Brag: I’m happy to say we are buying a 4 bedroom house from a Boomer, empty nest couple
Beat: They already purchased their retirement home, which is actually a step-up in size by ~500sq. ft, +0.5 bath, +1.2 acres.
Variance: thanks WSJ for putting the audio at the top so I can click and listen to the whole article rather than mess with bypassing the paywall
Surely the location is worse. Or are they just rich?
Worse for us, better for them. Their new location is a better fit for their retirement life outside of the city, across the Sound, quieter. They definitely did want the house to go to a family, so they aren’t the typical Boomer stereotype.
The house we’re buying made it into their family back in the 60s. The Husband also bought a separate house a few blocks down the road back in the late 80s. His parents passed and he got the house in the early 2000s and they have lived there since, while renting out the other house. In late 2022, they sold the rental for a nice sum of money. In early 2023, they purchased the retirement house upgrade. Now in 2024 they will be selling the family house, for an amount that I know is slightly higher than the purchase prices of their retirement house.
At this point, they are doing quite well imo given the sequence of real estate transactions. They should have a lot of money free and clear, plus the husband worked a good union job at the airport for about 30 years, has a decent pension, etc.
Further Variance: locked in 6.3% 20 year a month ago…
If you had to live on one of the red counties in the first map, where do you choose?
https://twitter.com/StatisticUrban/status/1779487088619978781?t=DWOCp1ga0gqiNZUjy4OcqQ&s=19
Shout out to Wyoming.
What’s going on there?
Jackson has become a second home for various celebrities, often due to Wyoming’s income tax regime, including Sandra Bullock, RuPaul Charles, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Nikki Sixx, and Harrison Ford.
I would do everything in my power to avoid all of them. I’d rather be homeless.
I’d need to research it more, but it looks like the FL, GA, NC, and SC ones are in the lead. Definitely would not be happy about it. But if I’ve got to choose, it’s probably one of those.
Spent a week there for work last fall. Absolutely gorgeous. Lot’s of cool places too.
NYC?
I’d go Michigan UP or the PA one. The latter is close enough to Pittsburgh. No way am I living down south. I’ve done it, it sucks. Maybe the IL one, and just drive to Chicago a lot.
Searching listings for these under $100k counties on Realtor and I am not buying it. There are 65 single family listings for Glade County Florida and only 1 of them is below $100k and it is a mobile home. 54 listings over $250k.
Once I eliminate the desert, hurricane zones, the chef serving KFC, the states west of the chef serving KFC, and fucking West Virginia, I guess I’m left with southern Illinois, Michigan UP, or wherever that is in PA.
Just eyeballing it it’s not that close to Pittsburgh. It’s firmly in the Alabama section of PA and I think it’s one of those counties that is/was using irradiated wastewater from fracking to treat their roads.
Think all these come down to if you have kids or not. If not for kids could probably be pretty happy in almost any of the rural ones working remotely on a big enough lot not to see the neighbors.
Only if you’re a hermit
Guess that’s fair if just going to out in forest approach, but I would think about half those east coast rural county would contain at least one body of water where you could be living it up with boat, dock, water sports, etc and probably bunch of neighbors who it their weekend house or whatever. Still not ideal necessarily but if forced to live in one those counties would be way to go IMO
During a light rain the other day, lightning struck a tree in the neighbor’s yard. The tree fell on the power lines, which run along the property line in between the houses on our street and the street behind ours. This caused a utility pole in our yard to fall as well as a pole in my neighbor’s yard on the other side from where the tree fell. This pulled out the electric mast (pole where the electric wires enter the house) on my house, my backyard neighbor’s house, and the house on the side opposite where the tree fell. Neighbor’s house where the tree fell it’s fine. An electrician with the original repair crew asked for $2300 to fix our mast before the power could be restored. We reluctantly agreed as we needed the power back as soon as possible. I later found out he charged the other two neighbors the same. Any chance the electric company would be responsible for something like this that affects so many houses?
I think it may be location dependent. I sort of dealt with this once (needed to mess around with the power line in order to have a tree trimmed) and for me, the power company was responsible just for the main line/poles, and then I was responsible for the connection to my house.
No harm in checking with the power company to see what is your/vs their responsibility.