Looks Like I'll Have To Sell The House

[Zema Bus]

Well I may have to sell the house. I'm not making as much as I was when I first bought it all those years ago but I've been holding my own for
the last 17 years. But now with the cost of living costing so much more, property taxes going way up, insurance going up, and very high income taxes
things aren't looking so good, I will run out of money eventually. There are companies that will buy homes, I'm going to look into that, one in
particular is https://www.revive.realestate/ but there are others. I'm thinking of finding a smaller cheaper place, with the sale of this house I may be able to end
up with a very small mortgage. Renting doesn't look like a good option, the rental prices I've seen are even higher than my current mortgage.
In the meantime I'm going to try to cut everything I can. I'm also exploring ways to make additional money. It would be nice to be out from under that huge financial burden that keeps me from doing a lot of things. I'm not looking forward to the painful process though. Maybe a mobile home, those are usually relatively cheap, harder to get a loan for, but if I'm lucky maybe I wouldn't need one.

[Grogan]

That's sad to hear. You work your fucking ass off and still can't have nice things. It's a mean, cut throat society. If you already have nice things, they'll fix that.

I hope you can work something out to avoid it, you've put so much into it.

Too bad we couldn't like found the next biggest Internet fad or something. All these companies that make billions out of thin air. I'm probably not sleazy enough to monetize something like that, there's no way I could have behaved like Zuckerberg for example. Even those guys that have an honest schtick... I don't have it in me to grovel for sponsors, beg visitors for money (I wouldn't even want people to have to pay), exploit them with advertisers, and sell pointless swag that people only buy out of charity.

[Zema Bus]

I've been reading that there's a lot of this going on now, some people forced out even with a fully paid off loan because they're on a fixed income and can't afford the property tax hikes on top of the higher cost of living.

Yeah I'd sure like to get something going to make money independent of an employer.

So far the only potentially affordable houses in this state are dumps, or mobile homes. And mobile homes come with space rentals that are usually $700 to over $1,000, and often HOA fees that are hundreds of dollars. And from what I've read mobile homes tend to be poorly built, need lots of maintenance, and depreciate in value like a car. Most of them are also in 55+ communities for some reason. I'd qualify for that now lol! I was thinking about when I was driving to Arizona a few times a year for a couple years, back in 2006, and seeing a billboard for new houses and noticing how inexpensive they were compared to the ones in California. I checked some listings in that area and sure enough I found some that were more what I was looking for, that I could probably afford with the sale of this house, leaving me with a mortgage about a third the size of my current one. Even houses that we are new construction are reasonable (actually they were less expensive even than a lot of the existing houses I saw for sale). I also like the landscaping in Arizona, just rocks and some cactus and desert shrubs. That's much more my style. In California there are city ordinances requiring home owners to maintain green lawns even in areas that are essentially desert like here. Everything else is cheaper there too, property tax, cost of living etc. One of my sisters wants to get out of her house (the house I grew up in, she inherited when my parents died, it was built in the 1950's), she wants to get out because the neighborhood has deteriorated (lots of lowlifes have moved into the neighborhood and there are roving gangs), maybe I could convenience her to go there too.

[Grogan]

California is probably one of the most expensive places in the world to live, so yeah, if you can stomach relocating, you could have a much better existence.

[Zema Bus]

I'm psyching myself up to the daunting task of relocating lol! I think I can do most of it remotely if I can find a good realtor there, and it will likely be new construction which will make it simpler. If the home buying company gives me time after closing to get things wrapped up with the new house and utilities turned on (and turned off in the old house) then it should be just one trip out there (4 hours). The transition is the tricky part. Going to try to have Internet connected too before I arrive. Still have to find out which ISP's are available there.

[Grogan]

Yeah, I doubt your work will be too understanding of disruptions. (or are you going to have to quit that because they insist on having you report to an office etc.?)

It's a big ordeal though, moving. I always feel kind of lost, packing shit up to move. Your life, in a fucking box.

[Zema Bus]

Yep, I hope to make it as seamless as possible. Fortunately since I'm fully remote I never have to physically show up in any offices for the contract company. They're headquartered in Texas though they also have offices in San Diego and Florida. This will be my first time doing a full blown move, when I first moved in here it was after still living in my parent's house so I didn't have that much stuff to haul. I still have some ancient stuff from my old childhood bedroom that I never got around to sorting through, I just tossed it in a spare bedroom and then it was out of sight out of mind. Guess I'll finally be getting around to that.

[Grogan]

That's where I'm at too, this was always home base where most of my stuff could stay. Eventually this house is going to go up for sale (even if my parents don't, I wouldn't be able afford to keep it... the property taxes etc. would dwindle money right quick without more constantly coming in from investments etc.) and I'll have to move for real, somewhere.

[Zema Bus]

I found out about government program (USDA) that might be able to help me. I haven't gone through it thoroughly yet but I did do the eligibility check and I'm under the max gross income limit, though just barely.

The Section 502 Guaranteed Loan Program assists approved lenders in providing low- and moderate-income households the opportunity to own adequate, modest, decent, safe and sanitary dwellings as their primary residence in eligible rural areas. Eligible applicants may purchase, build, rehabilitate, improve or relocate a dwelling in an eligible rural area with 100% financing. The program provides a 90% loan note guarantee to approved lenders in order to reduce the risk of extending 100% loans to eligible rural homebuyers – so no money down for those who qualify!

The government had a significant hand in putting me in this predicament, maybe the government can help get me out of it.

[Grogan]

Why yes, The Government Is There To Help (themselves)

The problem with rural areas is shitty communications infrastructure though.

[Zema Bus]

Their definition of rural is pretty broad though, the suburbs qualify.

After pouring over all the information I could find the last few days I think the Revive company is going to be my best bet. Their primary business is renovating homes (realtors send their clients to them). For the option of having them buy a house, after they buy it they do renovations then put it up for sale, and after it sells they send the original seller a 2nd check for the higher profit it brought in. Anyway I'm worn out from all of this, time to do something more fun before Monday hits again

[Zema Bus]

The wheels are starting to turn, I have Zoom meeting scheduled with the Revive company on Wednesday. I might just get a rental after the initial as-is sell, then after the renovations and final sell finally get a new place. A rental like this might do, sounds like there's room there to store my stuff until the final move: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5644 ... 6770_zpid/

I'm going to have a junk removal guy come by to get rid of a bunch of old junk.

[Zema Bus]

Oh and the power is off again here for maintenance. Supposed to only be for 15 mins this time.

[Grogan]

Wow, that's moving fast. They must really want to flip houses.

[Grogan]

That was all I could get out last night (had to head to the big chair lol) but I was also thinking this is the first time I've heard of a house flipping vulture cutting the homeowner a cheque with a percentage of the profits. Usually they just prey on people who need real estate taken off their hands fast... then it never goes on the market and gets turned into something only rich cunts can afford. It exacerbates housing problems. They buy up rental units and turn them into expensive condos too.

Sounds like a good deal for you. When you first said you were considering relocating, I never though it could happen that fast.

You don't realize how much junk you've accumulated until you move. I had an apartment pretty much full of junk when I left Toronto, I mean literally, I had paths carved out for habitation after 2+ years of being in that place. I hauled some of it back with me, but I filled a green garbage bin in the apt. building parking lot. I just had to let a lot of stuff go (a lot of what I put in there was garbage that had been accumulating though). The super was quite upset with me. I can't bring myself to do it, but I have a lot of old computer hardware junk that has to go. I've got shit like old ISA SCSI cards that will never be used again in the closet, too but it's like the cartoons (you wouldn't want to pull anything out lol).

Some of that shit I got from a guy named Bernard, from pcnineoneone, he lived in the area (Mississauga, in the hinterland) and we met up for dinner a lot. A really nice, intelligent, sophisticated guy. He used to snag old shit for me to play with. Old computers to set up NT server instances and shit etc. too. You'd think "SCSI card on the ISA bus... what's the point" but those were still better than IDE in those days (i/o processing on the card). He took me to cool places I'd never have known about, to buy shit too. There was this one big place, it was like a bazaar with tables and tables and bins of shit for dirt cheap. Used, reconditioned, old, new. They had stuff like unused, old AT power supplies for $10 each, I bought a few because they used to blow a lot. That was in the days when a crappy PSU came with your case, you'd have a hard time buying one at a computer shop, they just didn't keep them. I bought some big old 5.25 inch Quantum Bigfoot drives cheap too. Those were old clunkers (not exactly their fastest drives), but they were pretty reliable.

[Zema Bus]

Yeah I think getting all the junk sorted out is going to take a while. Wish I could take a week off from work to devote to it. I have a lot of ancient computer parts, some of it I'll try to save but the majority of it is either too obsolete or junk. I have a motherboard graveyard in one cabinet, a bunch of motherboards that have died over the years. A few of them from the early 2000's have Nvidia chipsets, at the time that seemed like a cool thing. I also have some old heavy steel Chieftech tower cases from the early 2000's that I'll probably be letting go. I'm not sure about my old beige Inwin full tower case, it was my first build in 2001 but I'll probably never use it again, the front panel connectors aren't very compatible with modern boards, last time I used it I had to do a hack job of getting some of the leads to work. Plus it's too narrow for tower coolers and the case fans are small by today's standards. I have tons of ribbon cables, 'new old stock' too since they used to come with new boards, and my brother-in-law gave me a bunch of them in the late 90's as well. Also lots of old AGP and PCI video cards, internal modems and NIC's.

[Zema Bus]

The word that sums up my status right now is stress They want me to take pics of the house, I got the outside ones done, over the weekend I'll do all the rooms. I'm going to try to clean things up a bit first, and see if I can get some junk haulers to come by to clear out a bunch of stuff Sunday. Then Monday another Zoom meeting to go over details, then a realtor walkthrough sometime next week. It may not be that long after that that I'll be needing to move out. I'm still trying to figure out where to go. I've been looking at rentals but I don't like any of the affordable ones around here I've seen, they're all old ugly and depressing places to end up. There are lots of nice affordable places in Arizona though. A downside to rentals is getting a ding on my credit score, the last thing I need right before buying a new house. And applying to rent a place is like applying for a job, worse in some ways, they do a thorough background check and you have to show them pay stubs, your bank balance etc, and references. A lot of them require a verifiable renting history. They also tend to not like short term rentals. One thought I had was if I got an empty rental house I could store my stuff in the garage until it was finally time to move to the new place. Another option is AirBnB, it doesn't look like they do all that stuff, but I'd have to find one with an Ethernet connection (most of them only mention WIFI) and a recliner to sleep in since I can't sleep in a regular bed. And then I'd have to store my stuff in storage facility, which wouldn't be cheap.

[Grogan]

I remember the good old days, when all you needed to rent a place was a wad of cash (if you had first and last month's rent in cash, they wouldn't want to let you leave lol). I remember when I was a 16 year old kid, I got kicked out of one place (at the end of the month) but I just went the next day and paid cash again and rented a cottage. Oh... and rent was like $200/month back then (that cottage was $180).

That is pretty bad stress, that situation. Maybe it won't happen that fast and you'll have more time to figure something out in Az. It would suck to have to pay California rent, to add insult to injury.

[Zema Bus]

I'd love to go back to those days to rent a place

Working on the house today I felt like I could use a month. I spent most of the day at it, and I'll be back at it again tomorrow. I think it's going to feel like I didn't have a weekend, but the last few weekends haven't been very restful. I got the kitchen looking pretty respectable. In case I can't get the junk removal guy to come by tomorrow I'm going to use the pics of the two problem bedrooms that were taken three years ago when I had to have an appraiser do a walk-through when I refinanced. Those rooms were messy then too but not quite as bad then, after I had spent a whole weekend making it less horrible. I pulled those pics from the PDF and I would just need to remove the timestamps.

I saw one rental house in Twentynine Palms, nothing impressive, just an ordinary 1 story house, but it had solar panels and a big wide yard, making neighboring houses a lot more than just a few feet away. The monthly was still too high for what it is, but with funding I could deal with it for a month or so. A/C could be show stopper though, it just says air conditioning. Around here that could mean a swamp cooler, especially on an older house. I didn't see one hanging off the side of the house in the pics but I also didn't see a central HVAC unit. I would not want to be stuck with a swamp cooler. I grew up in a house cooled with one of those and know just how much of a pain they can be. But I remember back when I was a kid after my dad would put in new cooler pads at the beginning of summer there would be this nice fresh smell blowing in from the A/C and I always had an association with the smell of fresh cooler pads and summer vacations, because a few weeks after that my dad would start his 3 week vacation and we usually did some traveling or camping.

[Grogan]

I've never heard that expression, but I'm thinking a "swamp cooler" is a window mounted air conditioning unit?

Those are OK for an apartment or something (or a trailer in the swamp heheh), but for a house you'd need multiple units (= impractical)

[Zema Bus]

Yeah they're window mounted (sometimes they're mounted on the roof), but they're not like the smaller units used in apartments, they're big units that move a lot of air. They're evaporative so they need a continuous flow of water down all three pads. Usually there's only one installed in a house so the cooling is uneven throughout the house.

swampcooler.jpg (118.58 KiB) Viewed 256591 times

The motor turns a big squirrel cage fan.

swampcooler2.jpg (188.29 KiB) Viewed 256591 times

[Grogan]

Oh, one of those. Now I get it. Not the same thing at all, I don't think those work very well for cooling air. (It was the original principle for the first ice making refrigerating devices... but time isn't such an issue there)

[Zema Bus]

It works best when the air is really dry, which it usually is in this area, but when the humidity goes up with summertime monsoon thunderstorms it doesn't work as well. When I think back to those days I hear the sound of roaring air and the plastic clip my mom had on the bottom of the calendar banging against the wall from all the air movement in the kitchen.

I got as much of the house as I could tidied up and all pics taken and uploaded. I'm exhausted after all the work. Thank gawd tomorrow's Monday lol!

[Grogan]

Jeeze, got to get back to work to get some rest, eh?

Oh well, at least all that is done instead of procrastinating. Any more time you get will be a bonus.

[Grogan]

I'm just hoping you're having a productive "Monday the 13th" today

[Zema Bus]

lol!

[Zema Bus]

I finally got a hold of a junk remover, none of the others answer their phones or respond to their webforms. They'll be by late Friday morning. Then next Wednesday the realtor stops by to do his walk-through.

[Zema Bus]

Finally got rid of most of the junk. They ran out of room in their trailer so they'll get the rest when they come back. I already knew I'd need to have them come back after I sort through things to figure out what I don't need to haul to the next place.

[Grogan]

At least you've got direction and should be on track for the realtors.

[Zema Bus]

I just spent two hours moving some of the remaining stuff in the bedroom they weren't able to finish down to the garage, and it reminded me why I hired someone to do this lol! My back does not like this type of work. I think it will be after the realtor comes by that I have the junk removers come back for the rest so I wanted to make the remaining mess look not quite as bad. I might move a little more later but it's probably good enough. The downstairs bedroom needs some attention, an old broken chair and some old obsolete computer cases to move out so I'll be better off doing that.