I've Lost It!

[JERRY2KONE]

Brian I am not disagreeing with ya at all, but nearly everyone who owns a house at this moment is up-sidedown with their loans because of the real estate crash. Normally things are not like this. The way I look at it is if I purchase a home sure I would like to think that there is going to be some level of profit on the other end, BUT I do not focus on that point. I figured if we can invest into our own home and get out from under it without losing the clothes off of our backs we are golden. We get the pleasure of owning our very own living space and can do whatever we like to it, and pretty much tell others to stick it if they don't like the way we live. Unless you have a homeowners ass. Then you can get screwed.

I have always come out on top, until now. Once again this is because of the housing crash over the last few years. Oh well what are you gonna do, right? In fact we just invested even more money (about $40K) into our remodel this past year just so we could get the place rented out for a decent monthly income $$$$$. There are pros and cons in every sales deal, and you really have to be careful just like buying a car. Do your homework and if anything looks even slightly suspicious or out of sorts, walk away. There will always be a better deal somewhere down the road. There is no one house that is made perfect just for you unless you had it built. You have to buy what you want and make it yours.

I watched my mom & dad struggle and fight there way though home ownership, foreclosier, and did not know how to fix anything on their own. So I made it a point to learn everything I could about home building and repair as I was growing up so I would not have to depend on anyone else to take care of our house, nor would we have to spend enormous amounts of money paying someone else to make those repairs. That is just how things worked out for me. We saved over $100K on that remodel just in contractor fees, because I did 90% of the work myself. I busted my butt for 6 weeks straight, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we are very pleased with how it turned out. It was tough work and I paid for it physically, but it was worth every minute and cent spent. I learned a lot and got so hone my skills even more.

Now we finally have it rented out for nearly what the monthly mortgage is, and the house looks beautiful. If we end up selling the place and break even I will be happy. Because I learned a ton owning and working on it, and we had taken out money on the house 5 years ago. I look at it this way. Now we are paying back that equity by fixing the place up. We used the equity to buy new cars for all of our older kids, and paying off credit card debt all around. Not every deal is perfect, but you have to take chances sometimes. Life is a gamble.

[reno911]

Lots of good reading here thanks.

I know only enough to stay sane my wife is the number person.

We went with an FHA loan so a lot is included in the mortgage. Only a few exterior payments will be necessary. That and we can save more of our cash, since an extra thousand or two on a loan equates to little added to your monthly.

We financed for roughly 1/4 our monthly income, and that is a total finance which includes the HOA and utilities on the very moderate side. We would rather overshoot our finance goals than undershoot, always safe to give it a little jiggle room.

I am in between on the owning vs renting, both have their benefits and their disadvantages.

My main goal in this was to get something with everything needed to be comfortable. Things that the wife and I have never had. Gas furnace, hot water recycler, garage, huge tub with jets, etc etc. To get some of these features with a rental in good condition is scarce, or twice the amount you can be paying on a mortgage.

Jerry, I appreciate the advice and trust me I will be following those even if you had said nothing.

Brian, the good thing about buying now, is everything is set at that low price tag and value, so as things progress, hopefully in a better direction, the value can go back up as well as my sell price.

Seriously though, no one with dark furniture?

Oh and Jerry, seeing as your in the East, know of any good place to get lacquer furniture?

[JERRY2KONE]

Have you noticed my location on my RCM sig. We own a house in San Francisco, but we live in Prague, Czech Republic Europe, after spending nearly three years in Seoul, Korea. I guess you could say we live in eastern Europe if that is what you meant? The best furniture over here is in Germany. Great construction.

[reno911]

I forgot. You moved, I was thinking Korea still. My wife has some Korean in her and we love Asian influences.

Her grandmother passed and her crazy aunt took all of her antique black lacquer Asian furniture.

I have been looking to find something for her for that reason.

We already have a nice platform bed, but I want something nice to compliment it in our new home.

Anyway maybe I'll get with you later than in regards to fine distilled potato juice.

[JERRY2KONE]

Anyway maybe I'll get with you later than in regards to fine distilled potato juice.[/QUOTE]

ha ha ha ha. Funny.

Man we should have talked before I left Korea. I am sure that we could have worked something out. We do have some of their fine furniture pieces in our collection. We had a special locking 5' DVD cabinet/chest made last year that holds about 400 DVD's. We keep all of our "R" rated movies in it so the kids cannot get to them. Parental control at its best.

You can go online to order directly from Korea. Try googling korean.furniture.KR. All of their websites end in KR. I know for sure that they do international shipping, and if you connect with the right place they will give you a good price. We had the DVD chest made for about $600, and we received a very nice 5 foot Korean (ambient lighting) lamp as a gift after waiting three months for the chest to be made, shipped, and recieved. It took a while for them to build the piece by hand and there is hand carvings in the two front doors, and it looks fabulous.

We also shipped ten pieces to one of our daughters for her birthday. Sorry you missed out on us being there for nearly three years, and that was our second time posted there. 2001-2005, & 2008-2011. We were in Brussels, Belgium between that from 2005-2008. Its tough moving all over the darnned place, but someone has to do it.

[reno911]

So we sat down with the loan officer last night to finish that part of the deal and it turns out that since we kept adding more and more to the buffer zone, we are going to be very well financed for this. We had been on the more conservative side of the financing portion, basically financing for the worst case scenario. After last night I am feeling really good about this purchase, we over shot by a lot, we will be paying a lot less a month than we planned for, which is awesome. Locked in a good rate 5.00% and everything is going smoothly.

I hope I can get some pictures for you all next week as the inspection will happen this Saturday.

Oh and Jerry there is a really good one from that part of the woods, it comes in a container that looks like a fire extinguisher. Or maybe that one was from Moldova I can not remember, but it has a slight honey accent to it and it is good!

I think babacki is Czech best, get it for cheap?

[reno911]

I was in harbor freight today and saw this. For the price I could get two side by side and call it a day.

[reno911]

Oh and has anyone painted their concrete in their garage?

What product did you use?

[JERRY2KONE]

So what is the ballpark figure on that bench?

When I did my garage in Orlando I used epoxy paint black & White, and did a checkered flag creating a winners circle. After it dried I placed driver logos and #'s around it, and finished up with a winners circle banner at the entrance. It turned out pretty cool. Make sure whatever you put on the concrete that you epoxy over it. If you do not and you park a car on it the tires will pull it up every time. I have also seen guys do this with lenoleum tiles and then coat it with epoxy. Of course I am a huge racing fan so this was my choice for a grage/workshop floor. I have also seen football and other sporting event floors as well.

[reno911]

Originally Posted by JERRY2KONE

So what is the ballpark figure on that bench?

When I did my garage in Orlando I used epoxy paint black & White, and did a checkered flag creating a winners circle. After it dried I placed driver logos and #'s around it, and finished up with a winners circle banner at the entrance. It turned out pretty cool. Make sure whatever you put on the concrete that you epoxy over it. If you do not and you park a car on it the tires will pull it up every time. I have also seen guys do this with lenoleum tiles and then coat it with epoxy. Of course I am a huge racing fan so this was my choice for a grage/workshop floor. I have also seen football and other sporting event floors as well.

Online they are a bit more but in store they are around 125 a piece, which in my eyes is an awesome price, and worth it to buy over building my own.

I like the idea of a sporting field or checkered flag. Maybe a soccer field would be cool, or maybe a small drift/onroad coarse in black and the rest in epoxy white. I was looking around online yesterday and there are quite a few different ways to go about this. I think I may just go with a solid color Epoxy and use those little flakes for some extra styling. Simple and clean. Thankfully the prior owner was nothing of a mechanic nor had anything leaking, just guessing my the cleanliness of the floor in the garage...


On another note I guess I can give you all some info on the house itself. Single owner prior defaulted on his loan in early 2010 and walked away from the house. An investor bought it off of the Court House steps for fairly cheap and has been holding onto it since October of 2010. We technically will be the second owner on the house.

Built in 2004, 2x6 construction on a poured foundation. Granite counter tops, 2 1/2 bath, 2 master beds. 1800 square feet two story. Bull nosed walls, and many other nice custom feeling features. My fave is the water heater recycling unit, this will be a nice one to have.

Any way getting closer and closer... Getting excited.

Oh: http://www.idxcentral.com/snar/idxse...hunting&rows=5

[JERRY2KONE]

Yea the bullnose is a great feature. I hope you got some kind of termite protection. Trust me you do not want to see the wrong side of that feasco. When I was selling my home in Orlando I ended up opening six walls in my home to replace about 75% of the stud work just to bring it up to par so I could get rid of it. It took me several weeks to get it all done, and ended up replacing about half of the siding as well due to the damage. It was an awful lot of work and if I had to have it done by a contractor it would have cost me a small fortune. About $1000 to $2000 per wall just to repare the framework. Plus the shetrock work and siding replacement. I had three contractors bid on the job and the lowest one was trying not to kill me with a heavy debt at about $23k to fix it all. I ended up doing the frame work, sheetrock and installed the siding all by myself, and then had a painter come in to cover it all up. It cost me less than $10K altogether, but I busted my a$$ for weeks trying to get out of there. All because I did not have the house treated and bonded for $2000. It was a nightmare that I never want to live through again, nor do I want to see anyone else go through it if it can be avoided. Just my advice.

[reno911]

Originally Posted by JERRY2KONE

Yea the bullnose is a great feature. I hope you got some kind of termite protection. Trust me you do not want to see the wrong side of that feasco. When I was selling my home in Orlando I ended up opening six walls in my home to replace about 75% of the stud work just to bring it up to par so I could get rid of it. It took me several weeks to get it all done, and ended up replacing about half of the siding as well due to the damage. It was an awful lot of work and if I had to have it done by a contractor it would have cost me a small fortune. About $1000 to $2000 per wall just to repare the framework. Plus the shetrock work and siding replacement. I had three contractors bid on the job and the lowest one was trying not to kill me with a heavy debt at about $23k to fix it all. I ended up doing the frame work, sheetrock and installed the siding all by myself, and then had a painter come in to cover it all up. It cost me less than $10K altogether, but I busted my a$$ for weeks trying to get out of there. All because I did not have the house treated and bonded for $2000. It was a nightmare that I never want to live through again, nor do I want to see anyone else go through it if it can be avoided. Just my advice.

Good advise. Always good to be preventative rather than the reactive.

I was shopping around for homeowners insurance and I was looking at pest protection as well, I pray that I will never have this problem, thankfully we really do not have termites in our area. Though they do exist, so I still have a concern.

[JERRY2KONE]

Do not be fooled my friend. Where is this house located? About the only state that does not have too much termite issues related to housing is alaska, because it is too cold for them to come to the surface 90% of the year. There are termites just about everywhere on this Earth, but some places are better suited weather wise to keep them underground most of the time.

The problem arrises when you aquire an unseen leak somewhere in your home without you finding it. Usually a leaky pipe in the wall, or even a roof leak that drains into a wall and travels down into the structure that is invisible from anywhere outside the wall itself. Once they get a smell of wet wood in your home they begin tunneling up into your home from below. They never surface for you to see them either. They do not like the sunlight. They stay hidden deep in your walls and eat until there is nothing left to eat, or they are poisoned by pest control. Subteranian termites have to have water so they travel back and forth from the ground to your house as long as nothing stops them. They can bring water up from underground and wet your wood themselves as well. Then eat, and return underground. This can go on for many years undetected, and by the time they are found there is not much left holding the house up but paint and siding. This is why it is important to have your home treated up front. By the time I found the damage in my home I had owned it for about 15 years and it had not been treated since it was built, which was nearly 20 years.

Every state varies in cost, but what most of them do now is treat your foundation through the outside wall about 8 inches off the ground every 12 inches by drilling a 3/8" to 1/2" hole on a 30 degree angle through the footer and under the slab. Then they spray poison into each hole soaking under the slab, into the footer and the wall and if your lucky outside the wall as well. About 1 to 3 gallons per hole if they do it right. The more the better. The only problem these days is that the poison they use now is not near as storng as it once was, nor does it last as long either. They used to use "Dursban", which was an oil based chemical that lasted for many years
(20 to 30 years or more). This chemical was outlawed a few years back by the Federal Gov because it was deemed responsible for causing cancer by traveling into our drinking water. It was some pretty nasty stuff. It is illegal now to use dursban at all, and there is a heavy fine if you get caught. They no longer produce it, but there are still some places that have it stored from years back. Its not even allowed to be sold any longer.

Anyway once treated they seal the holes and call it a day. The warranty now a days is that they will cover your structure as long as you pay them once a year to come out and inspect your home for infestation, and treat as needed. If any termite damage is discovered then they pay for the damaged area to be fully repared at no cost to you. Unless the damage is proved to be done prior to their treatment.

I had so much damage to my home I was totally amazed. I had window cills with triple 2 X 4's nailed together and I could crumble them with my bare hands like cardboard. Walls with 75% to 80% of the studs eaten away up to the six foot mark. The only wood that was not eaten was the 2X6 baseplate, and only because it was pressure treated. I never have understood why they just don't use pressure treated lumber for the entire structure. The termites would never touch it then.

[reno911]

Good reading there, I think once all settled in I will have treated for preventative reasons. The inspector is looking for signs of infestation so if needed we can always back out if noticeable problems exist.

Thanks a bunch Jerry!

[JERRY2KONE]

Originally Posted by reno911

Good reading there, I think once all settled in I will have treated for preventative reasons. The inspector is looking for signs of infestation so if needed we can always back out if noticeable problems exist.

Thanks a bunch Jerry!

NO problem man. If you want to know anything else let us know. I myself have owned several homes in my lifetime, and have had to deal with all kinds of issues. I learned a lot and some of it the hard way. I was also a state ceritfied property appraiser in Florida, so I know the ins and outs about how and why some things are accountable in sales and and why some are not. Any time Brah.