We Bought a Crack House
torontolife.com
torontolife.com
"See! Buying a home is so easy! All you need is your parents to give you tens of thousands and you're set!"
The mortgage loan book of the 4 major banks here is hovering at about 50% interest-only loans. Nearly 1 in 3 people lie on their mortgage application too [2].
[1] https://www.domain.com.au/26-south-street-strathfield-nsw-21... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/mortgage-fraud-systemi...
> [...] broom-swept condition
> This is the first time in my life I have ever heard this phrase, in all its privilege-dripping glory. The more you know, I guess. Carry on.
"Besenrein" is a pretty normal thing if you rent out something in Germany. In fact, every holiday-house-rental and every rented flat / house I ever helped moving, this was the standard.
Even when we went to Switzerland and France - so isn't this a thing at all in the US?
It was literally a crack house with squatters that they had to bribe to vacate. I wouldn't call that "complex socioeconomic barriers". Would fellow Toronto residents prefer the squatters in the neighborhood to this couple?
I live in Brooklyn. But if I had to choose between a rooming house and these insufferable adult-children for my neighbors I would opt for the former.
I really don't care how much money they have. Whether or not it's "privilege" or not. It is but that's not the point.
They were idiots. They deserved everything they got and —frankly— got off lightly.
We weren’t particularly handy, but we’d seen all the home reno shows, and it seemed like everyone in the city was doing it. How hard could it be?
"i'm just a front-end dev but i read this article on medium about smart contracts and the syntax looked familiar so i thought i could just cobble together a smart bank over the weekend and now all my ethereum is gone pls halp"
"What did you expect? They're builders! Have you ever seen a film where the hero is a builder? No, no, because they never f-cking turn up in the nick of time. Bat-builder? Spider-builder? Huh? That's why you never see a superhero with a hod!"
[In The Loop]
"Finally, Julian called in a professional. Peter was reliable, organized, patient and came with glowing references. He was the contractor we should have hired from the start—in fact, Julian had already interviewed him twice but we had passed because he was charging market rate."
The level of privilege fucking burns.
You two in this thread sound like children. Grow up.
These people had a backup condo to live in after selling their first house. You don't get to use 'cash strapped' when you have a backup condo.
If you can drop nearly three times the entire median family income per year for half a decade on renovations alone, you're not 'cash-strapped'.
Cry me a river.
This is not an understatement for anyone who has just finished reading the entire article. It's in every paragraph. You have to read it just to get a sense of the level of selfishness on display at every level.
That said, I don't think these people are evil, it's easy to loose sight of the fact how lucky you are for all of us. We need to guard against it at all times and it's not easy. I'm guilty of having got somewhat irritated by a homeless person in the past and now I think I was an idiot for being like that and having children has made me so much more understanding and loving of everyone. Going up is also easier than going down, if these people had as much money as me (and owned no properties) they might be suicidal, however I'm quite happy with my life :-) Although of course I do aspire to own one home at least for my family.
Luckily, we still owned the two-bedroom condo at King and Bathurst. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of the soon-to-be four of us sharing 900 square feet, but I figured it would only be for a few months.
almost made my blood boil. Oh dear, how could life treat you that badly. My god. This is nothing but two privileged naive idiots stupidly buying a half million dollar house without even having looked inside and then trying to backwards rationalize and talk themselves deeper into neurosis.. publicly even, so they can farm consolation and attention so their mental abstractions never have to fall apart.
* 22K is the median salary. The people under 22K get propped up by social security up to around that amount (theoretically, practically not)
* top-20% percentil starts at 38K
* top-13% is 45K (relevant in the UK as it is the limit for high tax bracket)
* top-10% is 50K
* top-5% is 70K
* top-2% is 110K
* top-1% is 160K
The average cost of a house is 250K, 400K in London. Only the smallest fraction of the population will be able to get that amount of money from just working. You need to be propped up by something, your parent, luck, post-code lottery on your first ring of the property ladder, ...
You need to borrow from the future and the past to afford the present.
edit: formatting
edit2: all amounts are in GBP.
* Your data is for all workers including part-time workers (including students and part time for lifestyle reasons like parenting). Full time work pay averages are quite a bit higher - median at £28k, 90th percentile at £56k. In London where the housing lottery problem is more extreme, it is partly because pay is also higher - full time annual median at £35k, 90th percentile at £75k. * The median earner doesn't buy property - the people who buy houses are the prime-age segment who earn quite a bit more.
In this case something as simple as "having a family member with $150k" creates a remarkable difference in consequences.
They did something stupid, which is embark on a renovation without sufficient funds and having no idea what they were doing. The consequence for them is owing a family friend money and being even higher on the wealth and assets ladder with growing equity.
For the person that doesn't have that, the consequences would be losing all of their savings, foreclosure, ruined credit, and a near zero chance of getting another shot at doing it again.
Having access to resources compounds and grows over time, and and changes everything about ultimate outcomes.
> a young family without a lot of money.
...
> Our budget was $560,000, but nothing came on the market at that price
wat.
> We sold our two-bedroom rat trap for $635,000
wat.
> Luckily, we still owned the two-bedroom condo at King and Bathurst.
Well, that's okay then.
Seriously, these people live in a completely different universe from me.
I keep being reminded of when Oslo opened their second needle room, closer to the more affluent areas of the city.
All of a sudden the got well dressed visitors driving expensive vehicles. These were people that stopped by to get their dosage done before landing some deal or making some high level decision that day...
Not sure what it means?
People use clean needles. They get information about rehab if they want it. They can dispose of the sharps safely. There's help nearby if they overdose. They can get other medical advice about infection or sexual health.
https://theawl.com/vancouvers-supervised-drug-injection-cent...
Luckily they are still brave souls in this world, willing to help them
> We offered back at $59,000, and the deal was done. We were proud owners of a riverside recreational property, an impulse purchase courtesy of our line of credit. Never could we have imagined that a cottage weekend getaway would result in a cottage of our very own. “You guys are so badass,” our friends told us. Once we knew the cottage was ours, I felt a rush of adrenalin—“Did we just do what I think we did?” mixed with “We can’t believe our good luck!”
> A month later, we got possession, and reality started to sink in. Our little cabin (“cottage,” we decided, was too lofty for what it was) had no electricity or running water. It had been abandoned for the past three years and was filthy.
I used to work as a residential remodeling contractor, I quickly learned to steer clear of this type of client/"victim"
What's the lesson here? Fall into money, and when that isn't enough, fall into some more from a distant relative?
I'm from an immigrant family who didn't come here with a whole lot, and I'm in a good place now - a lot of it because my parents did all they could to have us avoid _feeling_ poor even when that was reality, lots of sacrifice for our educations, and also a good dose of luck. Some bad breaks too, some big ones, but some really favorable as well. I know very well the feeling where you strung together a few good decisions and it paid off, and where if any of them had gone wrong, life might be very different at the present. Sometimes it's good decisions, sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's a combination. But the worst thing we can do is pass off those instances of luck and circumstance (or privilege as they call it these days I guess) as hard work bolstered by good decisions leading to that outcome. If you rolled a hard six (Distant Uncle showing up with $150k to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat), call it that, you know?
This isn't because you're going to make people feel bad by admitting luck or privilege, either. This is a matter of self-awareness. In life, you HAVE to know where you did right, where you fucked up, and where you got a little bit (or a lot) lucky. That all influences future decisions, and if you want to set your kids up to be better off than you are, you just have to know and honestly assess these things. All of this is magnified if you have less margin of error for mistakes and bad luck.
There's no lesson in this article other than to demonstrate that you can fuck up badly and come out on top if you have enough resources at your disposal. That's life, but not a lesson, if that makes any sense.
I sure hope they're getting their mysterious benefactor a really nice father's day gift.
What planet do those people live on. Am I the only one who grew up in a place where 85 square meters is ample for a flat for 6 people, not 4, to live in?
You don't see McMansions until you get out to the suburbs and bedroom communities.
According to this, 85 square meters is enough for 6 people to live in:
http://www.privatehousinginformation.co.uk/site/files/LHMO%2...
I meant a family of 2 adults + 4 children, in which case yes, 85sqm is ample. For just 2 adults + 2 children it's way more than enough.
At every turn the couple seems to make monumentally reckless decisions -- from spending more than they can afford, to buying a nearly condemned halfway home and expecting modest repair work, to buying it pretty much sight unseen, to hiring a friendly stranger as a contractor, to commencing $300k+ in contract labor without funding secured, to bribing squatters with big wads of cash. Squatters who obviously know where the couple lives.
Yikes. I do feel sorry for these folks. But I read this entire article between the gaps in my fingers, my palm fixed to my face, my lips silently mouthing, "Nooooo!"
It was also in Parkdale - not exactly one of Toronto's "best" neighborhoods.
But man, these folks are so clueless it hurts.
the story was a cringeworthy read.
glad it worked out well in the end... but life was gentle and kind here.
"Desperate, we pimped out our newborn daughter for some modelling gigs."
What?
It is a heroic tale of paying 560.000 for a crack house and it worked out all well.
How healthy is the Toronto real estate market if they have to resort to pushing such stories?
But at the end of the day it's a good way to test the stability of your marriage.
As you do.
The fact that they expect the occupants to just leave when asked as if they have somewhere to go is bizarre. Who are these people?
They have everywhere else to go.
Well, I mean, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask people to leave the property you just bought.
Like, don't get me wrong, I'm all for ensuring that there is good housing for everyone, and property values and gentrification are having a horrible effect on anyone not fortunate enough to be born into a family with some money, but it's not like it's a house the buyers had just let sit empty for years at a time. The seller probably should have been more involved in ensuring that the property was either actually empty or at the very least securing it and ensuring there were no existing contracts, as one of the residents there apparently had.
Like, there's plenty to be annoyed with regarding the buyers. This isn't one of the reasons.
Legal residence gives them the right to time to move on peacefully rather than be dumped immediately into the sometimes permanent downward spiral of homelessness because this would be awfully convenient for the new owner.
Buying the properly doesn't entitle you to skip this step. I can't imagine a world in which it ought to. This is something the prior owner ought to have ironed out prior to selling. Either the property was still a worthy project despite the issue or they should have taken their money elsewhere.
Put yourself in the place of the residents. You have few resources and nowhere to go. The government provides that the new owner must give you a finite and reasonable time to move elsewhere do you a) lose most of your few belongings and go sleep on the curb because some yuppy comes and yells at you or b) use that time to save money, make plans, and secure yourself a new place to live.
You see it from the perspective of someone with connections, family, money. Many people have none of these things. It wasn't a choice between the inconvenience of moving to a new home and thumbing their noses at her it was in all likelihood a choice between the street and keeping their lives together.
If you have never struggled you likely don't understand.
What I was suggesting was that no, it wasn't really unreasonable for the buyers to be surprised and expect squatters to not be present in their newly bought property. That is the responsibility of the seller. The seller sounds to have been fairly irreputable and tried to pawn off a problem property.
At no point did I suggest, or am I suggesting, that a buyer should be able to immediately force legal residents or tenants to vacate. I'm saying that they probably had every right to be a bit surprised and annoyed/frustrated to find that the seller hadn't really done their duty.
The story is farcical enough without inventing more ways to be upset at the buyers in the story, and such outrage really isn't useful for anyone.
We really need a semi official landlord rating website where you can expect to see ratings for landlords. A landlord shouldn't be able to get a second set of decent tenants at market rate 10 years after he screws over the first.
To be clear yelp for landlords with less of an extortion angle.
If you don't want to buy a house with existing tenants you should check before you buy.