Hmmm… Lemme clarify my definition of “Dead as a door nail”.
If I water that nail, I’ll end up with mud! There is no grass to water. Just dirt! We’re not sure WHEN we’ll move, we’re looking at states/cities that are tax friendly to retirees with nice weather and homes, safe neighborhoods and near our families.
October 10th, the GGrand daughter I call Dip is getting married. We’re flying to St. Louis Illinois for 6 weeks where she lives, to look at houses. We currently live in California. Highest sales tax in the U.S. after Hawaii, and they tax the hell out of our retirement income.
We have 15 offspring, the most near St. Louis, and some in the very pinky of the glove of Michigan. Then we have OUR family and in-laws in the lower half of the state. Both Tennessee and Missouri are tax friendly and nearer to family. Tennessee has the Smokey Mountains and the foothills are nice. Missouri has the Ozarks in the lower part.
This is/was a beautiful neighborhood with houses now selling for over $600,000! Ours is on the smaller side at 1,860 sq feet, (Some are over 3,500 and sell for $1.5 million plus) So our realtor says we should be able to get around $550,000. We can get a NICE house in the mid-west, for less than $200,000.
Retired, we’ll take all we can get.
25 years ago this was a new house we paid $180,000 for.
Anyway, she (the realtor) thinks our best bet is to plan on $520,000 because of the goobers!
Couple things though. The goobers added space above the garage, and added onto their house. The garage is 2 beds and the add on is 3 beds. The main house is 4 beds. It’s okay to add on to your home/garage, but not for rent. The goobers don’t live there and as far as I can count, there are 15 people in total RENTING the place. At least I see 9 cars, coming and going.
And parking in front of five houses! We live across from a beautiful park. Plenty of parking. Do these healthy youngsters park there? No, WE do!
Note this is “track housing”. Cookie cutter copy/paste the style of houses from one block to the next. How close are the houses? I once went to open a window and saw into the next house to watch the husband getting his head slapped up one side and down the other by his wife.
Can’t add-on to rent. Also, this is a 55 year-old and up neighborhood. If one of those renters is even close to 30, I’ll eat my hat.
Having a Doctorate (top of my class) from a University of Ass Holes so, big surprise, I called the City. Told them about the yard and the renting bull shit. The City can’t do anything about the yard, but they said they’re already on the goobers for the renting. It simply IS NOT allowed.
I was told the City manager (Lives in the neighborhood) is working with the City lawyer to evicts to kids and force the goobers to move back in, or sell the dump. I’m betting they sell the dump and hoping the new owners will fix the lawn. They’ll certainly have the money, 'cuz the goobers aren’t gonna get jack shit for it.
Oh, and these kids are always drunk Whataya wanna bet the inside of the house is totally fucked!
The house in question is not my immediate neighbor, there’s 1 house between us and them. Yesterday, I spoke to my immediate neighbor and asked if he’d share the cost of re-sodding the grass, and splitting the cost of his water bill since he’s close enough to run a hose to a couple sprinklers. Which would be a huge pain in the ass as it’d be inconvenient as hell!
Here, we have what’s called hard pan for the ground. I shit you not, when I planted our lemon bush, I rented a jack hammer! We ALL have underground automatic sprinklers, because you can’t just water enough once a day. The water won’t absorb all that, and just run off and down the sidewalk. We water 3 times every other day 10 minutes to 15 minutes each time, depending on if it’s the lawn or the landscaping.
must be a Brian ‘thing’ …from an old thread I created 
