321–330 of 553 posts
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No, that’s not really skyrocketing if your point of reference is other volatile things (stocks, crypto currencies, etc).
Your point of reference for a commodity should be the amount of money the buyers who need the commodity have.
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I believe it. I am actually more worried about a deflationary spiral and an actual depression when the covid punch bowl gets taken away than moon growth for ever. Things were shitty before covid happened, and many were expecting a recesion in 2020 before covid existed, markets siezed up late q3 19, and needed help then. The world has since been living on vast quantities of high grade heroin dished out all over the wo…
Why would they US government not be able to print its way out? I assume the US will be able to as long as it has the preeminent military and a stable society and court system, with relatively high levels of trust compared to other countries. If another similar size country becomes a more stable option, then I would be worried.
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I would wait. I'm an licensed inactive General Contractor. If 14 months ago, they were building them for $450,000, I'd wait. I'd shop around for another contractor too. A young guy starting out, might save you a lot. (There's no way to verify he knows what he's doing though.) If you are some what handy, it's not that difficult to owner build your own house. That is if you get the blueprints past the town's council. G…
> I just pictured a typical computer developer in a wet lot, with an unhappy wife. Have you heard of the TV programme Grand Designs ? It's just this over and over again. Sometimes the wife is pregnant, sometimes they're living in a caravan on site. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs They're not trying to build anything as simple as a house, either, the "grand" part implies some mad architectural vision…
Fortunately, my wife isn’t pregnant… I don’t think.
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Huh, so they overcommit, accept deposits, then force some of those customers out - do they return those deposits then? If not, how is this not criminal?
Because the customers are the ones quitting, they forfeit the deposit by their contract. The developers aren't held to a timeline in the contract. They just stall forever, working on the ones willing to pay the most. If they ever ran out of better customers, they would eventually get around to the cheaper customers. They've done something unethical, but they haven't broken the contract.
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I always understood electricians did have to be registered and qualified https://www.competentperson.co.uk/ But I don’t know for sure.
My understanding is that anybody can do any type of electrical work (in homes), but certain type of electrical work needs to be certified. If your electrician isn't certified then a third party certifier has to certify the work after completion.
Even that has been outlawed sadly. You can't fit your own fuse board and get an electrician to just sign off on it anymore - there might be people who still do it and give you a document saying they've done the installation, but in general it's not a thing anymore.
Of course absolutely nothing stops you from doing it anyway, then having a general electrical inspection done. If anyone asks just say it was like that when you bought the house already.
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I'm picturing a web developer in 2023 wondering why everything is slightly tilted in his DIY house even though he used the poured slab as reference
I don’t have extensive DIY experience and this joke is sadly lost on me. Why does the slab not work as a reference?
Block is generally level, but if they pour it, they don't get very close
Are houses in the US solely built using lumber/wood or do they have brick walls and concrete floors like here in Europe?
Where does insulation go in a brick single-family home?
Are houses in the US solely built using lumber/wood or do they have brick walls and concrete floors like here in Europe?
It depends on the area. And it applies to Europe too. Plenty of areas where wood frames are more common.
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who has all this money to spend? everywhere everything is so expensive. i make a ton, and this doesn't add up. nothing about home prices seems to add up.
I don't get it either, and I'm a hedge fund manager. To my mind nothing seems like it's a sensible price in any of the cities I look at. I mean I get that there's a fair few people making good money who can buy a £2M home, but it doesn't make any sense that there are entire swathes of London where every home is like that. A quick google suggests that a £100K income is in the top 3% in this country, and top 1% is abou…
The sort of person who could afford a nice house 3+ decades ago and spent the intervening years living in London isn't likely to move to somewhere more rural just because they can realise an investment.