House regret | Imamother

SixOfWands

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 10:21 am

IMNSHO you need to do two things. First, share your feelings with your husband. I'd put it somewhat more diplomatically. You love the house, but ....

Then start making calls. What would you get for the house if you sold? What would it cost to make the most urgent repairs, those that would make you happier. Like rodent-proofing the house. Just because your husband "won" a few years ago doesn't mean he should or will "win" now. Having lived in the house for some time, you are more aware of what really needs to be done.

Then make decisions based on all the information in your possession.

amother

Aquamarine

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 10:25 am

It's hard to feel regret. To cheer yourself up you can remind yourself that the grass is not always greener on the other side. You do like your neighbors. What was your other choice, a much smaller fixed up house? It doesn't sound like you would want that even now.

eagle

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 10:53 am

What is your interest rate on your mortgage? Right now rates are historically low and it might be beneficial to refinance and lower your monthly mortgage. You might then have some extra money to put into your house.

amother

Wine

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 12:44 pm

amother [ OP ] wrote:

It would take us at least 10 years to recoup the costs of making a rental apartment and he adamantly refused to do so. At that point we would need to be paying for simchos and yeshivas etc and a growing family. He is a strong follower of Dave Ramsey and would only ever take on a loan for a true emergency (medical debt CV). Having a renovated house is not what he would consider an emergency.
He wants us to build up savings slowly and fix slowly. But we can't keep up so the renovations are taking a back burner to the repairs. And we're constantly playing catch up. If he felt that renovations were worthy of taking out a loan we would have done that when we bought the house and done it properly before even moving in (something we discussed at the time but he ended up "winning").

In terms of selling, in the condition this house is in maybe it would sell for $750k. A tiny house in Brooklyn starts at $750. Bringing a realtor sounds like a good idea. Will they overestimate how much we can sell for?

Hold on. I'm not an accountant, but I read that any money that you use as renovations specifically for rental is subject to tax credits or tax deductions or something like that.

banana123

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 12:46 pm

amother [ Brown ] wrote:

He should call in his question to dave ramsey. He gives responsible solid advice. He would tell you which repairs will cost you extra to do it the cheap way, one bit at a time than fixing it straight up. Like a roof, its foolish to do piecemeal. It will cost more in the long term.

This is actually a great idea.

amother

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 1:33 pm

amother [ Aquamarine ] wrote:

So I always said if we found a smaller (but still fit our needs) house that didn't need work I would prefer that but this is Brooklyn, it is NOT a buyers market, most homes were a bidding war and the options were few and far between and no point did we ever have a choice of homes, it was each home for itself. As it came up, can we make this house work? And this house the answer was yes. We can afford it, it has tons of space (something I'm realizing now isn't so important), it had the important things ticked off and our offer was accepted. We had put in tens of offers over the 3 years we were looking. This is why Im so hesitant to go the "sell it and buy another" route. I know how hard it is to find a house. A house that needs no work will be a flipped house that is not worth the money I believe.

I really want to be happy in this house.

amother

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 1:35 pm

eagle wrote:

We BH got a really low rate. We looked into refinancing but it wouldn't be worth it for us (its only worth it if you drop a whole point or more). Our mortgage rate is already in the 2s.

I appreciate the idea though. It is a good one.

eagle

Wed, Jun 17 2020, 7:10 pm

Just thought I'd throw this out there, not really a game changer but I find lots of ways to save money during our renovations. I use this website to buy Lowe's coupons at 10% (It only works in stores though.)
https://www.save10percent.net/

I also save my Amex points and a few times a year gift cards for points goes on sale. So for example right now I can redeem 8,000 points for $100 Home Depot gift card.

I also use Rakuten for cash back and sites where I can get discounted gift cards. (https://www.raise.com/ https://www.cardpool.com/)

Sun, Jun 28 2020, 2:04 am

amother [ OP ] wrote:

can I ask where did you get a mortgage rate in the 2's. that's really low