the incredible still cruddy housing market on LI

Wow. Having grown up in NJ I'm familiar with taxes that are insane. Can't complain here. My taxes went down this year due to the value of the home dropping. I now owe more than it is worth, but even so it's not too bad. 1200 sf ranch on corner lot with inground pool - was worth $140K 3 years ago, now worth only $105K because of all the foreclosures and short sales in the area. When the bank is your competitor in the housing market it hurts your value. Taxes? 3 years ago we were just breaking the $1,000 mark. My tax bill that arrived last week - $845.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD!

As a Home Inspection and Appraiser I have seen just about everything. (never say everything!) What your describing is more common than you think. People are pigs! My wife is always saying our house is a mess. I love it when she says that in front of another Real Estate person. We just look at each other and laugh because we know the truth.

My favorite house was the one where I had to WALK ON the clothes in laundry to get in it. No joke. The Dinning room table... I could see the chairs and one leg. It was covered in boxes of 'stuff' stacked up on and under it. The walls were stacked with boxes. Just a path around the room. All the while the owner bragged about the mirror tiles he had put up on the wall. , which was mostly covered by boxes.

Kitchen..... I wouldn't let me dog eat out of there! The best part was the oven door was open with last nights (or last weeks maybe) chicken and there was a dirty pipe wrench laying on the door beside the food....... NO JOKE! And these people were not poor by any means.

I won't get into prices, but for $300K+ here, very nice large home in almost any neighborhood.

I used to be a sort of foreclosure specialist for FmHA and HUD. When folks get 'down' they really get down. The situations you describe are fairly typical of deadbeats. Admittedly, the home price ranges are different than what I dealt with.
With taxes being what you say, I'm questioning whether renting would really be throwing money away. Your son might want to sit down with a good financial advisor.
Question comes to my mind: Does he need to stay in that area?
Personally, I would saddle up and be out of there pronto.

art-you can put you kid anywhere, but you will pay tuition, as in a ridiculous price. OUr districts, as well as alot of other districts have hired residency inspectors, who go after people who live in other nabes and attempt to send their kids to our schools. Its all about the taxes.

Jeff-I dont envy you, its gotta be a tough thing to walk around with so much filth. (Ive always rented apts in my investment property, but no tenants have ever been this dirty or sloppy)

Frank-He doesnt want the drive from my home anymore, he works far out, so he wanted to move 20 miles closer. 20 miles is alot when you have to deal with Long Island traffic and long island expressway, nicknamed the worlds largest parking lot.

Jeff, you are right about dirty. I have seen some stomach turning things. One that sticks in my mind (unfortunately) involved a nurse who owned cats. The 'cat room' was about two feet deep in......uh.....droppings. Stench was beyond belief.
I have a huge respect for nurses. This one disgraced the profession.
I had real trouble finding someone to hire to clean the house. Finally found a guy who had cleaned similar 'cat houses' before.

Jim DeLaney said:

Between car expenses (fuel, insurance, wear & tear, etc.) and eating out expenses, they found they could have bought the more expensive house in Tustin, made the bigger mortgage payments, and still saved a bit. Plus the stress level was horrific.

After about three years, they sold out in Merino Valley and moved to Irvine, just a few miles from their jobs. They were much happier there...

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I used to drive 22 miles to work in Glendale (close to where Vaughn lives). Morning drive to work was usually not too bad but the drive back home would take about 50 min to an hour. I don't mind driving an hour at 60 MPH but I am talkng about stop-and-go traffic. I used to come home all cranky. Now I drive 10 miles to work and it takes about 20 min each way. I am a much pleasant person to be around now.
Traffic is the biggest factor but there are some other factors why we want to stay where we are now. Beach, airport and downtown are within 20 minutes drive. There is a big Pakistani community in the WLA/Palms area.
I don't mind spending 800K to buy a house but what irritates me is that we can't even get the house of our liking for that price.

allen levine said:

art-you can put you kid anywhere, but you will pay tuition, as in a ridiculous price. .... Its all about the taxes.

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Hmm, education here is funded provincially, I bet that makes the difference

Art Mulder said:

Hmm, education here is funded provincially, I bet that makes the difference

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Yeah, that'd do it.

Here, the school systems are city/township districts. My particular township has some of the best schools in the area, and does offer 'open enrollment.' Open enrollment means that if you ship your kid in from outside the district, it'll cost you an extra $2400 per school year as 'tuition,' plus the district you actually live in will lose the state funding for him/her. State funding is currently about $2,000.00 per student, so in reality, my school district will receive about $4,400.00 per year for teaching your 'foreign' kid.

Currently, there about 300 out-of-district kids enrolled here.

I have a very modest Gambrel style 2300 sf home on 5+ acres in a nice town. pond in back and surrounded by woods and fields. The value of my house has dropped more than 100K in the past year and a half. My property taxes of 8K/yr are going up again and the town refuses to re-evaluate.
I am totally po'd at the housing market and the economy. Taxes go up but my income goes down by half.
Wheres our stimulus.

Frank Fusco said:

I have a huge respect for nurses. This one disgraced the profession.

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Not sure I see what the cats had to do with her nursing skills... but whatever.

My FIL was an inspector for the San Antonio Housing Authority (read that to say Section 8) for many years. He could tell you some stories.

Kirk Constable said:

Not sure I see what the cats had to do with her nursing skills... but whatever.

My FIL was an inspector for the San Antonio Housing Authority (read that to say Section 8) for many years. He could tell you some stories.

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Kirk, I have to believe if she had such horrible regard for hygiene at home that lack would carry over to her patient care.

I have right at 30 acres with one house 2100 sq/ft finished with 2100 sq/ft unfinished basement. I also have a 1400 sq/ft house on the land. My taxes are right at 1500 per/year. I don't have city taxes added on only county.

I remember when we were looking for a house in '96 here in Orange County. I was amazed that people who had their homes up for sale would keep them so filthy. Common sense would tell you that you'll sell the house easier if the buyer can see themselves in the home. And if it's filthy and cluttered, they won't see themselves living there.

And those sellers were asking top dollar for their homes.

Back in '96, it was a buyer's market. Homes weren't selling very quickly so the sellers needed to do everything possible to entice a buyer.

And as a side note, sellers don't seem to be willing to discount their price to account for the problems in a house. If the beautiful, well maintained home down the street went for $xxx, they want $xxx+ for their pig sty.

Mike

[Oh, little side note. Orange County is very expensive and we were moving from a low price home location. My wife was still back at our old house, and I was working here and looking at homes. We established a price we were willing to pay. But after looking at homes at that price range, I'd call my wife and say, "You don't want to live in a $yyy house." Then we'd up the price we'd consider by $50,000 and look again. It took a number of those adjustments before we found houses we'd want to live in.]

Vaughn McMillan said:

We're in the northern part of the LA city limits -- sort of the low-rent district compared to a lot of places in LA -- and $350K still wouldn't get you very far in this area. Maybe a 2 bed 1 bath in a depressed neighborhood, and a 50/50 chance you'd need to gut the place and start over with the interior. The houses Mohammad is describing would probably be about $550K to $650K in my neighborhood, with taxes in the $6500 to $7500 range.

Our property taxes have actually gone down in the 5 years we've lived here. Unfortunately, that's because the assessed value has dropped about $130K in that length of time.

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Boy, I tell you I'm glad I left the Bay Area when average smallish houses were still under $150K.... during my first marriage from 1971 til mid 1977 the wife and I went through 3 houses ... first a 1200 sqft we got for $30K.. sold at $42K... second a 1900 sqft we paid $49.5K for and sold at $68K... third was a 1600 sqft townhouse we got at $56K and sold for $80. This one I put on market at $90 but the market flatten a little and we were pressed to get things settled... Sad thing, a year later that same townhouse sold for $140K.
No idea what those places would be worth today... My uncle bought a 1000 sqft house on a corner lot in San Mateo, just off 19th ave. about 1950 for around $12... my aunt died about 1990 and my uncle remarried a couple years later....I don't have confirmation, but rumor was when he sold the place to move into his wife's place in San Bruno he got over $200K for the house.

My daughter lives in Aptos near Santa Cruz... she bought her house about 10 years ago... at that time it was 60 year old bungalow style.. 2 br 1 ba about 1100 square feet... she paid about $245K and thinks it worth about $500K today... scary to say the least.

Chuck Ellis said:

...My daughter lives in Aptos near Santa Cruz... she bought her house about 10 years ago... at that time it was 60 year old bungalow style.. 2 br 1 ba about 1100 square feet... she paid about $245K and thinks it worth about $500K today... scary to say the least.

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Similar to my first house. A little 1100 sf 2 bed 1 bath...I bought it in '97 for about $130K and sold it seven years later for $434K. The prices aren't climbing that fast out here now, but they've started slowly going back up (supposedly).

Vaughn McMillan said:

Similar to my first house. A little 1100 sf 2 bed 1 bath...I bought it in '97 for about $130K and sold it seven years later for $434K. The prices aren't climbing that fast out here now, but they've started slowly going back up (supposedly).

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ok just outa curiosity yu made 300k in 7 years but did that same house size you sold balance with what you went to vaughn.. another word the numbers looked good on the sales part but yu needed more to get another roof over your head afterwards, but if you went to a lower cost home then yu still made a profit..kinda like leaving CA and going to another state that has lower rates per sq. ft.

Housing here isn't as expensive as California but it also doesn't appreciate nor depreciate as fast.

Just a slow steady upward climb.

Shortly after moving here, the local unions struck the largest employer in the area and were out for a year. I saw 3 or 4 ads in the paper of homes for sale...take over the payments.

Other than that 1 year period homes have neither appreciated nor depreciated a lot...just a slow upward climb. Our home is worth about 2.5 times what we paid for it 27 years ago.

Ken Fitzgerald said:

Housing here isn't as expensive as California but it also doesn't appreciate nor depreciate as fast.

Just a slow steady upward climb.

Shortly after moving here, the local unions struck the largest employer in the area and were out for a year. I saw 3 or 4 ads in the paper of homes for sale...take over the payments.

Other than that 1 year period homes have neither appreciated nor depreciated a lot...just a slow upward climb. Our home is worth about 2.5 times what we paid for it 27 years ago.

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Houses here in Tennessee, at least in my area, seem to be doing about the same.. we bought our house 7 years ago this Thanksgiving. We bought out of a bank repossession, so we got it under market, but according to the last tax assessment it has nearly doubled in value (from what we paid for it)... not sure what the actual value might have been when we bought it, but compared to other places we looked at, it was about $20k under the market. Plus we've added some outbuilding.. my shop and a garage.. and done some minor remodeling.

Well as far as taxes go, they stink. We have around 500 acres and pay our fair share. Part that gets me is school taxes. They just have to have a new ball field or something like that every year. State is supposed to have that under control now.

One simple piece of advice. Buy ground. They still haven't figured out how to make more. My cousin just bought 12 acres, guy wanted 60,000 and he talked him down to 30,000. Still way too much for the ground he got, but it's his.

larry merlau said:

ok just outa curiosity yu made 300k in 7 years but did that same house size you sold balance with what you went to vaughn.. another word the numbers looked good on the sales part but yu needed more to get another roof over your head afterwards, but if you went to a lower cost home then yu still made a profit..kinda like leaving CA and going to another state that has lower rates per sq. ft.

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Yeah, if I had moved to somewhere else (like NM), I could have paid cash for a very nice home. Instead, we bought another over-inflated CA home at the peak of the price boom. Fortunately, we also had the proceeds from the house LOML and her mom lived in. That one was bought new in the early '60s for something like $40K, and sold for north of $500K as a fixer-upper. (Needed lots of work.) End result is we got a nice house we would not have otherwise been able to buy.