Refi update:

Bank is eating 100% of costs. Dropping 0.5% interest rate, ~10 months after initial purchase. Call your banks!

when you refi, do they reassess your house? we've done a substantial amount of work and i'd want that taken into consideration

In general they re-appraise your house as a recent appraisal is a requirement for mortgages.

Since we were refinancing within a year of purchase, the original appraisal was considered still valid.

I'd assume that if I specifically requested a new appraisal (if I'd done more significant work, or if I'd thought the market had moved for real), they'd have let me do that too.

Cit what area do you reside in?

Chicago.

Update: just found out that because of property tax spike, I have to bring a few thousand to close to replenish escrow. This cost was coming regardless of refinance, but still a mild bummer.

It would have happened at the annual escrow rebalance anyway.

That is literally what my last sentence meant, yes.

In random numbers aligning universe: refinancing will effectively let me "skip" September mortgage payment, which is almost exactly (within $30) what I'm going to have to outlay for escrow catch up. So I guess everything is in fact coming up Millhouse.

Thanks for the responses.

Just to clarify, I'm not looking to flip a house. I'm looking for a home that I'll live in for at least 5 years, perhaps considerably longer.

I've basically got three options:
1. Buy a more or less turnkey home that I like and be done with it
2. Buy an old home and fix it up
3. Buy land and rebuild

I believe #3 is likely to fare better than #2 because a home built in 2020 will tend to appreciate faster than an old home that was renovated. In 2030, a 10 year old home vs a 70-80 year old home is a big difference. My understanding is even with major renovations, you don't get to claim the renovation year as the build year. You've got to do a total teardown in order to reset the build year. Even though it'll cost more upfront, I believe #3 is the better long term proposition than #2.

#3 is likely to be a bit cheaper upfront than #1, with the added perk that I'd get to live in a house that exactly meets my specs, rather than accepting what someone else built.

Of course, the major downsides of #3 are time and legwork. And there's the common sense question: if rebuilding is such a sound long term investment, why aren't more people doing it? What's the catch? I suppose there's only a limited pool of folks willing to pay the premium for new construction.

Most people in this country can't think past next week much less longterm.

It's not like a car. Very few people care much about build year if the home is otherwise in good condition and what/where they want. The only real challenges are actual physical problems, layouts of the era may not be to current taste, and neighborhood change over time.

Outside of something really unique like a Frank Lloyd Wright house - houses depreciate. Land often appreciates enough to more than make up for this, but houses (including brand new ones) depreciate. As far as an investment to hold on to, the smallest cheapest oldest structure would be the best because there's not much to depreciate while the same land is there to appreciate.

Yes, houses depreciate to a certain degree, but this is mostly a case of condition, not just a straight case of age.

because building new usually isn't cheaper. idk where you got your numbers from. in my area, 20-30 year old homes, that were mostly turn key were going for like $150/sf. new construction was closer to $200/sf and that didn't include buying the land or any costs with utilities to the house (if any).

additionally:
1) time is money. even experienced contractors need to be watched. by you. through the entire construction. they will make mistakes. most don't have the ability to be around a construction for 4ish months
2) many people dont understand even the most rudimentary aspects of construction. this makes #1 harder
3) what ever a contractor tells you it's gonna cost to build new, assume it will cost 10-25% more.

fact is, buying a house is a lot like buying a car in the sense that there is always value in used because someone is always selling cheaper to get the money. thats typically not gonna happen with a contractor building a new house.

Now I am glad I have a large lot and a lawn boy. Well, he is actually a lawn man. We used to have a lawn boy who is the lawn man's son, but he got bigger and decided he didn't want to be a lawn man.

My wife hired them as she didn't want either one of us mowing the yard.

Speaking of Frank Lloyd Wright, we have two of his houses in town and one of them was recently on the market.

Looking to get a new lawn. Any recommendations for what grass to go with?

We live in Southern California and have a dog

Anyone use marathon 2?

Toledo Windowbox.

Look up the nearest (nice) golf course and email the superintendent. Also a local university should have a agricultural department that will test your soil for $20~ or so and make recommendations based on your location. Grass is one of those things you can go a million different directions on based on climate/location/tree cover/soil type etc.

I would rather not go with a thermostat that can be monitored by the electric company and I was wondering what kind of thermostat people would recommend.

We had our AC replaced without replacing the thermostat and ever since it has been a little wonky. It won't hold the new programming. Also, when I set it lower without programming, it runs for awhile and reverts to old programming without cooling to the override temp.

I've had 3 Nests and have liked the product. I understand the Ecobee products to be quite good too.

None of them can be monitored by the electrical company without you configuring them specifically to do that. You can run all (afaik) smart thermostats as effectively just a normal programmable thermostat, if you want.

You are concerned that the people who know how much electricity you use because they already bill for it will know how much electricity you use?

Neither here nor there to this discussion, but some of the earliest installations of air conditioning in the Los Angeles area required a separate service and you'll see houses with two sets of parallel lines from the poles. The set for A/C has a disconnect at the pole so that the utility could go shut everyone's A/C off to avoid brownouts/blackouts during heavy use.

Hadn't thought of it that way, but no.

Don't they still need that?

Sharing your theory on why this is something that you want would probably keep me from continuing to guess.

Do you keep your house at a temperature that the folk at the electric company would ridicule you for? Do your temperature preferences have such a deep personal meaning that you would only share them with close friends?

Sorry, I was going to type something further but got distracted.

I guess it could be what you said originally as I think a thermostat tied into the electric company let's them intrude into my life even more.