7 ms·
We Bought a Crack House
- fredsted 9y agoA whole bunch of bad decisions.
- alaskamiller 9y agoWe weren’t particularly handy, but we’d seen all the home reno shows, and it seemed like everyone in the city was doing it. How hard could it be? Hear this every day in IT projects
- arethuza 9y agoMaybe we should have reality TVs shows about IT projects....
- wayn3 9y agowouldn't that make the problem worse? "i'm just a front-end dev but i read this article on medium about smart contracts and the syntax looked familiar so i thought i could just cobble together a smart bank over the weekend and now all my ethereum is gone pls halp"
- arethuza 9y agoPersonally, I'd find that far more entertaining than yet another show with people complaining about their builders not turning up on time (not that I watch these you understand). "What did you expect? They're builders! Have you ever seen a film where the hero is a builder? No, no, because they never f-cking turn up in the nick of time. Bat-builder? Spider-builder? Huh? That's why you never see a superhero with a hod!" [In The Loop]
- kuroguro 9y agoPeople need to start somewhere. The project might be f-ed but at least the dev will learn.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y agoAlso, this nugget: "Finally, Julian called in a professional. Peter was reliable, organized, patient and came with glowing references. He was the contractor we should have hired from the start—in fact, Julian had already interviewed him twice but we had passed because he was charging market rate."
- annerajb 9y agoI think they could have avoided almost all issues if they would have paid market rate from the start..
- alaskamiller 9y agoHow hard could it be?
- Jach 9y agoMaybe I don't watch enough of these shows but isn't the dream of DIY home renovation actually, you know, picking up a hammer and doing it yourself as much as legally allowed? Seems the husband hired a neighbor to help with ripping everything out but then the construction was all handled by a contractor. I don't see the analog for IT projects.
- posterboy 9y agoit's analoguos to calling a library
- D-Coder 9y agoWho knew renovating a house could be so complicated?
- jacknews 9y agoOK I only skimmed to the bit where current house prices are in the $2 million range. Sounds like the whole city, perhaps the whole capitalist western world, is on crack.
- digi_owl 9y agoYou may be more right than you think. I keep being reminded of when Oslo opened their second needle room, closer to the more affluent areas of the city. All of a sudden the got well dressed visitors driving expensive vehicles. These were people that stopped by to get their dosage done before landing some deal or making some high level decision that day...
- vermontdevil 9y ago"Opened their second needle room"? Not sure what it means?
- DanBC 9y agoSome places have safe, clean, injection rooms. This is good because it reduces some of the public health problems associated with injection drug use. People use clean needles. They get information about rehab if they want it. They can dispose of the sharps safely. There's help nearby if they overdose. They can get other medical advice about infection or sexual health. https://theawl.com/vancouvers-supervised-drug-injection-center-how-does-it-work-c483cdd18b66 https://theawl.com/vancouvers-supervised-drug-injection-cent...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- KevanM 9y agoI don't know much about Toronto so I'm surprised that these two jobs: "Julian had just finished his PhD in education and was teaching part-time at Humber; I was an editor for the Food Network’s website and preparing to go on maternity leave." Don't provide an income for a reasonably sized family home in the suburbs?
- nowherecat 9y agoAnd more here: How One Story Pissed Off Just About Every Non-Rich Person in Toronto - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-one-story-pissed-off-just-about-every-non-rich-person-in-toronto https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-one-story-pissed-off-...
- madeofpalk 9y agoThis is a common meme in Australia as well with the 'housing affordability crises' that's happening here (as well). "See! Buying a home is so easy! All you need is your parents to give you tens of thousands and you're set!"
- ryankennedyio 9y agoJust for a reference point on how ridiculous Sydney is; $4,900,000 AUD will buy you this[1] about 50 minutes from the CBD. The mortgage loan book of the 4 major banks here is hovering at about 50% interest-only loans. Nearly 1 in 3 people lie on their mortgage application too [2]. [1] https://www.domain.com.au/26-south-street-strathfield-nsw-2135-2013586225 https://www.domain.com.au/26-south-street-strathfield-nsw-21... [2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/mortgage-fraud-systemic-in-australia-ubs-survey-shows/7911978 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/mortgage-fraud-systemi...
- maxxxxx 9y agoI am also entertained by people who can raise a few hundred thousand from friends and family to start a business.
- golergka 9y agoIf the only outcome of this story would be this ridiculous hate piece from Vice, it would still be worth it. I can feel bad for someone down on their luck, but when they show their political colours like that, I can only feel shadenfreude at someone getting exactly what they deserve.
- flai 9y agoI agree with most of the sarcastic comments but > [...] broom-swept condition > This is the first time in my life I have ever heard this phrase, in all its privilege-dripping glory. The more you know, I guess. Carry on. "Besenrein" is a pretty normal thing if you rent out something in Germany. In fact, every holiday-house-rental and every rented flat / house I ever helped moving, this was the standard. Even when we went to Switzerland and France - so isn't this a thing at all in the US?
- Fifer82 9y agoIt hammers home how poor I am
- cup 9y agoThis article would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. I don't know whats worse. The authors general ignorance about 'flipping' houses or their arrogance around the disadvantages drug users experience. The fact that they expect the occupants to just leave when asked as if they have somewhere to go is bizarre. Who are these people?
- grondilu 9y ago> The fact that they expect the occupants to just leave when asked as if they have somewhere to go is bizarre. They have everywhere else to go.
- yblokhin 9y agoWhich utopian planet do you live on? Since when asking to leave the people who're squatting in your house illegally is a bizarre thing to do? In most places in the world, illegal occupants deal not with a couple of polite and scared copywriters but with law enforcement & enraged legal owners of the property.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bubblethink 9y agoThe bizarre thing is to expect to get rid of squatters without hassle, which is probably what the OP is pointing out.
- icebraining 9y agoI'm not sure about cup, but what I find bizarre about it is because it implies they are expecting it to work. Calling the cops is not bizarre.
- michaelmrose 9y agoOne party had legal residence as determined by the law he couldn't be removed by the cops. The prior owner was a moron.
- 9y ago
- foota 9y agoReally enjoyable read. I'll think of this when it comes time to buy a home.
- sqldba 9y ago"Cash-strapped", looking for a $560k house, and burning up to $1.1m over the next few years - which friends and relatives lent them. The level of privilege fucking burns.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoAnd "desperate"...
- Para2016 9y agoYea, they can't spend 200k a year over 5 years as mature working adults. That's just preposterous right? You two in this thread sound like children. Grow up.
- Trundle 9y agoThey can do what they want. What they can't do authentically however is to try to claim hardship status. Which "cash strapped" does. These people had a backup condo to live in after selling their first house. You don't get to use 'cash strapped' when you have a backup condo.
- Para2016 9y agoPerhaps I missed it, I can't find in the article where they claim a hardship status. Could you point be to it? He's an education PhD and she's an online editor, they have two kids. They borrowed heavily and sold their old house to finance their new one. I suppose because it's written by a middle class woman and not a desperately poor person then her story is abhorrent to HN.
- bshimmin 9y agoThe strapline: "We were cash-strapped, desperate to move and hemmed in by a hot market." I read the article in full (nothing like a bit of procrastination on a Monday morning) and I think probably the two most abhorrent aspects are: 1) the utter and seemingly limitless stupidity of their decisions; 2) the way their back-up condo is casually introduced about halfway through - "Luckily, we still owned..." (An honourable mention goes to the wealthy English godfather making a sudden, ridiculous appearance. This bit sounded totally fictitious, to be honest.)
- wsgeek 9y agoI just skimmed the article, but if that was a crackhouse then wouldn't it be in a bad neighborhood? Then once their shiny new place becomes known to the local denizens, break-ins galore!
- watter 9y agoThe author describes walking their children through the house upon becoming the owner and finding two people smoking crack. So yes, it was a crack house. It was also in Parkdale - not exactly one of Toronto's "best" neighborhoods.
- microcolonel 9y agoToronto is probably one of the safest cities in North America (and that's saying something, since North America is largely so safe). That said, Parkdale is a fairly risky place as far as Toronto goes. Recently some Parkdale landowners have sold land to condo developers though, so something tells me it won't be that way for long. But man, these folks are so clueless it hurts.
- gambiting 9y ago"I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of the soon-to-be four of us sharing 900 square feet" What planet do those people live on. Am I the only one who grew up in a place where 85 square meters is ample for a flat for 6 people, not 4, to live in?
- Para2016 9y agoEarth. And not the place you grew up in.
- literallycancer 9y agoI'd consider 4 people too many for 80 square meters. I thought the houses in America were more spacious? Perhaps it's different in Canada.
- mschuster91 9y agoWhen I was young and living with some local punks we were 4 people in a 42 m² flat. It can work out :D
- na85 9y agoToronto is full of small houses, as I'm sure are parts of New York City. You don't see McMansions until you get out to the suburbs and bedroom communities.
- manarth 9y agoProperty sizes by country: Canada, at 72 sq m per person, comes third to Australia and the USA. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house
- unsigner 9y agoThis. F-ing North Americans with their f-ing empty praeries :-)
- Jach 9y agoAmple if you all have meager possessions. More or less fine if you're the same family. 4 adults though? Good luck, unless you're all college students, but they can suffer even less room.
- jnty 9y agoA series of astonishingly poor decisions. Why are they so mystified that the people living there already are so hostile given that they've just strolled into their home?
- nowherecat 9y agoOh, it's getting even better: The story of how one young family found their dream cottage for $59,000 - http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-how-one-young-family-found-their-dream-cottage-for-59000 http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-how-one-young...
- curuinor 9y agoThis had a go-around in the Reddit and Something Awful bad-with-money threads/forums
- rl3 9y ago>We Bought a Crack House As you do.
- staz 9y agohttps://www.gofundme.com/help-this-brave-gentrifier-family https://www.gofundme.com/help-this-brave-gentrifier-family Luckily they are still brave souls in this world, willing to help them
- bubblethink 9y agoHow does one go about due diligence before buying a house ? Do you hire a law firm ? What are their fees ? It is hard to imagine dropping half a million sight unseen, especially since it is not insignificant for the people in the article, but how much would it have cost them had they hired a lawyer/firm ?
- Jach 9y agoHaving researched home buying a bit I think it's too much to list in a HN comment if you want to cover cases where every party is unreliable but maybe someone will try. At the very least look at the damn thing in person. When I've done rentals with a friend we do a fairly thorough inspection before signing but it'd take 10x longer if we had intent to buy, we'd check a lot more, and that's before involving various 3rd parties. If you're planning a remodel from the beginning though your criteria will change.
- bubblethink 9y agoYes, I understand doing your own homework. I recently avoided a rental pretty narrowly. Nothing quite as unsavoury as this, but due to a couple of layers of indirection through agents, the fact that parking was tandem wasn't evident until the very end. Own homework aside, I just wanted to get some ballpark estimate on legal fees that one would incur with such an undertaking, and whether this is all pretty boilerplate, or do you have to have to get some bespoke solution from a law firm.
- vermontdevil 9y agoDef cheaper than $1.1 million.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- asrafulbprd 9y ago7 Ways to Increase Website Visitors by good rank in google for your website https://technomint.org/good-rank-google-website/ https://technomint.org/good-rank-google-website/
- Thriptic 9y agoSurprise! When you try to do things on the cheap, don't do adequate due diligence, and are impatient and hasty, things go wrong.
- kowdermeister 9y agoSo if you got steady walls and you have cash left to refurbish everything it's a good deal compared to buying something ready to move in? Who would have thought? But at the end of the day it's a good way to test the stability of your marriage.
- jheriko 9y agohow do people end up with so much money when they have such a lack of common sense? the story was a cringeworthy read. glad it worked out well in the end... but life was gentle and kind here.
- throwanem 9y agoMy observation is that it works the other way around - it's the consequence-insulating money that engenders the lack of common sense, rather than the converse.
- drewmol 9y ago>We were the victims of a shoddy contractor and bad luck, but also of our own colossal ignorance and hubris. I used to work as a residential remodeling contractor, I quickly learned to steer clear of this type of client/"victim"
- therealmarv 9y agoTL;DR: Stupid decisions everywhere (should have never bought that house), house looks good at the end.
- empath75 9y agoThis would be the greatest episode of property brothers ever.
- vultour 9y ago"We were cash-strapped" and "$1.1 million later" don't really seem to go together
- kev009 9y agoI love how they pay people off that have fucked them over. Made the comment thread here about privilege that much more funny.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- khana 9y agoGood. Now fix it up.
- michaelhoffman 9y agoWe bought a $3 million bungalow full of bats and were not happy with the result: https://www.thebeaverton.com/2017/05/bought-3-million-bungalow-full-bats-not-happy-result/ https://www.thebeaverton.com/2017/05/bought-3-million-bungal...
- oliwarner 9y agoThey didn't view the house before bidding. They didn't get somebody else to view/appraise it for them. Their bid went from $480k to $560k in one step. They hired a cowboy without checking credentials, who went on to almost destroy the house. They hired a cowboy mortgage broker who reneged on a deal (or they're lying about it). I really don't care how much money they have. Whether or not it's "privilege" or not. It is but that's not the point. They were idiots. They deserved everything they got and —frankly— got off lightly.
- shakestheclown 9y agoExactly. None of this was really an unforeseen accident that you might feel sorry for; it's all avoidable circumstances by having the least bit of common sense. And they took on this project with one of them part time and the other on maternity leave. In the end, they were mostly saved by accident as well so I doubt if many lessons were learned.
- jagermo 9y agoI had hoped for a grizzly tale of DIY, but that takes the cake. "Desperate, we pimped out our newborn daughter for some modelling gigs." What?
- heisenbit 9y agoAnd then pixelate her picture for the article.
- jagermo 9y agoOh god, the story about their cottage is even better: http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-how-one-young-family-found-their-dream-cottage-for-59000 http://cottagelife.com/realestate/the-story-of-how-one-young... > We offered back at $59,000, and the deal was done. We were proud owners of a riverside recreational property, an impulse purchase courtesy of our line of credit. Never could we have imagined that a cottage weekend getaway would result in a cottage of our very own. “You guys are so badass,” our friends told us. Once we knew the cottage was ours, I felt a rush of adrenalin—“Did we just do what I think we did?” mixed with “We can’t believe our good luck!” > A month later, we got possession, and reality started to sink in. Our little cabin (“cottage,” we decided, was too lofty for what it was) had no electricity or running water. It had been abandoned for the past three years and was filthy.
- chippy 9y agoIs this a clever satire? Seems as if it could be a hoax.
- heisenbit 9y agoNow what is the purpose of this story? Why is such a story published? Who is writing such a story and why is it published? It is a heroic tale of paying 560.000 for a crack house and it worked out all well. How healthy is the Toronto real estate market if they have to resort to pushing such stories?
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoHow do a guy just finishing a PhD and a lady editing Food Network's website float 3 mortgages? I should have stopped reading after the "Luckily we still owned the condo..." but I kept going like an idiot. What's the lesson here? Fall into money, and when that isn't enough, fall into some more from a distant relative?
- antisthenes 9y agoThis is failing upwards at its finest. Despite multiple bad decisions, these people keep falling into cushy safety nets.
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoDon't get me wrong, I've had some luck in life too. Not to the tune of what's described in this blog post, but then again, I'm not out there broadcasting it. I'm from an immigrant family who didn't come here with a whole lot, and I'm in a good place now - a lot of it because my parents did all they could to have us avoid _feeling_ poor even when that was reality, lots of sacrifice for our educations, and also a good dose of luck. Some bad breaks too, some big ones, but some really favorable as well. I know very well the feeling where you strung together a few good decisions and it paid off, and where if any of them had gone wrong, life might be very different at the present. Sometimes it's good decisions, sometimes it's luck, sometimes it's a combination. But the worst thing we can do is pass off those instances of luck and circumstance (or privilege as they call it these days I guess) as hard work bolstered by good decisions leading to that outcome. If you rolled a hard six (Distant Uncle showing up with $150k to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat), call it that, you know? This isn't because you're going to make people feel bad by admitting luck or privilege, either. This is a matter of self-awareness. In life, you HAVE to know where you did right, where you fucked up, and where you got a little bit (or a lot) lucky. That all influences future decisions, and if you want to set your kids up to be better off than you are, you just have to know and honestly assess these things. All of this is magnified if you have less margin of error for mistakes and bad luck. There's no lesson in this article other than to demonstrate that you can fuck up badly and come out on top if you have enough resources at your disposal. That's life, but not a lesson, if that makes any sense.
- jonnathanson 9y agoWhile this is an interesting read, it's pretty much a textbook case of what happens when you don't perform your diligence. At every turn the couple seems to make monumentally reckless decisions -- from spending more than they can afford, to buying a nearly condemned halfway home and expecting modest repair work, to buying it pretty much sight unseen, to hiring a friendly stranger as a contractor, to commencing $300k+ in contract labor without funding secured, to bribing squatters with big wads of cash. Squatters who obviously know where the couple lives. Yikes. I do feel sorry for these folks. But I read this entire article between the gaps in my fingers, my palm fixed to my face, my lips silently mouthing, "Nooooo!"
- Simulacra 9y agoThis reminds me of one of those HGTV programs: my wife collects butterflies on the weekends and I sharpen pencils four hours a day, our budget is $1.5 million