Real estate General topic

[grsthegreat]

When i sold my rental house in california (parents old home) it was sold as is. Got good money for it also.

When i sold the rental house in idaho i was asking more than comps in the area, but house had new roof and i replaced all the carpet and hard surface flooring, plus added ac and new water heater. It sold in 5 days to a California buyer, and i was asking 50k more than comps. I had no problem with that sale, was glad to get rid of the headache renters provide. When i figure in the rent collected over 5 years and the profit from the sale less repairs…. I more than doubled my investment in 5 years.

But done better with the 10 acres i bought across from my place. Bought it for $60K 6 years ago or so (as i recall) for horse pasture. Area comps for similar land now is 400-500k.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

lol... you don't know the Mennonites! They may be pious, but they've also never stepped over a nickel without picking it up. Frugal to a fault, there's no way there is anything of any value hiding under this house.

Locals joke that the "M" in Mennonite is for "Money".

I have Mennonite friends here in Virginia. Yoder & Glick. I know what you mean.
I assume (hope) you have a good metal detector?

 

[WinterDeere]

I assume (hope) you have a good metal detector?

I do, but after 300 years of constant inhabitation in which there was no trash service for probably the first 250+ years, it's basically impossible to use one around here! It beeps constantly, over almost every square foot of ground, given the amount of metallic trash that's been discarded and subsumed into the earth over that time. Nails, shutter hinges, old gutter hangers, bottle caps, plumbing parts...

Most are so disolved into the earth that they're completely unidentifiable, but they still trigger the detector, unless you really start gaming with the discriminator functions to hunt a specific metal or depth.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

My Whites detector is about 30 years old and it will discriminate between metal, the depth, etc. The new ones are way more advanced.
I found my Dad's wedding band he lost cleaning gutters, the gold I could tell by the audio tone. He was buried with it 10 years ago.
Your area & age of place I bet there are treasures to be found. During the Civil War people hid gold in wells and lots of coins found at outhouses out of pants pockets!

 

[WinterDeere]

Yep, I had an old Whites from the 1970's or 80's, now I have a more modern unit bought about 5-10 years ago. They're great when you know what you're looking for, but when just doing an indescriminate sweep to see what may be down there, this area is just constant hits on mostly trash metal.

Not much war history here, because Civil war never really came this way, the the Mennonites made such a public point of staying out of the Rev. war. I grew up surrounded by Rev. war history, George Washington actually used my grandmother's house as his headquarters for 10 days leading up to the Christmas day march on Trenton, and another Uncle's house was the headquarters of General Lord Sterling at the same time. Another uncle's house near @kenmbz's place was used as a hospital during the Rev. war, and soldiers were (at least temporarily) interred in the basement of that house. But none of that made it as far west as my current location.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

What I did was sweep an area without metal, then place a silver coin, my gold wedding band, aluminum foil in different areas. Mine has a distinct sound for gold and silver. Trash metal has a raspy sound.
If you can metal detect at your relatives place.
I carry a pin-point detector also to make locating faster.
I need to detect at the home place. Lots of interesting stuff I've found there.

 

[WinterDeere]

That's a good way to train it, and something I'll have to remember to try.

As to the relative's houses, my grandparents generation of my family owned most of the historic landmarks associated with the late 1776 into early 1777 part of the rev war, which was centered in east central Bucks County. But over the last few dozen years, each has been sold off as that generation passed. I had actually planned to buy the one next to @kenmbz at one time, but that aunt and uncle took so long to get around to selling that I had already bought our current place and settled our family here. Others sold when I was still too young and poor to afford them, which was a shame, but happens all the time.

One became a museum along River Road, just south of New Hope PA, which I get to take my kids to visit. The rest of those old family houses are all private residences under new owners now.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

My Grandparents were from Carbondale, Grandfather graduated from Carnegie Tech (later Mellon) in Pittsburgh and moved to Philadelphia when he became an Osteopathic Physician. My Mother talks about seeing Autogyros & Mummers parade there in the 1930s and Grandfather built a Sears Roebuck house there.
A favorite aunt & uncle lived in Mills...few people ever heard of it was so small.

 

[paulsharvey]

Emailed our real estate folks this morning, and basically told them, if the only repairs are the water heater and the tie downs, and once we have the appraisal, we will move forward, but asked if it is reasonable for us to ask the buyer to pay for the water heater replacement/betterment.

No sense doing these if the appraisal comes up short...

 

[paulsharvey]

Got 1 quote back on the tie downs, just over $2500. Sent the engineering info to another, who also wanted exterior pictures (guess they are concerned about access), but waiting on that quote. Called a local plumber about water heater. Got to get size, breaker, and space info for them.
Man, it pains me to hire that out, as it's super easy install, but I don't think I can sign the owner builder affidavit, with the home actively under contract... Yes, I know my county won't check, but....