Things that are unlike other things

impossibletospell:

The 9 br 6 ba 2 kitchen monster house (failed gentrification ftw) next to me is for sale super cheap. Like the mortgage would be about $1, 200/mo. Someone start a housing co-op bf some slumlord fills it with bros. I will help you.

@Katy—

It’s got 6 cars worth of parking and a decent-sized fenced backyard with mature pecan trees, and lots of nice flower & herb garden. It’s kinda broken into a downstairs 3 br/2 ba apartment, and a 2nd and 3rd floor mega apartment. They’re selling it as 7 br altogether  but adding an ‘office’ and a ‘library’ that were originally also bedrooms. There’s a two story porch and marble fireplaces and Jacuzzi tubs and shit too, so folks could have the Nicest Ever Punk House. 

I got the flier out of their box thingie out of curiosity. There used to be a nice enough middle aged yuppie-hippy couple living there and running a free school, but they had to move to NC to be closer to family, so the place has been empty for a while and they’re super eager to get rid of it.

It was built by a developer who bought a little house like mine and ‘renovated’ it into a three story triplex without telling the city (at a time when the city paid even less attention to this neighborhood), then tried to ask for retroactive forgiveness-rezoning, and the city was like ‘Nope, congrats on your single-family house.’ They compromised with the next owners and now it’s zoned as a duplex. 

L and I got nosy last night and dorked around with a mortgage calculator; they’re asking $205,000, and with current crazy-low interest rates (3.5%), and current Athens property taxes (~1.33%), with good-not-great credit, the mortgage payment on a 30-yr mortgage would be about $1,150/mo. Which, with like 6 people…hella cheap.

On my FB, Tzvi linked to a credit co-op that specifically offers financing to people starting housing co-ops, and you/they’d need someone…a lawyer…who’s into making rad community stuff happen (cough cough)…to draw up a non-profit agreement that I think would basically mean the co-op owns the house, everyone who lives there owns the co-op together, and to create a binding contract on how to transfer ownership when people move in and out, what happens if someone flakes out, etc.

IDEK what you’d have to do about the down payment—20% is standard, less is possible depending on the bank and seller’s willingness to work with you. 10% would be a little over 3K each, which is a ton of money, but not for buying a house? And you could write the by-laws so that the longer you stayed, the more of your downpayment you got back on move-out? 

Ok seriously I want someone to do this so I can live next door to them. Sorry if I said a bunch of shit that’s really obvious. 

impossibletospell:

The 9 br 6 ba 2 kitchen monster house (failed gentrification ftw) next to me is for sale super cheap. Like the mortgage would be about $1, 200/mo. Someone start a housing co-op bf some slumlord fills it with bros. I will help you.

@Katy—

It’s got 6 cars worth of parking and a decent-sized fenced backyard with mature pecan trees, and lots of nice flower & herb garden. It’s kinda broken into a downstairs 3 br/2 ba apartment, and a 2nd and 3rd floor mega apartment. They’re selling it as 7 br altogether  but adding an ‘office’ and a ‘library’ that were originally also bedrooms. There’s a two story porch and marble fireplaces and Jacuzzi tubs and shit too, so folks could have the Nicest Ever Punk House. 

I got the flier out of their box thingie out of curiosity. There used to be a nice enough middle aged yuppie-hippy couple living there and running a free school, but they had to move to NC to be closer to family, so the place has been empty for a while and they’re super eager to get rid of it.

It was built by a developer who bought a little house like mine and ‘renovated’ it into a three story triplex without telling the city (at a time when the city paid even less attention to this neighborhood), then tried to ask for retroactive forgiveness-rezoning, and the city was like ‘Nope, congrats on your single-family house.’ They compromised with the next owners and now it’s zoned as a duplex. 

L and I got nosy last night and dorked around with a mortgage calculator; they’re asking $205,000, and with current crazy-low interest rates (3.5%), and current Athens property taxes (~1.33%), with good-not-great credit, the mortgage payment on a 30-yr mortgage would be about $1,150/mo. Which, with like 6 people…hella cheap.

On my FB, Tzvi linked to a credit co-op that specifically offers financing to people starting housing co-ops, and you/they’d need someone…a lawyer…who’s into making rad community stuff happen (cough cough)…to draw up a non-profit agreement that I think would basically mean the co-op owns the house, everyone who lives there owns the co-op together, and to create a binding contract on how to transfer ownership when people move in and out, what happens if someone flakes out, etc.

IDEK what you’d have to do about the down payment—20% is standard, less is possible depending on the bank and seller’s willingness to work with you. 10% would be a little over 3K each, which is a ton of money, but not for buying a house? And you could write the by-laws so that the longer you stayed, the more of your downpayment you got back on move-out? 

Ok seriously I want someone to do this so I can live next door to them. Sorry if I said a bunch of shit that’s really obvious. 

impossibletospell:

This whole shebang we call the LGBT rights movement started because a few trans women looked at each other and said ‘Fuck it, let’s punch some cops.’ 

On the whole, it’s been a surprisingly effective strategy.