Can we talk real estate again?

[tacokick]

My bedroom growing up (through college) was a hair over 8x6 plus a tiny closet. I had room for a twin bed, a book case jammed at the foot of my bed rendering the bottom two shelves useless and my small dresser was in the closet. It was miserable.

[Deleted]

May 1, 2018 15:04:37 GMT -5 shauni27 said:

I am sorry it has been such a struggle! Do you have a realator that you like that can keep looking for you? They can get you in on houses right when they go to list (or before).

Yep. We have an agent we like. It's just tough. If I have my days right, the last one we offered on hit MLS like midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning. I literally saw it at 2am during a baby feeding. We were in to see it late Monday afternoon and submitted an offer by 9pm Monday. Our offer was for 5 percent over asking, with an escalation clause to go up to just over 10 percent over. By 9pm Tuesday, the sellers decided to go with another offer that had a larger down payment.

I'm telling myself the Lord is testing me since patience is not my strong suit.

[aurora]

May 1, 2018 14:04:50 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 13:43:18 GMT -5 wawa said:

DOES MILWAUKEE NOT HAVE NORMAL HOUSES? 

The answer is no.

The house we really really wanted but lost had a tub room. Not a bathroom. Just like an office-type room with a giant jetted tub and nothing else.

I have seen at least 2 houses with no door between the master bedroom and master bathroom. One of those could have had a door added. The other not only didn't have a door, but it didn't have a wall and instead had a couch facing the bathroom. One house we looked at had at least 6 pieces of taxidermy in the laundry room. The last house we looked at had a kitchen island with the sink on one side and the dishwasher on the other so that you had to walk around the island to load the dishwasher. The first house we looked at had an abomination of a kitchen. It had a bathroom sink in the kitchen and full sized dishwasher on wheels that you would move over to the sink to load and hook up to the water.

You can see why the tub room was NBD to us.

Re. the couch facing the bathroom, if I knew how to insert gifs from my phone I'd put the one of the three pugs head tilting questioningly here.

Re. the dishwasher on wheels, H's parents have one. It's not ideal, but it doesn't bother them too much.

[Deleted]

May 1, 2018 15:05:41 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

Fundamentally, in a tough market, you’re buying the land and home footprint. Almost everything else can be changed.

I mean, sure, if you're made of money.

[aurora]

May 1, 2018 14:20:05 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

May 1, 2018 14:00:08 GMT -5 icedcoffee said:

Beyond the mess of a wall-less shower. I hate them because your steam escapes and you get cold. I even get annoyed with my H when he opens the bathroom door when I shower. Stop letting my steam escape!!!

In that house you just yell, "H, chop more kindling and get that damn fire roaring!"

If we ever sell our house I'm going to send you pics and get tips on how to market it.

[aurora]

And harpy, I'm sorry you're struggling to find the right house. We've had similar markets here and I know it's extremely frustrating for buyers.

[Velar Fricative]

May 1, 2018 15:29:07 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 15:05:41 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

Fundamentally, in a tough market, you’re buying the land and home footprint. Almost everything else can be changed.

I mean, sure, if you're made of money.

That’s why I think the OP house isn’t bad. As long as there are no serious structural issues (and it does have a new roof and other similar stuff which is nice), you could live there without knocking down walls and doing $$$ gut renos.

I do concur with the reply you quoted though. We bought a house we could afford with great bones, but the inside was (and still is) outdated. We can’t afford to make huge changes at once and we are not DIY people, so we take our time with stuff unless HGTV can pay for us to do something. We will live here for a long time so what’s the rush?

But ignore me if the OP house has structural issues or it’s just not your cup of tea at all.

[Pom]

House shopping sucks. It was our third house before we had a “not a fucking nightmare” scenario. But selling house #2 at the same time almost killed me.

Sending you househunting hugs and good juju.

[goldengirlz]

May 1, 2018 15:29:07 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 15:05:41 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

Fundamentally, in a tough market, you’re buying the land and home footprint. Almost everything else can be changed.

I mean, sure, if you're made of money.

That’s fair but not every project needs to be done immediately either. We bought two fixers and have no regrets even when it meant living with outdated, well, everything for years before we were able to jazz things up.

Anyway, housing hunting is the goddamn worst and I’m sorry it’s been so hard.

[rachelgreen]

May 1, 2018 14:41:29 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 14:33:08 GMT -5 shauni27 said:

kath16 you are good at this! @angryharpy , you should go see the ones Kath just posted; they are too cute! Good luck in your house buying journey, friend!

The Hartung Ave one she posted closed yesterday. The 69th Street one is already under contract. She's got good taste, I'll give her that.

You practically have to show up with an offer in hand. The second house we bid and lost on was on the market for no more than 72 hours, I think.

Exactly.

People, especially for the Milwaukee area. Do. Not. Use. Zillow for our searches. We have a red hot market here. Zillow is outdated within hours. My house never even got a sign out up in the yard and we closed two years ago this month.

Use Shorewest and see if it says Active or Active with offer if you’re really wanting to search for AH.

Edit: and she’s right. We saw this hour within 12 hours of it being on the market. We were the second offer on it. Full asking, flexible closing date, wrote a letter, etc etc etc.

[jenny1980]

May 1, 2018 14:01:06 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

You know what makes me feel super awesome about myself? Gushing about how cheap real estate is when I'm struggling to find something decent that I can afford. Very cool.

My point is that all of your options in your price range ARE super decent! You will definitely end up in a much nicer house than any of the crap shacks we looked at here, that's for sure. 

It definitely sucks to buy in a hot market. Everyone waives contingencies here, so we had to pay $500 on each house for a pre-inspection before even making an offer. It's absolutely ridiculous. You're being smart by not getting caught up in a bidding frenzy.

[thejackpot]

@angryharpy, ugh. Sorry that this is such a crappy time to buy. We are buying now and the house that we picked had 5 offers and was only on the market for 2 days. So very stressful!

[Deleted]

May 1, 2018 16:04:55 GMT -5 jenny1980 said:

May 1, 2018 14:01:06 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

You know what makes me feel super awesome about myself? Gushing about how cheap real estate is when I'm struggling to find something decent that I can afford. Very cool.

My point is that all of your options in your price range ARE super decent! You will definitely end up in a much nicer house than any of the crap shacks we looked at here, that's for sure. 

It definitely sucks to buy in a hot market. Everyone waives contingencies here, so we had to pay $500 on each house for a pre-inspection before even making an offer. It's absolutely ridiculous. You're being smart by not getting caught up in a bidding frenzy.

But you can't compare what's a "crap shack" in your market to what's here. We passed on a house that was, honestly, super awesome because it was just so overpriced for the neighborhood that we didn't think it was worth bothering with an offer. In Seattle, yes, it would've been a steal. But here, any market correction and we'd suddenly be $40k underwater. So yeah, the house with the 9x6 bedroom (FOR REAL, Y'ALL, IF SOMEONE NOT NAMED DIRK NOWITSKI IS TOO TALL TO LIE DOWN IN ONE DIRECTION, IT'S NOT A BEDROOM) might be workable, but if anything happens to the market, then we're the people stuck underwater making our kid sleep in the cupboard under the stairs a la Harry Potter because nobody will buy our crap shack because who the fuck wants a 15x6 bowling alley of a bedroom?

But yes, we will find something. I'm impatient but not worried. I mostly wanted to share because a hallway and a walk-in closet are NOT bedrooms.

[Deleted]

May 1, 2018 15:47:55 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

May 1, 2018 14:04:50 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

The answer is no.

The house we really really wanted but lost had a tub room. Not a bathroom. Just like an office-type room with a giant jetted tub and nothing else.

I have seen at least 2 houses with no door between the master bedroom and master bathroom. One of those could have had a door added. The other not only didn't have a door, but it didn't have a wall and instead had a couch facing the bathroom. One house we looked at had at least 6 pieces of taxidermy in the laundry room. The last house we looked at had a kitchen island with the sink on one side and the dishwasher on the other so that you had to walk around the island to load the dishwasher. The first house we looked at had an abomination of a kitchen. It had a bathroom sink in the kitchen and full sized dishwasher on wheels that you would move over to the sink to load and hook up to the water.

You can see why the tub room was NBD to us.

This...is a lot

And I haven't even shown you the boat house.

Shopping for houses has made me realize how fucking weird this city is.

[imobviouslystaying]

Is this a white people thing?

[karinothing]

I am really disappointed you did not buy the boat house.

[aurora]

May 1, 2018 16:36:14 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 15:47:55 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

This...is a lot

And I haven't even shown you the boat house.

Shopping for houses has made me realize how fucking weird this city is.

Oh, wow! Somebody went all in. I do kind of love the map walls.

[agnes]

I kinda dig the boathouse!

But wtf were they thinking?

[heyjude]

Not that using Redfin will get you a house (which you have my sympathies as house buying is stressful) but Redfin is just a much easier application to use to search for houses for sale and it allows you to search only for houses that are not pending so you don’t accidentally stumble on and fall in love with a house under contract. And it looks like Milwaukee has Redfin! Good luck! It will happen.

[Deleted]

May 1, 2018 17:18:50 GMT -5 agnes said:

I kinda dig the boathouse!

But wtf were they thinking?

So it wasn’t actually built to be a house. It was built to be a tourist attraction, but the builder moved in after zoning laws changed.

www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/2018/03/27/milwaukees-famous-boat-house-sale-again/461900002/

[agnes]

May 1, 2018 17:32:34 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Not that using Redfin will get you a house (which you have my sympathies as house buying is stressful) but Redfin is just a much easier application to use to search for houses for sale and it allows you to search only for houses that are not pending so you don’t accidentally stumble on and fall in love with a house under contract. And it looks like Milwaukee has Redfin! Good luck! It will happen.

yes! I loved Redfin when we were searching.

But our agent was saying that it was as up to date as the MLS site he gave us access to. I don’t know how accurate that is, but I really hated the MLS search’s interface so I rarely used it.

I often would just send him listings from Redfin and he’d get us in to see it right away. I’m

[HRH Queen Dick I, Orphan]

May 1, 2018 11:56:48 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 11:55:29 GMT -5 karinothing said:

Ha, I want to see pictures of the hallway bedroom. IT is so frustrating. When we were house shopping stuff would be marked as bedrooms that were only accessible through staircases in the masterbed (and had no windows..so basically an attic) or were like closets in basements where I Couldn't even stand. A lot of that stuff violates housing laws too.

Here is the house.

Did Spiderman take picture 17 of the bathroom?

[sakura]

Do you follow Firefly on fb? They post their upcoming houses before they hit mls.

[Jalapeñomel]

I love Milwaukee.

[iammalcolmx]

May 1, 2018 15:29:07 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 15:05:41 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

Fundamentally, in a tough market, you’re buying the land and home footprint. Almost everything else can be changed.

I mean, sure, if you're made of money.

And if you know of a good contractor AND have the resources/patience to rehab a damn home. We looked at houses 100k under we could afford and still didn’t have the nerve to do a big rehab. I feel you! H and I almost killed each other looking for a house. It’s frustrating and demoralizing. PEOPLE She doesn’t want to hear how cheap real estate is in her area but if you can find her something that would be helpful!!!

[kadams767]

I am pretty sure my husband would make us buy that boat house if it were in our city.

[TR]

May 1, 2018 17:10:54 GMT -5 imobviouslystaying said:

Is this a white people thing?

Is what a white people thing? Not wanting small rooms? Talking about real estate?

[litebright]

I'm sorry it's tough out there, @angryharpy. I hope you find something great soon!

[bronxgirl]

May 1, 2018 16:36:14 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

May 1, 2018 15:47:55 GMT -5 1234FIF! said:

This...is a lot

And I haven't even shown you the boat house.

Shopping for houses has made me realize how fucking weird this city is.

Wow, this is amazing. I'm not sure of amazing is exactly the word I want to use, but I don't think there is a word to sum up my reaction.  I have never been so curious to hear the backstory of a house.  All I can think is "Why?"

And I'm sorry this is such a frustrating process.

ETA: I guess I should have kept reading to see your explanation of the house, but it seemed like something I just had to respond to right away.  Because it's a boathouse. That's not a boat.

[imobviouslystaying]

May 1, 2018 20:10:18 GMT -5 TR said:

May 1, 2018 17:10:54 GMT -5 imobviouslystaying said:

Is this a white people thing?

Is what a white people thing? Not wanting small rooms? Talking about real estate?

Yup, totally. That's exactly it.