I was chatting with a fellow club member yesterday. She and her husband are packing up for now, returning to their northern state for a bit. But while still here, they are looking for a home to rent when they return in a few months. They have been renting a house for several years a few blocks from here, or about a mile from the rec center we mostly go to, but the owner has died and it's being sold.
She mentioned one they looked at to me, which turns out to be across the street and two houses east. It's a cute little thing, but nothing super special. It has two bedrooms, a single bathroom, a semi-open floor plan for kitchen/dining/living room area. Unlike ours the rental has a small one car garage rather than a one car carport. It also lacks solar. The outside is painted concrete block, the original way these were all built in this section back in '61. (Ours happens now to have siding over insulation board on the outside of the block. Some of ours just got replaced, so I took pictures.) Other neighboring houses have wood siding, some stucco. I have to presume then that like ours, what passes for studs aren't 2 x 4s with 16 inch centers, but 1 x 2s spaced variably and usually around 21 or 22 inches between. It's also likely, like ours, to have sections where those studs run horizontally rather than vertically, making it always extra fun to find studs behind the drywall in order to hang, say, a picture. Arizona building codes were... interesting back then.
The yard is nothing special, no fence, no decorative rocks, a few desert plants in front for show, and because it's a rental, likely no citrus in back which take regular watering. (When ours languished on the market back in 2011, the realtor handling the sale had all water turned off and three citrus trees died.) All is covered in rocks, the standard for this neighborhood. We don't waste water for lawns, nor energy - personal or gas - for mowing.
It's been for rent for a couple months now, despite this being the prime time for new snowbirds looking for a senior activity-filled community to arrive and settle into. She and her husband won't be living there. The price is $3,000 a month!!!
HOLY SHIT! I mean HOLY! BLANKING! SHIT!
She admitted they might be able to afford the rental... if there were no utilities, no bills, no food required to sustain life, no insurance, no car payments/maintenance/gas, no medical needs, no clothing to replace, or anything else. I sincerely hope they can find something reasonable. I'd miss her.
I'm incidentally also watching a house across the street and up a few in the other direction which is for sale. That sign has been up for several months now. I wonder if everyone is pricing seniors out of this seniors-only community. It sure explains all the phone calls we get from acknowledged investors trying to buy this house. I doubt Steve and I could afford a single bedroom condo in this area any more, were we trying to move in. No savings we had could manage that kind of bill. It reinforces my choice to cash in most of my IRAs back at the bottom of the recession to buy this place. There's very little extra for emergencies, aside from a good credit limit on a card, but we can afford to live here and once we sell will have a decent nest egg.
I'm continuing to keep an eye on the market, since I'm pretty sure any offers from investors will be significantly low-balled, hoping we're either senile, stupid, or desperate enough to accept one. I can't be positive, since I never let those phone calls go that long. We, in turn, can point out all the improvements we've made, mostly by necessity, that any investor wouldn't have to add to their costs before passing the house on for a sweet profit. Even better to my mind would be selling directly to somebody who actually wants to live in the house. I can google our address, or any others in the neighborhood, and get realtor companies with descriptions of the properties and either last or current selling price, or estimate on current price if not for sale. What's really funny is the misinformation contained in these. A couple list our 3 bedroom 2 bath home as 1 bedroom 1 bath. Those typically don't show this as a short sale back when, so maybe they haven't bothered to do their research and just can't believe what we lucked into. According to the latest one with accurate details, but not even showing solar on the roof, the house would sell for almost 5 times what we paid!
It's crazy down here! And it's not just the politics.
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