[XBoxBoy]

[quote=Hobie] I’d be surprised if this issue was isolated to this particular lot. [/quote]
It is not. This is a common issue in this particular area.

[quote=Hobie] Thinking the owner knows more than they are telling you. Not good for you.
[/quote]
No one is trying to hide anything here. The owner and the owner’s realtor openly admit that the lot has extensive settling.

[quote=Hobie] Without finding out the underlying cause… [/quote]
The issue is simple. The houses were built in the 60’s on fill dirt that was not properly compacted. One side of the street where the dirt was scrapped doesn’t have any issues. The other side of the street where the dirt that was scraped was pushed to, all the houses have settling issues.

[quote=Hobie] People know what is going on at that site. Otherwise it would have sold by now.[/quote]

Indeed, the only reason that it hasn’t sold is that after considering the costs and risks of the remodel the current price is too high. However there is good reason to believe the price will be lowered. So I’m trying to do a calculation that says at X price it becomes viable. But to do that calculation I need to estimate the cost of the remodel more accurately. Thus I’m looking for suggestions about how to accurately estimate the costs. I realize that this isn’t something easily done, and probably has lots of, “well just depends” added to it. My current thinking is to get a builder who has done this kind of work on hillsides and get them to give me some estimates. Bringing in a geologist/soils engineer would probably help tighten up the estimate. But I’m fishing for other good suggestions at the same time.

[XBoxBoy]

Thanks to those that have responded. Here’s some additional comments:

We are not even in escrow, or even close at this time. So my questions are about how to get a ballpark idea of cost. (And don’t worry SK I’m not going to trust anyone’s opinion of what it should cost, only looking for suggestions on how to get a reliable estimate from someone who would actually know.)

There are no soil reports. Doubt if we could do any drilling/soil sampling until after close. So as much as I like the idea of doing something like that, not sure it’s possible. Might be able to do it while in escrow, not sure.

The idea of hiring a civil engineer/soil engineer is a good one, and would probably be worth a grand or two if we got into escrow. (Maybe could get in escrow with contingency about soil report. Seller’s might not agree though.)

I’d love to steer clear of houses with foundation issues, but the houses with great views that are fixers in our area all have serious foundation issues.

Thanks again,
XboxBoy

[XBoxBoy]

sdduuuude,

Hope you will post some more here about your experiences. I for one would love to hear what you’ve done and how things worked out for you. (And what didn’t!)

Did you use an architect? If so, how did you go about picking them? Do they bill based on a percent of construction costs or a flat fee rate? How much help were they when dealing with the city? Did they try to sell you a lot of “interior decorator” services too? Did you have a good idea of what you wanted when you went into the project or was this something where they provided a lot of the design and ideas?

Do you have a construction company overseeing everything, or maybe a general contractor, or maybe you’re doing it all. How much time has this taken?

Are you doing a lot of foundation work, or is that a pretty small part of the job? What style is the house? Where do you see most of the costs coming from?

Anyway, want to really encourage you to either do your own blog, or to post more here about your experiences. Yes we want to hear about it!

XBoxBoy

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=zk]I’m genuinely stumped as to why republicans are voting for this, and I’m extremely curious about it, and I hope somebody out there can enlighten me.[/quote]

The Republicans have got themselves in a bind on this one. It was easy and convenient when they were not in power to bad mouth Obamacare. It was even easier to rally their supporters with talk about how Obamacare was a mess, how they would repeal it, etc.

But now the tables have turned and the Republicans are in power and they have a simple choice. 1) Repeal and/or replace Obamacare or 2) Look incompetent and stupid for railing against a bad policy, promising to change it but then not doing so.

Obviously option 2 is a bad choice. You never want to look incompetent and stupid when you are in power.

Which leaves us with option 1, repeal and/or replace Obamacare. If they simply repeal Obamacare that’s going to be unpopular because many who make up their base are actively enjoying the benefits of Obamacare and if you take that away, that will be unpopular.

If you want to replace Obamacare, then you probably want to try and fix the problems in it. And that’s where things get really problematic. There are two issues with that. First are the ideological issues. Some Republicans are angry that the govt is now giving payments to pay for poor people’s health care. Ending that doesn’t play well in the news.

The second problem is that Obamacare forces people to buy health care. Which wouldn’t be so bad except in case you hadn’t noticed, health care costs have been climbing worse than housing costs in 2004. (Maybe that’s not technically correct, but you get the idea)

So the Republicans need to figure out a way to limit the cost of health care. And that is a huge issue that there is no good answer to.

So here’s the deal: The Republicans promised everyone they would repeal Obamacare and replace it with a great program that everyone would love. They used this repeatedly during their campaigning. Now they are in power they need to deliver on this promise. But there is no good way to do this.

So why vote? Well, they sort of have to. It’s like the political world has double dared them. But note that they are all scrambling for cover as they prepare to vote. No one wants to own responsibility for whatever gets passed.

The bottom line is that the Republicans will probably be hurt by the vote, but they’ll be hurt even more if they don’t vote. It’s a choice of the lesser of two evils.

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=harvey][quote=FlyerInHi]Trump won’t resign. Why would he?[/quote]

Because it’s a really hard job, one that you cannot escape with a vacation.

[/quote]

Ummmm… I’m pretty sure he’s already had a number of vacations where he spends his day playing golf at Mar-A-Lago.

[XBoxBoy]

Does a candidate to UC have to prove their ethnicity? (If so how?) Can’t anyone just claim to be whatever race will increase their chances?

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=Happs]Are there any regional or national financial or political trends that could stall appreciation of west of I-5 properties?[/quote]

A handful of really major earthquakes might do it.

A trade war with China that escalates to lobbing nukes back and forth might put a crimp on all of San Diego.

Neither seems particularly likely, but you asked…

[XBoxBoy]

Just wanted to chime in that I was one who also benefited from Piggington.

I don’t know when I first found the site, it was pretty early in the housing bubble. There wasn’t much discussion but there were some posts by Rich with links to articles about the housing market. I was suspicious about the housing bubble but not confident in my views.

In Nov. 2004 I sold the house I had been living in for a good price, then a bit later got married and by mid 2005 my wife and I were looking to buy. Searching on housing bubble san diego I found Piggington. I didn’t become a regular or sign up to post at that time, just lurked a bit. Then I decided that the site was just too negative and was slowing down my purchase plans so I stopped visiting. But I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger on a purchase. Five or six month later I returned, and the site was more active.

Once I returned I became more convinced of the housing bubble. Soon after I fired our realtor. My wife and I settled into a nice rental and I continued to lurk on piggington for another year before posting. Since then I’ve lurked more, posted a little and bought a house in fall of 2009. I still mostly just lurk, only posting once in a while, and wonder how the heck you frequent posters have the time to post these long political diatribes. To each his own though.

But I will forever be grateful to Rich and this site for giving me the info that I need to hold fast from 2005 until 2009 waiting for the bubble to peak, pop, and deflate. It wasn’t always easy to go against all the people who said that housing only goes up. And of course that great line, “Land! They aren’t making any more of it.”

Thanks again to Rich, and all the Piggies,

XboxBoy

[XBoxBoy]

Great article Rich. Good to see you posting to their site.

[XBoxBoy]

Never sure how much faith to put in various blog posts, but in general Calculated Risk has always struck me as pretty informative. This afternoon he posted on the decline in Chinese real estate investors in LA.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2017/02/update-on-lack-of-chinese-residential.html

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=harvey]Not unconstitutional and may not be illegal, depending upon how implemented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
[/quote]

In the wikipedia article you quote it’s pretty clear that only applies to the US Army and Air Force. So no basis for a legal challenge from that angle. Any other basis for a legal challenge?

[quote=harvey]
Either way, it is definitely a terrible idea and against core American principles of limited federal government. [/quote]

Agreed. But not the question I’m looking for an answer to.

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=spdrun]if Guard units are given illegal or un-Constitutional orders, that they’ll refuse to obey.[/quote]

Why would these orders be unconstitutional or illegal? What part of the constitution bans using the national guard for rounding up illegal immigrants or doing law enforcement? I don’t disagree that this is a bad idea, but would this order be subject to challenge in the courts? (Assuming the governor of the state agreed.)

[XBoxBoy]

Normally, all waterproofing of basements is done on the outside when the house is built. Because concrete and block is porous you have to stop the water before it gets into the foundations and the walls. Putting waterproofing on the inside doesn’t really work very well. Which means that waterproofing an existing basement is very difficult and expensive. If you have water in the basement issues often the best way to deal with it is to dig french drains around the house and try to divert the water before it hits the basement walls.

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=flu]What one company did that I interviewed for was interesting. They made candidates take an online test. Interesting idea.[/quote]

I’ll spare you the rant, but I’d argue that the online tests are horrible at figuring out whether a candidate is qualified or not. (And they often rule out good experienced programmers since the questions are geared to recent college grads vs those with work experience) Most if not all of the questions on these tests are totally irrelevant to real programming tasks. The open ended questions you asked in the interview, “Can you give me examples of when you designed interfaces and abstract classes, what led you to chose one versus the other?” will give you much more insight into the person’s ability.

More importantly, if you can make the person feel relaxed and get them to talk about their past work experiences you will be able to get clues about whether they are productive, whether they are passionate about what they do, or whether “it’s a job man, I’m just here for the paycheck.”

So, skip the online tests and go straight to the questions that tell you who this person is, and what they know.

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=harvey]What’s the price point where it is cost effective for a builder to add a basement?[/quote]
I don’t really know, but I would guess about $150-200 per square foot. Maybe more if there are potential issues with water drainage. On a 2000 sq ft house that would be adding $300-400k in price.

[Author]

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