Patti and I watch a lot of home improvement/real estate type shows on HGTV and the like. We've always been do it yourself'ers when it came to the house. When we were first together, it was out of necessity, now we do it to put our stamp on things. Which is really fun!
Recently we've watched that 'What's my house worth' a bunch. The premise of the show, for those of you that haven't seen it, is to let people know if they've gone too far on their on their improvements for their neighborhoods. It's really entertaining to see what people have done and (geez) the money they spend.
I live in Buffalo, and the housing market here has always been much way below the average, so it's kinda hard to relate to 1400 square ft. houses going for 700k!
Firstly, there is an extremely annoying thing at the end of each review of the homes by an 'expert' where they say 'your house is worth'.... (pregnant pause - lots of stupid looking at each other replete with expressions) and then they give the number, and the people are happy/unhappy. Every time they do that pause I cringe...
The last couple of shows we saw the people wanted to see if the improvements have garnered enough money for them to 'upgrade' or do more improvements. So they'll say 'well, we're hoping for 1.5 mil, so we can remodel the basement (or buy a bigger home).
What is interesting to me is that the people NEVER will have any equity, and it doesn't seem to bother them in the least. So if your house is assessed for 30k more than you paid it's like someone gave them 30k cash. I just can't rationalize that. I just couldn't do it. I want to pay my house off, not perpetually run the mortgage to the legal limit (or more).
Does this make sense to anyone else? It sure doesn't to me. I couldn't sleep at night if I did that...
m.
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