You are basically using up the water that was already heated and has been cooling in the pipes. A circulation pump runs a loop to recirculate that cooled water.
a.tramp any experience with tankless water heaters and Kohler's dTV system? Everything I read online tells me that it isn't a good idea, but the comments I find are from 3-4 years ago. The wife is tired of running out of hot water in 20 minutes.
So are we team tank or team tankless in here? Also, if you owned rent houses what would you put in there? Tankless?
I really don't understand the purpose of a real estate agent unless you don't know what you want or don't have the time/willpower to search. I get it could be uncomfortable for people to negotiate stuff but there are tons of people that can manage those talks. Ultimately it's business. Why hasn't someone created a better system for this? I want to start a company that basically helps people cut out the real estaet agent & their commissions. I'll charge a fraction of what they would charge for my advice/services which will mostly be template/cookie cutter agreements... Hourly charge for specific calls - Why wouldn't this work?
It’s not that cold tonight but goddamn it we’ve been waiting to have an operable fireplace. Once they paint the chimney extension I’ll share a picture
I think RE agents value add is on setting the asking price. Seems like the quickest way to take a bath is flipping, over pricing, and then the price goes into free fall to the point you have to take it off the market and re list it. If you’re buying they have information about properties in advance of listing so there’s your value add. They can also drive the price up in especially hot markets with “offering prices” as opposed to “asking prices”
True. It's not that I don't recognize any value add. It's the price(commission) they make for that value... I'd gladly pay an hourly rate to my next realtor.
It's been said before, but those who devalue an agent just hasn't worked with a good one. Ours staged the house we sold with her stuff since we had already moved into the new place, cut her side of the commission without even telling us, did a ton of showings on short notice, advised us not to buy at least 2 places because she thought we could do better, etc. Worth every damn penny and I'm cheap.
One of the beautiful things about TMB is its members ability to completely drag every profession but his own. Do not start a war to the end that.
When we remodeled our house I wanted tankless for the energy efficiency. Our remodeler said it would limit our water pressure because we would need more volume than tankless could supply. So, we got a high efficiency tank with a recirculating pump to avoid having to wait for hot water. I’m team it depends on the house and situation.
Staging has a dollar value - Spoiler it's not 6% of your home value. If your agent is staging houses and "cutting" their commisison. This only supports my argument that they are overpaid. Fair. Are you an agent? If so help educate me on the technical skills/expertise a real estate agent must possesses.
So I told myself the same thing. It still bothers me how much we paid our damn agent. But I am busy with my work and kids, and honestly all the paperwork and lawyers fees intimidated me. It would have been a very steep learning curve to teach myself how to sell and purchase by owner. Then you're almost always giving commision to the other agent anyways. We really liked our agent. She was always really responsive to our texts and did everything you would expect a good agent to do. She was worth it for us.
Ours helped immensely with negotiating after the inspection, as well as what to list the house for, what to do with the house to have it ready to sell, and what contractors to use on some of the minor things the buyers wanted. Sure you could save some money by not paying an agent, but how much value do you place on your own time? With 2 toddlers, I ain't got time to sell my house on my own.
I hope the real estate agent discussion continues for at least 3-4 more pages. It's really informative and fascinating stuff.
I think dealing with insufferable assholes all day long that think their time (and home) is valuable but no one else’s is could easily be an automatic 2%. Not that hard to add more percentage points for other services to see why they get paid what they do. Are there bad agents that should look for other work, yes. Are there mediocre agents that most likely struggle during market downturns that have to rely on commissions from past sales to see themself through to the next sale, probably a good amount of them. And then there are great agents that deserve every single dime and then some.
Anyone know what percent of time individuals negotiate a different % with their Realtor? For instance, the house we bought was owned by a couple, and the wife's father was the RE agent. Our agent said he was almost definitely doing it as a favor to his daughter/SIL and charging a fraction of the normal 3%. Any of you guys negotiate for less? If negotiating isn't somewhat accepted (which I get would be offensive to the realtor), then it's more likely we'd likely enter in a transaction w/o a RE Agent the next time around.
In hindsight, I know our Realtor worked hard for us, I know she leaned on infrastructure (systems, labor, etc) from her broker but I don't want to estimate the effective hourly rate we must of paid her for our transaction.
If an agent happens to be both the buying & listing agent it is common for them to lower the rate some. If an agent bungles a deal somewhat and adds stress to the situation, I would not hesitate to ask for a slight discount to make up for the stress. Other than that, I consider their fee just part of the process. Having someone work for you in good faith after you most likely sign a contract with them for them to represent you for a fee and then trying to renegotiate that agreed upon fee after the fact for anything other than a very valid reason speaks more to the quality of the customer than it does the agent. Imo.
My realtor, who I consider one of the great ones, charges me 1% to sell my house (So 4% total after paying the buyers agent) as long as I use him to buy the next house (why wouldn't I)
Yes, laid out a head of time is fine. I am just talking about getting ready to close and then trying to drop the hammer on agents.
the one I'm currently in was a jumbo so he made $24k total between the two but he's done it for all three of my homes
I guess I have yet to work with these theoretical good agents but it's hard for me to wrap my head around 2-5% of 300k for that amount of work. Leaning towards going realtor free when I sell my place later this year. Dealing with a couple of realtors as we look to buy our next place. We gave very specific parameters that we were looking for land/house on the west side of a particular mountain. 3 bedrooms+. > 2500^2'. Realtor sent us some houses to look at in the next town over one of which was a two bedroom. Then was upset when we said we were going to see houses, on the mountain, with a different realtor. How would one go about finding these unicorn, high quality, realtors?
Also, look at the top producing brokerages and more specifically agents in your area/price range. Most commonly they are going to achieve that by volume and/or quality. A good agent is going to close deals, it is that simple. They find houses that fit the buyers criteria and close the deal.
So to give you an idea of how my day is going, I thought that a woodpecker was pecking at our house (there was one last week that showed up briefly and left opting for our neighbors house). I went outside to look for it and I couldn’t find it. I came back inside and I heard it again. So I asked my 7 yo daughter if she was tapping a pencil or some thing, and she said no. So I went back outside and tried to find the woodpecker and couldn’t. So I decided the next best thing was to get some estimates for tree removal so that I can remove all of this nature surrounding our house that is also letting squirrels and other critters crawl all over our roof and our house. Now I have someone coming out to give me an estimate for tree removal later this afternoon. This is in addition to the gutter cleaning and repair company coming in two weeks. Oh, and that woodpecker? Yeah it actually was 7 yo daughter and she just straight up lied to me about it. She was tapping her pencil on her desk. My home paranoias are getting a little out of control. I’m constantly worried about the pinhole leaks we keep getting in our copper pipes possibly causing a mold infestation somewhere that I haven’t noticed the leak and shit like that. Most of my concerns are pipe related, and I’m contemplating having a whole house replacement of my copper pipes with PEX. Then I’d need to pay for drywall repair all over the place and repainting. I could do a lot of it on my own, but it would take fucking forever.
Tree removal is a lot more expensive than it would seem, but for good reason. Just make sure you're getting someone bonded and insured if they're cutting trees down near your house.
This is a fantastic post. One for the comedy of kids. And secondly the door is now wide open for the thread to disparage and dog pile both tree trimming services and gutter companies! Grabbing my popcorn.