NOT house proud.

[NotCranky]

I am not house proud anymore. Many moons ago I was in a Spanish class in HS. The teacher taught us a saying, Un dicho, un refran, “El habito no hace el monje” “the clothes don’t make the man”, same with houses. I can’t believe I even tried “house proud” on for size , what bullshit.

Comments?

[NotCranky]

Sorry, spell check strikes again, no hace is what was taught. El habito no hace el monje, or with houses, the house doesn’t make the man.

[scaredyclassic]

It is true that clothes don’t make the man. Yet I am very concerned with how I dress. I knew a lawyer once whose life was falling apart. His clothes literally were coming apart. I remember seeing a loose seam at the edge of his pocket. Drug problem. I remember thinking… do something about yr. Pocket.

The home is more private, so a different thing. I think more decay at home is OK.

[scaredyclassic]

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain

[NotCranky]

[quote=scaredyclassic]Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain[/quote]
He wrote some stories where he led us to be much fonder of the shabby than the fancy. Maybe he messed up my perceptions.

[FlyerInHi]

Being house proud is not any worse than any other pride.

The bible is clear on pride. It’s bad.
https://www.openbible.info/topics/pride

BTW, i don’t believe in God but I have a long running discussion with a friend who wants to convert me. I’m not convinced that religion as practiced in this country is the answer because people are very prideful.

I’m a product or my environment. I am house proud and I disdain people who have ugly messy house, not because they are poor, but because they don’t take care. A simple, modest place can be beautiful. Rich people who have gaudy houses are worse.

Architecture and design are learned principles like anything else. If you have intellectual curiosity, you would learn about the physical spaces that affect you. I would have like to be an architect.

[bearishgurl]

I don’t think I’ve ever been “house proud” but houses are very, very important to me. Especially for my residence, where I prefer the privacy of a house not too close to neighbors. In addition, I haven’t been without a garage to park my vehicle in every night for at least 35 years. Having a garage is second in importance to me. I detested leaving my vehicle outside at night when I used to rent apts. Of course, vehicle thefts and break-ins were more common in SD and vehicles were easier to break into and “hotwire-start” back then. However, the “club” was available for your steering wheel, as well as primitive alarm systems with engine kill switches. Unfortunately, their on/off switches were mounted on the outside of the vehicle and the thieves knew exactly where to check for them to dismantle the alarm. I found my car pulled over down the street (up to four blocks away) several times when the engine died on the thieves and always with the dash (and doors) ripped out and my radio/cassette player gone, often along with 2 or more speakers. It got old replacing the stereo over and over again and getting seatcovers for vandalized (slashed) car seats as well as replacing slashed tires. Besides that, I don’t like loading and unloading my vehicle in front of neighbors. For example, I don’t need everyone around me to know I’m leaving on a road trip the next day … just a couple of “select” trusted individuals.

It is easy to tell the difference between a 20 yo vehicle which has always been garaged compared to one which has been parked outside most/all of its “life.”

I would give up 2 bdrms for a garage. In other words, I would rather have a 2 bdrm house with a garage than a 4 bdrm house without one. Especially with a house situated on a city lot where there is no room to build a (detached) garage.

Having a house is more important to me than having a newer vehicle, having my house “remodeled” all at once or having the latest appliances, electronics and furnishings in it. “House” ownership means everything to me and I won’t move without a house waiting for me to move into on the other end (whether leased or purchased) :=0

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Being house proud is not any worse than any other pride.

The bible is clear on pride. It’s bad.
https://www.openbible.info/topics/pride

BTW, i don’t believe in God but I have a long running discussion with a friend who wants to convert me. I’m not convinced that religion as practiced in this country is the answer because people are very prideful.

I’m a product or my environment. I am house proud and I disdain people who have ugly messy house, not because they are poor, but because they don’t take care. A simple, modest place can be beautiful. Rich people who have gaudy houses are worse.

Architecture and design are learned principles like anything else. If you have intellectual curiosity, you would learn about the physical spaces that affect you. I would have like to be an architect.[/quote]Agree with all except that I do believe in God. But I have annoying “habitual prostelyzers” around me as well that I have had to be very firm with in order to be left alone. I am continually appalled at how some people actually live and believe it’s due to laziness derived from untreated depression. Especially in able-bodied senior citizen homeowners. I also missed more than one of my “callings.” I believe I would have been a good “interior designer.” :=)

[ucodegen]

[quote=bearishgurl]I am continually appalled at how some people actually live and believe it’s due to laziness derived from untreated depression. Especially in able-bodied senior citizen homeowners. I also missed more than one of my “callings.” I believe I would have been a good “interior designer.” :=)[/quote]I don’t think the ‘laziness’ derives from untreated depression. I feel it is more like ‘inertia’. People need to get into the regular habit of picking up a little at a time – continuously(making things cleaner a little at a time, each day). It is kind of like developing momentum. However, I do think that a messy and disorganized environment can lead to depression, which then makes developing a pattern to clean up harder. I also feel that messiness is taught, often at a young age (minimal boundaries, minimal or non-existent expectations).

[treehugger]

Why not be house proud??

I am very proud: I worked hard and earned my money. I bought my first house, that I could afford, with conventional financing (thank you HLS). I am proud that I gutted that house and remodeled (did most of the work ourselves) and sold that house, made money, moved to a neighborhood we like better. I am proud that I found a foreclosure, was able to afford it, again conventional financing. I have proceeded to gut the place and remodel (again most of the work has been done by me and my husband).

I have a house we love, in a neighborhood we love, on a great big lot, lots of privacy, we installed a pool, I have a 3 car garage (which we park our cars in every night), live next to open space, I have savings/retirement accounts, and my neighbors are awesome. I married my best friend, recycled 2 children and 3 dogs. I did have a mid-life crisis last year and bought a Mercedes, but otherwise I tend towards good decisions.

What is there not to be proud of? I am definitely house proud.

[FlyerInHi]

ucodegen, one of my friends grew messy and alcoholic. horrible turn to a very good life. And this guy doesn’t believe in depression and “bullshit crap” that people use to avoid personal responsibility.

I always keep my window shades open to keep the place nice and bright. I find dark places depressing.

Lot of studies on dark, messy, unhealthy environments. That matters a lot in northern climates where’s there not a lot of sunshine in the winter. In 1930s when urban planning took shape, architects wrote about the need for air and light.

I asked this question of a realtor friend. He said that 80% of the occupied homes he visits are below standards; and people know it because they apologize for the mess.

I once bought a hoarder’s home (built early 80s). It was empty when I got it, but you would not believe…. Everything had to be ripped out. When the kitchen cabinets were removed, you could see that roaches were living behind the cabinets. The walls were covered in roach shit. There were tons of mice droppings under the cabinets. If you leave food around, the bugs will come in

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]ucodegen, one of my friends grew messy and alcoholic. horrible turn to a very good life. And this guy doesn’t believe in depression and “bullshit crap” that people use to avoid personal responsibility.

I always keep my window shades open to keep the place nice and bright. I find dark places depressing.

Lot of studies on dark, messy, unhealthy environments. That matters a lot in northern climates where’s there not a lot of sunshine in the winter. In 1930s when urban planning took shape, architects wrote about the need for air and light.

I asked this question of a realtor friend. He said that 80% of the occupied homes he visits are below standards; and people know it because they apologize for the mess.

I once bought a hoarder’s home (built early 80s). It was empty when I got it, but you would not believe…. Everything had to be ripped out. When the kitchen cabinets were removed, you could see that roaches were living behind the cabinets. The walls were covered in roach shit. There were tons of mice droppings under the cabinets. If you leave food around, the bugs will come in[/quote]FIH, we bought houses like that in SD back in the ’80’s. Except in our case, the floors/carpets were covered in trash and junk to the point where one could barely make their way through the house on foot, the house had often been used by squatters for a period of time and the utilities were always turned off. We always had to make multiple trips to the dump upon COE because back then, the “seller” (HUD/VA) did absolutely nothing to the property. For example, if there was a plate of food and a glass of milk left on the counter or a 20+ lb turkey left in the (later) turned-off frig at the time of the (hurried) eviction of the occupants, it was often still there 6-12 months later, when the “winning” bidder took possession.

There were no laws back then to “protect” tenants from being evicted when a foreclosure was purchased at a trustee’s sale or reverted back to the beneficiary at the time of the sale. But the tenants were always noticed and fully expected they would have to move out due to the NOD and one or more DATED NOS’s hung on the front door over a period of months. 3+1 days after the trustee’s sale, any holdover tenants in the property were at the mercy of the new owner and the gubment (HUD/VA local “property mgrs”) always evicted them prior to placing the property on the sealed bid roster.

Luckily we had our own 1.5 ton full-size stepside pickup, ladders, scaffolding, a slew of power tools and garden tools, air mattresses and a “ghetto blaster” to listen to while we worked :=0

WE did end up purchasing these homes for a song and resold them for a profit after a lot of hard work in our “spare” time. They were all 4 bdrm, 2+ bath except one, which was 3/1.75.

However, in recent years, defaulting trustors in CA have been coddled and allowed to squat into oblivion by their defaulted-upon lenders as well as HUD/Frannie/VHA and their tenants now have “holdover rights” for a specified period of time AFTER the property has successfully been foreclosed upon. It appears that the (temporary) CA Civil Code section 2924.10 (as it applies to mod applications “in the works” at the time of an NOD filing) has been continued for yet another four years (now until 1/1/18).

For the life of me, I don’t understand why we have to coddle these folks for another four years while most of them owe back interest equivalent to $100K or more and are now paying on 40 yr (trial or “perm”) loan mods in which they will never be able to pay off even their back interest, much less any principle they “stole” out of it! I find it ridiculous that this section had to be extended by the Legislature when, by 1/1/14, the lenders could have gotten most or all their money out of the properties had they elected to timely foreclose at that point. Since these deadbeat underwater homedebtors are still so financially strapped, they can’t possibly maintain their property in any way, shape or form, causing it to slowly go to waste while their sorry a$$e$ pile up judgment and tax liens in their names because they now have “nothing to lose” :=0

Why can’t we go back to the ’90’s and prior and just make a clean sweep of timely foreclosures on everyone who is still behind on their payments (ummm … cuz they bought way too much house for themselves and/or turned their residence into their own personal ATM)? There are quite a few SS listings still around here and the vast majority of them are beyond filthy and haven’t been maintained in many years. Most of them are occupied by tenants who are paying “owners” who aren’t paying anything to keep the property …. not even their taxes in several years! Even when a SS listing is owner-occupied, it is typically full of trash and in horrible condition. These people don’t deserve to “own” real property … at all! They deserve to put down a humongous security deposit IF they can find a LL willing to give them a try and then LOSE IT ALL when they are timely evicted for nonpayment of rent. When they can’t find a willing LL anymore, they deserve to go find a well-used mobile home or RV which has been “donated” and find a place to park it and pay space rent for it. If that place is not in a CA coastal county, so be it. If they get evicted from their park due to nonpayment of space rent and not following the rules because they’re slovenly, so be it. They can find a homeless shelter to take them in (but will undoubtedly be “put to work” after checking in and getting their cots assigned, lol). Every non-disabled adult should be required to take personal responsibility for themselves but instead they’re treated like babies by their lenders (with a wink and a nod by the gubment).

I don’t feel this group needs to be given ~10 years worth of chances to get their sh!t together. They’re dragging down their neighborhoods at this very late date. G@d, I know of houses that have repeated city-fine liens for weeds/trash and every time the city pays to have it removed (at least from the front yard) the occupant just starts to pile up junk again and let the weeds grow. Why haven’t these properties been condemned by now? Vacating and boarding up these properties until they can be razed would be preferable to the sh!t we’re still looking at from the grossly incompetent mishandling of the aftermath of the “great recession.” These lots (unimproved, with nothing on them and utils brought to the curb) are worth $150K – $400K so I don’t know why we still need to play games with all these deadbeats. In LA County, in the cities of La Puente, El Monte and East LA, I noticed these same filthy longtime SS listings among an extraordinary dearth of SFR listings (way worse than SD County). Two of these listings had been “contingent” for 2 years or more! The ones in East LA had large lots, which, if unimproved (with utils at the curb), would have been worth over $650K due to their being zoned for multiple uses (incl comm’l). It’s absolutely unbelievable to me why this crap is still going on when many of these lots are worth MORE unimproved!

The above is all very unfair to the property owners surrounding these dilapidated eyesores … the ones who actually pay their bills on time and maintain their properties and there is no excuse for any of it at this (very) late date. Even the homeowners who want to have “pride” can’t because their property is only as good to a prospective buyer as the “lowest common denominator” on the block. Yes, I’m going to sit in judgment of these lazy opportunists because this BS has gone on much too long and is affecting everyone … including SFR inventory in a lot of zip codes. SD and LA Counties aren’t Detroit and never will be. As such, SoCal coastal county dwellers shouldn’t have to put up with this sh!t any longer. When are we going to be done??

[end of rant]

[sdsurfer]

I’d say I’m proud that my family and I own a house rather than rent, but what type of house and how large it is a bunch of bs. The aspect that when we had a 2nd kid everyone around us just sort of assumed that we’d either sell it and buy a larger one or remodel to accommodate another 7 lb 20 inch long person really blew me away.

I think I’d add that Car Proud is BS too in my opinion. I noticed a few people salivating over an Aston Martin in the parking lot the other day and felt sorry for them. In my opinion, everyone should get a valet job at a nice restaurant/hotel like I did when they are younger to get the chance to drive a few fancy cars and realize for themselves that they start, move and turn pretty much the same. Some might look good or go fast, but they all do the same thing as far as getting one from point a to point b a bit quicker than walking or running.

[moneymaker]

I agree sdsurfer. I’m proud that I have greater than 50% equity after only 7 years, I’m proud I can pay my taxes this year without resorting to putting it on a credit card. I am also glad that all my cars are in running condition with no bad tires on them. Walked the dogs this morning and was somewhat shocked at finding 2 nice cars in the neighborhood with flat/old tires.

[joec]

[quote=sdsurfer]I’d say I’m proud that my family and I own a house rather than rent, but what type of house and how large it is a bunch of bs. The aspect that when we had a 2nd kid everyone around us just sort of assumed that we’d either sell it and buy a larger one or remodel to accommodate another 7 lb 20 inch long person really blew me away.

I think I’d add that Car Proud is BS too in my opinion. I noticed a few people salivating over an Aston Martin in the parking lot the other day and felt sorry for them. In my opinion, everyone should get a valet job at a nice restaurant/hotel like I did when they are younger to get the chance to drive a few fancy cars and realize for themselves that they start, move and turn pretty much the same. Some might look good or go fast, but they all do the same thing as far as getting one from point a to point b a bit quicker than walking or running.[/quote]

Agree on the house thing, but would comment that this thought is true for pretty much EVERYTHING you aren’t interested in as people would find most EVERYTHING you are interested in a waste of money also.

Jewelry, perfume, clothes, looks, house, some travel locations, etc…after a certain point, I can care less too…(married with children mentality/thinking…)

As for the car, I used to think like you too and used to drive a plain Toyota commuter…(People used to joke to me that what I drove showed that I was cheap…no car changes in 10+ years), but when you have really taken various faster/nicer cars on a real race track and have done slalom (auto-x) driving or multiple track events, taking cars fast to their limits on an auto-x can be as exciting as s*x or whatever you find insanely awesome and is totally fun (other car enthusiast can chime in here). Different tires, more worn tire treads, even small things can totally make a difference in racing, not to mention racing in the rain and sliding all over :).

I supposed ignorance is bliss here as can probably be said for most things we “aren’t” interested in.

At the end, if you can afford the car, no need to worry what people think since you can afford the car, the home, the kids, the trips, whatever…or just prioritize with what you like.

I’m pretty happy just driving my beater currently.

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