn't a piece of shit quality-wise on the inside of the house.

I can get a 2-3 bedroom in the mountains but there will be no granite counters, hardwood floors, or marble bathrooms, etc.

I want the interior quality that I have now, only in the mountains so it's kind of a weird situation.
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.....Must be another reason because its not hard to fix/delete things off your credit if you have the $$. Furthermore, stick with the Caribbean (I hate Trinidad though) given you're single and have no ties to any specific place.
 
danke said:
Have you even paid a power bill on over 3,000 sq ft? Especially if you're security conscious and need the outside lights on all night in certain areas... And the central air? Fuck me... That's at least another $500 a month right there.
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This. We moved into our new place a couple months ago, a little over 5700 square feet, and this was the first months power bill:
JOTHy.png


It won't be that high again; there are something like 145 light bulbs in this place, all were incandescent . I'm replacing them all with a mix of CFL and LED so that should bring down the bill a bit, but holy fuck. AC was a big bit of it too.

We've two acres of lawn to water, luckily we have a water share and its just under $300 per quarter for unlimited use. Heat on this place will be sweet though - radiant floor in all the bedrooms means no need to heat all three levels at night.

My point? Utilities on a big place can kick your ass if you aren't planning for them.
 
Dresden14 said:
.....Must be another reason because its not hard to fix/delete things off your credit if you have the $$. Furthermore, stick with the Caribbean (I hate Trinidad though) given you're single and have no ties to any specific place.
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I took out some pre-paid credit cards. I max them out and pay them all the way off each month. Guessing it will help after a few years.
 
cheshire said:
Modern homes are pretty damned energy efficient. With good insulation and high seer heating/cooling units your bills should stay low. The guy I used to work for had a 6000 sq ft. home, 3 A/C units to cool it and his bills rarely exceeded $350/mo. Granted he had the most efficient everything but it can be done.

My current home is roughly 3000 sq ft and even through Texas summers it never exceeds $250 for electric and it was built in 1983. All I did was spray in an extra foot of insulation in the attic and replace the exterior A/C unit with an 18 seer.
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If you're gonna build, build exterior walls with 2x6s instead of 2x4s.
 
Getting good credit is easy. Be debt free and have cash in the bank.

The myth that you have to "build up credit" is used to trap people.
 
Bofu2U said:
Jesus, $180 a month for power on that? That's nothing.

Last month I paid $260 for a 1400 sqft condo, 1 TV (though it's a 55), 2 laptops & a desktop. That's ... about it. Lights stay off half the day at least. It's the AC that's a fucker.
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US Electric Rates by State

They must run some hydro in Kentucky. The hydro chain on the Columbia in Eastern Washington creates so much cheap power that people of a certain large scale horticultural profession actively seek out old farm houses to set up shop in.

<allegedly> 5 1k watt HPS + 5 1k watt MH on 12:12 + another 5k watts on 100% of the time + ancillary devices + typical power use of 3k square foot home upstairs = ~$325/month</allegedly>

Or so I've heard...
 
Benji49 said:
P.S. One reason why nobody builds smaller luxury houses is because outside of kitchen/bathroom, square footage is cheap. What is expensive is the storm/sewer/water planning and the endless round of inspectors for electrical, plumbing, structural, earthquake, blah blah blah. I suspect the difference in cost between building a two bedroom, two bath one kitchen home and a five bedroom is way less than you would think.
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Your take on the construction cost is accurate. Building wood around air (adding sq footage) is not nearly as expensive as everything else.

The second reason is that even the rich cash buyer wants a value on the house and "value" these days is highly dependent upon square footage for most properties. Of course the buyer that is borrowing for the home, they need the square footage to justify the loan. In the end all these buyers cannot help themselves but to look beyond the home as an ideal place to live but to also look at it as an investment/savings account etc.

** One more thing - you are not concerned over a Vancouver bubble? It may be worth cashing out, sitting back for the crash, and then re-entering the market - even if under construction. At SoCal top of market I could get partially completed construction for top dollar also.
 
ly2 from WF said:
I took out some pre-paid credit cards. I max them out and pay them all the way off each month. Guessing it will help after a few years.
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There is a precise way to do this that will get you on solid ground - hit me by PM the day/week/year you want to get it together - even 560 FICO gets you 5% down at 4%. $2,500 buys a lot of house at today's rates/prices.
 
REIMktg said:
Your take on the construction cost is accurate. Building wood around air (adding sq footage) is not nearly as expensive as everything else.

The second reason is that even the rich cash buyer wants a value on the house and "value" these days is highly dependent upon square footage for most properties. Of course the buyer that is borrowing for the home, they need the square footage to justify the loan. In the end all these buyers cannot help themselves but to look beyond the home as an ideal place to live but to also look at it as an investment/savings account etc.

** One more thing - you are not concerned over a Vancouver bubble? It may be worth cashing out, sitting back for the crash, and then re-entering the market - even if under construction. At SoCal top of market I could get partially completed construction for top dollar also.
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They told me that Vancouver was a bubble back in 2003, when I first bought my house.

Lots of my smart friends (I'm not being sarcastic) held off buying and kept renting, and waited for the bubble to pop. Most of them now live in the suburbs.

I wasn't a forecasting genius or anything, I had a wife and a kid at the time with another on the way. We liked living in the city and I was tired of living in rent shitholes. We could afford to buy so we did end of story.

I like my neighbourhood. I like my city. If the bubble pops and my home drops in value by 50% it's just a number on a piece of paper to me.
 
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