• another reason for old homes: the hidden costs of commuting

    Reader Joel McDonald is a real estate agent in Boulder CO and wrote the following for Hewn & Hammered. Please note that this article’s copyright belongs solely to its author, and may not be reproduced without his written consent. He makes good points: while many people lust after the big lots and imagined superiority of new construction (which we know is a myth 99% of the time) and imagined safety of the suburbs or the (also sometimes imaginary) superiority of schools, the increasing cost of fuel – something that won’t decrease in price anytime soon – will often make exurban living much more expensive.

    In my own community – Sacramento, California – the oldest neighborhoods inside the city limits are Curtis, McKinley and Land Parks. They are also the most desirable. I doubt anyone, no matter how stunted their aesthetic taste, could argue that new tract homes in even the ritziest suburban neighborhoods hold a candle to the beautiful and sturdily-constructed Craftsman, Tudor and Mission Revival masterpieces of the urban core.

    If you’re not careful, you’ll spend more in gas than what you save in mortgage payment.

    One of the most common decisions we see buyers make is to buy 10 or 20 miles from the town they plan on working in because the price of homes in that area is 10% or 20% less out that way.  Boulder real estate company owner Joel McDonald points out that the biggest factor homeowners don’t take into consideration is what their own time is actually worth, the wear and tear on their car, and of course, the cost of gas (which ain’t cheap these days).  That’s not to say that buying a home in a less expensive area that isn’t in town isn’t a good idea, but more often than not, it’s not saving as much money as you might have initially thought.

    Let’s say you’re contemplating buying a $450,000 home in-town, vs buying an otherwise similar home for $400,000. Let’s also say the $400,000 home is 18 miles from the town you plan on working in 5 days a week.  That $50K in savings might be attractive to you because if you take out a loan for the difference, you’re looking at a monthly savings of between $320 and $370 a month.  The key in making the best decision, however, isn’t whether or not you’re saving a few hundred bucks a month on your mortgage payment — it’s how much you’re spending every month by commuting into town.

    Let’s say your car gets 20 miles a gallon.  At $3 a gallon, you’re looking at about $6 a day to drive into town.  Every mile you drive on your car typically represents about 20 cents in wear & tear.  (Those oil changes, new tires & every mile put on your car depreciate your car’s value, and those expenses are usually more than the cost of gasoline!)  36 miles round-trip times twenty cents is another $7.20 a day in expenses.

    Last, but definitely not least, you’ve got the most expensive part of the equation to weigh: your time.  If you have a $40,000 job, your "on the clock" time is worth $20 an hour.  Believe it or not, your "off time" is twice as valuable as your "billable time".  If you don’t buy into that logic, think about how valuable vacation time is to you, or think what you’d pay on Monday morning if you could just have a third day off.  Your "billable rate", by the way, assumes a 40-hour work week.  The more hours you work per week, the more valuable your off-time is, so $40 per hour could even be underestimating what your time is actually worth.  For the sake of this argument, however, let’s just say that if you earn $40,000 per year, your time is worth $30 an hour.  By living 18 miles from work, you are spending an average of 4 extra hours per week commuting!  That’s $120 per week (or $24 per day.)

    When you add all 3 variables up, and consider that you commute to work an average of 22 times a month, let’s see what you’re spending to make that commute:

    • $6 in gas 22 times a month is $132
    • $7 in wear & tear 22 times a month is $154
    • $24 in lost time 22 times per month is $528!
    • Add it all up, and your 18 mile drive is going to cost you $814 a month!

    Even if you don’t value your off-time at $30 an hour, or you enjoy that drive time because you get to listen to a good book-on tape, you’re still looking at $286 in car expenses every month.  Next time you find yourself grappling with the issue of whether to buy in town vs. commuting into town for a less expensive home, be sure to not to ignore the extra expenses you’ll be picking up in trade for what you save in monthly mortgage payment.  Your "more expensive" home could be several hundred dollars a month LESS expensive, when you factor in all of your peripheral expenses.

    This article was contributed by Automated Homefinder – your Boulder CO real estate experts.

     

  • for sale: real estate, West Coast edition (again)

    Dug these up from classified sections, Craigslist(s), flyers, redfin & other sites over the weekend. Lots and lots of beautiful old houses all over the western US:

  • for sale: homes in Phoenix, Arizona

    1912_bungalow_2

    from Nicole Serrin:

    historic 1912 bungalow in the Roosevelt historic district: 3 bed, 1.75 bath, 1702 sq ft; carefully restored. $775,000 [48 W. Willetta St.]

    1930 Tudor Revival home in the Medlock Place historic district: 2 bed, 2 bath, 1795 sq ft, with a separate 532 sq ft studio or guest house. Lot is big – just under half an acre. $747,000

    1935 Tudor Revival with some Mission features in the F.Q. Story historic district: 2 bed, 1 bath, 1152 sq ft; lots of neat detail. $330,000

  • Brea’s Bungalows

    Richard Dodd’s May 19 article in the Orange County Register on Brea, California’s Union Oil Co. neighborhood is a good one:

    The 1882 discovery of oil in shallow wells in Brea Canyon had a major influence in the history and economy of Orange County. Several small oil companies sprang up shortly afterward and in 1890, some of them merged to form Union Oil Co. of California.

    Many local communities faced a housing shortage for new workmen during the oil and land boom in the 1920s. Union Oil built 61 homes for their employees in the southwestern part of Brea. This area became known as the "Union Oil neighborhood."

    The bungalow period was in full swing at the time. As a result, most of the homes are California, Craftsman and Pueblo bungalows and other variations interspersed with a few
    provincial revivals.

    read the whole thing

  • more houseporn: brown shingles for sale

    The unpainted (or brown-painted) brown shingle is one of my favorite types of house. Usually taller than a one-story ground-hugging bungalow, built in either a Craftsman style or Western Stick variant (which often incorporates more rustic and cabin-like features, like rougher beam endings and less-symmetrical eaves), and are less often Craftsman-fied Queen Annes, with glossy trim and a bid of beadwork around the windows, these houses always seemed warm and friendly to me – partly because I grew up in Berkeley, CA, which is full of such homes, and partly because my father lives in a very warm & comfortable house built in this style. Some are raw wood or brown-painted wood shingle, others use wood siding or brown-painted wood siding; all share a sort of undecorated honesty of design. (There are also quite a few very modern brown shingles, built in the angular "Northern California" style that owes far more to Sea Ranch than Maybeck; these are mostly in the Eucalyptus woods of the upper Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco Hills, and while I am sure many of them are fine homes, they’re not especially interesting to me, or – I imagine – to you.)

    Here are a number of attractive brown shingles for sale. As you can see, the style is most popular on the West Coast, specifically in the Bay Area; I doubt wood shingle would last nearly as long when exposed regularly to snow, wind and ice.

  • Realty Advocates: the under-pricing epidemic

    Brett Weinstein and Hal Feiger sell real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their firm, Realty Advocates, advertises "full real estate services at reduced fees," and they really do approach their jobs as a trade and craft and not just a get-quick scheme – Hal is very active in the development of non-profit affordable housing in the area, and even found the synagogue I grew up with (Rabbi Burt officiated my Bar Mitzvah!), Kehilla, a permanent home in the East Bay. Brett, on the other hand, has worked as a carpenter and general contractor, and knows a lot more about quality construction than most of the agents I interact with. Basically, I’d buy a house from these guys.

    Recently, they added a blog to their site; one recent article caught my eye. Read the complete article at their site:

    You know the practice: suggesting, or going along with a seller’s
    idea, that the best way to obtain the highest price in the sale of a
    house is to deliberately ask a price that is well below what you expect
    it to sell for. A more odious variation: agreeing to list a property at
    a price the seller has told you he would not accept. You figure this is
    pretty safe: everything gets bid up these days. The SF Chronicle
    recently dubbed this the “under-pricing epidemic.”

    Sometimes this practice is blatant, as when the
    agent puts in the confidential remarks section of the MLS: “seller
    reserves the right to reject any and all offers.” Other times, it is
    hidden, as when offer day comes and you, the buyer’s agent, deliver the
    only offer. You are then countered at a price ten of thousands, and
    sometimes, hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the asking price.
    In essence, the buyer is being told to bid against himself.

  • for sale: real estate update, May 2007

    A few homes that struck me as I was browsing new (to me) search engine Oodle, which lets you look at classifieds at almost every major newspaper in the US (and plenty of not-so-major papers):

  • East Bay (California) homes for sale

  • “Shelterporn” from Houstonist: big profits in Texas

    Houstonist‘s every-Saturday Shelterporn section focused on a really pretty bungalow in last weekend’s edition:

    Longtime shelterporn readers will know that we’re most partial to two
    kinds of houses: clean, contemporary designs and traditional bungalows.
    Frankly, though, it’s the bungalow that really makes us think "home" —
    and so it’s only natural that we fell in love with this Heights beauty at first sight.

    At $599K, it’s no bargain, whatever that means, but I can’t speak to relative prices, not having much knowledge of Houston’s current real estate climate. However, based on the last selling price and the square footage price of other homes in the neighborhood, Zillow estimates the home’s value at $187,915, which certainly seems a bit more realistic.

    Adam Wells, president of Clerestory Homes, says that the upgrades and renovations were extensive:

    This project was definitely a labor of love for our company. It is
    an original 1920s bungalow that was extensively remodeled and
    renovated. We added ~1,900 sq.ft. to the original ~900 sq.ft.
    footprint.

    You can see previous sales data here; looks like a flipper or the developer bought it for $160,656 last year – so a more than 300% increase in price. It’s just too bad that people are priced out of neighborhoods they’ve lived in for years, and entire areas are ghettoized, by profiteering and personal greed. That said, the house itself is beautiful, inside and out, and apparently the buyer is very happy with her purchase.