Waiting on New Trucks thread.

I’m actually the last year of millennial (I hate that lol). I’m ten years older than them. The difference in opinions is crazy. Makes for great discussion/arguments.

 

I'm a year or two away from building a house to live in through retirement. Just the wife and I, couple of dogs, an office to run the business out of and a guest bedroom. We figure we put the office over the garage to keep some separation between home/work. Even with that, 2,000 sq. feet feels like MUCH more than we would use.

The trap I see many young people fall into is the "forever home" BS. When you're 26 and starting out, you don't need to buy a four bedroom home with a great room, living room, dining room and multimedia room. At that age, you need a starter home with a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room and a kid's bedroom big enough for a bunk bed. Pay it off in 5-7 years and trade up into something with a few more bedrooms in a good school district. Pay that off in 5-7 years, and they'd be set.

Instead, they are suckered into buying these huge behemoths that suck all their disposable income into the interest and maintenance black holes for 30 plus years.

 

We are in a similar situation.
Will retire in a year, give or take, and will move west to the Black Hills of SD.
Prices are up as well as rates and hard to find a smaller style of home.
In addition nobody is leaving a 2 or 3% mortgage.
We may end up building what we want in a barndominium style, depending on what next year brings economy wise.

 

A friend of mine is building 3/2 rental homes around here, very basic homes, but on a couple of acres. Including all expenses, lot, utilities, septic, permitting, labor, materials, he typically comes out at around $175K. Just over $100 per square foot, all in. That's pretty doable for most people.

Seems like houses are a lot like pickup trucks. People complain about how expensive they are today, but nobody is willing to drive around in a basic six cylinder standard cab with rubber floors, crank windows and a bench seat.

 

really why I’d like to build, 1800 sq feet plus a garage and a big enough drive way for the truck is all I need, seems everything In the area is ~3000 sq ft on 3 floors,

I moved a lot when I was younger though and I’m not doing it again unless it’s somewhere I’m going to die

 

hey now




All of that n aint even got cruise control lol

I have had way nicer vehicles than this in the past, but this does all I really need it to do at the moment.


Pick up truck doesn’t make me money, so it’s pretty hard to justify spending 80, 90, 100 grand on it.

 

if you had a couple of Cascadias getting 8 mpg ……. Never mind

 

Could not go back to a straight cab, actually just got the frame blasted and painted + cab corners etc on my 2010, and going to put a service body on it, I’m sick of of working out of Tupperware containers and want my ranger back as a car, which also just a standard cloth/xlt xcab.

 

I spend a lot of time in my pickup, so it has "some" nice things (Apple play is one), but I bought a little Maverick for under $30K OTD -- and that included 4WD and skid plates. If I want to impress my neighbor farmers, I'll show them my bank account, lol.

 

There a couple problems with the 'starter homes' - the first being competition from boomers looking to downsize.

The more prevelant is the condition of the homes. Last summer I was house hunting for my sister. All she needs is two bedrooms, one bath and a little yard to garden in. Every single property that we looked at that met those criteria were absolute garbage. The best of them were "home owner specials" - renovations done by the home owner who was learning as they went, without the proper tools/skills or were 'flipped' by someone looking to make a quick buck. Yeah, the drywall is only 10 years old but it's already falling down, or brand new flooring put over a rotten subfloor type thing. Then there where the DIWHYs - ie cutting the plug off an extension cord, wiring it into the ciruit box and then drilling holes through the wall and cabinets to power the garbage disposal. Finally we had the real piles - foundation issues, tube and knob wiring, cast iron pipes that are more rust than pipe.

So while the place might be listed for $150k, I'd be looking at dumping another $75k into making it habitable, at which point I've spent $225K on a house worth $165K. At that point, it made more sense to look at larger properties which were in better condition.