T-N-T
Senior Member
Don't buy a house too close to your in-laws.
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Rules For House Buying
- Thread starter Jack Ryan
- Start date
JB0704
I Gots Goats
This ^^^^. I'll NEVER do that again.
oops1
Buzzard Expert
Never buy a 2 story house, when you get old/drunk you sure don't want to be climbing stairs.
Unless it has a stair chair
oops1
Buzzard Expert
Could you get a DUI on one of those?
rospaw
Senior Member
When you buy a house, the day after closing you need to have made money.
Dialer
Senior Member
6 years old, I remember my Dad laughing out loud when the seller of our new home in Southwest Atlanta told him the house was haunted, but as long as he didn’t disturb the small 1/2 bath that was boarded up, things would be fine. Yep! Down came the wall of painted over 1x6’s, and in came the constant freeze spots. The 1/2 bath was at a constant 26 degrees, or so it seemed. Folks from all decades seen, smelled, or heard throughout the then 40 year old house. Myself and my 3 brothers were in constant confusion as to what exactly was going on. Apparently, according to modern “ghost hunters”, these were common symptoms of a “portal” being opened once the bathroom wall was torn down. Actual research of the house done in 1999, shows that a 77 year old woman cut her throat in the bathtub of the small bath in July of 1961. This created a portal that wayward spirits could come and go across this dimension through the bathroom. This describes exactly what was experienced by myself and family from 1966-1972. Th strong smell of a cigar entered the large living room one night while we were watching “The Partridge Family”, our favorite show. My Aunt turned around and asked my Mom, “Who is that standing there in the hall behind you?” She was the only one of us that seen this individual, but I could smell the thick cigar smoke. She describe a burly man, large build, dressed in the likeness of a lumberjack. His eyes were blank, beard and hair thick, with no other movement but very fluent in appearance to her, and of coarse smoking a cigar, just staring. This, like many other apparitions from all eras would disappear as fast as they would appear in the converted duplex. We were ran out in 1971 (ish) when my mother finally snapped the morning after she was nearly smothered in her sleep by yet another apparition from a past era. This time, a transparent woman with no eyes was in her face when my Mother was awakened to gasp for air.. These are just a small sample of the crazy things that happened in that house that still stands over on Sylvan road in SW Atlanta. So don’t laugh when someone hints that the house may be haunted!
Ours was built in 1954 on concrete blocks and framed with heart pine. You can't pry a nail out of any of it to save your life. If Rocket Man pops a nuke on the ATL our house will still be standing after the dust settles. It might glow green at night but it will still be standing.
What other kind of foundation is there? 99% of them here are concrete block foundations, some of them really old with no problems that I know of? I reckon y'all don't have basements down there?
I also don't understand the mindset of folks who act like buying a house is mainly for a financial thing. If I buy a house, I want it as a home to live in, pure and simple. And I don't plan on selling it to make money. I'd rather have a rusty trailer or tarpaper shack or tipi out in the middle of nowhere as a 500k house in a HOA subdivision to live in, any day and twice on Sunday. If I want to make a strictly financial investment, I'll do it somewhere else except my home.
And I don't want haints in my house. I can barely support mice, much less haints.
I also don't understand the mindset of folks who act like buying a house is mainly for a financial thing. If I buy a house, I want it as a home to live in, pure and simple. And I don't plan on selling it to make money. I'd rather have a rusty trailer or tarpaper shack or tipi out in the middle of nowhere as a 500k house in a HOA subdivision to live in, any day and twice on Sunday. If I want to make a strictly financial investment, I'll do it somewhere else except my home.
And I don't want haints in my house. I can barely support mice, much less haints.
No basements down in this part of the country. I don`t guess I`ve ever even seen a basement.
One down here would probably end up being an indoor swimming pool.
All the houses here are built into a hillside, there is no flat ground here except in the floodplain along the river. The ground floor is ground level at the top, and a 20' set of steps on the bottom side. And folks find out about once a decade why you don't want to build a house in the nice, flat floodplain.
T-N-T
Senior Member
I grew up where basements were scattered here and there.
But here I live a hole more than 2 ft deep in will hold water tomorrow most places. So No basements
But here I live a hole more than 2 ft deep in will hold water tomorrow most places. So No basements
Swamprat
Swamprat
For you younger folks.....never buy a house, keep living with your parents. They enjoy the company and smarmy banter about your job prospects. 
Havana Dude
Senior Member
For you younger folks.....never buy a house, keep living with your parents. They enjoy the company and smarmy banter about your job prospects.
I call mine squatters. I have 2. They are fully self funded except for their housing, and honestly, they don’t cost me much to have around, and frequently help out.
Jack Ryan
Senior Member
This was just a few of the things I've run in to over the years buying houses around Indiana and in Wisconsin.
I try never to make the same mistake twice, so far each one has been a new one.
I try never to make the same mistake twice, so far each one has been a new one.
Swamprat
Swamprat
HD.....good to see you still around. I got one married with my first grandson in Ohio, another in pharmacy school at UF and my last who turned 18 on the 11th and will graduate HS this year and wants to be a orthodontist.
We are pretty much empty nesters after the youngest goes to college, will get boring not hearing others in the house.
I will miss the chaos of the two daughters bickering over borrowed clothes.
Sorry to the OP for getting off topic but I have found just about every house you buy has it's own unique quirks or challenges unless it is in a cookie cutter subdivision.
GA native
Senior Member
Cookie cutters are not without their challenges. There you find builders who cut every corner. The corners that could not be cut, were rounded off. Then they throw in a bunch of cheap useless froo froo, designed to lure females into buying.
Undersized AC units.
Useless garden tubs.
Useless 8'x8' patios or decks.
GP siding.
Cellotex under the GP siding.
100 amp breaker box.
Cheap windows.
Polybutlylene under the slab.
My last house was a cookie cutter. Because of Obamanomics, we stayed in that house about 8 years longer than we had intended. So I wound up investing way more time and money in that shack, than we would ever see in return.
Couple that with the neighborhood's value cratering. By 2012, half of the hood' was in foreclosure. Those were bought out by REIT, and converted into rentals. So today, with over half of that neighborhood being rental property, it really is a "hood." Cops are prowling the streets everyday. Pitbulls are prowling the streets. Empty 40's in the gutters. Trash everywhere. Lawns that have not seen a lawnmower since the last time the county made them cut it. Roofs with blue tarps rotting away on them, with little hope of new shingles going in.
We finally managed to dump it on a rental company, and break even on the mortgage.
So there's a slew of nevers for the thread.
RinggoldGa
Senior Member
One of my best friends from UGA started a company on his own from his living room buying foreclosed homes in neighborhoods and renting them out. He saw a need for decent rental houses to people who couldn't get a mortgage due to a recent foreclosure. Started with one home.
Within 5 years he had 100+ employees, 2500 houses, and he and his investors sold the company for around 260 million.
It was called The American Home and almost half those homes were in the Atlanta area. May have been the one that did a lot of homes in your neighborhood.
We've never talked numbers but I'm sure my buddy walked away with many millions of dollars.
Here's a link to a story on him from MSNBC back in 2013, about 2 years prior to them selling the company.
https://www.cnbc.com/id/100366417
GA native
Senior Member
Here's another never.
Never buy a house with vaulted ceilings. They cost a fortune to heat and cool.
Never buy a house with vaulted ceilings. They cost a fortune to heat and cool.
BeerThirty
Senior Member
Not if they're insulated properly. Personally can't stand houses that don't have vaulted ceilings...makes me feel tight, almost claustrophobic..
