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Mid Winter Banter, Observation and General Discussion 2018


dryslot

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1 hour ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

Anyone have an opinion on condo vs home ownership?

My fiancé and I have been researching and it appears condos are more affordable... at least on the surface.

Anyone have experience with this or thoughts?

Don’t forget the HOA fees. They can be high. 

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Drive-by obvious here...

But, depends on the condo and the patience of the individual looking? This is what I encountered when I was looking 10 years ago. 

I have seen "condo" complexes that are really nothing more than reclaimed apartment complexes/rental developments that appeared to be bought by some investment group, outfitted with some additional accoutrements, then remarketed out at 200,000 to 300,000 bucks a pop depending on location ...demographics, etc... The problem with those is, you are of course still sharing an extended floor plan with a cornucopia of different people that may or may not challenge one's tolerance - roll those dice.  The walls could be thin, and noises/vibrations permeate.  Plus, smells ... hallways tend to over-wash at dinner hours with an olfactory pallet of curry, fades to fried chicken... then pizza... and, what was that?  Cheeseburgers...? Come home late at night and those smells have homogenized into a staled pal - such is life in the beehive residential honeycomb setting.  

Then, you have your complexes that were built specifically as condos, not merely reclaimed and outfitted complexes. Those will cost you though. They are basically all houses with a shared wall. Small conjoined front yards and within chatting distance of your neighbor in a bath robe fetching his mail.  Those can actually run upwards of half a million or more ...again, location augmenting. 

There's also these colonial sized houses and/or duplex styles, that have been sort of split into individual units .. Those condos may retain a bit more of an individual charm, as well, offer a bit less feeling of being a drone in the Borg collective. However, less in the way of encompassing services ... leaving restoration and cooperation and so forth, entirely up to the residence of the shared housing.  These will have less/no fees, but you are still sharing with a conjoined family/strangers and so forth, and if something goes wrong you are financially responsible. 

Which you kind of are in the former too, it's just that the 200 to 500/mo in fees is an assumption of own fault and let's face it, is basically homeowners insurance at a premium.  If you buy a small "started house," I don't believe your home owner's insurance runs quite the high.

 

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5 hours ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

Anyone have an opinion on condo vs home ownership?

My fiancé and I have been researching and it appears condos are more affordable... at least on the surface.

Anyone have experience with this or thoughts?

If you are going to buy a condo, buy a unit in a brand new development before the developer has sold enough units to transfer control to the association. The developer is going to purposefully keep fees low to sell the units. After a couple years, sell and repeat or buy something else. You don't want to get far enough into the life of the complex to be hit with special assessments galore.

Source: was a financial auditor of condos and HOAs for the better part of the start of my career.

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On 3/17/2018 at 7:09 AM, henry1978 said:

wet snow produces big piles. I saw reports of 14-18 inches in the city of fall river.  Do you think the 18 inch total is accurate?  I'm assuming the highest totals were in the northern reaches of the city limits. The urban heat island affect kept totals a bit lower in Providence.  The 95 webcams were black top a good part of the day on 95 through downtown.  Newport, only 14 miles ssw of the south end of Fall River only had 6 inches.  Our poster on the sakonnet side of Prtsmouth did not report a total but I'm assuming the number was around 10.  Providence didn't get into the meat of the heavy bands either as the city was a wee bit too far west, east, and south for the heaviest bands. The mid and outer cape got screwed on every single snowstorm this winter.

i was in san diego for the storm. based on what i saw two days later portsmouth had more than newport but not much more than an inch or two

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36 minutes ago, S&P said:

i was in san diego for the storm. based on what i saw two days later portsmouth had more than newport but not much more than an inch or two

Also the cape got a foot. I would not say they got screwed. I’m here now and it’s snow covered.

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Just now, CoastalWx said:

Also the cape got a foot. I would not say they got screwed. I’m here now and it’s snow covered.

we are down under 50% coverage now, but with drifting there were lots of thins spots that easily melted out even though what fell was concrete

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5 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Also the cape got a foot. I would not say they got screwed. I’m here now and it’s snow covered.

what part of the cape are you referring to?  I saw that Bourne reported 14.5, but bourne is snowier than just about any other cape locale.

according to the NWS pns other mid and outer cape locations had 5-9 inches and the pics Phil retweeted all looked like under 10.  Jimmy reported 8.  Jimmy, how far are you from the ocean?

There were a lot of wild reports from this past storm.  I saw a report from Sharon of 24, and 17 from Walpole. I just don't see how a couple miles in the woods of interior SE MA could make that much of a difference.

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46 minutes ago, henry1978 said:

what part of the cape are you referring to?  I saw that Bourne reported 14.5, but bourne is snowier than just about any other cape locale.

according to the NWS pns other mid and outer cape locations had 5-9 inches and the pics Phil retweeted all looked like under 10.  Jimmy reported 8.  Jimmy, how far are you from the ocean?

There were a lot of wild reports from this past storm.  I saw a report from Sharon of 24, and 17 from Walpole. I just don't see how a couple miles in the woods of interior SE MA could make that much of a difference.

I was in Brewster and it was pretty much coverage. Impressive for this time of year. Interesting to see 3-4” stuck to sides of trees. Lots of damage can be seen even from the hardwoods and scrub pines that take the wind. 

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1 hour ago, Albert A Clipper said:

looks like  6-8 inches there haha....picture probably doesn't do reality justice.

Late September sun? You have Greenday on the brain? 

We are only a few days from the spring equinox, similar sun angle to September 24th I think?

Haha and that photo I guess doesn't really do the snow justice.  I was curious so I measured out back and had 22.5" on the ground.  Settled a few inches in the past two days.

Took another photo of the neighboring condo development that our backyard backs up against.

Pure winter out there...like a January afternoon.

QCeWLKK.jpg


Pretty similar depth to most of the CoCoRAHS reports in this area too (general 18-24"), as I'm located a couple miles west of the 21" depth there in southern Lamoille County...sharp elevational gradient though once up to 1,500ft it's quickly into the 3-4 foot depth range.  You can see even on the CoCoRAHS there are a few stations that are in the 36-42" depth range in north/central portions of VT.

40FK6c0.gif

 

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Speaking of snow depths... I'm shocked at how low they are down in SNE after the two big storms. 

I guess I haven't been paying attention to how warm it got down there or something?  There were some big totals and I sort of expected to still find widespread 12-24" on the ground.

Highest reported CoCoRAHS depth's even in the Berkshires are 22" at Plainfield and 17" at Beckett. 

That area and ORH hills are usually excellent at preserving snow so was surprised with the monthly totals reported to see those depth values that are on average 6-12"...even some areas under 6" that had two feet of snowfall 5 days ago?

w4VJ89s.gif

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