Ugh... this drives me nuts... (Page 3/4)
maryjane AUG 18, 07:28 AM

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As for farmland... yeah, in the case of where I have a house in Fort Lauderdale... the farmland had been there a long time, but it was the farmer who sold due to the fact that he got such a huge offer on the land. He kept about half the land, and then sold another half of that. For the next ~10 years, he held onto the last quarter of the original land, and sold it back in 2017 when real estate started getting really, really, really hot in South Florida (still is). All the homes built on that parcel were postage-stamp sized homes that were $1 million+, which is insane. They also built a Walmart Neighborhood Market which... you'd never think this would be a classy thing, but it's Walmart's attempt at being fancy. They JUST sell groceries. There's also an Aldis and a Trader Joes on the same block. But yeah... I assume the county loves it because they get much more property tax income than they would get with farmland.



Correct. In the example of where my son presently resides.....
It was originally a large cattle ranch, then a new owner changed it to an Arabian horse farm. A developer made the farm owner an offer he couldn't refuse and the property reportedly was sold to the developer for somewhere around $17,000-$20,000/acre..closer to 20k than $17 from what I understand. Flat, cleared, well drained and well out of the flood plain, within 1 mile of Houston metro's Grand Parkway toll road..iow, highly desirable property. Harris county was already getting a pretty good revenue stream from acreage in that area even if it did have an ag exemption, but.. Within months of purchase, the surveyors were done laying it all out and the excavators were busy putting in underground utilities, streets layed out, and houses were going up. You can't get ten 1/10 acre home sites on every 1 acre because of public infrastructurem but you can get 8 and that's average forthat development from what I observe. Remember, taxes assessed on $20K/acre market value previously....
8 homes/ac x $300,000 now theoretically means that acre that was appraised at around $20k means the same acre is now appraised at $2.4 million and of course, taxed accordingly. Even with a homestead exemption (which in Texas is less of a tax break than ag exemption) that is one heck of a windfall for the tax collector..
In the short term, the winner is the previous owner, the developer and of course the new home owners in the ritzy new subdivision..
The big winner in the long run tho, is Harris County tax assessor/collector. He/she will collect tax revenues from that developed acre forever, at a much higher benchmark than it could ever bring as a farm or ranch. The loser forever, is agriculture.

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 08-18-2020).]

Raydar AUG 18, 02:30 PM
This is the house we just sold. 30 miles west of Atlanta. It's about 1800 square feet, over a full basement that doubles as a 3-car drive-under, and two finished basement rooms. It sits on ~1/2 acre.
Houses like that, around here, are selling for between 200K and 230K, depending upon where they are. Selling for much more than that in town, and north of town.













[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 08-18-2020).]

Patrick DEC 12, 09:09 PM

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Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:

I know I'll get some flak for posting this... but this is an example of the type of house that's super-common today. These are the kinds of homes that I absolutely abhor and would never be caught dead living in one:



There is nothing I hate more than a home that says... "Welcome to my garage. If you want to come inside, the front door is on the side..."

...I just can't stand a home where the only thing you see is the garage.

...you could literally mistake that house for a storage unit, or some kind of industrial warehouse if you removed the domestic exterior lights and changed the eves / roof

Sorry, just ranting, got an e-mail from Zillow with homes for sale. The one above is almost $500k, and looks ridiculous.



I thought of this thread when the following home came up on my realty site today. It's on a puny 3,960 sq ft lot out in what used to be the sticks outside of Vancouver. The price... $2,000,000 They were asking $2,389,000 a year ago.

Raydar DEC 12, 10:18 PM

quote
Originally posted by Patrick:

I thought of this thread when the following home came up on my realty site today. It's on a puny 3,960 sq ft lot out in what used to be the sticks outside of Vancouver. The price... $2,000,000 They were asking $2,389,000 a year ago.




I had heard that housing in BC was just insane. This is a perfect illustration of that.

That construction - and the price - kind of remind me of a Florida beach house. Minus the water, sand, and palm trees, of course.

BTW... the house that I posted above, that we moved from, is now estimated at $332K.
Too bad we couldn't have waited, but we also would have had to cough up more for what we've got now.
ls3mach DEC 12, 10:43 PM
These days I like warm, dry, and safe.
Patrick DEC 13, 12:06 AM

quote
Originally posted by Raydar:

I had heard that housing in BC was just insane. This is a perfect illustration of that.

That construction - and the price - kind of remind me of a Florida beach house. Minus the water, sand, and palm trees, of course.



For anyone who might be curious what the house I referred to might offer a prospective buyer for $2M... Here is the listing. The inside looks presentable, but the outside is ugly as sin. I have not added it to my short list of homes to check out.
82-T/A [At Work] DEC 13, 08:48 AM

quote
Originally posted by Patrick:

For anyone who might be curious what the house I referred to might offer a prospective buyer for $2M... Here is the listing. The inside looks presentable, but the outside is ugly as sin. I have not added it to my short list of homes to check out.




The home is very nice inside... but yeah, the outside of the home I find to be almost criminal. When I first looked at that post, I assumed maybe that was the BACK of the home... until I realized that was the back.

The neighborhood I live in has a variety of different home sizes, but I've mentioned it before, they have different styles of home that all cater to the idea of community. Every home has a front porch, and they're able to integrate million-dollar homes in with homes that are $300k homes without really making it noticeable. They have some separate neighborhoods that are sectioned off which are below $300k and are 4-unit town-homes, and then one for homes over $1.5 million which are much much larger.

But the majority of the homes in this neighborhood are like this one (Note: this is not my house):






Now... this is a $550k home, converting to Canadian, that's about $750k Canadian (respectively). This home (above) is mostly original from 2007, so it's not outdated, just somewhat basic looking. Has granite countertops and nice wood cabinets and a tile floor, but other than that it's a little bit beige inside. But all that aside, it's conceivable to think this home was probably more expensive (material-wise) to build than that home in Canada... but not TOO much more. There's a front porch, columns, and a few styling cues that would make up the difference in cost. This home above is 3,150 square feet.

Ok, so why do I mention it? Both of these homes... the one you posted and the one I just showed pictures of are relatively the same size, same shape, even to a degree a similar layout. Both of them fit on a nearly similar sized lot. The difference? In this community, they decided to add 1 additional road... an alley, behind the homes. So the homes all back up to an alley where most people park their cars.




Note, they CAN park their cars on the street in front, but most people don't... they park their cars in the back. This is nice because it keeps the congestion, the trash cans, and everything else in the back, and the front of the homes are where people bike, the mail lady comes, and people do food and service deliveries... and normal passenger vehicle traffic to go visit the park and whatever else. This kind of design is like what many of the homes had after WW2 in places like Chicago, Missouri, Kansas, New York, etc... and it's more "community-centric." This time of year, I'm constantly sitting out on my porch (I have a whole couch out there and a big dish chair) and I'm working or whatever, and always saying hi to people walking around with their pets etc.

The idea of the home you posted is the epitome of introversion. You don't even really have a front entrance so much as a place where you just enter the unit. It's almost prison-like. I'd be absolutely miserable in a home like that. I love my front porch.

Anyway, this is another picture of the home where you can see better where the sidewalk is, and the distance from the road in the front. In front of this home is a massive community center with a couple of restaurants and a huge splash pad, water park, and outdoor theater which doubles as a soccer field for kids. So the dude living in this house walks 35 yards and he's at a bar... 40 yards if he walks around the splash pad.
maryjane DEC 13, 09:26 AM
And I thought MY yard was small....

Most people here DO park on the street, because they have 3-4-5 vehicles and their garages are stuffed full of crap. (often, their grown kids' stuff while away at college)
Right now, my neighbor across the street has:
1 whatever they call the civilian version of a humvee.
1 late model Camaro
1 big suv..suburban maybe.
1 almost new bright red pickup truck.
1 little beater of some kind that he told me he was hoping his grown son would want but the AC doesn't work so kid said "nope, I'll take the pickup truck tho".

and when their daughter is home from school (Sam Houston State) , there's a Jeep parked in front too.

I guess they can afford 'em all..a pretty recently retired US Army Colonel.

I'm not keeping up appearances..just 2 vehicles..
82-T/A [At Work] DEC 13, 11:38 AM

quote
Originally posted by maryjane:

And I thought MY yard was small....

Most people here DO park on the street, because they have 3-4-5 vehicles and their garages are stuffed full of crap. (often, their grown kids' stuff while away at college)
Right now, my neighbor across the street has:
1 whatever they call the civilian version of a humvee.
1 late model Camaro
1 big suv..suburban maybe.
1 almost new bright red pickup truck.
1 little beater of some kind that he told me he was hoping his grown son would want but the AC doesn't work so kid said "nope, I'll take the pickup truck tho".

and when their daughter is home from school (Sam Houston State) , there's a Jeep parked in front too.

I guess they can afford 'em all..a pretty recently retired US Army Colonel.

I'm not keeping up appearances..just 2 vehicles..




Hahah... yeah, it's interesting because a lot of people don't understand that... but like Florida, in many parts of Texas you just can't have basements... either because of the water table, or it's cost-prohibitive to dig through that solid bedrock. So yeah, everyone uses their garages for storage.

I've really, really tried to not follow this path, so I make it a point to get rid of anything and everything I can so that I can use my garages for cars.

I used to be that person with all the cars. When I was ~26-27 I had 9 cars and a golf cart. They weren't expensive cars... all but two of them were $5,000 or less in value (most substantially less), but I had them anyway. My neighbors were nice because I helped them with everything.

I never want to be that person again. We have 4 cars at the house, but two of them are always in the garage, an third one sometimes in the garage, and the fourth one parked in the driveway.
Patrick DEC 13, 05:07 PM

quote
Originally posted by 82-T/A [At Work]:

In this community, they decided to add 1 additional road... an alley, behind the homes. So the homes all back up to an alley where most people park their cars.



In the city of Vancouver, basically all the houses have a back alley. I'm old enough to remember the junk man going down the back lane in his horse drawn wagon... but I digress.

Anyway, the point I wanted to bring up is that I've been looking for a home (just outside of Vancouver) with no back lane, and no back neighbor. After living in a crowded major city all my life, I want a home with a private backyard adjacent to a greenbelt. A creek would be nice. A southern backyard exposure is also high on my priority list. I'd like a backyard (and kitchen, which is usually at the back) that is sun-drenched... well, as sun-drenched as can be possible here. I'd like a three-car garage as well, but I'd settle for a two-car garage, as long as it's not too narrow. I'm not interested in an 18 ft wide garage.

I made a very fair offer on the following place last July, for a lot of money, with no subject clauses... and they turned me down flat, without even a counteroffer. It's now six months later, the house never sold, and it's off the market. Everyone is hoping to make a killing here, even in a declining market (due mostly to high mortgage rates). This place wasn't exactly what I wanted, but the setting was very nice. Yes, there was even a creek out back.