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The HighPoly USA Questions Megathread

SiahWester

Member
Personally I feel that house is a luxury house. Out here in Colorado that house would easily be 1 million. I love my state, but no denying it's crazy out here. Somehow I still make it and I'm truly blessed for that.
 

HighPoly

Banned
In Atlanta, that could fetch between 200k to 450k.

In San Francisco or Los Angeles... 800k to 1.1million. Shoot... Even some rundown houses can go for around 500k
Jesus! I found on Zillow amazing houses for those prices!

Atlanta seems to be an amazing city!
Pretty places! Relaxing!

I hope there are great food!
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
My F-150 puts in work. I live in the country and I am always hauling supplies or lumber or something. I enjoy driving it, but it's not my daily driver. I have to drive into the city for work so I have a more economical midsize SUV I drive daily. The SUV has seat warmers and a sunroof so I guess it is kind of luxurious at times.

The F-150 is only luxurious inasmuch as I don't have to fold myself in half to get in and out of it. I bought it in 2018 before prices went crazy but I'm not sure I would want to buy one now, not with all the bells and whistles. Mine does have 5.0 liter V8 and the STX sport package with the high performance sport setting that I have turned on from time to time on the backroads. I will never admit that it has easily reached 110 mph of the 120 mph that the speedometer tops out at.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
There should be a housing market adjustment bubble soon. It will leave people underwater on their houses. Hopefully interest rates drop too so people are not stuck with 7% interest rates.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
There should be a housing market adjustment bubble soon. It will leave people underwater on their houses. Hopefully interest rates drop too so people are not stuck with 7% interest rates.
People have to be anxious to refinance out of those 7+% mortgages. Hopefully interest rates drop before the bubble bursts, otherwise they're going to be stuck.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
There should be a housing market adjustment bubble soon. It will leave people underwater on their houses. Hopefully interest rates drop too so people are not stuck with 7% interest rates.
People have to be anxious to refinance out of those 7+% mortgages. Hopefully interest rates drop before the bubble bursts, otherwise they're going to be stuck.
I;m surprised we havet heard about massive foreclosures like global crisis 2008. Either mortgage applications were much more rock solid with controls and buffer in, or we just havent seen the fallout yet as rates have only been sky high the past 12-18 months and there's people still locked into good rates.

Rates started rising in early 2022, but it still took a bit for it to blow by 4%. I'd estimate the 4%+ range is when things can shit the bed. And when it's time for owners to renew their mortgage at 4-7%, that's when you should see lots of panic.
 

Pejo

Gold Member
Man this 'HighPoly and the USA' story arc has been quite a ride so far.

But yea housing is in the shitter right now. There will likely be another crash in a few years that will course correct some of it, depending on the area you're looking at.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I;m surprised we havet heard about massive foreclosures like global crisis 2008. Either mortgage applications were much more rock solid with controls and buffer in, or we just havent seen the fallout yet as rates have only been sky high the past 12-18 months and there's people still locked into good rates.

Rates started rising in early 2022, but it still took a bit for it to blow by 4%. I'd estimate the 4%+ range is when things can shit the bed. And when it's time for owners to renew their mortgage at 4-7%, that's when you should see lots of panic.
I don't think it can crash the same way it did in 2008, but I still think it can crash. Financial institutions aren't allowed to bundle mortgages as securities the way they used to as a hedge to get cheaper capital than what they would normally have to pay. Them gambling with other people's debt just exacerbated the whole thing.

I think another thing that's different now is that corporate purchases of private homes has sent rents through the roof in formerly affordable areas, so people are more focused on keeping up with their 7% mortgage because even though they are struggling with it it is still cheaper than renting a house. Something that could really make housing more affordable overall would be if companies couldn't scarf up houses for rental properties before the average Joe can buy them. I kind of feel like that's what's going to cause the crash. Because it's certainly a main cause of the housing crisis.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Something that could really make housing more affordable overall would be if companies couldn't scarf up houses for rental properties before the average Joe can buy them. I kind of feel like that's what's going to cause the crash. Because it's certainly a main cause of the housing crisis.
I dont know what the government laws are about corporate hoarding (if there are any?), but I know that when I buy grassroots new developments, the builder has a policy of one unit per person and no hoarders. Its not just corporations, but also rich foreigners who my real estate agent would say have no problem asking a builder if he could buy an entire floor. Sounds crazy, but there's people with cash to do that. I'm going to assume I'm just lucky the builds I do have policies where I have been able to get into the sales showroom and buy one as a walk in.
 
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ReBurn

Gold Member
I dont know what the government laws are about corporate hoarding (if there are any?), but I know that when I buy grassroots new developments, the builder has a policy of one unit per person and no hoarders. Its not just corporations, but also rich foreigners who my real estate agent would say have no problem asking a builder if he could buy an entire floor. Sounds crazy, but there's people with cash to do that. I'm going to assume I'm just lucky the builds I do have policies where I have been able to get into the sales showroom and buy one as a walk in.
Around here there are a couple of new construction developments with over a hundred houses in them that were built for the sole purpose of being rentals. Entire neighborhoods and not a person in them owns a home. It's crazy. But thankfully there are a couple of new places with relatively affordable homes that don't do sales to corporations and they come with an HOA that forbids sales to corporations. It's nice to see people moving in to their first home.

I'm lucky because I was able to have my house custom built on acreage I own just before the pandemic caused everything to go crazy. I don't know how someone would do it now.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Around here there are a couple of new construction developments with over a hundred houses in them that were built for the sole purpose of being rentals. Entire neighborhoods and not a person in them owns a home. It's crazy. But thankfully there are a couple of new places with relatively affordable homes that don't do sales to corporations and they come with an HOA that forbids sales to corporations. It's nice to see people moving in to their first home.

I'm lucky because I was able to have my house custom built on acreage I own just before the pandemic caused everything to go crazy. I don't know how someone would do it now.
For people moving during COVID I know many who did. Not first time home buyers but people who took advantage of the situation and moved an hour farther away and cash out banking tons of money and did wfh. Or they used the money to buy a home way bigger. Yup, while most people were scared of germs and moving houses is the last thing on their minds some people did the opposite and moved. You could tell it was a weird situation because they didn’t want people to know at work they moved.
 
All cars are getting better. I bought a BMW 330i xDrive recently. The car is insanely good, and arguably beats 5 series from last gen on many key points. The economy cars have gotten much better as well across the board.
 

Havoc2049

Member
I don't think it can crash the same way it did in 2008, but I still think it can crash. Financial institutions aren't allowed to bundle mortgages as securities the way they used to as a hedge to get cheaper capital than what they would normally have to pay. Them gambling with other people's debt just exacerbated the whole thing.

I think another thing that's different now is that corporate purchases of private homes has sent rents through the roof in formerly affordable areas, so people are more focused on keeping up with their 7% mortgage because even though they are struggling with it it is still cheaper than renting a house. Something that could really make housing more affordable overall would be if companies couldn't scarf up houses for rental properties before the average Joe can buy them. I kind of feel like that's what's going to cause the crash. Because it's certainly a main cause of the housing crisis.
I'm normally all for free markets, but I do think it's time to limit corporate and foriegn investment for single family homes. The housing market is all out of wack. Tons of home owners in California couldn't afford the current home they own at today's prices. The only reason they are able to afford living there is they bought their house 10+ years ago.

I was listening to NPR in San Diego a few years back and this mother was all sad because all three of her kids had moved out of state. Her kids were raised in San Diego, went to college in San Diego and got their first job in San Diego. When it came time to get married, buy a house and raise a family though, all her kids had to move out of state to make it happen, because California had become too expensive to live comfortably.
 

SimTourist

Member
In some ways yes like safety, driving assists and infotainment, but some luxury cars from the 80/90/00s have unique features that are not found much today.
 

Blade2.0

Member
What's insane is that there are more abandoned homes than homeless. How the fuck are homes so expensive and yet there are still more and more empty homes? Just start handing them out at that point.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Yeah the new Prius and the new Camry are hot. Cheap cars have gotten a lot better and have a lot of the driving assists and active safety and stuff that used to be premium car features. Even the new Prius is somewhat quick now too with the same 0-60 as the new Integra.

The difference with luxury would be more in the handling dynamics, comfort, even more power than the rising baseline, and sometimes much more noise isolation.
 
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Blade2.0

Member
Jesus! I found on Zillow amazing houses for those prices!

Atlanta seems to be an amazing city!
Pretty places! Relaxing!

I hope there are great food!
Pretty much the shittiest traffic in all of the south of the USA. Public transit is garbage there. You have 5 to 6 lane interstates that slow to a crawl during rush hours and are still mostly full even into 1am or longer. If you do move there, live as close as possible as you can to your job.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
LOL, not a luxury house? In Italy something like that would easily cost half a million these days, possibly more.
It’d be all masonry, to be fair, because we don’t like houses made of papier mache even if this isn’t hurricane zone.
 

Cyberpunkd

Member
Smartphones, consoles, clothes and cars in USA uses to be cheaper...

But HOUSES are expensive as hell !

Who can make this dream come true there? below

aLRWgfB.jpg

Not a luxury house, but not a poor house...

which families, jobs, salary buys that house? based on your town/state
Comedy Reaction GIF by Jo Koy


Bruh, you are constantly making the same threads. We get it, your life sucks, you don't need to remind everyone about it all the time. People gave you plenty of good advice in your other threads, I think it's time for you to take a pause from social media and forums.
 

Heimdall_Xtreme

Hermen Hulst Fanclub's #1 Member
Smartphones, consoles, clothes and cars in USA uses to be cheaper...

But HOUSES are expensive as hell !

Who can make this dream come true there? below

aLRWgfB.jpg

Not a luxury house, but not a poor house...

which families, jobs, salary buys that house? based on your town/state

Not a luxury house!?????😨

Its a amazing house!!! 😱
 
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Trilobit

Member
Look at the new truck Toyota made that isn't available in the US.


It would sell like pancakes but it would not make a lot of US auto makers happy, so they are basically banning it.


Oh man, I want it. I'd have no use for a truck for sure, but I want it. At least they could try to get it in Snowrunner and make Japan areas.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
Weird OP, plenty of us are buying houses, enjoying life, doing all the things we dreamed of. Post what you do, your education, the things you've done to succeed and let us help figure out where your wrong turns were and see if we can get you on the right track. Or keep making threads complaining. Whatever makes you happy.
 
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Shodai

Member
Weird OP, plenty of us are buying houses, enjoying life, doing all the things we dreamed of. Post what you do, your education, the things you've done to succeed and let us help figure out where your wrong turns were and see if we can get you on the right track. Or keep making threads complaining. Whatever makes you happy.
Truuuuue.
 

Phobos Base

Member
Until fairly recently cars were pretty low spec over here, even in the early 90's you could buy a BMW where the radio was an optional extra. These days even the most basic of cars have air con, electric windows, power steering, ABS etc which used ot be the preserve of luxury cars. Personally the only 3 things that are essential are air con, cruise control and heated seats, everything else is just a bonus.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Weird OP, plenty of us are buying houses, enjoying life, doing all the things we dreamed of. Post what you do, your education, the things you've done to succeed and let us help figure out where your wrong turns were and see if we can get you on the right track. Or keep making threads complaining. Whatever makes you happy.
Yup.

Things in life arent free. Some have more than others that's life. My investment condo (1 bed room + 1 den) cost me almost $500k and due to high interest rates, the market price has barely budged. I think it's worth $600k. Take away capital gains, commission if I sell, land transfer tax, levies etc.... I'd make almost nothing since I bought it off the floorplan 5 years ago. I'd make more money if I put my down payments into a boring term deposit at a bank.

So far so good. Tenant has been good. Pays on time and the place is neat and tidy when I did a Tarion warranty check for deficiencies.
 
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AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
Weird OP, plenty of us are buying houses, enjoying life, doing all the things we dreamed of. Post what you do, your education, the things you've done to succeed and let us help figure out where your wrong turns were and see if we can get you on the right track. Or keep making threads complaining. Whatever makes you happy.


This if probably the OP.

 

Soltype

Member
In some ways yes like safety, driving assists and infotainment, but some luxury cars from the 80/90/00s have unique features that are not found much today.
they also feel better to drive, cars today have forfeited driving dynamics in favor of "safety" and comfort. Go drive a E46 M3 vs the F80, it's night and day
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
Jesus! I found on Zillow amazing houses for those prices!

Atlanta seems to be an amazing city!
Pretty places! Relaxing!

I hope there are great food!
Atlanta has a WIDE range of costs. Where I lived in/near Druid Hills (center of the 'old' area with all the little parks and whatnot) a house like this would go for a mill or more, or more correctly, the LAND is a mill, the house you put on it is almost an afterthought. Lots of folks around me dropped 1+ mill on a lot with some 1500sq home from the 40's, demoed the home, and then built a mcmansion, STILL cheaper than buying a lot with the mcmansion on it already :p

No lie, it was AWESOME to be able to walk to a half dozen corner commercial areas with restaurants, shops, and the kids school. Small parks everywhere, everything was forested around the homes and no two houses looked the same. Big change from the cookie cutter tract homes slapped down on some farmland 5 miles from the nearest place to eat you get out in the burbs. If I could afford a townhome in historic Savannah, same thing there, just awesome Southern 'urban' living without having to deal with yankee winters :p
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
1. build a remote career (not easy, admittedly; but if you're a software engineer, you can go down this road)
2. move out to the country, buy land and a nice house, without spending a fortune

I have decent acreage, woods, dock on the lake, and nice classic-sized home for our size of family... and it's thanks to moving out to the country, and also to building a career where I don't have to live near any urban hub.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
1. build a remote career (not easy, admittedly; but if you're a software engineer, you can go down this road)
2. move out to the country, buy land and a nice house, without spending a fortune

I have decent acreage, woods, dock on the lake, and nice classic-sized home for our size of family... and it's thanks to moving out to the country, and also to building a career where I don't have to live near any urban hub.
As long as the company's wfh oplicy is flexible, getting a desk job that is wfh is easy. Not just for coders. But any desk job that has little face time with people, meetings, and the job is mostly all emailing can easily be wfh. Lots of people at my office are perma wfh ASSUMING their job class allows it. The only time they are expected to show up for sake of news and not being a 100% lone wolf is important town hall meetings twice a year and the company Xmas party. And if the department has some important hardcore meeting everyone is expected to show up that day because the boss doesn't want it to be interrupted with MS Teams tech issues. But that's it. Some people show up at the office a handful of times per year. Thats it.

After everyone was perma wfh during covid and our company opened up being hybrid the past two years, I got to the office 2-3 times a week. But those wfh classified people I have literally seen like 5 times in two years.
 
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calistan

Member
This would be around 150,000 to 200,000 in my area. Maybe cheaper. Midwest is pretty cheap to live in the large towns. Avoid cities.
That's a very American-looking house, very big and wooden. There's nothing exactly like that in the UK, and you probably couldn't get anything at all for $150k unless you're prepared to go Scottish or become a slum landlord.

The closest I could find in my area on the market right now is this - four bedrooms, "in need of some modernisation", for the equivalent of $1.45 million. You're basically shit out of luck unless both you and your partner are on a hefty salary, or you got on the property ladder 30 years ago.

RWn1IM7.jpg
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
That's a very American-looking house, very big and wooden. There's nothing exactly like that in the UK, and you probably couldn't get anything at all for $150k unless you're prepared to go Scottish or become a slum landlord.

The closest I could find in my area on the market right now is this - four bedrooms, "in need of some modernisation", for the equivalent of $1.45 million. You're basically shit out of luck unless both you and your partner are on a hefty salary, or you got on the property ladder 30 years ago.

RWn1IM7.jpg
For you house buyers out there, maybe I'm overthinking it ad OCD, but I always avoid homes where there's an outside door (like in the picture) that is at the bottom of stairs or a slope. All it takes is some bad drainage grates and a big rain or melted snow and you're going to have water pooling at the door as the water is sloping towards the door. Good luck opening the door too even if it's set an inch above ground.

I remember long time ago a house I was scoping had a small outside staircase in the backyard leading to the basement (basement tenant access door). I saw zero drainage holes. It was like solid concrete right at the door. Sure, the door might have a good seal, but I wonder what the fuck happens on those days with giant rain.
 
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HighPoly

Banned
Well, I'll probably visit NY city in 2025, and I wanna see for the first time a Crown Victoria!

This car is getting older and older through years, and I don't really know if I'll find some of them on streets...

Have you seen this model as a Taxi or Police car, recently? around US ?

I bought my GreenLight Collectible model yesterday!
This one, but it's just a toy...
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
My parents still drive one. They get approached a few times a year from guys asking to buy it off them. It does ride nice.
 

ahtlas7

Member
My grandparents owned a crown vic. The shocks were going out on it and my grandad refused to get them replaced. It was a true land yacht. If you hit a bump the car would still be rocking long after it was parked.
 
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Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
I remember going to New York years ago and seeing loads of these. There was some sort of convoy of police cars for something or other going on and I noted how beaten up and crappy looking they were, due to what I can only assume was local police policy being to ram any vehicle on the road that they didn't like the look of.
 
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HighPoly

Banned
I remember going to New York years ago and seeing loads of these. There was some sort of convoy of police cars for something or other going on and I noted how beaten up and crappy looking they were, due to what I can only assume was local police policy being to ram any vehicle on the road that they didn't like the look of.
Jesus!

I'm going to US next year, I hope to see some Crown, even a Taxi one
 

HighPoly

Banned
I remember going to New York years ago and seeing loads of these. There was some sort of convoy of police cars for something or other going on and I noted how beaten up and crappy looking they were, due to what I can only assume was local police policy being to ram any vehicle on the road that they didn't like the look of.

They are genging all cars... Even Taxis...
so sad :messenger_pensive:
 
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