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Home stuff šŸ” Quirks of your local housing market

The quirks in my market is how cheap it is. I mean, not dirt cheap, but you can still buy a decent house in the $100-200k range.
 
illinoisplanner said:
Right. Sorry, I don't really have a lot of experience with those. Some municipalities employ TIFs, some don't. I feel like they can sometimes lead to special service areas which lead to additional taxes.

And yes, the townships do become redundant in more urban areas. They are necessary in rural areas, however. Someone's gotta take care of those minor rural roads, cemeteries, and the like. In suburban areas, I feel like townships increasingly provide services to the poor and elderly (i.e. food pantries, senior bus service, etc.), but I don't know why the municipalities couldn't take these sorts of things on. Townships also handle tax assessments, but I feel like the counties could take this on.
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We have no unincorporated area in the entire state. Every scrap of land and drop of water belongs to a muni.

Mud Princess said:
We have the same issue regarding school districts, but most people with kids in school are resistant to mergers. They worry that the school will somehow lose its identity, or that kids have to travel too far to get to school. Cuomo has tried to encourage school district mergers, but most of these initiatives have been unsuccessful.

In our state, school districts do not neatly align with county or municipal boundaries, and are completely separate taxing jurisdictions. As a result, someone living on one side of town may pay more or less in property taxes as someone living on the other side. A friend of ours lives in the same town as we do, but he pays far more in property taxes because he's located in a better school district.
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NJ's school districts are nearly always synonymous with the municipal boundary except for the towns that have agreed to a shared school system with a neighboring town.
 
illinoisplanner said:
I would say that in order to see $9,000 taxes, you generally have to have a home in the high $200s or low $300s. So I guess we're a little better than NJ, but not by much.
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Around here, combined municipal, county, and school taxes are about 3% to 4% of assessed valuation.

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See this house? It's in a distant suburb of Ithaca. Asking price $185K, assessment $160K, property taxes for 2013 $5,697.

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3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1,200'2. Another distant suburb. Asking $168K, assessment $139K, 2013 property taxes $4,937.

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City of Ithaca. 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 1360'2, asking $240K, 2013 taxes $6,009.

Why are the taxes here so high? Schools. Teacher salaries in upstate NY are among the highest in the US.
 
Dan said:
Farmhouses. In more urban areas, the modal house is a pre-1910 Folk Victorian or farmhouse vernacular-style house, most of which have unusually low ceilings. The "older houses have high ceilings" trope is a myth around here. Low ceilings are also common in the modal post-WWII-era house around here - simple gable-roofed boxes and entry-level modulars in outlying areas.

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Really, I've never seen another American metro where 6.5'-7' floor-to-ceiling heights are as commonplace.
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^^^
kjel said:
Very interesting, maybe the area was settled by a bunch of shorties. Most of the old housing stock I've renovated have had normal or excessive ceiling heights. Only the basement of my house I live in now has 7' ceilings. The ground and second floors have 10' and 12' ceilings respectively. Although it was a gut rehab, we actually placed the floors at the height the were originally at based on the timber pockets in the party walls. The house was originally built in 1882.
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These old farmhouses were originally heated with either fireplaces or with wood stoves, and winters in Upstate NY are cold. Since heat rises, high ceilings would have allowed too much heat to collect uselessly near the ceiling, hence, low ceilings. Also farmers tended to be relatively poor, so they were always aware of costs: building costs and heating costs.

The old vernacular farmhouse that I grew up in (circa 1840), still had the hole in my 2nd floor bedroom so that warm air from the first floor could heat the second floor. My father put a register grate on it, but my room was still cold.
 
Like Linda_D I am guessing that climate has something to do with ceiling heights. In hot and humid areas you often find not only high ceilings, but also tansoms above interior doors to aid in ventilation.
 
mike gurnee said:
Like Linda_D I am guessing that climate has something to do with ceiling heights. In hot and humid areas you often find not only high ceilings, but also tansoms above interior doors to aid in ventilation.
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It's always fascinating to see how vernacular architecture adapted based on climate.
 
kjel said:
It's always fascinating to see how vernacular architecture adapted based on climate.
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Our old homestead (1805) had twin front doors, no central hall. and enclosed stairs. Less room to heat. Neighboring houses of the same era had wide central halls with large doors front and back for ventilation.
 
kjel said:
It's always fascinating to see how vernacular architecture adapted based on climate.
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One thing you notice about old farmsteads here in hilly Upstate NY: they are almost never set on the crest of a hill but on a sheltered slope (east or south facing), or with an orchard or brushy fence line providing some shelter. Hilltop homes are almost always newer ones built since WW II and the advent of central heating and insulation.
 
I wish I could find it again, but I was looking at real estate listings in Buffalo, and found a house with a Pittsburgh potty! In case you don't know, a Pittsburgh potty is a toilet in the middle of the basement. No walls or anything surrounding it -- just a shitter in a prominent location for all to see. When I was house hunting in Denver about two decades ago, I saw a few houses with Pittsburgh potties.

Also, this is probably the most Buffalo thing I've seen in any home listing. Not in Cheektowaga, Sloan, Depew, or Lancaster, surprisingly.

www.zillow.com

16 Mar Del Way, Williamsville, NY 14221 | Zillow

16 Mar Del Way, Williamsville NY, is a Single Family home that contains 3425 sq ft and was built in 1977.It contains 3 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms.This home last sold for $525,000 in July 2022. The Zestimate for this Single Family is $634,400, which has decreased by $13,013 in the last 30...
www.zillow.com www.zillow.com

It's not the three bedrooms and six bathrooms. (A house with six bedrooms and one bathroom is really more "Buffalo".) It's not the basement kitchen. :italy: It's the basement bowling alley. With two lanes. :poland:

bowling.jpg
 
Dan said:
I wish I could find it again, but I was looking at real estate listings in Buffalo, and found a house with a Pittsburgh potty! In case you don't know, a Pittsburgh potty is a toilet in the middle of the basement. No walls or anything surrounding it -- just a shitter in a prominent location for all to see. When I was house hunting in Denver about two decades ago, I saw a few houses with Pittsburgh potties.

Also, this is probably the most Buffalo thing I've seen in any home listing. Not in Cheektowaga, Sloan, Depew, or Lancaster, surprisingly.

www.zillow.com

16 Mar Del Way, Williamsville, NY 14221 | Zillow

16 Mar Del Way, Williamsville NY, is a Single Family home that contains 3425 sq ft and was built in 1977.It contains 3 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms.This home last sold for $525,000 in July 2022. The Zestimate for this Single Family is $634,400, which has decreased by $13,013 in the last 30...
www.zillow.com www.zillow.com

It's not the three bedrooms and six bathrooms. (Something Buffalo is more like six bedrooms and one bathroom.) It's not the basement kitchen. :italy: It's the basement bowling alley. With two lanes. :poland:

View attachment 57218
Click to expand...
My grandpa's old house had a single toilet in the basement. No walls or anything. Just a toilet. Never knew there was a name for it.
 
Subdivision construction is on in my burg! Survey, tree removal, and hydrant installation has begun, hopefully the roadbeds will be completed by August. Living here in the Rust Belt, it is encouraging to see this optimism. I wish I knew if the lots are already pre-sold. The way interest rates keep rising, material costs inflating, and the shortage of labor, I am not holding my breath that these homes will actually be built anytime soon.
 
House I rented in Kansas had a Pittsburg toilet. Now I know the name for that.

I think the big quirk here is that we don't do basements. It's rare to find a house that has any underground work.
 
Dan said:
I wish I could find it again, but I was looking at real estate listings in Buffalo, and found a house with a Pittsburgh potty! In case you don't know, a Pittsburgh potty is a toilet in the middle of the basement. No walls or anything surrounding it -- just a shitter in a prominent location for all to see. When I was house hunting in Denver about two decades ago, I saw a few houses with Pittsburgh potties.

Also, this is probably the most Buffalo thing I've seen in any home listing. Not in Cheektowaga, Sloan, Depew, or Lancaster, surprisingly.

www.zillow.com

16 Mar Del Way, Williamsville, NY 14221 | Zillow

16 Mar Del Way, Williamsville NY, is a Single Family home that contains 3425 sq ft and was built in 1977.It contains 3 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms.This home last sold for $525,000 in July 2022. The Zestimate for this Single Family is $634,400, which has decreased by $13,013 in the last 30...
www.zillow.com www.zillow.com

It's not the three bedrooms and six bathrooms. (A house with six bedrooms and one bathroom is really more "Buffalo".) It's not the basement kitchen. :italy: It's the basement bowling alley. With two lanes. :poland:

View attachment 57218
Click to expand...

I love it!

Over the years I've seen a few homes on the market here in Metro Detroit with bowling lanes in the basement, the best was a big old mansion in Beverly Hills (MI) with a basement bowling alley of 4 or 6 lanes that looked like the one out of the final scene of There Will be Blood.


That one that you posted looks pretty nicely maintained! I'd happily move in there!

I never knew there was a name for a lone toilet in the basement without it being in an actual bathroom but we see that up here as well, usually in houses built in the '50s - '70s. It seemed like most of the houses here would be plumbed for a bathroom in the basement when they were building and then one of three things would happen: A) nothing and the pipes and plumbing lines would just be capped off, B) basement would get finished and then somebody would build a proper bathroom down there, or C) dad would have a workshop in the basement and decide he's too lazy to go upstairs to use the bathroom and instead of pissing in the sump well or down a floor drain, he'd get the idea to build a proper bathroom. He'd start with the toilet and then realize he could just stack some boxes around it for privacy and just call it a day!
 
One thing that pops up sort of often in my area is an overuse of white or light tiles in living rooms, bedrooms, etc. It would look normal in a kitchen, but can look odd and out of place elsewhere (or at least to me it does). I suspect it's because it is a hot climate and tile helps keep cool.

Also, lots of garage conversions into an additional bedroom + 1/2 bath for the older ranch homes that used to be 2 and 1s. If they're done well, they can be really nice.

I would love having a bowling alley in a basement, or just a basement at all.
 
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