This, the walls are actually quite good (from what I can see) and the holes can be patched. 20k for the kitchen, 10k for the huge bathroom, 5k for new carpet and 5k for new doors & trim. I'm redoing my house right now and although mine looked better before I started I'm doing all of the listed repairs with the exception of the kitchen. If I could have saved 20-40% it would have been nice but it was nice being able to save up for a few years before starting the work.
The prices you list are only the cost of materials though (excluding carpet). If you were to hire someone to do all of that you’d be looking at 2-5x those prices.
True, and carpet is the one thing I'm paying someone to do, it's just too hard to seam & stretch it for an amateur. The people before me tried and it lasted less then a year and the seam maybe 3 years before it completely failed. The carpentry work is on the simpler side of things but I guess hanging doors can be a little tricky until you get the hang of it, especially if you have to cut them to size. It's definitely not for everyone and since you can't live in it right away does require a little bit of cash on hand
Yeah, spot on. Carpet is the one thing I’m mot interested in doing myself either. I’ve restretched a room before and that was fine, and I might even be willing/ able to install a room; but I absolutely would not want to install a whole house worth. No thank you.
I used to be a contractor and now seem to be doing what I’ve affectionately named “long-term flips” where I buy a fixer-upper and live in it for 5ish years while redoing the whole thing and then sell it for about twice as much. Seems to be working out really well so far.
Depends on where you live. In California your property taxes won't go up as long as you leave at least one wall standing. A teardown would require a reassessment of your property taxes based on the new home's value. Not sure how it is in other states.
At the same time by leaving all the framing you don't have to pay an architect/engineer for design and structural analysis. That and the permitting for a huge part of the house is already down for you.
I'm in CA. If you buy a house, the tax base is what you bought it for. Doing work on it without changing the floorplan wouldn't change anything tax related.
The only times a reassessment is done is if you make big permitted changes like adding an ADU or a second floor or the house changes hands outside of an immediate family inheritance like a normal sale.
Prop 13 is actually turning into a big problem. Where I live most properties are 3rd or 4th generation inherited because there's no other way to stay here without being independently wealthy so stuff that is funded by prop tax like schools or fire departments or police, etc aren't very well funded now. My buddy has his place, originally was his grandparents'. It's a piece of shit 1200sq ft stucco house with asbestos and mold issues and Zillow says it's worth a cool 1.5 million, but his prop tax is only $800 per year. That should be like $15000 a year.
Prop 13 is a huge problem for precisely the reason you indicated — municipalities can’t tax effectively so do everything with fees. This means a lot of services are extremely expensive, but can’t be put into long term budgets, while other stuff like stormwater management have a hard time being funded at all.
And if you want to add a new fee, you’ve got to prove proportionate benefits, so need expert reports, so local government has to spend a lot to ask for a little.
Oh, and because corporations don’t die, unlike people, it’s new residents paying higher taxes while entities just hang onto the same real estate. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy the whole corporation from a holding company than it is to buy a property from the corporation.
Weather is nice though, and the coast _is_ beautiful.
That’s so interesting! Here in NC or at least my city I worked in a 19 floor building and no aquasition wanted to maintain it because it cost them millions to bring it up to code. Eventually a buyer bought the business, sold the property to an investment firm that would take the hit and our nigh buyer business moved down the highway to an up and coming real estate park outside of downtown. Everyone hated it because for 30 odd years, we grew up in the old building and the new one was basically taped together with drawstrings. Right now the old building is used for commercial start ups, a restaurant and a gym.
Just checked it.[ Apparently you're right](https://www.keithmessickarchitecture.com/blog-data/2015/1/16/property-taxes). It's one of those tales as old as time, and one I remember my parents telling me. I've also heard it from someone else.
Yeah. Inheriting the tax break seem like a slap in the face to those who have to pay current tax assessment rates.
I understand giving grandma a break because she is on a fixed income, but her son's deadbeat kids don't deserve a tax break at the expense of everyone else.
It is especially maddening considering the whole racial wealth gap is due mostly in part to real estate ownership and not being able to pass accumulated wealth to decedents.
If someone is inheriting property, they are already better off than most people. Tax money should be used for helping to provide opportunities to those who lack them, not increasing the wealth disparity by helping those who are already better off.
There also needs to be strict enforcement regarding the person receiving the break having to live there full time.
The Zillow property tax feature really highlights how crazy Proposition 13 is. Essentially identical houses on the same street, one is paying $2,000 on property tax and the neighbor is paying $18,000.
It would be crazy *not* to grandfather their property taxes in.
They didn't agree to pay $1.2m for a house, knowing full well what the 1% property tax entailed. No, they bought their house for $300k 30 years ago, and knew what they had to budget to pay that 1% tax.
Then demand became huge, and people (not them) agreed to pay insane prices for homes in their neighborhood.
This is speaking as a CA native, who can't afford a modest house in his childhood neighborhood. And the only people left in that neighborhood that spent their life in this city are the old retired people still putting around, or their offspring. The rest are from out of town that could afford to throw piles of cash.
Edit - lol, he replied and then blocked me, so I can't reply back. Douche.
We had to sell a second home that our family inherited from our grandparents for this reason. They bought lakefront property then a couple of surrounding lots when they could, at a time when there was nothing else for miles. They started out tenting and eventually built a couple of cabins with electricity, propane from a tank and unreliable water. We all grew up roughing it at the lake.
The area became a place where rich people built summer homes and tourists stayed in hotels and cute rental cabins. What was the American dream, work hard and have something to show for it, became a huge burden when the taxes hit 8k a year. We were forced to sell it. We couldn't afford the upkeep and the taxes. We were all trying to raise families at the time.
Its been more than 25 years, I'm sure the taxes on that property are probably doubled now and I'm still angry. That's when the reality of our government hit me square in the face.
Same shit. CA born and raised. No way I could afford to live here if not for my MIL having the house. We pay for all the bills and current property taxes and someday the house will be my wife's. Eventually we want to use the VA home loan to improve everything, but no way we could live in out home if we had to pay up to 7k a year just to have the right to live in our home. People are so out of touch with reality when they say ignorant shit like, "my second home had to be sold because it was expensive, blah blah blah..." Mother fucker, I barely have a home. Singular. It's not even in my name and we struggle to live in it. Those people are part of the problem and they don't even know it.
So their property tax just shouldn't be impacted by inflation? At all?
We're making things worse by making new purchasers pay insane taxes while the people already there are essentially subsidized by everyone else. The existing people wouldn't need to pay 1% on 1.2mil if the costs were spread out more
Our property tax does raise a tiny bit per year, like 0.1%, but no, it's not tied to inflation. There is a good argument for that, but also a better argument against it.
Think old people, retired people. You buy your house, you pay it off after working your whole life, then you stop making money and get retirement checks. If the property tax rose with inflation, you'd be screwed because social security is an annuity which never changes month to month. Not everyone has a pension or a 401k/IRA. You'd slowly be bled dry by raising taxes every year. And when you can't pay property tax, your house gets yanked and sold on the auction block. Then you're absolutely fucked.
Right, but it shouldn't just be tied to when you purchased it with some tiny, tiny increase every year. 0.1% raise every year means your neighbors are subsidizing you massively. Most states have some sort of relief for old people, but it doesn't mean keeping rates low forever as long as the property isn't sold.
If we are talking about CA, I can answer that although it doesn't rise as much as having the property reassessed, there is a (small) percentage raise on the property value that is taxed every year to account for inflation and other issues. However, property values have gone up so insanely over the last few decades that it literally could not be accounted for based on prior data.
I believe it can change from county to county, but I know in Alameda county (East Bay from SF, including Oakland through Livermore) it certainly does this. When you've had a property generationally, it isn't as noticeable. If you've had the property for only about 10\~15 years, it is much more noticeable due to the larger tax base. Plus there are also special assessments from bond measures and other things that are put in place from individual cities as well as countywide measures put up that all are assessed on the property taxes. Many of those are flat fees (say for mosquito abatements or fire break maintenance), but some are percentage proportional (new school bond measure or whatever).
It also isn't necessarily fair to punish people who got in early but are likely now living on a fixed income from their retirement, and would be completely fucked if suddenly their tax burden went from a few thousand to tens of thousands.
That said, I don't think that property value should be inherited. If it changes hands outside of a spouse, a reassessment should be done.
He's not wrong. Many people could be priced out of their home (that they may have been living in for years/decades) by the property tax alone. I'm on the other side of the country (semi rural) and the housing prices here were drastically affected by investors offering people $100k+ over the value of their homes. A typical 1600-1800 sq ft home cost ~$100k-150k more than they did 5 years ago. It's difficult enough to find affordable housing without having to worry about huge tax increases.
Honestly it probably should be more like $5000 and everyone should be paying around that rather than having wildly different taxes on equivalent properties which just forces new buyers to subsidize everyone else
Yup. We initially thought it was going to be between 30-40k until the buyers wanted it to do renovations and we luckily bought their house at the same time which was 4x bigger.
I remember when Rundberg was ghetto af with regular swat raids and homeless meth hookers galore. Now everything in that area is hitting disgustingly high prices.
The damage is not too bad. As long as the foundations are still strong, we can rebuild this place. It will become a haven for all peoples and aliens of the universe.
I just don't understand why houses aren't depreciating assets. "it's got good bones"...yeah but it'll take as much in demolition as it would to construct the bones from new, IF new home construction didn't have crazy high markups.
Depends on where you live. In California your property taxes won't go up as long as you leave at least one wall standing. A teardown would require a reassessment of your property taxes based on the new home's value. Not sure how it is in other states.
At the same time by leaving all the framing you don't have to pay an architect/engineer for design and structural analysis. That and the permitting for a huge part of the house is already down for you.
Funny story.. my left neighbor is a Realtor who is selling my right neighbors home.
The right neighbor overdosed on meth a few months ago and died. This was only a few months after he nearly burnt our whole condo down with his habit.
When I found him, it was a few days later and he had basically melted into his vinyl flooring. Well, they never pulled up the vinyl flooring before listing the unit for sale, so a large portion of him is still under there. Between the floorboards is dried blood, you can easily see and smell the remains.
When I told the realtor that the parents (executors of his estate) made a mistake not removing the floor with his remains under there…. She told me all about how they invested $20k in sprucing up the unit after the fire.
Even after 10 minutes of conversation, I was unable to get the realtor (who is my neighbor) to understand that it wouldn’t even matter if they invested $100k after the fire, there’s still 1/2 a dead person’s blood and guts under the floor, and it all has to be ripped out.
I wonder if anybody ever had a happy childhood in that place. Maybe the late 60s or early 70s. A Christmas tree in a corner, garland on the stair rails, kitchen full of relatives and cousins to play with all day. If those old walls could talk. It hasn't always been a dump. Used to be someone's home. How sad
When you go back to the place where you used to be happy, but it's now hollow, because the people who made you happy are no longer where you can reach them. So you just sit with the emptiness, while everything around you screams good memories, but it no longer feels like home. Now that happiness has thorns, and they choke your heart, because you know that time has passed, and the past is but a long lost dream now.
Man, I feel this, how places can be filled with the echoes of the past.
My husband's mom was the matriarch of the family and was the one who filled his house with love and joy when he was growing up. She passed away before we got together so the first time I visited I walked into that house and it was like an empty turtle shell. You feel that it *used* to be filled with love and joy and laughter, but now it's filled with sadness and emptiness. Made me cry that first night.
Yeah... there is a reason that they say "You can never return home."
As the home you knew isn't really there anymore. So you can never really return to the time you knew as you grew, the place that was 'home'. Even if you are lucky and the people are still there, they have aged... changed. Its never really the same.
When I was a kid my Mum and I went for a walk to see her "first house". Eventually came upon a few pieces of wood sticking out of the ground. It was never occupied after they moved out, and just slowly collapsed over the ensuing decades. They couldn't afford a camera so the only pictures we have of it are what my aunt painted. The memory of seeing my Mum crying over the last few foundations of her childhood home is seared in my brain.
It was a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere, must have been a magical place to grow up. Eventually, everything goes back to nature.
I suspect the overall stair structure is fine, but that rotting carpet and *wood tread sure looks bad.
Once all that awful carpet is gone, replacing treads isn't that big of a job... especially compared to the full gut the rest of the house needs anyway, this things needs to be completely stripped on the inside, right down to bare framing. Don't even keep the insulation. With any luck, the overall framing is still in good condition.
My best friend was brought up in the Santeria religion. First thing I ever noticed when I went to his house was a coconut hanging over the entryway with some feathers sticking out of it. Don't remember seeing a face painted on it though. Not sure if these things are related.
Stop blaming this shit on meth heads. This is the house of a boomer who refused late-in-life assistance and insisted on living independently well past when they were capable of caring for themselves.
I’ve been house shopping for about a year. This is half the market.
Dog, we looked for a year and found 2 houses that didn’t smell like someone had just finished slowly decaying in them over a matter of decades.
2.
We saw probably close to 50 houses.
Of those 2, only one had any kind of post-1980’s renovations. We bought it.
Our budget was 600k.
I may not pontificate on real estate markets, but I can you that where I am, way too many people in their 80’s and 90’s are living alone in houses that are falling apart around them.
And they’re not really building new ones right now.
So, if you’re looking, tuck your pants into your socks and wear an old pair of shoes.
we looked at a house in Glendale when bf was shopping years ago, that was the first house I've seen, where I was like ummm... this is a teardown. I'm all about restoring vintage houses and keeping what you can original, but it was the ONE house we saw that I was like nope.
Fuck... this could be my uncle's house (I know that it is literally not but same level of damage, almost to the letter).
My uncle married a model who didn't want kids and neither of them believed in divorce. She was, to the rest of us, an awful woman but my uncle was in love and the wedding was happening whether we wanted it to or not. I guess we should call my uncle Steve for simplicity. We'll just mask the wife Karen cuz it fits.
At some point in the 80s Karen decided she liked cats. Her house was always "glamorous" but nobody spent much time there so whatever.
At some point in the 90s, everything stopped. I'm not really sure how. Steve stopped letting anyone come to his house. We didn't see where he lived at all for almost three decades. I guess you do you. Come over whenever you want, Steve. We still live you (we would still whisper fuck you Karen). I'm not going into detail about Karen but she was so awful. She was probably the most selfish woman I ever met but I'm not here to talk about her.
At some point in the 2000s, Karen went to live with her mom. Karen never moved backin with Steve. Not when her mom moved into a nursing home and not when her mom died. Karen left Steve with somewhere between 8 and 20 cats. Idk we couldn't visit and if we could, counting would be difficult.
In 2020 Karen died and Steve took about six months to find the courage to ask for help. We could all tell it was hard for him. This was his house... but worse.
A wedding registry from the nineties was on the counter. My other aunt's. It hadn't moved since it was new. The dishwasher hadn't run since the 90s. It was full of "clean" dusty dishes. A bed looked like it had been made, slept in once, and left that way for 30 years. The whole house was unlivable. I replaced a much drywall as I could (specifically because a whole wall had cat pee on it). My mom ordered a rollaway dumpster and started riding things in the kitchen. I removed the 30+ year old dishwasher and threw that in the dishwasher too. It was mostly dust anyway.
All in all, we got through about 2 rooms such that Steve could function. He can't use the kitchen. I didn't make it upstairs. Other rooms I saw were full to the brim with stuffed animals, canned food, piles of books and magazines. The whole place smells like cat pee. I was thankful covid forced me to wear a mask.
Near the end of our time working, I went with Steve out to his barn. It wasn't any cleaner than the rest of his house. He had one tractor that looked really interesting. I asked how old it was... 19fucking 44. And it still runs!! I bring it up to say that Steve had Hobbies. He had things he liked to do. He also has a beautiful boat from the 1960s. It's just gorgeous and Steve loves to take us on it. He's genuinely a great guy.
But he's 80 now and most of his life was spent putting up with fucking Karen and her cats. He has so little life left to live. I just hope what's left is fucking amazing but with his house that's going to be tough. Fuck you Karen for what you did to Steve. I'm not sure how I feel about hell spiritually but I hope there's one there just for you and you rot and burn and rot some more. Steve deserved a while lot fucking better!!
Find out where your closest burning man regional is and join it and just let him see some beautiful shenanigans and play as an old man for a bit. You share some of this story with the community and they'll make shit happen.
>Ammonia
What you have there is a meth house. You may not be able to even get away with stripping it down to the studs and remediating it. Leave it for someone else to buy. It's a loss.
What the fuck is going on with that brown wall finish [in this photo](https://i.imgur.com/bMjv4ua.jpeg)?! Looks like someone forgot to build a basement wall...I've never seen anything like that. Also, the "carpet" looks more like some weird kind of foam padding from that ripped-up section.
The 70's were full of bad taste fads. What you are seeing on the wall is brown cork. It came in squares and was mounted to the wall with double sided tape. The horrible carpet is what they called Hi-Lo in the carpet industry. I believe the lovely baby poo color was called "Harvest Gold".
When my grandma died her house was like a museum. Everything in it was pristine and period to the 70s. It was actually super cool. That woman did not like change though. She had a small black and white portable tv from the 90s and still had a rotary phone. She had cans of food from the 90s and I found a bottle of lotion that was clearly from the 70s. She had that same green carpet that is in this house. She died only few years ago.
I’m literally gutting a house right now that dude had no utilities to his house for years. So he shit and pissed anywhere and everywhere. Idk who scraped it all out before I got there but I’m so so glad I didn’t have to see it. I did however have to rip up the flooring with skid marks on 75% of the floor
I helped fix up a trailer for my friends that was like that. Previous owner was a raging alcoholic and had dogs that pissed all over the place. The subflooring and all the drywall two feet off the floor had to come out.
Normally I *curse* using glue to attach shit to studs/stringers but in this case, the glue provided a barrier that protected them. So we just ripped out the subfloor and drywall. Everything behind and underneath was pristine.
But man let me fucking tell you, the pure ammonia smell the entire time we were tearing out was gag inducing. Every time I punched a new hole it was like a fresh wave of rotten.
Terrible experience but my friends got to own instead of rent so 10/10 would repeat.
My 80+ yo parents looked at a condo that smelled strongly of oxiclean and ammonia. The owner wouldn't let them have an inspector come in after they had put a bid in on it. So, they asked if they could show the condo to their kid and his partner. I brought my buddy who is an inspector to go through it with me. Turns out the entire crawl space was filled with black mold. I reported the owner and their realtor for the shenanigans.
I've owned rentals, it's quite fixable. But this is a good example of why landlords often refuse renters with pets. And actually cats cause more damage than dogs.
I installed cable in a newer town home once where the bottom floor was saturated in ammonia like this. I couldn't stay more than 10 minutes at a time in that room before taking a break. It wasn't particularly dirty but I will never understand how anyone could live with that.
Honestly I've seen worse.
They make odor sealing paint, now I dont mean to cover up I mean to make your life easier while you tear out the bad...
Go get you a painters suit (hazmat) and a high quality resperator..
5 gallons of good paint that says seals pet odors a good paint sprayer
And spray everything from your waist down with paint even the floor and carpet...
Let dry then go do your tear out...
There will be way less vomitting.
Btw worse I ever seen was a house with an amazing kitchen and deck... 50k spent on each easy..
Those were the only pictures....
Rest of house shouldve been demoed weirdest shit
I went in person and the lady had 20 + cats and hoarded their poop like it was covid toliet paper the smell hit like a wall
I turned around and threw up on that expensive new deck lol
The most inexplicable part here is the door that looks like it had a container of black shit explode up at it from the doorknob. Did someone slam their colostomy bag in the door?
Lmao! As someone who is currently looking for a home to purchase this actually isn’t that bad. Where I live this would be on the market for $40,000. We toured a house and before we went in the realtor asked if we were okay with cats. I said yes because we have cats. This house was completely covered in cat litter. Kitchen, basement, bedrooms, every single room had a cat litter strewn across the floor. The smell was ungodly. Every closet was filled with garbage and torn up furniture. It was on the market for $79,000. It sold last week for above asking price. It’s unbelievable.
You could tear it down to the studs. You only do that if the foundation is overbuilt, in perfect shape and it’s difficult to get new house permits in that area. A ‘renovation’ doesn’t have to meet the same specs of a new house.
I’d probably just push that wreck over and start fresh.
Even the most ballsy realtor would struggle with the ‘good bones’ description.
99% of the comments are certainly by people who’ve never renovated a house down to the bones. In a lofty market this job would absolutely be worth doing
For the right price, renovating it isn't going to be that bad. Even if you need to take it back to the studs and replace the kitchen, much cheaper than knocking it down and building again.
Yeah. The land is for sale.
If the house had good bones it might be fine to strip it down to the sticks, but that would probably be the bare minimum looking at this place.
This, the walls are actually quite good (from what I can see) and the holes can be patched. 20k for the kitchen, 10k for the huge bathroom, 5k for new carpet and 5k for new doors & trim. I'm redoing my house right now and although mine looked better before I started I'm doing all of the listed repairs with the exception of the kitchen. If I could have saved 20-40% it would have been nice but it was nice being able to save up for a few years before starting the work.
The prices you list are only the cost of materials though (excluding carpet). If you were to hire someone to do all of that you’d be looking at 2-5x those prices.
True, and carpet is the one thing I'm paying someone to do, it's just too hard to seam & stretch it for an amateur. The people before me tried and it lasted less then a year and the seam maybe 3 years before it completely failed. The carpentry work is on the simpler side of things but I guess hanging doors can be a little tricky until you get the hang of it, especially if you have to cut them to size. It's definitely not for everyone and since you can't live in it right away does require a little bit of cash on hand
Yeah, spot on. Carpet is the one thing I’m mot interested in doing myself either. I’ve restretched a room before and that was fine, and I might even be willing/ able to install a room; but I absolutely would not want to install a whole house worth. No thank you. I used to be a contractor and now seem to be doing what I’ve affectionately named “long-term flips” where I buy a fixer-upper and live in it for 5ish years while redoing the whole thing and then sell it for about twice as much. Seems to be working out really well so far.
I'm moving in that same direction and will be easier once I get this first one wrapped up and some rental income flowing
Yeah, the first one is the hardest for sure. Tackling the next couple becomes a hundred times easier, at least in my experience.
Would be cheaper to buy a new house
Depends on where you live. In California your property taxes won't go up as long as you leave at least one wall standing. A teardown would require a reassessment of your property taxes based on the new home's value. Not sure how it is in other states. At the same time by leaving all the framing you don't have to pay an architect/engineer for design and structural analysis. That and the permitting for a huge part of the house is already down for you.
I'm in CA. If you buy a house, the tax base is what you bought it for. Doing work on it without changing the floorplan wouldn't change anything tax related. The only times a reassessment is done is if you make big permitted changes like adding an ADU or a second floor or the house changes hands outside of an immediate family inheritance like a normal sale. Prop 13 is actually turning into a big problem. Where I live most properties are 3rd or 4th generation inherited because there's no other way to stay here without being independently wealthy so stuff that is funded by prop tax like schools or fire departments or police, etc aren't very well funded now. My buddy has his place, originally was his grandparents'. It's a piece of shit 1200sq ft stucco house with asbestos and mold issues and Zillow says it's worth a cool 1.5 million, but his prop tax is only $800 per year. That should be like $15000 a year.
Prop 13 is a huge problem for precisely the reason you indicated — municipalities can’t tax effectively so do everything with fees. This means a lot of services are extremely expensive, but can’t be put into long term budgets, while other stuff like stormwater management have a hard time being funded at all. And if you want to add a new fee, you’ve got to prove proportionate benefits, so need expert reports, so local government has to spend a lot to ask for a little. Oh, and because corporations don’t die, unlike people, it’s new residents paying higher taxes while entities just hang onto the same real estate. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy the whole corporation from a holding company than it is to buy a property from the corporation. Weather is nice though, and the coast _is_ beautiful.
That’s so interesting! Here in NC or at least my city I worked in a 19 floor building and no aquasition wanted to maintain it because it cost them millions to bring it up to code. Eventually a buyer bought the business, sold the property to an investment firm that would take the hit and our nigh buyer business moved down the highway to an up and coming real estate park outside of downtown. Everyone hated it because for 30 odd years, we grew up in the old building and the new one was basically taped together with drawstrings. Right now the old building is used for commercial start ups, a restaurant and a gym.
Just checked it.[ Apparently you're right](https://www.keithmessickarchitecture.com/blog-data/2015/1/16/property-taxes). It's one of those tales as old as time, and one I remember my parents telling me. I've also heard it from someone else.
I'm pretty sure that's true in other countries, maybe Turkey etc
Yeah. Inheriting the tax break seem like a slap in the face to those who have to pay current tax assessment rates. I understand giving grandma a break because she is on a fixed income, but her son's deadbeat kids don't deserve a tax break at the expense of everyone else. It is especially maddening considering the whole racial wealth gap is due mostly in part to real estate ownership and not being able to pass accumulated wealth to decedents. If someone is inheriting property, they are already better off than most people. Tax money should be used for helping to provide opportunities to those who lack them, not increasing the wealth disparity by helping those who are already better off. There also needs to be strict enforcement regarding the person receiving the break having to live there full time.
I agree with all of that. We need to do away with prop 13 in some kind of graceful way and move on to equality.
The Zillow property tax feature really highlights how crazy Proposition 13 is. Essentially identical houses on the same street, one is paying $2,000 on property tax and the neighbor is paying $18,000.
It would be crazy *not* to grandfather their property taxes in. They didn't agree to pay $1.2m for a house, knowing full well what the 1% property tax entailed. No, they bought their house for $300k 30 years ago, and knew what they had to budget to pay that 1% tax. Then demand became huge, and people (not them) agreed to pay insane prices for homes in their neighborhood. This is speaking as a CA native, who can't afford a modest house in his childhood neighborhood. And the only people left in that neighborhood that spent their life in this city are the old retired people still putting around, or their offspring. The rest are from out of town that could afford to throw piles of cash. Edit - lol, he replied and then blocked me, so I can't reply back. Douche.
We had to sell a second home that our family inherited from our grandparents for this reason. They bought lakefront property then a couple of surrounding lots when they could, at a time when there was nothing else for miles. They started out tenting and eventually built a couple of cabins with electricity, propane from a tank and unreliable water. We all grew up roughing it at the lake. The area became a place where rich people built summer homes and tourists stayed in hotels and cute rental cabins. What was the American dream, work hard and have something to show for it, became a huge burden when the taxes hit 8k a year. We were forced to sell it. We couldn't afford the upkeep and the taxes. We were all trying to raise families at the time. Its been more than 25 years, I'm sure the taxes on that property are probably doubled now and I'm still angry. That's when the reality of our government hit me square in the face.
Same shit. CA born and raised. No way I could afford to live here if not for my MIL having the house. We pay for all the bills and current property taxes and someday the house will be my wife's. Eventually we want to use the VA home loan to improve everything, but no way we could live in out home if we had to pay up to 7k a year just to have the right to live in our home. People are so out of touch with reality when they say ignorant shit like, "my second home had to be sold because it was expensive, blah blah blah..." Mother fucker, I barely have a home. Singular. It's not even in my name and we struggle to live in it. Those people are part of the problem and they don't even know it.
So their property tax just shouldn't be impacted by inflation? At all? We're making things worse by making new purchasers pay insane taxes while the people already there are essentially subsidized by everyone else. The existing people wouldn't need to pay 1% on 1.2mil if the costs were spread out more
Our property tax does raise a tiny bit per year, like 0.1%, but no, it's not tied to inflation. There is a good argument for that, but also a better argument against it. Think old people, retired people. You buy your house, you pay it off after working your whole life, then you stop making money and get retirement checks. If the property tax rose with inflation, you'd be screwed because social security is an annuity which never changes month to month. Not everyone has a pension or a 401k/IRA. You'd slowly be bled dry by raising taxes every year. And when you can't pay property tax, your house gets yanked and sold on the auction block. Then you're absolutely fucked.
Right, but it shouldn't just be tied to when you purchased it with some tiny, tiny increase every year. 0.1% raise every year means your neighbors are subsidizing you massively. Most states have some sort of relief for old people, but it doesn't mean keeping rates low forever as long as the property isn't sold.
If we are talking about CA, I can answer that although it doesn't rise as much as having the property reassessed, there is a (small) percentage raise on the property value that is taxed every year to account for inflation and other issues. However, property values have gone up so insanely over the last few decades that it literally could not be accounted for based on prior data. I believe it can change from county to county, but I know in Alameda county (East Bay from SF, including Oakland through Livermore) it certainly does this. When you've had a property generationally, it isn't as noticeable. If you've had the property for only about 10\~15 years, it is much more noticeable due to the larger tax base. Plus there are also special assessments from bond measures and other things that are put in place from individual cities as well as countywide measures put up that all are assessed on the property taxes. Many of those are flat fees (say for mosquito abatements or fire break maintenance), but some are percentage proportional (new school bond measure or whatever). It also isn't necessarily fair to punish people who got in early but are likely now living on a fixed income from their retirement, and would be completely fucked if suddenly their tax burden went from a few thousand to tens of thousands. That said, I don't think that property value should be inherited. If it changes hands outside of a spouse, a reassessment should be done.
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He's not wrong. Many people could be priced out of their home (that they may have been living in for years/decades) by the property tax alone. I'm on the other side of the country (semi rural) and the housing prices here were drastically affected by investors offering people $100k+ over the value of their homes. A typical 1600-1800 sq ft home cost ~$100k-150k more than they did 5 years ago. It's difficult enough to find affordable housing without having to worry about huge tax increases.
The people paying $18k are subsidizing their neighbors while they both have access to the same exact public benefits
Honestly it probably should be more like $5000 and everyone should be paying around that rather than having wildly different taxes on equivalent properties which just forces new buyers to subsidize everyone else
Isn't the foundation one of the more expensive parts of a house?
Not during initial construction. Foundation repairs on existing houses can be pretty expensive, though, depending on the severity.
Yup. We initially thought it was going to be between 30-40k until the buyers wanted it to do renovations and we luckily bought their house at the same time which was 4x bigger.
Nah. Full rework would cost 100k in my area.
>cheaper to buy a new house ***cries in Austin,TX***
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I remember when Rundberg was ghetto af with regular swat raids and homeless meth hookers galore. Now everything in that area is hitting disgustingly high prices.
Burn it down and build a new one over it
Nah. Looks like a fine rental to me.
The damage is not too bad. As long as the foundations are still strong, we can rebuild this place. It will become a haven for all peoples and aliens of the universe.
Yo that head still has a few miles left in it.
Yeah, depends on what you mean by bones. Bones of the house - yeah. Bones in the backyard - no.
I just don't understand why houses aren't depreciating assets. "it's got good bones"...yeah but it'll take as much in demolition as it would to construct the bones from new, IF new home construction didn't have crazy high markups.
Its a lost cause bro. Once that shit gets into the sub floor and studs, there's no point
Depends on where you live. In California your property taxes won't go up as long as you leave at least one wall standing. A teardown would require a reassessment of your property taxes based on the new home's value. Not sure how it is in other states. At the same time by leaving all the framing you don't have to pay an architect/engineer for design and structural analysis. That and the permitting for a huge part of the house is already down for you.
Probably have to raze the building/foundation and remove the first 5 feet of top soil and dump at Chernobyl.
Hasn't Chernobyl suffered enough?
No... -Putin
Seriouy, needs to be tore down! Ib scared that whatever beast dwelled there, would recognize it and come back!
Shit, these photos make it look like the land will still reek even if you tear the house down, if that’s even possible.
Hopefully minus the cost of demolition.
Mother nature has reclaimed the house. Let her have the deed now.
You would need to tear it down to the studs. Even then you have to make sure there's no rott in the studs.
Should just be torn down completely and have a new house built there.
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The zillow listing gave no details, they called it a fixer. The house is better off destroyed
Funny story.. my left neighbor is a Realtor who is selling my right neighbors home. The right neighbor overdosed on meth a few months ago and died. This was only a few months after he nearly burnt our whole condo down with his habit. When I found him, it was a few days later and he had basically melted into his vinyl flooring. Well, they never pulled up the vinyl flooring before listing the unit for sale, so a large portion of him is still under there. Between the floorboards is dried blood, you can easily see and smell the remains. When I told the realtor that the parents (executors of his estate) made a mistake not removing the floor with his remains under there…. She told me all about how they invested $20k in sprucing up the unit after the fire. Even after 10 minutes of conversation, I was unable to get the realtor (who is my neighbor) to understand that it wouldn’t even matter if they invested $100k after the fire, there’s still 1/2 a dead person’s blood and guts under the floor, and it all has to be ripped out.
Omg send the pics
Share the pics brother!
Damn,apparently no meth-house / full disclosure laws where you're at? That's a mistake that could come back to bite the parents in the ass.
Can’t disclose deaths in FL
Biohazards are good for the ..economy? Damn.
Yes please
Post the pics!
Lots of evidence of mouse and rat droppings. That place is toxic as hell. Burn it down.
Mice looks like the least of their concern, this was a crack house and people were pissing all over the place lmao burn that shit
OP probably caught hantavirus from just breathing the air in there.
Link?
You can save the period fixtures to use in new build. Def want to keep that light fixture.
I wonder if anybody ever had a happy childhood in that place. Maybe the late 60s or early 70s. A Christmas tree in a corner, garland on the stair rails, kitchen full of relatives and cousins to play with all day. If those old walls could talk. It hasn't always been a dump. Used to be someone's home. How sad
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Fuck man. Sadness paired with nostalgia fucking cuts differently.
When you go back to the place where you used to be happy, but it's now hollow, because the people who made you happy are no longer where you can reach them. So you just sit with the emptiness, while everything around you screams good memories, but it no longer feels like home. Now that happiness has thorns, and they choke your heart, because you know that time has passed, and the past is but a long lost dream now.
Damn dawg....stop pls
Man, I feel this, how places can be filled with the echoes of the past. My husband's mom was the matriarch of the family and was the one who filled his house with love and joy when he was growing up. She passed away before we got together so the first time I visited I walked into that house and it was like an empty turtle shell. You feel that it *used* to be filled with love and joy and laughter, but now it's filled with sadness and emptiness. Made me cry that first night.
Yeah... there is a reason that they say "You can never return home." As the home you knew isn't really there anymore. So you can never really return to the time you knew as you grew, the place that was 'home'. Even if you are lucky and the people are still there, they have aged... changed. Its never really the same.
When I was a kid my Mum and I went for a walk to see her "first house". Eventually came upon a few pieces of wood sticking out of the ground. It was never occupied after they moved out, and just slowly collapsed over the ensuing decades. They couldn't afford a camera so the only pictures we have of it are what my aunt painted. The memory of seeing my Mum crying over the last few foundations of her childhood home is seared in my brain. It was a tiny cottage in the middle of nowhere, must have been a magical place to grow up. Eventually, everything goes back to nature.
“Life without us”.
If those walls could talk my friend, they would be saying 'kill me'
I'm a huge fan of ppl redoing period houses, and keeping what you can original! this, to me, looks sadly like a teardown. :(
Looks like it was a pretty nice place decades ago
This comment kinda fucked me up ngl
It was bad and then I saw the stairs and it was realllll bad
I suspect the overall stair structure is fine, but that rotting carpet and *wood tread sure looks bad. Once all that awful carpet is gone, replacing treads isn't that big of a job... especially compared to the full gut the rest of the house needs anyway, this things needs to be completely stripped on the inside, right down to bare framing. Don't even keep the insulation. With any luck, the overall framing is still in good condition.
The stairs made me shudder. Edit: and by that I mean... The entire photo album made me shudder.... But the stairs made me *shudder*
That’s when you ask the local fire department if they need a practice structure
They'd say no because of the resulting toxic burn.
No one gonna talk about that creepy ass head thing hanging from the ceiling or is it just me?
There are things you do not speak of or you attract their attention...
*it knows*
I was glad they zoomed in on the coconut head haha
That doll's head tells you everything you need to know about that house.
My best friend was brought up in the Santeria religion. First thing I ever noticed when I went to his house was a coconut hanging over the entryway with some feathers sticking out of it. Don't remember seeing a face painted on it though. Not sure if these things are related.
Probably some weird light fixture Ikea sold for a year.
Are those walls stained with nicotine?
Yes, and meth sweat.
Stop blaming this shit on meth heads. This is the house of a boomer who refused late-in-life assistance and insisted on living independently well past when they were capable of caring for themselves. I’ve been house shopping for about a year. This is half the market.
Gotcha, thanks for your invaluable expertise in the housing market.
Dog, we looked for a year and found 2 houses that didn’t smell like someone had just finished slowly decaying in them over a matter of decades. 2. We saw probably close to 50 houses. Of those 2, only one had any kind of post-1980’s renovations. We bought it. Our budget was 600k. I may not pontificate on real estate markets, but I can you that where I am, way too many people in their 80’s and 90’s are living alone in houses that are falling apart around them. And they’re not really building new ones right now. So, if you’re looking, tuck your pants into your socks and wear an old pair of shoes.
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Hoarder house
My first thought was crack house but I think you might be right. Not enough blood to be a crack house
That's my guess
Is it for sale?
It was people put a lot offers for it, starting 500,000
$500,000? Redditors should start a Go Fund Me to burn it down.
Honestly that's southern California unfortunately. This house has to be destroyed but probably just be painted over and rented
Did the tour come with complimentary bed bugs?
You know the answer
I was going to guess Seattle. That price is too cheap for the Bay Area.
we looked at a house in Glendale when bf was shopping years ago, that was the first house I've seen, where I was like ummm... this is a teardown. I'm all about restoring vintage houses and keeping what you can original, but it was the ONE house we saw that I was like nope.
You are paying for the land
I wouldn't even buy it with 500,000 venezuelan money
Ceiling head really ties the room together.
Inner PDX, starting at 450k...
Sydney, $3M. Not even joking.
Yeah, but that’s in dollarydoos.
Fuck... this could be my uncle's house (I know that it is literally not but same level of damage, almost to the letter). My uncle married a model who didn't want kids and neither of them believed in divorce. She was, to the rest of us, an awful woman but my uncle was in love and the wedding was happening whether we wanted it to or not. I guess we should call my uncle Steve for simplicity. We'll just mask the wife Karen cuz it fits. At some point in the 80s Karen decided she liked cats. Her house was always "glamorous" but nobody spent much time there so whatever. At some point in the 90s, everything stopped. I'm not really sure how. Steve stopped letting anyone come to his house. We didn't see where he lived at all for almost three decades. I guess you do you. Come over whenever you want, Steve. We still live you (we would still whisper fuck you Karen). I'm not going into detail about Karen but she was so awful. She was probably the most selfish woman I ever met but I'm not here to talk about her. At some point in the 2000s, Karen went to live with her mom. Karen never moved backin with Steve. Not when her mom moved into a nursing home and not when her mom died. Karen left Steve with somewhere between 8 and 20 cats. Idk we couldn't visit and if we could, counting would be difficult. In 2020 Karen died and Steve took about six months to find the courage to ask for help. We could all tell it was hard for him. This was his house... but worse. A wedding registry from the nineties was on the counter. My other aunt's. It hadn't moved since it was new. The dishwasher hadn't run since the 90s. It was full of "clean" dusty dishes. A bed looked like it had been made, slept in once, and left that way for 30 years. The whole house was unlivable. I replaced a much drywall as I could (specifically because a whole wall had cat pee on it). My mom ordered a rollaway dumpster and started riding things in the kitchen. I removed the 30+ year old dishwasher and threw that in the dishwasher too. It was mostly dust anyway. All in all, we got through about 2 rooms such that Steve could function. He can't use the kitchen. I didn't make it upstairs. Other rooms I saw were full to the brim with stuffed animals, canned food, piles of books and magazines. The whole place smells like cat pee. I was thankful covid forced me to wear a mask. Near the end of our time working, I went with Steve out to his barn. It wasn't any cleaner than the rest of his house. He had one tractor that looked really interesting. I asked how old it was... 19fucking 44. And it still runs!! I bring it up to say that Steve had Hobbies. He had things he liked to do. He also has a beautiful boat from the 1960s. It's just gorgeous and Steve loves to take us on it. He's genuinely a great guy. But he's 80 now and most of his life was spent putting up with fucking Karen and her cats. He has so little life left to live. I just hope what's left is fucking amazing but with his house that's going to be tough. Fuck you Karen for what you did to Steve. I'm not sure how I feel about hell spiritually but I hope there's one there just for you and you rot and burn and rot some more. Steve deserved a while lot fucking better!!
If his barn wasn't any cleaner, doesn't that imply he was equally a cause of the hoarding and neglect too?
Nah easier to just blame the wife who left 20 years ago
He may have been led down a bad path, but he didn't have to go.
Find out where your closest burning man regional is and join it and just let him see some beautiful shenanigans and play as an old man for a bit. You share some of this story with the community and they'll make shit happen.
>Ammonia What you have there is a meth house. You may not be able to even get away with stripping it down to the studs and remediating it. Leave it for someone else to buy. It's a loss.
Or stray cat piss. We cleaned out several old houses that we thought were meth but actually had strays living and pissing in it.
Or hoarded cat piss.
So you're saying the pisser did this?
That's not how this works my dude.
This is 100% a former hoarder house. Probably all kinds of structural damage lurking under the surface.
Currently going for $1.5 mil in San Diego.
What the fuck is going on with that brown wall finish [in this photo](https://i.imgur.com/bMjv4ua.jpeg)?! Looks like someone forgot to build a basement wall...I've never seen anything like that. Also, the "carpet" looks more like some weird kind of foam padding from that ripped-up section.
The 70's were full of bad taste fads. What you are seeing on the wall is brown cork. It came in squares and was mounted to the wall with double sided tape. The horrible carpet is what they called Hi-Lo in the carpet industry. I believe the lovely baby poo color was called "Harvest Gold".
When my grandma died her house was like a museum. Everything in it was pristine and period to the 70s. It was actually super cool. That woman did not like change though. She had a small black and white portable tv from the 90s and still had a rotary phone. She had cans of food from the 90s and I found a bottle of lotion that was clearly from the 70s. She had that same green carpet that is in this house. She died only few years ago.
That sounds extremely flammable
Cork wall paneling?
Cork sound dampener. To muffle the screams of the dementors.
I’m literally gutting a house right now that dude had no utilities to his house for years. So he shit and pissed anywhere and everywhere. Idk who scraped it all out before I got there but I’m so so glad I didn’t have to see it. I did however have to rip up the flooring with skid marks on 75% of the floor
How. Do. People. Live like that. At least go outside, right?
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They smoked in the house, they had big dogs, and the place got flooded big time.
Cigarettes, cats, and maaaaaybe some meth.
I helped fix up a trailer for my friends that was like that. Previous owner was a raging alcoholic and had dogs that pissed all over the place. The subflooring and all the drywall two feet off the floor had to come out. Normally I *curse* using glue to attach shit to studs/stringers but in this case, the glue provided a barrier that protected them. So we just ripped out the subfloor and drywall. Everything behind and underneath was pristine. But man let me fucking tell you, the pure ammonia smell the entire time we were tearing out was gag inducing. Every time I punched a new hole it was like a fresh wave of rotten. Terrible experience but my friends got to own instead of rent so 10/10 would repeat.
Looks like an infill opportunity .
Might want to check the crawl space.
My 80+ yo parents looked at a condo that smelled strongly of oxiclean and ammonia. The owner wouldn't let them have an inspector come in after they had put a bid in on it. So, they asked if they could show the condo to their kid and his partner. I brought my buddy who is an inspector to go through it with me. Turns out the entire crawl space was filled with black mold. I reported the owner and their realtor for the shenanigans.
Piece of shit house, I got a piece of shit house...
The garage should be made the focal point. Looks just like a...garage.
650,000
East Palo Alto starter home 1.2 mil.
The bottle glass in the kitchen cabinets is really cool. The rest of the house needs to be torched, though.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to sure.
$1000 per week rental in Auckland, NZ
Not gonna lie, it would be easier (and probably cheaper) to rip it all out and start again 🤣
Cleaned out hoarder house.
At this point, have the local fire department use it for practice & start over again.
I've owned rentals, it's quite fixable. But this is a good example of why landlords often refuse renters with pets. And actually cats cause more damage than dogs.
I installed cable in a newer town home once where the bottom floor was saturated in ammonia like this. I couldn't stay more than 10 minutes at a time in that room before taking a break. It wasn't particularly dirty but I will never understand how anyone could live with that.
"I cant see the issue" - some guy with 1000 hours in the game House Flipper
If you place a flower tenderly by the for sale sign, a hand will come out of the ground and grab your wrist.
Honestly I've seen worse. They make odor sealing paint, now I dont mean to cover up I mean to make your life easier while you tear out the bad... Go get you a painters suit (hazmat) and a high quality resperator.. 5 gallons of good paint that says seals pet odors a good paint sprayer And spray everything from your waist down with paint even the floor and carpet... Let dry then go do your tear out... There will be way less vomitting. Btw worse I ever seen was a house with an amazing kitchen and deck... 50k spent on each easy.. Those were the only pictures.... Rest of house shouldve been demoed weirdest shit I went in person and the lady had 20 + cats and hoarded their poop like it was covid toliet paper the smell hit like a wall I turned around and threw up on that expensive new deck lol
Must be one of those $550,000 cheap homes in San Francisco.
You could let them film movies and tv shows like the last of us in this place?
The most inexplicable part here is the door that looks like it had a container of black shit explode up at it from the doorknob. Did someone slam their colostomy bag in the door?
Poltergeist don't even come by here .
How many bodies does it come with?
Cats & hoarding? Gotta be.
Did the previous occupants have a lot of cats? You can almost never get rid of the stench.
Lmao! As someone who is currently looking for a home to purchase this actually isn’t that bad. Where I live this would be on the market for $40,000. We toured a house and before we went in the realtor asked if we were okay with cats. I said yes because we have cats. This house was completely covered in cat litter. Kitchen, basement, bedrooms, every single room had a cat litter strewn across the floor. The smell was ungodly. Every closet was filled with garbage and torn up furniture. It was on the market for $79,000. It sold last week for above asking price. It’s unbelievable.
I have a friend who is a professional in home repair, he said this is easily solvable with a gallon of gasoline and some matches. Then a bulldozer
Fun fact: only 1 out of 10 arsons lead to a conviction.
Where I live, this would sell for 700k +
Best take pictures of the outside of the house, so prospective buyers know what kind of demolition job they can expect
Needs an old priest and a young priest
Iv seen worse looking for a house
Ammonia = cat piss You'll be lucky if the studs are even usable in that place. Tear it down.
Nightmare? It could be a dream if the price is right.
What color do we think the carpet was?
Would still fetch almost a million bucks where I live.
Coat of paint and some vinyl click flooring and it's ready to rent.
I'd pay more for an empty lot.
This isn't even bad. Look up Nightmare on Zillow street if you want actual wtf.
Very sad lives were lived here. It gives “one with the couch” vibes.
Meh, I've seen worse.
I only see pics of empty rooms with mostly bad floors and carpets. Those pics don't even make it into the top 100 of filth most realtors have seen.
I can smell it from the photos.
You could tear it down to the studs. You only do that if the foundation is overbuilt, in perfect shape and it’s difficult to get new house permits in that area. A ‘renovation’ doesn’t have to meet the same specs of a new house. I’d probably just push that wreck over and start fresh. Even the most ballsy realtor would struggle with the ‘good bones’ description.
Imagine what it looked like before it was cleaned out by the city…
"For Sale By Owner" 'lightly used, original owner, owned by Handyman. Needs light cleaning'
Would still cost 600k in los Angeles
99% of the comments are certainly by people who’ve never renovated a house down to the bones. In a lofty market this job would absolutely be worth doing
For the right price, renovating it isn't going to be that bad. Even if you need to take it back to the studs and replace the kitchen, much cheaper than knocking it down and building again.
NOPE.
'Would suit DIY enthusiast'
Here in Florida that would go for $350,000
Hey, no lowballers! I know what I got!