The pandemic and stay at home orders are not going to last forever. Micro units will be fine for the people they are geared towards. When I lived in downtown Cleveland, I had a 600sft apartment, and apart from sleeping, I spent all of my time in about 350sft of space. It was more than enough, because I was downtown and had the entire city worth of space to live in. If I was back in that time of my life, I'd jump at the idea of one of the micro units like they proposed in the Flats, mostly because it would be much more affordable.

 

Plus, isn't one of the big groups these are marketed towards college students? I don't think they would necessarily be effected by having to work from home in case of a future pandemic. I don't think that line of reasoning to argue against these really works because the people these are marketed towards and who would be renting these are not the typical group to be working from home (college students, restaurant/retail workers). Work from home office workers would generally be able to afford something larger to begin with.

7 hours ago, Clefan98 said:

 

Your logic seems off....Why can someone leave their house, but not their 300' apartment? Your first premise is bunk so I didn't even bother reading points 2 or 3.

For one, things are a bit more restrictive in NYC. Also, the whole premise of living in a 300 Sq ft apartment is mostly to have a place to rest your head at night and maybe relax on a weekend/rainy morning. The point is you are not there often, your life is living in the city. Well, the city is now closed, so you have no place to be. Yes, you can go to the park, but for the most part you are working from home, and spending all day at home. It gets cramped in there. Plus, many of these places have community gathering spots, given the need to social distance, a lot of those spaces are now closed. The dorm style living does not seem as appealing as it did 3-4 months ago, as people would rather have more space during this time. 

I dont think it is an indictment on urban living, but think we will see a bit of a drop off for a bit. 

But we don't live in New York City. Frankly, I couldn't care less about the development situation going forward in New York City unless it can somehow benefit Cleveland, such as NYC going underwater from climate change or NYC-area residents hating de Blasio's incompetence so much they couldn't wait to get away.

 

BTW, we have some new residents on our block from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California. My realtor who advises me on my condo flips says they're getting some people from NYC who didn't want to be living under its restrictions and wanted to save some money while living in an urban setting during this downturn so they came to Greater Cleveland (Lakewood). He says they like it here and are considering staying. I also sold a condo flip in my building to a woman from California who wanted to get away from the traffic and high-cost of the Bay Area -- but that was before the pandemic. She says she's even happier about her decision now.

1 minute ago, KJP said:

But we don't live in New York City. Frankly, I couldn't care less about the development situation going forward in New York City unless it can somehow benefit Cleveland, such as NYC going underwater from climate change or NYC-area residents hating de Blasio's incompetence so much they couldn't wait to get away.

 

BTW, we have some new residents on our block from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California. My realtor who advises me on my condo flips says they're getting some people from NYC who didn't want to be living under its restrictions and wanted to save some money while living in an urban setting during this downturn so they came to Greater Cleveland (Lakewood). He says they like it here and are considering staying. I also sold a condo flip in my building to a woman from California who wanted to get away from the traffic and high-cost of the Bay Area -- but that was before the pandemic. She says she's even happier about her decision now.

I think you are going to be seeing that in many places in the Midwest. Especially as the Corona Virus opens up peoples ability to work remotely, people will start to realize that there is not as much benefit to living in Silicon Valley or New York as there used to be and they can have the same urban experience in say Cleveland or Cincinnati for 1/2 the cost, plus it would be more accessible and they could do more. 

 

I had a friend who wanted to work for a big law firm in NYC many years ago to get the experience of living in New York. I would come to NYC monthly to visit them and enjoy spending time in the city. My friend often had to work most of the visit anyway, because that is what his job required so I was often exploring by myself and even hanging out by myself or with other friends who joined me. We used to joke that I spent more time "living"  in NY with my weekend trips, than he did because he was tied to his office the entire time. 

5 hours ago, DEPACincy said:

 

My house is like 2000 square feet, but I've spent most of my time in just a couple rooms. Work in the dining room, watch tv in the den, cook in the kitchen, sleep in my room. The guest bedrooms and extra bathroom don't really change my experience since I'm not going to be in them ever anyway. I would probably have the same experience in half the space.

 

More important to my mental health during this time has been that I live in a dense neighborhood with lots of sidewalks, multiple parks, and businesses I can walk to. I don't need to drive to Kroger to get a loaf of bread or a six pack of beer. It's saved me a TON of stress.

I think a 2000' house in a urban area is an ideal setting for something like this. It offers space between neighbors but you are in a walkable community and have amenities nearby to walk to when needed. My main point about the micro apartments was the common communal areas they promote (essentially dorm living) that do not really do much to assist with the social distancing part.

3 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

I think you are going to be seeing that in many places in the Midwest. Especially as the Corona Virus opens up peoples ability to work remotely, people will start to realize that there is not as much benefit to living in Silicon Valley or New York as there used to be and they can have the same urban experience in say Cleveland or Cincinnati for 1/2 the cost, plus it would be more accessible and they could do more. 

 

 

This is really important for the rest of the country if it catches on. There's no sense in having to pay Silicon Valley wages for work that can be done elsewhere. The internet was supposed to even out where the money was in this country but instead sucked it all into Seattle, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Austin and a couple other hot spots. That pushed up the cost of living and doing business in those cities so high that you have to pay someone $250,000 for $100,000 worth of work.

1 hour ago, PoshSteve said:

The pandemic and stay at home orders are not going to last forever. Micro units will be fine for the people they are geared towards. When I lived in downtown Cleveland, I had a 600sft apartment, and apart from sleeping, I spent all of my time in about 350sft of space. It was more than enough, because I was downtown and had the entire city worth of space to live in. If I was back in that time of my life, I'd jump at the idea of one of the micro units like they proposed in the Flats, mostly because it would be much more affordable.

 

 

 

Really, the huge bedrooms seen in so much single-family and even quite a bit of multi-family today are completely pointless for the vast majority of people. That's one thing that can easily go.

5 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

 

This is really important for the rest of the country if it catches on. There's no sense in having to pay Silicon Valley wages for work that can be done elsewhere. The internet was supposed to even out where the money was in this country but instead sucked it all into Seattle, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Austin and a couple other hot spots. That pushed up the cost of living and doing business in those cities so high that you have to pay someone $250,000 for $100,000 worth of work.

There was a trend for a while before the last recession where Silicon Valley was losing workers to other parts of the country, but I remember when Marissa Mayer was at Yahoo, she famously shut down remote working arrangements and worked to bring everything back in house in Silicon Valley.

15 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

 

This is really important for the rest of the country if it catches on. There's no sense in having to pay Silicon Valley wages for work that can be done elsewhere. The internet was supposed to even out where the money was in this country but instead sucked it all into Seattle, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Austin and a couple other hot spots. That pushed up the cost of living and doing business in those cities so high that you have to pay someone $250,000 for $100,000 worth of work.

 

Even better for the rest of the country, there's no sense in having to pay Silicon Valley and Manhattan real estate prices if workers can be located elsewhere, and workers can hopefully still command the same paychecks (after all, much work is of equivalent value regardless of where it's performed).

 

Starting salaries at Jones Day in Cleveland are basically the same as at their NYC office.

 

My wife's paycheck is essentially a Dallas paycheck.  It goes further in Akron.  When she was at Bridgestone, we looked at Nashville a few times, but the lateral jobs that she'd have qualified for in Nashville did not come with any real cost-of-living adjustment vis-a-vis Akron.  I know Nashville and Dallas aren't the most expensive places out there, but Akron still lets you stretch those dollars quite a bit further.  I certainly wouldn't be talking about buying a 6000sf home in Dallas.

 

I have a friend who does online financial information security for Square.  He worked in the Bay area for a few years; he's now moved back to Akron where he grew up.  I don't think he took a pay cut when he left the super-expensive market.

I don't think you can't underestimate how many of these decisions are made by Mr. SVP, who just wants to look out into the office and see a bunch of people working hard. That's why some companies did not allow any remote work before Covid-19, and will probably go right back to requiring most employees to be in the office 4 days per week when this is all over. The only reason it won't go back to 5 is because we now have "proof" the company does not fall apart when people work from home.

 

For about 7 years I worked for a small consulting company in Cincinnati that specialized in niche technologies. Our clients tended to be bigger companies based in bigger, more expensive cities. I spent a huge percentage of my time as a consultant flying across the country, so that I could work in a cubicle in the client's office, rather than working from my company's office in Cincinnati or my home office. Even during projects where I was literally just programming (so I wasn't in very many meetings and didn't need face-to-face time with anyone), some clients would spend an enormous amount of money on travel expenses so that I could stare at a computer screen in Seattle or San Jose rather than in Cincinnati.

 

At the end of the day, the only reason for it is because when Mr. SVP walks through the cube farm, he wants to see that people are working. (Especially when they have hired expensive consultants, but I think it applies to full-time employees too.) The amount of money that it costs is irrelevant to them.

Yeah I don't get why people are in such a hurry to hide from their bosses.  It's basically impossible to position yourself to get promoted if you're an unknown person on email chains.  

 

 

13 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Yeah I don't get why people are in such a hurry to hide from their bosses.  It's basically impossible to position yourself to get promoted if you're an unknown person on email chains.  

 

 

 

Depends on the business.   Some of us are working to make achievement and accomplishment more important than politics.

 

Micromanagers that interrupt and know much less than their reports can get in the way of that.

18 hours ago, Gramarye said:

 

Even better for the rest of the country, there's no sense in having to pay Silicon Valley and Manhattan real estate prices if workers can be located elsewhere, and workers can hopefully still command the same paychecks (after all, much work is of equivalent value regardless of where it's performed).

 

At my former employer any new projects went immediately to our Bay Area branch because their rent was too damn high. It mattered not that our CLE/Cincy/Columbus office personnel were smarter, less costly and had a better work ethic. 

What's fueling it, then? Hubris in the C-suite?

Probably justifying keeping the most expensive office open

2 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

Probably justifying keeping the most expensive office open

Exactly, until it was no longer sustainable. I'm sure clients loved being billed at higher rates just so we could have an unnecessary physical presence in SF. 

That's what I was trying to get at. If it was unnecessary and superfluous, why keep the office going that long?

9 minutes ago, BigDipper 80 said:

That's what I was trying to get at. If it was unnecessary and superfluous, why keep the office going that long?

 

The C-Suite execs would probably rather live in SF. 

13 minutes ago, BigDipper 80 said:

That's what I was trying to get at. If it was unnecessary and superfluous, why keep the office going that long?

 

 "Hubris in the C-suite" is the best description. I've had some really dumb bosses lol. 

45 minutes ago, DEPACincy said:

 

The C-Suite execs would probably rather live in SF. 

 

Hey, that's how Columbus landed the Sbarro HQ.

 

Thoughts on this? Should rental costs follow wages, or should wages following housing $?

 

Housing ends up following wages. This is why simply raising the minimum wage doesn't actually help the poor: housing and healthcare take all the money leaving none for the individual or consumer spending. The way to make things actually better is to remove healthcare costs and focus on ways to keep monthly mandatory bills down.

13 hours ago, smith said:

Residential real estate in C.H. right now is insane. I can’t speak to high priced properties but I’m licensed (just on the side from reg job, so do very few transactions) and helping my cousin buy a house and good houses under $200k are going instantly with multiple offers often selling for more than ask. I know Lakewood was like that a few years ago but I don’t think C.H. was. But is now and I’m actually pretty surprised it’s as active as it is especially with COVID. I’ve never seen C.H. as much of a seller’s market as it is right now. 

 

1 hour ago, Htsguy said:

This may well be a "certain price point/limited supply" phenomenom.  My sister in Hudson just sold her house last Saturday after one day on the market.  She had multiple bids and it sold for over the asking price.  Her friends across the street listed their house yesterday and already have 20 showings scheduled for Saturday and the real estate agent is confident  it will sell that day.  On the other side my sister put bids in on two houses in Cuyahoga Falls and she lost both of them.  Both sold the first day for over asking.

 

 

Redirecting from the Cleveland Heights development thread. I had a small condo in my building here in Lakewood sell for cash at the asking price, which was higher than any condo has ever sold in my building. What is going on? Is it a lack of new housing inventory or housing shortages as some developers say? Thousands of new units are coming on the market, but many are rentals. Even so, why is inventory a problem in a region that supposedly isn't growing in population?

 

Or is something new happening? I and others have noted in other threads a new influx of East Coast, Illinois and California license plates in Greater Cleveland, especially in the "hot" neighborhoods like downtown, Ohio City, Tremont, University Circle, etc. What are others in Greater Cleveland and other Ohio metros seeing in terms of real estate sales/trends?

2 minutes ago, KJP said:

 

 

Redirecting from the Cleveland Heights development thread. I had a small condo in my building here in Lakewood sell for cash at the asking price, which was higher than any condo has ever sold in my building. What is going on? Is it a lack of new housing inventory or housing shortages as some developers say? Thousands of new units are coming on the market, but many are rentals. Even so, why is inventory a problem in a region that supposedly isn't growing in population?

 

Or is something new happening? I and others have noted in other threads a new influx of East Coast, Illinois and California license plates in Greater Cleveland, especially in the "hot" neighborhoods like downtown, Ohio City, Tremont, University Circle, etc. What are others in Greater Cleveland and other Ohio metros seeing in terms of real estate sales/trends?

I know for a fact Mentor/East side has been booming as well. Sold my condo in a day for the highest price ever in the development on the Mentor/Concord border. Then bought my house the day the listing came up. 

My sister's agent definitely said a limited supply right now is driving much of this, especially if your house is in decent shape (badly priced wrecks are still sitting forever).  People are just not listing their houses right now like they would in a typical spring selling season.  That said, Hudson has been hot for a while.  My brother has been looking intensively for about two years for a ranch in Hudson as he down sizes from his huge place in Bainbridge (which he will definitely have problems selling giving the price point) and it seems everything was selling in two or three days over list (he will never pay over list if he doesn't think the price is worth it even though he can afford it which is the reason he loses out on so many houses)

47 minutes ago, Foraker said:

 

Are you seeing a north-south divide in those numbers?  Is north-of-Mayfield selling as well?

That's  good question.  I can't answer as we are generally looking in the S and UH.  And yeah, Hudson and Chagrin Falls have both been popular for a while and certainly Lakewood.  But while Lakewood had been booming the past several years CH seemed to be humming along as normal.  But I've never seen this amount of activity that you have multiples, often above ask.  I know of someone getting 16% above ask.  So this is all anecdotal my pure speculation on why CH is that interest rates are low, supply is low (I guess??), and maybe bigger is the ability (though getting much harder) to get a quality home for $150k or less close to downtown / university circle.  In a pandemic no less!

Edited May 22, 20205 yr by smith

South Euclid has been similar with CH. For quite some time now (at least over a year) our market has been hotter than it has been before. Last month was probably our best month since before the housing crash. The number of sales wasn't much changed from how its been each month for the last few years, but the average sales price was much higher. We had hardly any under 80k, and few that were under 100k even. More houses transferred for over 150k than under 100k. The houses that have been rehabbed, or at least updated, have been selling fast. 4165 Stilmore Rd (https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4165-Stilmore-Rd_Cleveland_OH_44121_M34197-20906#photo19) is what I would call a typical South Euclid bungalow, and typical of many houses throughout the inner ring in Cleveland. Its been on the market for 9 days as of today for 145k. They were under contract the same day they listed. I think the Cleveland housing market is doing pretty well when there is a hot and profitable market for rehabbing and reselling bungalows. 

1 hour ago, KJP said:

Or is something new happening? I and others have noted in other threads a new influx of East Coast, Illinois and California license plates in Greater Cleveland, especially in the "hot" neighborhoods like downtown, Ohio City, Tremont, University Circle, etc. What are others in Greater Cleveland and other Ohio metros seeing in terms of real estate sales/trends?

 

We bought our house in Northside, Cincinnati last summer. We put offers on two other houses in the neighborhood, above asking, and got outbid. We came in $10k above asking on the house we got. They had 5 offers on the first day it was on the market. Many of our neighbors are new Cincinnatians. Seems like a lot from California. We have multiple families who moved here from California just on our block. 

People are still searching for homes, but traffic on Zillow does not show more urbanites suddenly looking to move into suburban or rural areas. Nor are waves of home shoppers seeking to flee large cities for smaller ones. What's more, while current and prospective buyers in urban areas are most likely to say the coronavirus pandemic has affected where they want to live, 70% of the nearly 10,700 US adults we surveyed in April say they want to live in an area that is equally or even more urban than the neighborhood where they currently live.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/perspectives/homeowners-renters-cities-zillow-coronavirus/index.html

 

As a 15 year veteran of the restaurant industry I completely agree. There is a ton of wealth in NEOH, but many aren't the flashy type. We don't necessarily get the people drinking 10 grand of overpriced tequilla, but we do have families that eat out twice a week with a $200+ tab for 3 or 4 people.

Wonder if that has to do with a lack of fine dining as well. Still, someone has to be eating at Capital Grille or Cru Uncorked.

Could President Biden totally reshape the Section 8 program?

 

Quote

Joe Biden has a housing policy agenda that is ambitious, technically sound, and politically feasible, and that would — if implemented — be life-changing for millions of low-income and housing-insecure households. [...]

 

The centerpiece is simple. Take America’s biggest rental assistance program — Section 8 housing vouchers — and make it available to every family who qualifies. The current funding structure leaves out around 11 million people, simply because the pot allocated by Congress is too small. Then pair it with regulatory changes to help the housing market work better for more people. It’s the general consensus approach among top Democratic Party politicians and left-of-center policy wonks.

 

It's pretty much what I've wanted to see for years.  What does this do to project based Section 8 and public housing, though?  It becomes redundant in the long term, no?

 

We luckily haven't seen this on a large scale in NEO. They may be testing the water though, as over the last two years or so I've seen a handful of houses be bought by national players, including one that is a US Bank trust. Almost has a heart attack last year when a house transferred to a Goldman Sachs affiliate, but luckily they resold it. They are almost impossible to deal with though, and seem to have a total disregard to local rental rules. The small time and medium sized companies are flooding in though, and (based on the accidental newsletters they send me) they are absolutely foaming at the mouth for foreclosures to start up again. I'd be interested to see if the big companies follow in this time around.

Not sure about national outfits buying up houses in and around Cincinnati for renting, but there's a lot of local players buying them up to rehab.  Flippers and realtors are buying up a lot of the houses to fix and resell, and builders are buying the empty lots.  Even owners aren't selling, preferring to rent out instead.  If you're not already "in" then it's very difficult to get started, which shouldn't be happening anywhere in Ohio.  

On 4/30/2020 at 5:05 PM, GCrites80s said:

 

Really, the huge bedrooms seen in so much single-family and even quite a bit of multi-family today are completely pointless for the vast majority of people. That's one thing that can easily go.

I wonder what people here really think optimum house sizes and room sizes are for them.

How many rooms are needed? What size of room? 

 

As far as bedrooms go, I have an absolutely tiny one now(the other bedroom was opened up as a sort of open space with added storage). I think that 10 or 11 by 12 or so would be the smallest I would want for a secondary bedroom. ten by ten or something like that is just too small to me for a bedroom. I would want a minimum of 130 sqft. for a secondary bedroom(if i had the money to get another place that is).  I would say 12 by fifteen would be the smallest I would want for a master bedroom(and I live alone). The current living room here is about 13 by 17.

 

I guess if I had my way I would have a place just for me that had a master bedroom of at least 12 by 15 or 16 and one secondary bedroom of at least 130 square feet.

 

 

Edited July 27, 20204 yr by Toddguy

4 hours ago, PoshSteve said:

absolutely foaming at the mouth for foreclosures to start up again

 

Yep.  The low interest rate environment has pushed the hedge funds into real estate in order to create a bond-like product. 

 

4 hours ago, jjakucyk said:

If you're not already "in" then it's very difficult to get started, which shouldn't be happening anywhere in Ohio.  

 

Yeah I'd be rich right now if I had pulled the trigger on a few buys that I thought were too risky back in 2013-15. 

26 minutes ago, Toddguy said:

As far as bedrooms go, I have an absolutely tiny one now(the other bedroom was opened up as a sort of open space with added storage). I think that 10 or 11 by 12 or so would be the smallest I would want for a secondary bedroom. ten by ten or something like that is just too small to me for a bedroom. I would want a minimum of 130 sqft. for a secondary bedroom(if i had the money to get another place that is).  I would say 12 by fifteen would be the smallest I would want for a master bedroom(and I live alone). The current living room here is about 13 by 17.

 

My house was built in 1914 and is technically a 3-bedroom but the smallest bedroom (the one I use as an office) is only 9x7.  It has a window, though, so the auditor calls it a bedroom.  It doesn't have a closet.  A previous owner tried to have the auditor stop calling it a bedroom in order to get a tax reduction but the effort failed. 

 

 

 

 

11 hours ago, Toddguy said:

I wonder what people here really think optimum house sizes and room sizes are for them.

How many rooms are needed? What size of room? 

 

As far as bedrooms go, I have an absolutely tiny one now(the other bedroom was opened up as a sort of open space with added storage). I think that 10 or 11 by 12 or so would be the smallest I would want for a secondary bedroom. ten by ten or something like that is just too small to me for a bedroom. I would want a minimum of 130 sqft. for a secondary bedroom(if i had the money to get another place that is).  I would say 12 by fifteen would be the smallest I would want for a master bedroom(and I live alone). The current living room here is about 13 by 17.

 

I guess if I had my way I would have a place just for me that had a master bedroom of at least 12 by 15 or 16 and one secondary bedroom of at least 130 square feet.

 

 

 

Our master is 16 x 14 and is plenty big enough. Could go a little smaller and still be comfortable. We have a 16 by 12 room that we use as a TV room/office and a 14 by 9 room that is a guest room. They are both plenty big enough. Then we have a 15 x 13 bedroom that is used as a workout room and a "bonus" room that is 17 x 12. Our living room is 15 x 15. We have too many rooms. On the other hand, we only have one full bath. I would really enjoy another one. That's what happens when your house is over 100 years old.

1 hour ago, DEPACincy said:

 

Our master is 16 x 14 and is plenty big enough. Could go a little smaller and still be comfortable. We have a 16 by 12 room that we use as a TV room/office and a 14 by 9 room that is a guest room. They are both plenty big enough. Then we have a 15 x 13 bedroom that is used as a workout room and a "bonus" room that is 17 x 12. Our living room is 15 x 15. We have too many rooms. On the other hand, we only have one full bath. I would really enjoy another one. That's what happens when your house is over 100 years old.

My place is only about 650 square feet but is big enough for one person. The 13 by 17 living room helps. I just don't see how people really need houses that are 3,500 square feet, 6,000 square feet. Even if you need the extra rooms for home offices, fitness rooms, guest bedrooms, etc. those rooms do not have to be that big and can be on the smaller side. Why does every room like these need to be 15 by 20 feet? People tend to not "make the most" of the spaces they have anyway IMO.  Also rooms can be multi-functional.

 

How many people are in your household? And yeah at least a half bath or extra bathroom would be nice,  even in some one-bedroom apartments- just so you can avoid the "captive bath" scenario.  And a family of four or five all trying to utilize one bathroom on a weekday morning?...nah.

Edited July 27, 20204 yr by Toddguy

We just did a reno on our second floor to add a third bedroom and second full bath. We cut into our oversized master which was 13'x18' to add a 8'x8' en-suite bath and 7'x8' walk-in-closet. The resulting master is still comfortable at ~12"x13'. The second floor has somewhat small bedrooms now by today's standards, but we needed the extra bed and bath.  It's kind of ironic the extra bedroom could hurt resale, though the upstairs is way more usable for families, and much more modern, but that is today's market.

13 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

My house was built in 1914 and is technically a 3-bedroom but the smallest bedroom (the one I use as an office) is only 9x7.  It has a window, though, so the auditor calls it a bedroom.  It doesn't have a closet.  A previous owner tried to have the auditor stop calling it a bedroom in order to get a tax reduction but the effort failed. 

 

 

 

 

Why did the effort fail? You should be able to appeal this to get it changed if you have proper documentation. If anything, you can knock out a wall and solve the problem that way. 

11 minutes ago, Mendo said:

We just did a reno on our second floor to add a third bedroom and second full bath. We cut into our oversized master which was 13'x18' to add a 8'x8' en-suite bath and 7'x8' walk-in-closet. The resulting master is still comfortable at ~12"x13'. The second floor has somewhat small bedrooms now by today's standards, but we needed the extra bed and bath.  It's kind of ironic the extra bedroom could hurt resale, though the upstairs is way more usable for families, and much more modern, but that is today's market.

I never quite understood the need for a massive, over sized bedroom, even a master, if you have a good sized walk in closet.  What exactly are people doing in these huge bedrooms...playing touch football.  With a nice walk in closet all I need in a bedroom is a bed, nightstand and a smallish chair to put my socks and shoes and and throw clothes on at night if I am too tired to hang things up.

1 hour ago, Toddguy said:

My place is only about 650 square feet but is big enough for one person. The 13 by 17 living room helps. I just don't see how people really need houses that are 3,500 square feet, 6,000 square feet. Even if you need the extra rooms for home offices, fitness rooms, guest bedrooms, etc. those rooms do not have to be that big and can be on the smaller side. Why does every room like these need to be 15 by 20 feet? People tend to not "make the most" of the spaces they have anyway IMO.  Also rooms can be multi-functional.

 

How many people are in your household? And yeah at least a half bath or extra bathroom would be nice,  even in some one-bedroom apartments- just so you can avoid the "captive bath" scenario.  And a family of four or five all trying to utilize one bathroom on a weekday morning?...nah.

 

I lived in a 450 square foot apartment as a single person for awhile. It wasn't too bad. There are two of us in our house, but we plan on having two kids down the road and do not want to move again. We did not want a house this big though. The problem is, so many of these old houses in Cincinnati neighborhoods are giant. We really wanted to be in our neighborhood and we got outbid on two smaller houses so we jumped on this one even though it was more house than we preferred. We do love it though.

3 hours ago, DEPACincy said:

 

I lived in a 450 square foot apartment as a single person for awhile. It wasn't too bad. There are two of us in our house, but we plan on having two kids down the road and do not want to move again. We did not want a house this big though. The problem is, so many of these old houses in Cincinnati neighborhoods are giant. We really wanted to be in our neighborhood and we got outbid on two smaller houses so we jumped on this one even though it was more house than we preferred. We do love it though.

 

Are there side-by-side doubles in Cincinnati?    The house will be big, but your tenant will pay your mortgage for you.   

 

My Cleveland house is 4200 square feet, and my half is slightly bigger than half because I have the attic finished.   

4 minutes ago, Cleburger said:

Are there side-by-side doubles in Cincinnati?

 

You're much more likely to find over/under duplexes here from 1900-1930, or fourplexes with two units on each floor from 1930-1960. 

37 minutes ago, Cleburger said:

 

Are there side-by-side doubles in Cincinnati?    The house will be big, but your tenant will pay your mortgage for you.   

 

My Cleveland house is 4200 square feet, and my half is slightly bigger than half because I have the attic finished.   

Most of the Cleveland doubles I have seen have been top bottom,  where have they had the side by side doubles?

4 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Why did the effort fail? You should be able to appeal this to get it changed if you have proper documentation. If anything, you can knock out a wall and solve the problem that way. 

 

I don't know.  The cover sheet for the complaint is on the auditor's website but not the details of the complaint.  Our property taxes will no doubt be going up after the next reassessment so maybe I'll stop being lazy and go down there and challenge it.