5 houses in 4 months

[taekwondokid42]

House Number 1: College Dorm, moved out May 12th 2013 - time to start an internship
House Number 2: City-side house, moved out June 2nd 2013 - living there was a miserable experience, happy to leave
House Number 3: River-side house, got condemned July 9th 2013 - I loved living here, why is it condemned? Was I legally allowed to be living here? What was my landlord thinking? How did it get condemned on July 9th without the tenets hearing about it beforehand? "Surprise!"
House Number 4: ???, will move out August 16th (give or take) to go back to school.
House Number 5: Apartment for school next year, I'm already leasing it. Will move in on August 16th, give or take.

The worst part is changing your address. Bank, government, insurance, and who knows what else I missed. Don't mail me things. Seriously I'm probably not at whatever address I gave you 2 weeks ago, even if this place seemed like 'the one' it probably burned down or something.

[Shadow]

That sounds pretty awful. I'm guessing you don't own much furniture ^_^

[taekwondokid42]

none, actually.

Just my clothes and my electronics, basically. A few books too, and a broom :P

[Ruddertail]

At least that makes moving easy.

Wasn't the house by the river the one with the hole in its roof? In retrospect, you probably could have guessed it would be condemned. . .

[windhound]

Pretty good.
Shame about the condemned house, landlord was probably trying to get as much income as possible out of it -- shame he didn't invest what was needed so it met code.  Condemned generally means the county isn't happy.

btw, you've probably already done it, but most banks and credit cards allow you to setup electronic paperwork so they don't send you anything in the mail.  I prefer this, gives me less to shred and if I need the info there's downloadable PDF's online.  Banks like it as its one less, if minor, cost to them.

I just left all my address info set to my parent's house while in college, figured they'd let me know if anything important came in.  Not an option for everyone, but it did make it quite a bit easier. 
The DMV likes to charge you every time you change address info, plus you have to go deal with them and the occasional absurd wait times.

[taekwondokid42]

I lost my drivers license once last year. Had to get a new one over Thanksgiving break. I spent nearly 4 hours at the DMV. Mostly though wait times are less than 30 minutes.

Turns out the retaining wall protecting the road is the problem. The house itself is apparently safe but the county needs that wall fixed so they issued a condemnation to get the landlord to do something about it. Apparently this isn't the first thing they tried.

If he can get an architect to open a permit by Monday I won't have to move. Knowing his budget though, I don't think he's got the money right now. If I had realized when I moved in that his repair budget was roughly equal to his rent income, I would have picked somewhere else. This place has so much potential. $30,000 in repairs would probably double the value of the house (bought for $80k). Fully repaired, this place would probably be worth half a million.

----

WOW! I don't know what the rules say about personal info, but I found a youtube video of what the house used to look like. It's got the address on it, that's why I hesitate to post it. I don't mind, but if it's against the rules I don't want to violate anything.

The video is trying to sell the house for $689,000! It looks so different too. Amazing how much degrading floors and holes in the ceiling will affect the price of a house.

[Shadow]

I don't think we have hard rules about personal info, we leave it to your discretion.

[taekwondokid42]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LtRLBpuqcE

Just don't rob the place :P

not like there's anything worth stealing in the first place.

[Typhon]

Nice house

[windhound]

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/93-Old-Indian-Trl-Milton-NY-12547/32851625_zpid/

Dear god look at the estimated price graph, it just plummets.  Looks like two people lots their butts on that house in the past decade, one really bad.

Tax assessment in 2011 was $534,500 and it sold for $85,000 in March 2013
That's absolutely bizarre, is it just a total basketcase that needs a complete restoration?

[Genevieve]

Holy crap that's insane, how does that happen? Has that kind of value drop been common in the US?

I like the river views and the sexy soundtrack.

[Kilkenne]

That kind of value drop is fairly common, yes. A year of no one looking after a house can cause all kinds of problems, and a year with a tenant that wrecks the place is even worse. I see it a lot at my job (I work for a bank), when we go to refinance someone's mortgage and we send someone (third party) over there to do an assessment for the house's value only to find out that they turned the place into satan's anus and the value drops 40%+.

Additionally, if they were to put up "low income housing" in the area (American political double talk for "brown people housing"), housing values plummet because of white flight.

[taekwondokid42]

Sunrise was great. Sunset too but not nearly as fantastic, there's a hill overhead. I really liked it, despite the damage. I'd still be living there if I wasn't running the risk of "$1000 per day or up to 1 year in jail."

Theories have been flying every which direction about why it got condemned. I never got a chance to talk to the guy who condemned it, but according to the landlord the big issue is a huge crack in the foundational concrete... which doesn't sound great. The land is also moving.

If someone bought that house at $85k and had money to pour into it, it could be beautiful again. But like I said earlier the landlord just doesn't have the cash. He bought the house without actually considering the amount of work that the house needed. I don't even think he can afford to bring the house out of a condemned state.