I assume you are talking to me lol. I am in Lafayette, LA. The houses on my street vary widely. The houses across the street are bigger, with bigger lots, and on the river. Down the street one house is for sale for 2.5 million. So my street has a wide range but I would say I am definitely on the lower end but even with renovations I wont have some of the larger perks as some of the 800k+ homes.
Starting a new construction and have a call set up with our low voltage tech to firm up our plan. He sent me this email. Any reason for me not to go with cat 6 in this day and age assuming the cost is not absurd? -Do you want to go with CAT5 or CAT6 ethernet in the house? (CAT5 is what comes standard and handles up to 1 gigabit/second download speed while CAT6 passes up to 10 gigabits/second for any hard-wired devices) edit: just looked up the cost. Looks like a $2 price difference per 100ft
CAT6 is only going to be as fast as the devices using it but if the cost difference isn't too great I'd probably lean towards it too. You'd have to think it won't be obsolete anytime in the next couple decades.
The only reason I would consider 5 is if you only intend to plug in things like xbox/apple tv/printer/etc into it. If you will ever connect computers or use storage and complete file transfers, go with 6. I went with 6a on my install in January 2020.
Texas snowpocalypse got us behind by 1 week. Plumbing was trimmed out yesterday and shower glass today. Now just need electrical and the en suite is a wrap. I am going to have so much imaginary sex in this shower....
Yeah I know concrete would be more durable. I’m thinking of putting a pedestal under each end of the runners to at least keep it off direct contact with the ground. I only have about 5” of depth from the door sill so minimal depth is important
Good luck dude. Not saying your plan won't work, but I wouldn't do what you're describing (if I follow correctly), and it sounds like a perfect fit for concrete. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
I preface all rate advice to clients with, "If I knew what rates were going to do, we wouldn't be talking. I'd be on the island I purchased, sipping champagne" I've tracked it daily for 19+ years & know more than most, but shit happens beyond everyone's understanding all the time. If anyone speaks in definitives, ever, you should hang up the phone immediately
This real estate market is so stupid. We put in an offer last night on a house for 15k over asking and 100k more than what it sold for in august of 2020 (no major renovations since). Fully expecting to be outbid.
not literally. We have two kids under 3 though and our current house is not built for kids. We’re stuck with our 7-month old in our room.
I'm in the same boat. If we can't find something in the next month, we're going to have to abandon the first floor master and move everyone upstairs. Not looking forward to it.
yeah, we have made a lot of “concessions” already which we were told we wouldn’t have to make in our price range. Our realtor who has been around for 40 years says she has never seen anything like this. I’m just at a loss of what to do. I don’t feel comfortable paying 120k over what a house was bought for 6-months ago.
Totally agree. I suspect it will wash out when we sell our house, but I cannot imagine how salty I'd be if I bought in the crazy seller's market and it corrected before I did
I can’t stress this enough, everyone should be looking at new build spec homes or “inventory” homes if possible. Most people think new builds and go the timeline won’t work for me, but inventory homes are usually finished within two months same as a traditional close. the existing home market is awful nationwide
Kind of where I’m at right now. It’s a shit ton of work, but quarantine has made it a little easier in that regard. Not doing anything else during free time anyway. Worked with a modular company and designed/planned the whole thing ourselves. Going well so far but not without its hiccups.
Building right now with a custom builder and am getting completely wrecked by material costs. At least money is cheap. I do feel better by looking at what’s currently on the market in my area. None of it appeals to me at all now that I’ve been through the design process and have made things how we want.
we've talked about lumber prices, here is an interesting article I read this week. https://www.wsj.com/articles/lumber-prices-are-soaring-tree-growers-miserable-11614177282 I haven't heard any other materials are abnormally expensive these days, just lumber.
Yes you will save a ton of money but it will be a shit show in some areas. The problem is you are building one house. Most subs are working for guys/gals who are building 10-100 a year. So when they call, those subs are going to make them a priority. Your house will be bottom of the list unless you are paying a premium or working with subs no one else will work with. I used to build houses and have considered this route but my concern is I remember how hard it was building 20 a year to make sure subs showed up on my projects and am worried it would be 20 times worse building 1 house.
Got word back shortly before the deadline that they had multiple offers. Asked for final and best. I told our realtor we would go up to 40k above asking with an escalation clause. I swear to god if we don’t get this house.
Wood is pushing it, but as that rises everyone else will raise their price. So steel, concrete, masonry all going up, just not as drastic as wood
You helped move a needle in the other direction now. I’m planning on a paver patio. Went to Lowe’s to look at pavers this morning and wasn’t pleased with their selection. Anybody got any good recs for pavers for a patio?
Someone was telling me yesterday that the Mills are making crazy money because their is high demand and they can’t keep up/are behind, but the land owners are barely making it because the harvested raw wood is at an all time low.
domestic mills are slammed with pulp wood, which is used for boxes. Box plants for companies like IP can’t keep up. Most saw timber is imported from Canada right now. There is a shortage of mills in the us right now.
I’m trying to picture what he’s saying but if pouring concrete is too big of a job I’d use a shovel and excavate enough to place some concrete pier blocks to support the deck. And even if you’re gonna use .60 treated lumber I’d slap a strip of bituthene on the bottom of it.
Just for reference, I was going to put the joists in bricks or pedestals so they weren’t bearing on grade but slightly above. Probably should have called it a floating deck. Here’s what I was envisioning but my joists would’ve been pressure treated 2x4s on more supports. https://www.lowes.com/n/how-to/planning-a-floating-deck Nonetheless, I’m leaning towards a paver patio now. Looking for a good place to get a pallet of pavers for a 10’x12’ patio
Spoiler TWIGGS COUNTY, Ga.—The pandemic delivered an unexpected boon to the lumber industry. Hunkered-down homeowners remodeled en masse and low mortgage rates drove demand for suburban housing. Lumber supplies tightened up and prices smashed records. “You must be making a lot of money,” an Ace Hardware store manager told timber grower Joe Hopkins, whose family business has about 70,000 acres of slash pine near the Okefenokee Swamp. “I’m not making anything,” Mr. Hopkins replied. Timber growers across the U.S. South, where much of the nation’s logs are harvested, have gained nothing from the run-up in prices for finished lumber. It is the region’s sawmills, including many that have been bought up by Canadian firms, that are harvesting the profits. Sawmills are running as close to capacity as pandemic precautions will allow and are unable to keep up with lumber demand. The problem for timber growers is that so many trees have been planted between the Carolinas and Texas that mills are paying the lowest prices in decades for logs. The log-lumber divergence has been painful for thousands of Southerners who are counting on pine trees for income and as a way to hold on to family land. And it has been incredibly profitable for forest-products companies that have been buying mills in the South. Three Canadian firms— Canfor Corp. CFPZF 1.74% , Interfor Corp. IFP 0.36% and West Fraser Timber Co. WFG 0.34% —control about one-third of the South’s lumber-making capacity. Since bottoming out last March, shares of the Canadian sawyers have risen more than 300%, compared with a 75% climb of the S&P 500 index. The surplus of standing pine is such that growers, foresters and mill executives expect that even with mills sawing at capacity and new facilities coming online, it could be another decade, maybe two, before enough trees are felled to balance supply with demand. Meanwhile, it’s a buyer’s market for logs down South, said Don Kayne, Canfor’s chief executive. “We try to be fair,” he said. Sawmills like the one run by Canfor in Moultrie, Ga., are paying the lowest prices for logs in years. At their onset, coronavirus lockdowns seemed to derail the housing recovery. Lumber prices plunged in March 2020. Dealers liquidated inventories. Speculators dumped lumber futures and took short positions, betting prices would fall further. Mills sent workers home and curtailed production. By April, roughly 40% of North America’s sawmill capacity was shut down. Wood was in short supply when the remodeling bonanza began. Then the housing market picked up. Restaurants around the country had to build outdoor decks. Sawmills ramped up to capacity but couldn’t catch up. By last summer, lumber was America’s hottest commodity. Record prices Lumber futures, a benchmark for an array of regional and species-specific prices, rose to a record in early August and kept climbing. Futures contracts traded up to $1,000 per thousand board feet, more than 50% above the previous high, set during the 2018 building season. Diverging Markets While lumber prices have set records this year, prices of the timber used to make lumber have remained low. Lumber futures price* .per 1,000 board feetTRADING DAYS SINCE START OFYEAR2021202020172019201820162015125302004006008001,000$1,200 Southern pine saw timber price†, quarterly .a ton2000'05'10'15'2001530$45 *Random length front-month contracts †South-wide average Sources: FactSet (lumber); TimberMart-South (timber) Home builders kept hammering through mild early-winter weather and depleted lumber dealers are stocking up for spring. Lumber futures have hit all-time highs and are more than twice the typical winter price. Spot prices for southern yellow pine set records in January. None of that has lifted the price of timber, which never recovered from the 2007 housing bust. Logs for softwood lumber averaged $22.50 a ton across the South last summer, the least since 1992, according to TimberMart-South, a pricing service affiliated with the University of Georgia’s forestry school. “If you put inflation on it, it’s really sad,” said Mr. Hopkins, the Georgia timber grower. Adjusted for inflation, prices for the logs used to make lumber are at their lowest in more than 50 years. Mr. Hopkins raises timber on a 25-year rotation to support himself and make payments to more than a dozen shareholders in the 109-year-old family business. Because the pines take about a quarter-century to be suitable for lumber, just 4% of the land produces income each year, though taxes are owed on every acre. He said it is like managing a store where he can sell only merchandise from a few shelves. “We used to be considered wealthy,” he said. “I don’t see wealth. I see tax bills.” Mr. Hopkins harvests only a small portion of his timber each year, but has to pay taxes on every acre. Thousands of Southerners’ fortunes depend on timber prices. In Georgia, timberland owned by families and individuals covers roughly one-third of the state. Georgia, like much of the Southeast, was thick with longleaf pine when British colonists arrived. The crown claimed the big timbers for ship masts. Trees were bled for their gummy sap to make turpentine. After U.S. independence, the Georgia legislature encouraged clearing for farms by offering 500 acres to settlers who built sawmills. Johnny Bembry’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather got 200 acres near the Ocmulgee River for serving in the Revolutionary War. The family added land over the years and by the 1980s, when the veterinarian took over, there were 1,200 acres. Cotton and peanuts were too demanding for a practicing vet. Pine trees need little tending. Plus, the federal government was paying landowners to plant trees. Forestation initiatives meant to stop erosion and lift crop prices, such as the Conservation Reserve Program, promised annual payments for every farm acre planted over with trees. Mr. Bembry was among the droves of Southerners who signed up. He planted mostly slash, a little longleaf, and he added another 800 acres. The payments and restrictions on logging expired around 2000, just in time for a housing boom that pushed timber prices to highs. Mr. Bembry didn’t cut much of his timber, though. “I liked looking at it,” he said. “And it was good for wildlife.” Adjusted for inflation, prices for the logs used to make lumber are at their lowest in more than 50 years. Pine logs are loaded for transport in Charlton County, Ga. Home prices crashed in 2007. Lumber and timber prices, too. The number of sawmills in the South had already been declining due to consolidation. The collapse in home construction hastened closures of small and less efficient mills. Today the region has about 250, down from more than 400 in 2000, according to TimberMart-South. West Fraser, the continent’s largest lumber producer, and Canfor had already begun buying Southern mills in the years leading up to the crash. Back home in Canada, their prospects were dimming. Log supply, which is meted out by Canada’s provincial governments, is threatened by forest fires and wood-boring beetles, which together have laid waste to tens of millions of acres. The lumber companies also have paid billions of dollars in duties on boards sold across the U.S. border, part of a decadeslong trade dispute between the countries. “Canadian companies have always been on the losing end,” said Eric Miller, president of the Rideau Potomac Strategy Group, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm. “So the logical solution was for them to jump the tariff wall and invest in the U.S.” Southern ComfortThree Canadian companies with big Southernlumber-making operations are thriving.Share price and index performanceSource: FactSetAs of Feb. 26, 5:40 p.m. ET %InterforWestFraserTimberCanforS&P500April 2020'210100200300400500600 Sawing in the South allows Canadian firms to avoid tariffs and be closer to top customers in the Sunbelt’s mushrooming housing markets. Labor is cheaper, too. West Fraser bought mills from Texas to Florida, including 13 from International Paper Co. Canfor started with four in the Carolinas and moved west, adding mills in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. Interfor executives circled Georgia and waited for the bottom. The Vancouver, British Columbia, company pounced at the depths of the housing bust in 2013. Within about two years, Interfor owned one mill each in Arkansas and South Carolina and seven in the pinelands south of Atlanta. ‘Tough times’ “Whatever Interfor pays, that’s what everybody else pays,” said Billy Humphries, who advises on timber sales around Macon, Ga., and grows trees himself in Twiggs County. “They moved to the South in pretty tough times. They could be pretty ruthless.” Because of trees bred to become planks and the computerization of mills, well-managed timberland produces about 50% more wood than it did a generation ago, he said. Mr. Hopkins raises timber on a 25-year rotation to support himself and make payments to more than a dozen shareholders in the 109-year-old family business. When Interfor arrived, it studied the surrounding trees, noting ages and diameters, then calibrated mills to accommodate the most common-sized trunks, said Todd Mullis, a former Interfor executive who now works for Mr. Humphries’s firm, Forest Resource Consultants Inc. There aren’t enough of the oldest, thickest trees to justify scaling mills for them. Many of the biggest trees went from fetching top dollar to being mashed into paper and cardboard for much less money. This was bad news for growers like Mr. Bembry, whose trees were left growing when the housing crash cut off demand for wood. “When you design a mill, you design it for the masses,” Mr. Mullis said. “The metal matches the wood.” Off the paved roads in Laurens County, Ga., Charles Hill’s logging crew is loading trucks bound for Interfor and West Fraser mills. Sorting is done by a $500,000 John Deere swing machine. A computer is in the cab. A merchandiser on its arm senses the length and girth of trunks in its grasp, strips away limbs and slices off the tree top to fit the mill. Interfor urges loggers to use such equipment. The company says it offers long-term supply deals and premiums for mechanically trimmed trunks to ease the financial burden of buying the machines. “The most important decision you make is the first decision, which is where to cut the log,” said Interfor Chief Executive Ian Fillinger. “The human decision is taken out of it.” Sawing in the South allows Canadian firms like Canfor to avoid tariffs and be closer to top customers in the Sunbelt’s mushrooming housing markets. At its mills, Interfor installed scanners that size up logs and position and slice them to maximize board feet and minimize waste. Yields climbed as much as 20% within two years, Mr. Mullis said. Current Interfor executives say the company has invested $300 million making the mills more efficient and productive. Two would have closed had Interfor not bought them, Mr. Mullis said. “The industry in the Southern U.S. has been relatively backward,” said Mark Wilde, who researches forest products for BMO Capital Markets. Many lumber mills were built by paper companies eager for the sawdust and scraps to pulp. “Canadians going down South is the best thing that’s happened to Southern timber,” he said. This month, Interfor said it would pay a cardboard maker $59 million for a lumber mill near the port in Charleston, S.C., and would spend $25 million to boost output 60%. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS If you are remodeling or building a home, have lumber shortages or higher prices affected your plans? Join the conversation below. The average price of timber sold to lumber mills rose to $24.03 a ton in last year’s fourth quarter, according to TimberMart-South. But the increase is little consolation to pine growers. That is the same price as in 2012, when there were half as many homes being built. Mr. Hopkins worries he might have to sell some of his family’s 70,000 acres near the Florida line, likely to hobby farmers—doctors and dentists from Jacksonville more interested in outdoor recreation than turning profit on timber. Mr. Hopkins examines new pine growth on his land in Charlton County. He worries he might have to sell some of his family’s 70,000 acres. Sawmills are running as close to capacity as pandemic precautions will allow and are unable to keep up with lumber demand. Stacks of wood at a Canfor mill. “If I’m not sustainable, I can’t keep that land,” he said. “Everything is going up except the price of timber.” Mr. Bembry, the veterinarian, is concerned about passing liability to heirs. He is studying the potential to sell his standing trees into the booming market for carbon offsets, which would pay him not to cut, and has been planting longleaf instead of faster-growing slash, aided by federal habitat restoration programs. When the subsidies expire, the foot-long needles can be raked, baled and sold to garden centers and landscapers. “The salvation for me has been pine straw,” he said. An acre can annually produce more than $300 worth. Lee Rhodes wants to cut and restock for the next generation the 10,000 acres of loblolly pine he manages for his family. It wasn’t cut with urgency when prices were high. Now they are so low, and the nearest mill so far, that loggers have turned down jobs on the property northeast of Macon. He wants to hire his son as successor but cannot afford it. “The first thing I’ve got to have with 10,000 acres is $55,000” for property taxes, he said. “I do wake up some mornings wondering, why am I doing this?”
We built our home 5 years ago and I asked our builder to install a larger structured media enclosure. He didn’t. So now I’ve installed a 42” vs 20” that was there. I separated the speaker and hdmi runs from the cable and cat5e. I’ll post pics of shelf, once built, for the Sonos amps running 3 zones. I had to re-route some electric and have ordered some stuff so I can get everything to properly fit in the enclosure. But this day is done and electric re-route is done and the enclosure is installed.
it looked worse than it was. I’ve been adding smart home stuff everywhere so it got out of hand plus we are building a pool so I added a synology device for time lapse video. It was all clean and inside that tiny box 8 months ago.
Being occasionally required to plug a protocol adapter and antenna into peoples’ IT closets for pool controls I only have one thing to add. You have about 127 too few power outlets in there.
I just moved into a new house and we got a bunch of smart home stuff, and the installation is hilariously complex. Like I'm a fan of tech but I am 100% lost when I look at all of the devices it took to make this a smart home.
We’ve been looking to move for awhile now and looking for a bigger house in the same community we’re already in. The prices have gotten insane and it doesn’t help that Palm Beach County is getting flooded with folks from the Northeast who are flush with cash from selling their overpriced homes and willing to overpay for what they think is a “deal.” We had two deals fall through because of buyers who came in with cash offers before we could finalize terms. Yesterday, however, took the cake. We went to see a house that currently has renters living in it and I was shocked that the realtor would ever even show this home to anyone. When we walked in it reeked of stale cigarette smoke. Despite the home being 17 years old it still had the original cheap white builders’ paint on the wall, and the walls were scuffed to shit everywhere. On the edges of walls the drywall had come off exposing the metal underneath. Then in spots where there was some water damage on the ceiling the idiots used an eggshell finish to paint over a flat finish so it was obvious what happened. The tenants lived like fucking pigs. And yet, they still listed the house for a price close to what the totally remodeled homes were going for on the market.
No doubt. But I’m not paying too of the market prices for a house that needed a good 100k of rehab work on top of that.
I am putting used pool equipment that I had planned on taking to the dump on pools on $5,000,000 properties. Of course, the used equipment is only temporary (could be months) until new is available but the point still stands. When there is no supply, non-customary options start sliding into the market. As is the situation with this trap house.
Thinking I’ll be joining the club in a couple months. Been looking at houses for a while now on Zillow/Redfin. Just now starting to look at lenders and agents. Any tips for a first timer?