Escape from CA Part 2 FS: 100% off gear!

Hope you enjoy your new place now Marv, I am in planning to move out of NYC as well hopefully next year.

 

Congrats on the new house. Texas is top of my list if we ever move out of state (followed by Colorado).

Personally I adhere to the grey man philosophy. Don't want to get keyed by liberals for having thin blue line stickers or end up with a bullet hole in the side of my car for a Biden/Harris sticker (these are broad generalizations).

Besides, shits polarized enough without me triggering people on my way to the grocery store and someone decides to brake check me while my family is in the car. Maybe I just live in a shit state though.

 

Dibs on the house giveaway!

Congrats on your move! Now get some rest and enjoy lockdown-free holidays

 

Living in the country is great. I only have 2 neighbors out here, with huge empty lots of forest across the road on the other 2 sides of me. The neighbor south of me is the granddaughter of the original farmer who lived on this land, and her house used to be on my lot pre-1950, and was moved to their lot when the land was split up amongst the children. My neighbor to the east lives in the original farm house, which is at least 100 years old.

We help each other out with mowing lawns, trimming trees, cleaning gutters, etc. I've helped them both fix their cars, and we hung out around the fire pit this summer.

Not too different from detroit, my neighbors there were really friendly and had lived there long before I was born. This is in stark contrast to living in indianapolis, where I didn't even know my neighbors names.

@purr1n I hope you are happy in CC and are able to give your kids a better chance at prosperity. If you're ever back in Michigan visiting family, send me a message and we'll meet up.

 

Sounds like you and the family got a proper adventure for the holidays, no? Complete with elements of interminable waiting for stars to converge or dragons to wake up.

Only ever really lived in the same general region for all my life to date even with the flooding relocations so I can't imagine what it feels like knowing you'll be putting down new roots and having an entirely new place to "come back to", but definite well wishes with the sale and for all future endeavours.

Piss on the Trump-Pence stickers though— talk about masking your scent with fecal matter!

Edit: fixed typo, and also clarifying that I'm calling the support of certain individuals fecal matter, not the people who choose to support them for whatever reason.

 

Dislike since it is never wise to tell the opposite side that they are fecal matter. People like my dad and most of my family aren't fecal matter. Wise people don't look at the other side as poop.

 

Nah that's fair, though I would have figured that the tongue-in-cheek tone might have been communicated even without me lampshading it. Opinions remain the same of course, but I'm generally less reserved on this forum than elsewhere online so I indulge in a bad joke now and again

 

Whataburger is overrated IMO. I mean it’s fine and better than all the typical fast food offenders but I prefer Freddy’s for a drive thru fast food burger. I like that char to meat ratio on those thin patties.

 

Barely gone, already missing In-N-Out and trying to find a its replacement!

 

Freddy's is an overpriced Steak 'n Shake. 1/10 YMO not impressed......

But you are sticking up to your favorite food joint, so I respect that.

 

Traveled to Dallas a year ago on business and had Whataburger and In-n-out for the first time. I preferred the later but I liked them both. I think I still prefer Five Guys though.

The best food I had in Dallas was at some small spicy Korean BBQ joint.

 

You can eat your Whataburger any way you like, we don't care. And we do have In-n-Out, but maybe not in Corpus.

The PID thing sucks, I hadn't heard about it before, but we built our house 20 years ago.

You can also put an AR15 sticker with "Come and take it" on your vehicle's back window, LOL. I see a lot of those.

@purr1n when you buy a place, file a homestead exemption with your property taxing authority. It'll reduce your tax liability quite a bit. And if you can get a little land and put a couple of animals on it, you can get an ag exemption too. Others are for over 65 or being disabled.

Welcome to the state of Texas!

edit: For the rest of you, he's closer to San Antonio and Houston than Dallas; it's about 7-8 hours drive to DFW from Corpus.

 

I feel fortunate that we’ve always had fantastic realtor experiences.

Man there is a lot of fantastic Korean food in Dallas area. Big Korean populations in Plano and Mesquite areas.

 

Real estate agents live off of referrals and contacts, including their own. However, the fact that loss of friendship occurred should prove to you where her real alliances lye. That's pretty petty.

 

And always, always, always interview the prospective agents. One question in my experience is how they value the property. When they just lowball out a number based on comps, then you need to move on. I picked our agents not because they were one of the best at interviewing but because of their persistence when I said no. Lots of factors can drive the real value up of your house up and the fact they respected my judgement on why my house was going to sell for moar! We sold at the highest in our hood and became the new high comp, lol.

Good Luck on the sale Marv!

 

This is just an aside, but my experience so far in residential real estate brokerage is that there's 3 types of agents:

1) Seller client first. These are the ones that go staging, staging, staging and hire a pseudo-pro photographer to shoot garbage pics under low light and then do shitty iPhoto filters to make garbage look like shiny garbage. Redfin ONLY!! It saves you MONEY! Their hope is that a property goes for >15% over asking thru arbitration, so they can afford the new Audi S5 Coupe coming out next year. When you contact them to list prop, they're your best friend, when you contact them to buy prop they hardly return phone calls. They usually drive (and take you on tours) in a lease-spec Audi or BMW. They ty pically close deals with other like-minded Seller-client first brokers that also enjoy inflated property values.

2) Buyer client first. These are the ones that are the hunters. They generally suck to deal with and keep showing you stuff you're not interested in.They find undervalued stuff in "bad neighborhoods" that is 10% below market at offer. They don't talk much because they focus on volume. The drive a large Toyota or Nissan sedan or mid-size SUV because they're relatively inexpensive and the running costs are low.

3) The Agent-direct Agent. These are field-seasoned "desk traders". They do most of their work by hashing deals dealing with other friend agents. If you're a buyer or a seller, you're along for the ride since the inspector has the most say over whether a deal goes or not. These brokers drive and tour in 3-5 year old Japanese Lux since the depreciation curve has mostly run it's course and there's still a bit or CPO warranty left. And, most folks still think they're "fancy" cars.

Just my limited experience so far.