New House - WooooHooooo

[alenhard]

Looks like a home from a neighborhood in Maryland where I've studied. Then again, could be anywhere...My guess is east coast???

By the way, it's a beautiful house.

[ChrisX]

Houses aint cheap here, like just about everything else

Same, here in Sydney as homes became unaffordable for the young and they have to go interstate or New Zealand.

Some homes have gone up by as much 70% in two years and the bubble just about to burst. The prices are slowing and may dip.

In a few years, I'll unlikely remain in Sydney and probably escape to greener and cooler places.

The weather here lately has been extremely HOT and on Sunday the tempurature was at 40° C or 104° F with high humidity.

The HOT nights here I understand is some kind of record as well. I stayed up that night to watch the Star Trek TV series instead of trying to sleep.

[g_shocker182]

If you don't mind me asking what city/state do you live in g_shocker182?

Just curious because your house typifies what I think a normal american house would look like yet on my trip over to the US in 2000 in all the states we travelled to I didn't see a single house that resembled yours.

I live in northern Virginia, near D.C.

There's a huge middle class boom as well as population boom around here, so housing is getting very expensive and a typical pop-up neighboorhood hold could have 100 homes like mine or hundreds off townhomes.

Pacmania, if you travel more north homes begin to have a distinct look.
It really depends on where you travel.

[Hardcoreruss]

If you don't mind me asking what city/state do you live in g_shocker182?

Just curious because your house typifies what I think a normal american house would look like yet on my trip over to the US in 2000 in all the states we travelled to I didn't see a single house that resembled yours.

Yeah I thought that, the monster in law lives in Boston MA and her house looks just like shockers also.

[energy80s]

Those English houses of yours look really different from American homes.

Most British homes are brick / concrete construction. Also as land is at a premium, house sizes are quite small (and usually built on top of each other with very small gardens).

[Marco33]

I thought WE had "Zero" lot line in Florida. The houses are even closer over there.

[tgpo]

I can see your bedroom!!!! I can see your bedroom!!!!


Conservatory. Only time I've ever heard this word was in the game Clue. We call them a Sunroom, patio, or a Florida Room here in the dumb south.

[Kevin abq]

I can see your bedroom!!!! I can see your bedroom!!!!


Conservatory. Only time I've ever heard this word was in the game Clue. We call them a Sunroom, patio, or a Florida Room here in the dumb south.

I was thinking the same thing We also call those a "porch" or "solarium" in the states.

[indolikaa]

I will attest to your enthusiasm for a house. I rented apartments for a long time before I finally decided I was throwing way too much of my money away. Albuquerque is a very expensive place to rent apartments.

I bought a house for 1/3 of what my rent payments were in Albuquerque for the same square footage. And no more ridiculous rules about only being allowed to have cats with no testicles and no claws. Bollocks to that!

Most British homes are brick / concrete construction. Also as land is at a premium, house sizes are quite small (and usually built on top of each other with very small gardens).

Wow. The minimum parcel size out here is 40 acres, and those go for about £8,000.

[Kevin abq]

hardcoreruss,
Congrats. It sure is nice to be able to move up to a house, which is basically a savings account you live in, instead of a drawer full of rent receipts and no equity.

g_shocker,
Nice house! My wife and I both love colonial style homes. She would love your house. When we got our present house built in '93 we wanted a red brick colonial 2-story with white window shutters, which is what we got. Not too many homes like ours or yours here in Albuquerque, which is mostly adobe and stucco frame.

Indolikaa,
If you think Albuquerque is expensive, you ought to price homes and apartments in my old stomping grounds - Chicago. Starter homes in the suburb I grew up in are running about $300K, and I'm talking 1300 square foot bungalows, 2 or 3 small BR, 1 bath! The nice homes in the Chicago suburbs like Winnetka, Inverness, Barrington or Lake Forest are running $2 to 3 Million. And those aren't even the best houses. Where do these people work???

In Albuquerque $300K would get you a nice brand-new house, at least 2800 square feet, 4 BR, 2 or 3 bath, 3-car garage and a culdesac lot of about 1/2 acre in town. It would buy you a whole farm out in the boonies

[indolikaa]

Hardcore, let me just take another opportunity to congratulate you and wish you good luck. Not just for the house, mind you. When I got my house, I had AN ENTIRE ROOM! for my model trains that I DIDN'T HAVE TO SHARE WITH ANYONE! And a den for the computers.

HEAVEN!

@Kevin,

Chicago? The Suburbs? Expensive? Surely you jest.

This area is the antithesis of the building boom the US has seen for the last 10 years. It's too rural for most people and is not a place you'd sink money into as an investment in real estate. Most of the new houses going up are from families that originally settled the area, the rest of the population goes with double-wide and triple-wide houses on ½- to 10-acre lots.

[Hardcoreruss]

Happy Days

Property went on the market this morning at 11.30am, sold at 5.00pm for 122.5k.

Heres the listing below

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/rm/s/rm/template/publicsite%2Cbuying%2CPropertyDetails.vm/s...a_n=1&tr_t=buy

They did not even mention our 4 thousand pound imported swedish flooring (especially for you Baldrick )

That should shut her up er...................forever hopefully.............but I doubt it.

[indolikaa]

Sounds like you're buying tonight!

[Kevin abq]

Hardcore, let me just take another opportunity to congratulate you and wish you good luck. Not just for the house, mind you. When I got my house, I had AN ENTIRE ROOM! for my model trains that I DIDN'T HAVE TO SHARE WITH ANYONE! And a den for the computers.

HEAVEN!

@Kevin,

Chicago? The Suburbs? Expensive? Surely you jest. ......

........double-wide and triple-wide houses on ½- to 10-acre lots.

Indolikaa,
I know ....duuhhh!! Like saying "Seattle gets rain".I don't miss the high costs at all.
You remember what Los Lunas is like? Very rural, lots of land, lots and lots of trailer homes in the middle of these huge tracts.

[indolikaa]

Seattle gets rain?

[Kevin abq]

[tgpo]

Dude. I can't get over how close those houses are together. It looks like there is only a few feet between them.

[Craig Tucker]

We also have a thing over here called teracced blocks where there are rows and rows of houses with 0 feet between them. You have to remember that for our population of approximately 60 million our country is pretty small. Our pop. is nearly a quater of yours but the country would probrably easily fit into one of your larger states.

But then don't you guys have apartment buildings over there in urban areas where space is at a premium.

Go out into the country in less populated areas over here and you will get properties with much more land and spaced much further apart. But be prepared to pay a shitload of cash for them.

[g_shocker182]

At least here, a porch is not a sunroom. A sunroom is just an extra room in the house, like the left part on mine.

[gmatov]

Unf***in' believable.

Quarter of a million for a house. Over here, in this area, with no manufacturing left, they are literally throwing them up at 300k and up, people scrabbling to get into them.

I built my own, literally, starting in 74, finished in 82, out of my own pocket, no mortgage, for a total of 32k. 1900 foot two story colonial, more ot less, with 2 car attached garage.

Have to see what the f'in thing would go for, might finance my retirement 3 years down the road. Kids bought 3 acres, said I should sell, build on their back lots.

But, god-damn, 26 USD for a sheet of plywood subfloor that I paid 7 USD for, makes me think I could not do it again.

Kinda pity my kids, I saw the drawing of the house they want to build, and it will probably hit the numbers you guys are talking. (I am NOT allowed to be the General Contractor, to cut deals, or tell a drywall hanger, or electrician, he is talking out his ass).

How the hell can normal people afford 1000+ mortgage payments?

I built sub-100k houses for a while, they stayed on the market for 3-6 months.

Good luck to all of you.

Cheers,

George

[energy80s]

At least here, a porch is not a sunroom. A sunroom is just an extra room in the house, like the left part on mine.

An extra room would be called an extension! A sunroom or conservatory is an "add-on", but I've never seen the need for them.

I have lived in a terraced house (or town house as the estate agents now call them) all my life. Again, I don't suppose that Americans have housing estates with hundreds of houses built in a small area around a town. Most of these were built by the council for rent, but in recent years have been sold off to private buyers. Our current terraced house cost £6,000 in 1984! It's now worth about £45,000.

[alenhard]

Again, I don't suppose that Americans have housing estates with hundreds of houses built in a small area around a town.

It isn't common, but traditional neighborhoods are making a huge comeback in the States. Although some people still prefer a more rural setting, urban residential neighborhoods are increasing at a much higher rate.

The days of endless sprawling development and automobile dependency are being seriously reconsidered, and it appears that positive change is on the way. Mixed uses are finally becoming common again and architecture is more than just an afterthought.

[Kevin abq]

We have our share of "stacked" condos in high-rise apartment buildings in the states. They're like apartments but you actually buy the apartment and have a mortgage payment and an association fee.