I'm Buying A House!

Trash collection? Doesn’t the city take your trash?

Yoda owns all the threads.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Depends on what you mean by the city. Does the township count? Still have to have it in our name, though.

I wonder if our city trash collection is in our name? We just put a bin out front & they take it every week.

Dunno. Is that something you'd have handled, or would your husband have done it? Maybe in some places it's tied to the address more than the person. No idea.

Often it's just a phone call, though in my case I'm still waiting to hear back.

No idea. Never thought of it before.

Is your new house turn-key or will you need to do some work? Don’t think you’ve mentioned this aspect so far.

So they were supposed to be making some final repairs this weekend, so we can close this coming week. Fingers crossed.

I’ve reassessed what I want to fix/modify before I move-in: attic insulation, fence modifications, basement heater and concrete stained, filling a void under the front stoop, and electrical work (primarily fixing the exterior service conductors, but also the ground issue if possible).

That should make the first few years comfortable without adding too much to expenses. I still gotta find a washer and dryer.

And I’m thinking window inserts for the front side of the house to cut down on noise.

And here’s to hoping nothing blows up once I’m in it.

We've had to do this with our rentals (as well as our own house when we moved here). In our cases, the trash collection bill comes packaged with your water/sewer bill, with individual listings for water, sewer, and then trash collection. In recent years, our borough has added a new fee for "storm sewer maintenance" ($19 every three months). The city where most of our rentals are (one town over from us) has added a "fire hydrant" fee of $6 every three months.

But it's one big bill that each property gets once a quarter. A typical house ends up paying about $140 for three months of water, sewer, and trash pickup around here.

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What sort of noise are you experiencing?

Interesting. We don’t get a trash bill or a sewer bill. Every month we get a water bill which is about $45 or so depending on how much the garden is watered, etc.

Why don’t we get a sewer & trash bill?

Road noise. It's a 35mph zone with high traffic.

Probably because it's folded into some other tax you are paying.

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cuz u stole a sewer, obviously!

our trash collection bill goes to our county. water, to the "town." no sewage fee as we're in the country and use a septic tank. every few years I might need to have it dug up and drained for around $170ish. that's disruptive as they dig a massive hole in the back yard and takes forever for grass to re-cover it. that's probably more to do with the poor quality of ground where I live though.

ok. this was a distraction to avoid actual work at the job.

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danged pot heads

That would have to be property taxes then.

Seems like a good omen that this is one of my new neighbors:

That's adorable! And awesome. You're going to have to up your house decoration game.

Also, did you sell/are you selling the old house?

We will, but haven't yet.

Obviously in some cases those things have to happen simultaneously, but we paid it off awhile back and thankfully were able to make this work without having to selling it at the same time, so now we can empty it out and fix it up as necessary with a lot less complication. We'll just be eating some superfluous taxes and insurance for however many months it takes.

So I quickly realized 90% of what I said I want to do isn’t doable any time soon but the fence takes priority. This is going to be an interesting adventure to say the least. This place gonna make me a miser.

It’s also good, I would imagine, that you don’t need to dismantle many years of living in the old house before moving. I know how much stuff accumulates in a house.

Will you be in by Xmas as you hoped?

Yeah, that’s why it’s called a money pit.

Why is the fence a priority? Because of doggie or for safety?

Will you be in by Xmas as you hoped?

My dog. The fence wouldn’t keep him from getting out.

And no, I won’t be in till new year.

For most I imagine this would help, but we really wanted to move quickly anyway, so it made little difference. We had dozens of boxes filled and moved downstairs by the closing date and have made dozens of trips back and forth altogether. It is nice to know we can set our own pace, even though the pace we've set is mostly what we'd have to do if we had a hard "out" date, anyway.

The benefit is primarily in being able to leisurely fix up and stage the place without still living in it (particularly if/when it needs any significant work), and secondarily, not having to make that second variable (selling) line up with the first (buying).

We're already in. We've slept the last three nights here, had a friend erect some temporary fencing on Friday, got the Internet hooked up yesterday, and someone's coming by to replace the thermostat tomorrow.

So far, it's been lovely. Still a ton to do, though, even just to find clothes and kitchen implements as we need them.

All sounds very good.