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".
--
pyotr filipivich
"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand,
water is water. And east is east and west is west and
if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
Now you tell me what you know." Groucho Marx

On 4/18/2021 6:07 PM, pyotr filipivich wrote:

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".

That would be hoarding.
There IS unobtainium, but it means something different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium

On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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".



donatritus donate + detritus

John T.

On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.

Dumpster

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 wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper

On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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).

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.

No bidding war? In some places, once a full-price offer with no
contingencies is made, the house is "sold". That rarely happens
though.

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.)

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!

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.

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. ;-)

It's a tough market right now, no matter where you live. It helps if you know how
the game is played.

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.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.

Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 15:49:55 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.

Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

Clutter? Got a junk guy here, he will take just about anything, he
also delivers the paper.

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:48:35 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.
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).
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.

No bidding war? In some places, once a full-price offer with no
contingencies is made, the house is "sold". That rarely happens
though.

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.

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.)
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!

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
https://www.vrbo.com/2155063?noDates...unitId=2719599

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.

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.

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.


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. ;-)
It's a tough market right now, no matter where you live. It helps if you know how
the game is played.
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.

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. ;-)

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:50:01 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:
On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.
Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

It's actually a multi-word phrase:

https://[your-city-name-here].cr...uff/search/zip

They tell me that Facebook Marketplace has a free stuff section too.

I've given away lots of stuff on CL, stuff not worth "selling". The emails
come in almost immediately after posting. Within minutes sometimes.

Some folks post "curb-alerts" when they put stuff out for the waste
haulers. '"Come look before Thursday!"

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:57:00 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:50:01 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:
On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.
Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

It's actually a multi-word phrase:

https://[your-city-name-here].cr...uff/search/zip

They tell me that Facebook Marketplace has a free stuff section too.

I've given away lots of stuff on CL, stuff not worth "selling". The emails
come in almost immediately after posting. Within minutes sometimes.

Some folks post "curb-alerts" when they put stuff out for the waste
haulers. '"Come look before Thursday!"

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.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:45:38 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
...
No bidding war? In some places, once a full-price offer with no
contingencies is made, the house is "sold". That rarely happens
though.

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.

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.

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.)
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!

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. ;-)

Rosemary's baby weird. ;-)

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:45:38 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:48:35 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:
...

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.

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.

That sounds bad. Really bad. The irrigation system shouldn't be
between the shutoffs or at least there should be a valve on the
irrigation system.

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.

It's difficult to unzip a lawn and zip it back closed without it
showing.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 19:28:16 -0400, ads wrote:

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:57:00 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:50:01 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:
On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.
Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

It's actually a multi-word phrase:

https://[your-city-name-here].cr...uff/search/zip

They tell me that Facebook Marketplace has a free stuff section too.

I've given away lots of stuff on CL, stuff not worth "selling". The emails
come in almost immediately after posting. Within minutes sometimes.

Some folks post "curb-alerts" when they put stuff out for the waste
haulers. '"Come look before Thursday!"

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.

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.

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.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 21:27:36 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 19:28:16 -0400, ads wrote:

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:57:00 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:50:01 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:
On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.
Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

It's actually a multi-word phrase:

https://[your-city-name-here].cr...uff/search/zip

They tell me that Facebook Marketplace has a free stuff section too.

I've given away lots of stuff on CL, stuff not worth "selling". The emails
come in almost immediately after posting. Within minutes sometimes.

Some folks post "curb-alerts" when they put stuff out for the waste
haulers. '"Come look before Thursday!"

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.

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.

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.

on Sun, 18 Apr 2021 21:22:09 -0400 typed in
rec.woodworking the following:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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".



donatritus donate + detritus

+1

The Wife came up with Donatium

John T.
--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)

on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 15:49:55 -0400 typed in
rec.woodworking the following:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.

Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

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?
--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)

DerbyDad03 on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:57:00 -0700
(PDT) typed in rec.woodworking the following:

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.
Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

It's actually a multi-word phrase:

https://[your-city-name-here].cr...uff/search/zip

They tell me that Facebook Marketplace has a free stuff section too.

I've given away lots of stuff on CL, stuff not worth "selling". The emails
come in almost immediately after posting. Within minutes sometimes.

I have a cartoon of the guy at the dump, getting ride of his junk,
picking up some "perfectly good stuff" - 'that's why they call it
recycling.'

Some folks post "curb-alerts" when they put stuff out for the waste
haulers. '"Come look before Thursday!"
--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)

Puckdropper on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:13:07 GMT
typed in rec.woodworking the following:
pyotr filipivich wrote:
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".

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.

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.

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....

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.
--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 9:20:54 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 14:45:38 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 3:48:35 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:
...
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.

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.
That sounds bad. Really bad. The irrigation system shouldn't be
between the shutoffs or at least there should be a valve on the
irrigation system.

Thus the reason for the "both buyer and seller agree that the repair request
has been fulfilled" clause and the final walk through just before closing. My
son wants this house, but he doesn't need it. If this water issue doesn't get
resolved to his satisfaction, he'll walk.

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.
It's difficult to unzip a lawn and zip it back closed without it
showing.

Lawn? In Las Vegas? ;-) In this case it would just be a matter of putting the rocks
back in place.

BTW...He refers all of his clients to this inspector. On the inspection report, the
inspector had 2 line items:

Inspection: Quantity 1 at $275 each
Discount: Quantity 55 at $5 each

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.


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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.



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.

No bidding war? In some places, once a full-price offer with no
contingencies is made, the house is "sold". That rarely happens
though.

In Texas, the offer has to be accepted. Normally several offers are
considered before a contract is signed.


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.)

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!

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.

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.

The Las Vegas economy is all but non existent, at the moment.

On 4/18/21 7:07 PM, pyotr filipivich wrote:

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".



Effluvium Removium

On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2012).

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.

No bidding war? In some places, once a full-price offer with no
contingencies is made, the house is "sold". That rarely happens
though.

In Texas, the offer has to be accepted. Normally several offers are
considered before a contract is signed.


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.)

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!

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.

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.

The Las Vegas economy is all but non existent, at the moment.

Probably a good time to buy on spec.

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:23:57 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 15:49:55 -0400 typed in
rec.woodworking the following:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.

Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

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?

You sound like a hoarder. ;-) I have way too much stuff. I've been
going through boxes and throwing away anything that doesn't have
special meaning and hasn't been used (and still in the box from the
last move).

Can you have too many chisels?

On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:23:57 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

Puckdropper on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:13:07 GMT
typed in rec.woodworking the following:
pyotr filipivich wrote:
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".

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.

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.

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....

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.

Sounds like a lot of work for $1K.

wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

--
G Ross

On 4/21/2021 7:18 AM, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

It's at least partially covid related.Â* 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.Â* Sight unseen.Â* That's up
from 50% last year and 40% from the year before.Â* The buyer's attitude
is that if they don't like the house, they'll just turn around and
sell it.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he
could not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit
margin he wanted.Â* The builder literally canceled all contract builds
and is only selling spec homes.Â* Those spec homes are going up 20% in
price from the beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground.Â* I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but
we were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting,
construction quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough.Â* I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon.Â* Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder.Â* This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender.Â* At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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.Â* 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.Â* My wife was still living in
the old house because she needed to continue at her old job (that
insurance thing).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010.Â* Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of
last year, almost 10 years.Â* In the last 5~6 months its value has
gone up to about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes.Â* Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.



Yeah taxes are a big consideration.

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 08:18:58 -0400, G Ross wrote:

wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

As long as all evaluations rise together, there shouldn't be a
problem. Vermont had one (and the only one I can think of now) thing
they did right. They had a so called "Grand List" that enumerated
every bit of real estate and its evaluation. Then costs of
government. Your taxes were then (cost of government) * (your
assessment) / Grand list. As housing prices rose, the rates fell
accordingly. In theory. Unfortunately the cost of government,
primarily schools, is so high that the taxes are outasight (at least
4x my current taxes).

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 10:55:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/21/2021 7:18 AM, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he
could not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit
margin he wanted.* The builder literally canceled all contract builds
and is only selling spec homes.* Those spec homes are going up 20% in
price from the beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground.* I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but
we were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting,
construction quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough.* I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon.* Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder.* This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender.* At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010.* Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of
last year, almost 10 years.* In the last 5~6 months its value has
gone up to about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes.* Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.



Yeah taxes are a big consideration.

My taxes are about the same as they were then, or maybe a little less.
We're both over 65 now. ;-)

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 8:19:08 AM UTC-4, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

--
G Ross

Mixed blessings.

Less taxes paid, fewer services available. I know that services aren't always
provided/used on a equitable basis, but it would tough to complain about
those roads that aren't getting fixed at the same time people are protesting
their assessment.

on Tue, 20 Apr 2021 21:30:45 -0400 typed in
rec.woodworking the following:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:23:57 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 15:49:55 -0400 typed in
rec.woodworking the following:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:43:34 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:13 AM, Puckdropper wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote in
:


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".

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....

Puckdropper


The opposite is
Unobtainium.

The fuel on that far and distant planet in the movie Avatar.

Unobtanium is something you can't get. We're looking for the word for
something that you can't get rid of. ;-)

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?

You sound like a hoarder. ;-)

Some people call me a pack rat. Please, I am a "Rodent of Unusual
Acquisition and Retention."

I have way too much stuff. I've been
going through boxes and throwing away anything that doesn't have
special meaning and hasn't been used (and still in the box from the
last move).

I have a box labeled "It is 2:15 AM, who knows?"

I am also going through boxes and making marvelous discoveries.
Some are of the "so that's where it / the other parts are" and some
are "I forgot I ever had that."

Can you have too many chisels?

That's a question only when I find a "good deal" on another
one/set. I've been learning of the various types of chisels, so
having multiple chisels N wide is one thing if they are different
types, completely something else if they are all the same 'type'.

--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)

on Tue, 20 Apr 2021 21:32:33 -0400 typed in
rec.woodworking the following:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:23:57 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

Puckdropper on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:13:07 GMT
typed in rec.woodworking the following:
pyotr filipivich wrote:
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".

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.

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.

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....

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.

Sounds like a lot of work for $1K.

Maybe it is. But you know how it goes, a thousand here, a thousand
there, pretty soon you're talking real money.
--
pyotr filipivich
This Week's Panel: Us & Them - Eliminating Them.
Next Month's Panel: Having eliminated the old Them(tm)
Selecting who insufficiently Woke(tm) as to serve as the new Them(tm)

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 09:36:14 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 8:19:08 AM UTC-4, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

--
G Ross

Mixed blessings.

Less taxes paid, fewer services available. I know that services aren't always
provided/used on a equitable basis, but it would tough to complain about
those roads that aren't getting fixed at the same time people are protesting
their assessment.

OTOH, schools aren't teaching anything useful yet cost 2/3rds of the
taxes paid.

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 10:39:59 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

on Tue, 20 Apr 2021 21:32:33 -0400 typed in
rec.woodworking the following:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:23:57 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:

Puckdropper on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:13:07 GMT
typed in rec.woodworking the following:
pyotr filipivich wrote:
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".

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.

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.

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....

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.

Sounds like a lot of work for $1K.

Maybe it is. But you know how it goes, a thousand here, a thousand
there, pretty soon you're talking real money.

A day here and a day there, pretty soon you've taken your whole life.
There's always more money to be had. Never more life.

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 3:14:19 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 09:36:14 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 8:19:08 AM UTC-4, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

--
G Ross

Mixed blessings.

Less taxes paid, fewer services available. I know that services aren't always
provided/used on a equitable basis, but it would tough to complain about
those roads that aren't getting fixed at the same time people are protesting
their assessment.
OTOH, schools aren't teaching anything useful yet cost 2/3rds of the
taxes paid.

Right, so let's protest our assessments so we can lower our school taxes too,
further degrading the quality of our educational system. Then we can complain
about how terrible our educational system is and bitch about how little we are
getting for our tax dollars.

It's OK, my daughter and her partner will just dig deeper into their pockets to buy
basic supplies for their students. Then they can load the supplies into their cars
and drive to school on the crappy roads that didn't get repaired because we all
protested our assessments to lower our county taxes.

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 13:59:07 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 3:14:19 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 09:36:14 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 8:19:08 AM UTC-4, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

--
G Ross

Mixed blessings.

Less taxes paid, fewer services available. I know that services aren't always
provided/used on a equitable basis, but it would tough to complain about
those roads that aren't getting fixed at the same time people are protesting
their assessment.
OTOH, schools aren't teaching anything useful yet cost 2/3rds of the
taxes paid.

Right, so let's protest our assessments so we can lower our school taxes too,
further degrading the quality of our educational system. Then we can complain
about how terrible our educational system is and bitch about how little we are
getting for our tax dollars.

Exactly. There is nothing *to* fund but we're being charged
*enormously* for that nothing. Protest either/both sides.

It's OK, my daughter and her partner will just dig deeper into their pockets to buy
basic supplies for their students. Then they can load the supplies into their cars
and drive to school on the crappy roads that didn't get repaired because we all
protested our assessments to lower our county taxes.

It has nothing to do with supplies or anything else tangible. There
is no interest in teaching kids anything. The purpose of "education"
is to enrich unions (not teachers) and indoctrinate (not teach)
children. Answer me this - why is civics no longer taught, when
"Heather has Two Mommies" is? Or, how our mathematics scores are
among the lowest in the western world, and getting worse. Speaking of
"western world", why is that such an evil thing in education today.

When I was living in Vermont, the state education site (since buried)
had statistics for the state education system. The student to
"classroom teacher" ratio was 15:1. Not unreasonable. But there was
also one "non-classroom TEACHER" for every two classroom teacher. That
makes the teacher/student ratio more like 7.5:1. Then, for every two
"teachers" there was also a teacher's aid. Now it's more like 3-5:1.
That's just teachers. It doesn't include administration. Now, tell me
again how that's "not enough money" to teach our little darlings.

Yeah, our education taxes are too low.

wrote:
On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 13:59:07 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 3:14:19 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 09:36:14 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 8:19:08 AM UTC-4, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

--
G Ross

Mixed blessings.

Less taxes paid, fewer services available. I know that services aren't always
provided/used on a equitable basis, but it would tough to complain about
those roads that aren't getting fixed at the same time people are protesting
their assessment.
OTOH, schools aren't teaching anything useful yet cost 2/3rds of the
taxes paid.

Right, so let's protest our assessments so we can lower our school taxes too,
further degrading the quality of our educational system. Then we can complain
about how terrible our educational system is and bitch about how little we are
getting for our tax dollars.

Exactly. There is nothing *to* fund but we're being charged
*enormously* for that nothing. Protest either/both sides.

It's OK, my daughter and her partner will just dig deeper into their pockets to buy
basic supplies for their students. Then they can load the supplies into their cars
and drive to school on the crappy roads that didn't get repaired because we all
protested our assessments to lower our county taxes.

It has nothing to do with supplies or anything else tangible. There
is no interest in teaching kids anything. The purpose of "education"
is to enrich unions (not teachers) and indoctrinate (not teach)
children. Answer me this - why is civics no longer taught, when
"Heather has Two Mommies" is? Or, how our mathematics scores are
among the lowest in the western world, and getting worse. Speaking of
"western world", why is that such an evil thing in education today.

When I was living in Vermont, the state education site (since buried)
had statistics for the state education system. The student to
"classroom teacher" ratio was 15:1. Not unreasonable. But there was
also one "non-classroom TEACHER" for every two classroom teacher. That
makes the teacher/student ratio more like 7.5:1. Then, for every two
"teachers" there was also a teacher's aid. Now it's more like 3-5:1.
That's just teachers. It doesn't include administration. Now, tell me
again how that's "not enough money" to teach our little darlings.

Yeah, our education taxes are too low.

It is no longer allowed to punish misbehaving students other than to
"stay after school". So now the school buses run the routes through
the county not twice but 3 times so as to take the "punished" kids
home. Think of the extra pay to the drivers and the cost of running
those diesel powered buses an extra route. Plus extra pay to the
teacher who has to monitor them after school, extra time on the
heating or AC. That is progress?
--
G Ross

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:57:04 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 13:59:07 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 3:14:19 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 09:36:14 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 8:19:08 AM UTC-4, G Ross wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:40:02 -0500, Leon [email protected]
wrote:

On 4/19/2021 2:48 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:14:15 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:36:03 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 17:07:05 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote:


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.
Dumpster
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.

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.

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.

Interest rates are favorable but are being offset in the home prices
going up, way up, on a twice a week basis from new home builders.
My wife and I went into contract with a builder in September of last
year. 2 weeks later the builder canceled the contract because he could
not get materials at a price point to afford him the profit margin he
wanted. The builder literally canceled all contract builds and is only
selling spec homes. Those spec homes are going up 20% in price from the
beginning of the build to completion, 3/4 months.

Over 30 years, three or four (or six) percent adds up to some real
money. I see all sorts of new builds going well before completion.
Many are sold before breaking ground. I'm sure it's not only
materials going up faster than the homes can be built but there has to
be a shortage of subs and subs are having trouble finding the trades.

We probably could have fought this in a back logged court system but we
were not willing to risk less than what we were expecting, construction
quality wise.

Or a delay until the next century.


And yet the houses in our are cannot be built fast enough. I see a
housing crash, similar to the one in 2008, on the horizon. Once the
government stops sending every one stimulus checks that building boom
may slow.

Oh, so do I but I think it's going to be far harder. This time maybe
not so much for the buyer as the lender. At 2% interest now, lenders
are going to be in a squeeze if/when interest rates go to 5% or (maybe
far) above.

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).

About the same here but we built in late 2010 and moved in Dec. 24,
2010. Our house appreciated in value about 50% thru September of last
year, almost 10 years. In the last 5~6 months its value has gone up to
about 60% more than what we paid.

Ours is up almost 150% from what we paid (we actually bought in early
2011).

Think about taxes. Our old house was valued at $130 thousand in 2019,
and $189 thousand in 2020 with taxes going up comparably. I filed a
protest and got it down to
$140,000. This is just county taxes.

--
G Ross

Mixed blessings.

Less taxes paid, fewer services available. I know that services aren't always
provided/used on a equitable basis, but it would tough to complain about
those roads that aren't getting fixed at the same time people are protesting
their assessment.
OTOH, schools aren't teaching anything useful yet cost 2/3rds of the
taxes paid.

Right, so let's protest our assessments so we can lower our school taxes too,
further degrading the quality of our educational system. Then we can complain
about how terrible our educational system is and bitch about how little we are
getting for our tax dollars.

Exactly. There is nothing *to* fund but we're being charged
*enormously* for that nothing. Protest either/both sides.

It's OK, my daughter and her partner will just dig deeper into their pockets to buy
basic supplies for their students. Then they can load the supplies into their cars
and drive to school on the crappy roads that didn't get repaired because we all
protested our assessments to lower our county taxes.

It has nothing to do with supplies or anything else tangible. There
is no interest in teaching kids anything. The purpose of "education"
is to enrich unions (not teachers) and indoctrinate (not teach)
children. Answer me this - why is civics no longer taught, when
"Heather has Two Mommies" is? Or, how our mathematics scores are
among the lowest in the western world, and getting worse. Speaking of
"western world", why is that such an evil thing in education today.

When I was living in Vermont, the state education site (since buried)
had statistics for the state education system. The student to
"classroom teacher" ratio was 15:1. Not unreasonable. But there was
also one "non-classroom TEACHER" for every two classroom teacher. That
makes the teacher/student ratio more like 7.5:1. Then, for every two
"teachers" there was also a teacher's aid. Now it's more like 3-5:1.
That's just teachers. It doesn't include administration. Now, tell me
again how that's "not enough money" to teach our little darlings.

Yeah, our education taxes are too low.

Oh, then there are the teacher's retirement plans. A good friend of
my wife gets 100% of her salary after 25 years. How many retirement
plans still exist?

Full disclosu I'm collecting a retirement but about 30% of my
salary after 30+ years. Hover, I started working there 45+ years ago
and no longer exists and hasn't for 30 years. They've also eliminated
the health insurance part of the retirement. In general, teachers
still have full benefits.

Again, tell me how our taxes are too low and how important it is for
the kiddies to be educated. They sure don't seem to be the ones
benefiting from our taxes.