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Savvycat, I'm glad you fixed the leak under the sink.
Wasvilla, congratulations on the house sale!
Ron Van, I'm glad you were able to get a good deal on your house.
Eddie, I don't think I've ever had black walnuts.

Spicoli, you're right about some places being good for selling and others not. Houses in my area were selling dirt cheap. My late friend's property- which was 4 lots with two houses, a workshop, greenhouse, garden, etc sold for less than $25k. A house down the street sold for $3k. My friend's ex bought a house on his street for $11k more recently. That was after prices went up more. Granted, the house needs a lot of work and they had to clear out the former tenant's massive porn collection and the place needs to be re-wired.

We sold our house in California back in the 80s. Or, I suppose I should say, we had a real estate sell it and somehow they skipped the part of getting my parents' permission on the final sale price. To this day my mother gripes that the agent sold the house for waaaay less than my parents said they would sell the house for-- less than they had paid for it. We moved and when we arrived here we were told the house had sold but they had not been asked to sign off on it and the deal was done. I don't know if that was legal or not.

Meanwhile, we are still sitting in the heat. Can't get the fan on the outside unit to keep turning so the compressor won't stay on. Not sure if the fan is bad or if its an electrical problem.
 
We really lucked out, I think. We sold our California house in July 2020 for a huge profit (I bought it in 1989). We were able to put a significant down payment on a house in a lesser cost state. We got a good interest rate for a small mortgage on the new place but I made a huge mistake...My wife was on the deed but the loan was strictly in my name. If something were to happen to me, there is a federal survivors rule that says the bank should refinance the mortgage for the survivor but this didn't make me feel very good. We ended up refinancing the mortgage a year ago to get her on the mortgage. The interesting thing is that the interest rate had dropped to 2.9%! This is the lowest I remember it being in my lifetime. It actually was a Blessing that it happened that way. I remember mortgage interest rates being as high as 18% and 6% was considered good in normal times.
Yea the rates are crazy still. I got 2.75% on our refi. I remember our first place. Stood in line all night for a state program for first time buyers. It was 1985. We got the loan, 11-7/8%. We were so excited.
 
Aaand. AC stopped working again. Compressor and fan won't turn on and I have no idea why. Internal HVAC fan is blowing but external is not and its 91° in the coldest part of the house.
Check the circuit breaker and thermostat (mine has batteries in it) first... those capacitors are easy to change... just make a note of where every wire goes... some of the Asian capacitors they sell these days lucky to last a year... if you lived closer, I'd bring my capacitor tester over...
Been 80's and 90 here lately in N.W. Ohio... just under 70 max predicted for next few days... good working outside weather... we got almost none of the rain they had been predicting lately... which is fine...
Some of my grass is knee high now... guess it's time for the first mowing... I leave it long over the winter to insulate the ground... and longish most of the time to keep it thick and healthy and soft for the kids to fall on...
 
Yeah, it's amazing what homes can go for these days.

It's all where you live, but people from CA move here and buy land because my House on an Acre is less than half the cost of their cookie cutter where you can reach out the bathroom window and knock on your neighbor's house.

The cheapest VA 30 year loan now is 77% interest at Navy Federal while conventional loans are 85% interest... I'm at 37%, so I have no choice but to sit here if I want to move and build elsewhere.

Isn't the 18% you talk about the Carter years? I remember people talking about those rates. In actual terms, 18 percent for a 30 year loan is 442%

Banks are ALL criminals.
It's amazing how much home prices can go down and up these days... my home went down about 80% to what I paid for it 42 years ago... now going back up again... but in this Democrats run city with 1 1/2 murders weekly and poison water, it's rising slowly now...

Back in my home loan days 45 - 50 years ago I was paying 8 - 10 1/2%... had heard of 6% earlier... never dreamed it would ever be around 3%...

During Carter years, was selling real estate as a Realtor... remember bank mortgage rates at 21%... IF they would give one at all... was glad to get a land contract at 10.5%...
Savings CDs paying 14% interest...

"Banks are criminals" ??? Would you be interested in lending out hundreds of thousands of dollars at 2.75% ? To the types of borrowers seen these days?

A few years ago, Ted Danson sold his home that looked like mine on Malibu Beach for $16Million... his lot was even smaller than mine... looked like a foot between his roof edge and his neighbors' on both sides... don't think he had an unattached 3 car garage like mine, looked like they parked in the basement... can have a steep driveway down to the basement where you don't get snow...

My contract for electricity at 4.9c just ran out... company wants 13.7c now... switching back to local utility at 5.4c... outside offers from 6c to 20c...

Nat. gas at 33c... haven't looked to see yet when that expires... offers now are 55c - $2... low offers are monthly variable rate... which can be scary... they stay low over summer, but as heating season comes back around, they can soar on shortages... A few years ago had gas jump from 33c to $1.20 without warning... I had checked rates online and called them when it looked like others were raising their rates... but there had been no clue they were going to charge me more after the month of usage... complained to the local gas utility handling the billing, but that fell on deaf ears...

Local electric co. had just been busted for paying Ohio politicians $60Million in bribes for favorable legislation... may be why they are trying to look good by not cranking up rates at the moment...
 
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Had a good laugh earlier because Mom walked into the hallway and Gravy Jones was on the drawers next to the door. He got right up in her ear and yowled as loudly as he could (which is something he does to everyone). She turned and yowled back in his face very loudly. He put his ears back and backed away. My brother came running out of his room to see if she fell.
There's a lady kinda looks like Audrey Hepburn comes into local casino so may check her out. Inspired me to watch her ancient movie Breakfast at Tiffany's last night for the first time. <Spoiler Alert!> Her character treats the cat as horribly as she does all the men around her. In one scene she bats the no name cat toward the closet and it grabs the lattice strips of the door and hangs there. Cat likes to jump down on people's heads and shoulders from shelving. Reading between innocent lines of the story looks like she's really a prostitute that takes advantage of 20 - 30 ultra rich men a month and dumps them daily while thinking she's a proper 'duchess'. George Peppard's character is a less hidden gigolo who thinks he's a writer. Mickey Rooney wasn't recognizable as a Japanese guy. Buddy Ebsen plays a doctor mistaken for a private detective..
 
My breaker is on and the inside unit is working fine. The compressor turns on but it shuts off because the fan won't turn. Inside fan is working but the one in the unit outside is the issue it seems. Unless something connected to the fan motor in there is messing up.

The capacitors were changed already. It's frustrating bc its so damn hot. Thermostat is on and shows the temperature. It was trying to tell the outside unit to turn on but the damn fan won't turn. Got it turning briefly but then it stopped. So I don't know if it is not getting enough power to turn or if it is too rusty/weak. I guess I will have to call the repair guy and see if he will deign to come out to check.
 
Put $100,000 loan into this calculator, 30 years at 2.75%... See the $46,900 in interest on that $100,000?
A mortgage is worth it for a couple that wants a quick real home for their family...

I always paid my mortgages off pretty fast... during the first years of a mortgage, only a tiny % of the monthly payment goes toward the principal... the rest goes to interest... add 11 times that tiny % to each payment made and you're actually making a year's payments each month! Since most people's income rises yearly, it's not too hard to keep doing that or close to it until the mortgage is paid off really early!
Of course, banks/lending companies don't like people to realize that. Once I had a company try to charge me a big early payoff fee, but it wasn't in Jimmy Carter's 'Truth in Lending Statement' that accompanied the Mortgage Note, so my Lawyer told them to drop it or he'd have a Federal Court Order on their desk within 48 hours. So they did. (not to be confused with the new Ministry of Truth)
 
Yeah, it's a sliding scale, but when they make the made up out of thin air rates, they assume and hope people will carry it for 30 years. If I pay off my House in 10 years, it will end up being 11% interest instead of 37%...

The Left is the party of Homelessness, though, that's why the rates are going way up and it's why they parroted the $15 an hour minimum wage. People working and wanting the $15 didn't think for a second that their employers couldn't pay that and they would be laid off.

They also didn't factor in that their landlords were going to jack up the rent. If they were locked into a mortgage, that's good as long as they weren't chopped down to part time. Part time and laid off people is why there is massive amounts of homeless in tents in Seattle, LA, Portland etc... All Far Left cities. Those tents weren't there before the $15, and NOT ONE politician on the Left said anything besides good things about it because they are all Millionaires and will never feel the impact of their policies.
 
My breaker is on and the inside unit is working fine.
The fan bearings may be dry and seizing up... there's also a contactor/relay outside that the thermostat wiring tells to pull up and turn the outside fan and compressor on... sometimes it can also be pulled up manually with a finger...

My friend has a neighbor that is a HVAC guy that doesn't charge much, but he's usually too fat/drunk to want to go out and do anything...
 
The Left is the party of Homelessness, though, that's why the rates are going way up and it's why they parroted the $15 an hour minimum wage. People working and wanting the $15 didn't think for a second that their employers couldn't pay that and they would be laid off.

They also didn't factor in that their landlords were going to jack up the rent. If they were locked into a mortgage, that's good as long as they weren't chopped down to part time. Part time and laid off people is why there is massive amounts of homeless in tents in Seattle, LA, Portland etc... All Far Left cities. Those tents weren't there before the $15, and NOT ONE politician on the Left said anything besides good things about it because they are all Millionaires and will never feel the impact of their policies.
Interest rates going up because dufus Feds think that's how you slow inflation, but that's for normal times, not the insanity going on now! Raising rates takes away more spending money, causing less products to be bought, and still more companies to fail on top of the tens of thousands of companies that just failed! And fewer companies/products made, means still higher prices for any remaining products in shortage! And Jokementia Bribery says raising taxes on companies will cut inflation, not realizing companies will have to add the higher taxes into their prices! It's a vicious circle not understood by the Left that thinks money is something that comes in the mailbox weekly or monthly for a lifetime...

True, when wages go up quickly EVERYTHING ELSE also has to go up quickly! And/or people lose their jobs.

I bought a '77 new car for $5K... later looked to buy a new '81 car of same model... then it was $15K !!! And that was with a V6... not the V8 I got earlier... gasoline price increase had killed off demand for V8's, so hard to get one, barely being made, although in sales literature... V8 making employees prolly laid off, plant shut down... I've experienced severe inflation before!
 
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I haven't got an explanation from any economist how raising interest rates will curb inflation when everything is sky high in price. The Fed isn't supposed to do what the Executive branch wants, but Powell is doing exactly what Obama wants while he did exactly what Trump wanted and everything was priced great including record low Mortgages.

Lumber went up insanely like we all know, but that's fabricated, completely made up by the lumber industry and the major players like Lowe's and HD. It doesn't exist because the lumber yards were staffed just fine during Covid.

The Left does think money comes in the mailbox. In '20, we had a Dem. Governor that locked everything down except fast food, all restaurants were closed and people got checks to not work. That isn't still happening, but the kids don't want to work. The Pizza Hut on the main drag doesn't have dine in because they don't have any staffing. The sign on their door says "Will hire Veterans / Seniors." They don't want any kids that don't know what work is.
 
I'm not on "The Left" but I've gotten money in the mailbox before. Cash. For something as easy as completing surveys, no less.

Every contractor/skilled tradesman I've talked to tells me it's hard to find help, as in people who are willing to show up and work. I'm surprised by this, and kinda wish I was 17 now instead of 20 years ago because I remember it being really hard to get a job back then. I used to put in applications at 50 different places before I'd get a single interview anywhere, and the jobs I finally ended up getting were usually pretty horrible. And this remained true even after I'd gotten some experience both as a contractor's assistant and installing/uninstalling shows at an art gallery.
 
I've gotten emails promising money for doing a 5 minute survey... but the surveys went on forever and never any money...
 
Lumber went up insanely like we all know, but that's fabricated, completely made up by the lumber industry and the major players like Lowe's and HD. It doesn't exist because the lumber yards were staffed just fine during Covid.
The lumber industry was also shut down by the plandemic... I'm talking tree cutters, factories, etc... not just the home stores... plus with a Dim Govt now, those industries have to fight to be allowed to cut the tree huggers' trees...
 
The fan bearings may be dry and seizing up... there's also a contactor/relay outside that the thermostat wiring tells to pull up and turn the outside fan and compressor on... sometimes it can also be pulled up manually with a finger...

My friend has a neighbor that is a HVAC guy that doesn't charge much, but he's usually too fat/drunk to want to go out and do anything...
When I had the AC set to Cool or Auto it is telling the compressor and fan to turn on because I hear the compressor and saw the fan trying to move. But it short-cycled because the fan wouldn't do more than jostle a little. Now, could be the capacitor for it is defective & not giving enough power. Since it looks rusty, I think it might be the motor though.

I've been calling the regular AC guy (the one who doesn't return my calls) and leaving messages. I've asked my friend to call them bc he actually gets callbacks. I stopped using their service bc they never call me back. I don't want to come off as a Karen, but its boiling in here.

I had the same experience with surveys. Neverending and often they want me to buy something or subscribe to something in order to complete. So its scams.

I did once get $10 for winning one of the scratch-offs at Publisher's Clearing House. I play the games there sometimes out of boredom.
 
When I had the AC set to Cool or Auto it is telling the compressor and fan to turn on because I hear the compressor and saw the fan trying to move. But it short-cycled because the fan wouldn't do more than jostle a little. Now, could be the capacitor for it is defective & not giving enough power. Since it looks rusty, I think it might be the motor though.
I had the same problem a couple of weeks ago. If I went outside and pushed the fan blade with a long screwdriver, the fan would start and run but it seemed a little slow, nonetheless, it would cool the house that way until the next time it cycled off...then the fan would need another push to start. Not very convenient.

I looked around for a new fan and capacitor but found the local HVAC places won't sell parts to a homeowner. I was getting ready to go out of state for a short term job so I didn't have time to spare and just called a repair person to do the job.

They came to my house armed with a condenser fan motor and capacitor which cost a little over $200 and installed it. While he was there, he checked the charge and operation of the unit. The total bill was $530.00 for an hour of work. I wouldn't be afraid to do that job myself if I had the time to order the parts and have them shipped to me. All the work is easy to get to on the condenser unit outside. No freon lines need to be opened to change the condenser fan.

If you have a capacitor checker, you could just change the capacitor if it's bad but if that doesn't fix it and then you need to get a motor as well, you're looking at a long time without A/C. That's why I told the guy to just order a motor and capacitor and be done with it.
 
When I had the AC set to Cool or Auto it is telling the compressor and fan to turn on because I hear the compressor and saw the fan trying to move. But it short-cycled because the fan wouldn't do more than jostle a little. Now, could be the capacitor for it is defective & not giving enough power. Since it looks rusty, I think it might be the motor though.
On my old house, I had a "Cool Cap" installed on my Condenser fan. It's a big plastic cover that looks like a garbage can lid that is hinged and flips up when the fan blows it but then shuts when the fan is off. The purpose is to keep rain and other debris from getting in the fan blades and motor. It seems like a good idea to me but nobody will sell a Cool Cap to a homeowner.

I think they are afraid a "Dumb" homeowner will drill into the condenser coils or something while trying to install it.
 
Ron Van, the new capacitors should be working if they aren't defective. I've called again but regular AC guy still won't call back and the other guy is still in jail. There's a thunderstorm right now- which is cooling things down a little at least. My friend gave me the name of another AC service that didn't show up when I googled. Guy used to live down my road. Said he's booked up today but can send someone out tomorrow. I had to text him the address with my cellphone and hope it went through. It took me awhile to figure out how to add new contacts to text bc I almost never text.

I hope they get the message and can look at it. Still don't know why the one main service refuses to callback. I'm worried it might be hard to find replacement parts since the model number isn't anywhere on the unit.
 
I clicked on this icon seen above but didn't see anyone over there to join?
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I baked and ate a potato with butter and crumbled bacon. I microwaved the potato for 3 minutes then placed it in a 400°oven for 15 minutes or so. To take advantage of the oven being hot I made 3 two-ingredient biscuits to bake along w/potato. I ate 1½ buttered biscuits with strawberry preserves. As my wife did before me (she picked it up from my mom) I buttered all 3 biscuits while hot. I'll have the other 1½ biscuits tomorrow prolly toasted and topped w/syrup.
 
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