redkow97

Well i'm extra glad that I went this year.

Actually leaving a beater in her driveway would be pretty hilarious. I know a guy who owns his own toe company. He could probably find a car and drop it off for a few hundred bucks...

$11,800 is still a sick deal... If this doesn't hit $20k, I will be sad.

We looked at a slightly smaller house 2 miles away in a HOA neighborhood. It was a nicer area with a community pool, and I still was definitively in the "no" column. HOA's are miserable IMHO. I would have had to jump through so many hoops just to put up a fence to keep my dogs in the yard... The google street-view of my house shows a Cozy Coup on the tree lawn of our neighbor's house, and while we were driving through, I saw plenty of kids riding bikes around. I can be friendly toward almost anyone. I can actually be friends with people who are annoyed by the same shit as me! with any luck, we'll have kids old enough to babysit around too...

the only problems i definitely noticed about the house were: - will need a new roof sooner than i'd like - fence needs a couple of new posts sunk - kitchen floor is mildly warped, preventing basement door from fully opening. If that's cosmetic, I shave the bottom fo the door and ignore it. If that's structural, we have a problem. - paneling on the basement walls are warped. Initially, I assumed they had severe flooding - but the backs of the panels are exposed on un-finished side of the basement, and there are no water marks. I believe it's a combination of humidity, cheap paneling, and poor installation... So hopefully that's not much of an issue at all. The basement is purely storage for now. We won't have furniture to fill the house for years...

final review of mortgage approval is Saturday. Home inspection is Sunday. I'm hoping that it's as nice as I remember it when we walk through on Sunday and take a harder look!

My recollection is that tonik works for a school district. He's dealing with a huge beurocricy and likely a union employee.

My Corolla doesn't have any umph, but I can still pass people on the highway. Just plan better, and don't be afraid to drop into 4th gear.

Apparently the Cleveland armory was broken into, and there was a prominently displayed MotoSeries sticker in the window of the building when channel 5 just showed it.

I have never impacted the chin bar, but i've destroyed 2 shields while tumbling/rolling after initial impact. I used one as a visual aid in a presentation where I pushed law enforcement agencies to supply motorcycle officers with modular helmets and real riding pants/jackets/gloves.

Wife wants our daughter to grow up with friends in the neighborhood. Considering I still regularly see 4 guys who lived within 5 blocks of my parents, I'm not fighting too hard against that possibility.

It's not free. Somebody pays for it.

school district and more storage. We bought more house than we were really looking for, but Sara kept walking around saying "I LOVE THIS HOUSE" every time she turned a corner. The price was at the top of our range, but within our range, and it's move-in ready (unlike several of the places we looked at for less). We're going from 3 beds and 2 full baths with no basement (1600 square feet) to 4 beds, 3 full baths, a full basement, and 2500+ square feet. I wanted more land, which I didn't really get, but it's a cul-de-sac lot, so it's shaped in a manner that gives me a relatively large back yard, with very little front yard to mow or landscape. That's a win. Plus this house has a fence already, which saves me from spending $10k fencing in a half-acre or whatever for our dogs. the only thing i'm not thrilled with is that the roof will need to be replaced in the next 5 years or so, but I'm aware of that, and I can plan for it (or do it myself, if I can convince the wife to let me).

i got email notifications that the showings for tonight have been cancelled (by my wife), so I'm betting she lost her nerve and accepted the offer while i was in court. We'd discussed it earlier, so I knew that was a possibility.

the offer we've fielded is only $5k below asking, but the buyer wants us to credit 3% in closing costs. That said, it's still reasonable. did i mention our house has only been on the market for 4 days?

And that's my fear - but at the same time, both showings will be complete before the offer is even 24 hours old. I'm trying to defer to our agent on this, and hope she points us the right way. The offer is more than I expected to get for our house, but he wants 3% credit for closing costs. I hadn't factored that into my projections. If we accept the current offer, we can cover the down-payment on the new house, and pocket a few thousand on top of that.

Bibs optional. Just trying to figure out who might be more local after the move. To cap off the weekend, we got an offer on our house last night as well. I'm not 100% sure we're accepting it, but there's a lot to be said for selling your house after less than a week of having it on the market... The security of being certain we'll never have 2 mortgage payments may be too good to pass up. Then again, we also have 2 more showing scheduled for tonight. I'm tempted to at least allow the possibility of multiple bidders. We're talking thousands of dollars at stake. I don't want to be too hasty.

Unless something goes awry during our inspection, I'll be living in strongsville by Thanksgiving. The house is massive. The yard isn't massive, but it's shaped nicely. Garage is okay. Shed will need to be replaced with something larger ????

If it's the old 4.0 V6, that's basically a truck engine anyway. For those wheels, it's probably not the worst choice!

if we paid her, it was as a percentage of the price we had agreed to anyway. We did not directly pay our realtor anything. We agreed to pay $105k for our house, and the prior owner paid their selling agent some percentage that the two realtors then split. So yes, Christie was paid with our money, but not by me. This time around, Christie collects 6% of our sale price.

A 250 would carry you beyond the legal speed limit just fine. a 300 would probably carrying your wife as well. Unless she enjoys much more spirited riding than my wife tolerates, I think you'd be fine.

I actually prefer barn doors... the ramp doors require so much more space to open, and take up all that space all day long. I wish I could rationalize an enclosed trailer. Looked at a house with a second garage AND a shed last week

How much do you actually get to ride, Brian? Your past purchases have kind of shown that you want what you want, but as infrequently as you ride, I would seriously suggest looking at the Ninja 250 or 300. Either will be dirt cheap to insure while it sits in your garage 350 days of the year, and there is always a solid market of new riders to sell them to in the spring. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, a 250 is as much bike as anyone needs for the street. You've sworn off track days, and I don't recall you doing any kind of touring that a 250 couldn't handle. What's the downside of giving it a try, and selling it if you don't like it? https://www.facebook.com/sofuoglu/videos/10153061453324599/ (that's a 250 single, but the point is the same...)

It's very formulaic. It basically calculates value based on how many bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, and then factors in the comps in the area somehow. That said, it does not do a good job of considering very tangible things like the condition of the roof, whether or not the basement is damp, how much wallpaper is in the house, etc.

Zillow is woefully inaccurate and slow to update. Our realtor was extremely helpful as a buying agent in 2008, and we didn't pay her a dime. She split the seller's commission. I don't know the details, and I don't particularly care... We're using the same agent to list our house (today actually), and she has taken us around to look at houses 2 or 3 times already. As helpful as the internet is for finding a house, there is no substitute for seeing it in person. You still want an agent to set up viewings (and in our case, showings). The agreement with our realtor also includes professional photography of our home, and a professional stager to advise and instruct us on how to make the photos and showings as appealing as possible. Statistically, people who take the stager's advice sell their home within 30 days of listing it. That's something like 400% faster than average. Some of the crap the stager told us to do was flatly unreasonable, or (IMHO) stupid. She wanted me to paint the bar in our closet white and rip up our carpet, because there's hardwood flooring underneath. Other suggestions were a lot more helpful (like moving my neighbor's garbage cans so you can't see them through the window in our listing pictures).