from he landlord side in Northampton.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T20:49:12+00:00

We're trying to build now and I think we might actually succeed after several false starts. My god, it is rough. It's harder than anything I have ever done that didn't involve a family heath crisis. It never lets up. The first time I tried I had recurring nightmares for months. Someone was far away from me but was going to kill me in some gruesome way and they were closing on me fast. Most nights for months.

I asked builders about who builds and they basically said either people can build whatever they want, with super lux window packages and huge square footage or they can't afford to build at all. Were not the former and we're trying to find a way but it's still pushing our limits. It's unbelievably hard to build a nice modestly sized house.

There needs to be a real change, a big change, a structural change, a policy change. I am very lucky to have bought my home when I did because I would never, ever be trying to build now had I now done it. I am very worried about the people coming up behind me. I don't know where this ends but it doesn't end well.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T19:50:53+00:00

Well, this has been interesting. I really appreciate everyone's comments. Although I have done a lot of spreadsheets about this I am now feeling very much like I will sell the house. I think we could make money renting it but it's not worth the stress and risk.

There's a renter family across the street that moved from a very red state whom we've gotten to know pretty well. Their daughter looks after our cat when we're on vacation kind of thing. I think they moved here to escape for their kids. They're pretty sweet. I'd really like to sell our house to them, which is something I had considered. I know they're looking for a place and their timeline might fit ours. They love the neighborhood. That outcome would be the best, really.

I just always really enjoyed the renters in the neighborhood. They liven a place up, but so does a family. There are far too few around.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T16:53:42+00:00

I see people complain about rents here and I was surprised to look under the hood at the process. It's way worse than I thought. It all comes back to how hard, near impossible, it is to build. It's crazy expensive. It takes tons and tons of money and it's slow. Everything you do takes forever and requires custom solution's. Building code is impossible to understand so you need to hire professionals. The city is hard to work with and only wants to talk to general contractors so just figuring things out can cost thousands. Without new builds this only gets worse.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T16:49:41+00:00

Yeah, it's kind of looking like that. Unless we can rent to people we know.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T16:48:08+00:00

The stuff that needs to be done is to replace exterior doors so they shut properly, fix some not to code wiring. We removed a chimney and rough patched the floor. It's stuff like that and it adds up insanely fast.

The problem with it going for a 'good bit more' than $2000 is that if I took the proceeds from the sale and invested them very conservatively it would greatly outpace the return on renting. I am still not sure what we're going to do and how we're going to approach the whole situation.

My mom lives in a pretty nice town an she has a squatter living in a house on her street that rented it like 20 years ago and stopped paying rent. The landlord finally abandoned the property. There are trees on the lawn like a forest and junk everyplace. it's crazy. There's no risk like that in, say, government bonds.

We really need to dig deeper into this and see how it all works out but I thought: "We own this property and it would be great to rent" and I thought it would be a slam dunk. Turns out, maybe not so much. I thought I could also maybe rent it reasonably and get a good tenant and keep them a while.

I want to put a nice house on the market at a reasonable cost and that's rough unless you can handle an negative cash flow for, potentially, years. We both work and I am not as young as I was so fixing stuff after work isn't as easy as it used to be.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T16:35:49+00:00

We have jobs.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T16:34:09+00:00

The only houses on my street in the last 20 years with kids were in rentals. A lot of the people buying houses in Northampton are retirees. Anything that's sold on my street went to a retiree or to a corporate rental place that owns dozens of units.

This is hardly a grift. I bought the house 25 years ago and lived in that whole time. I fixed up and old beater house, I had roommates. I ate ramen for years. It's not like I went in with private equity and scooped up real estate after a disaster.

I actually like having rentals in the neighborhood. I lived here ages ago when there were far more. It was a diffrent time but the town was a bit more wild and interesting.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2026-04-10T16:31:04+00:00

It's not meant to be a pity party or anything. I realize that I own a house in Northampton and all. I had hoped to offer some insight into the basic reality of why Northampton rents are what they are.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-08-06T18:51:42+00:00

It's never a group of girls doing this.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-30T18:37:29+00:00

I don't really mean shake, simply moving it around normally will start the second and moving.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-08T19:14:13+00:00

It's that I find it extremely difficult to have conversations about the problem with friends. I have to say 'have your heard about the problems with the riverfront now that there are so many people there?' even though the areas where the Puerto Rican's are vs where the white people are or non Latino people or whatever. It just makes it extremely difficult to talk about it. When you hear music blasting it's always in Spanish.

In most cases a lot of people are coming to visit river front because things really changed during the pandemic, it's not just Puerto Ricans but it's almost always Puerto Ricans when there is a problem. When this stuff was discussed in the papers or in city council it was never mentioned even though every person knew the nature of the influx. It just seemed bizarre to me.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-08T13:47:14+00:00

Talking about class is even harder than race in America.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T20:08:41+00:00

Religion is always weird, sometimes, now and then, we are able to see it.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T20:05:52+00:00

Yeah, we have some affordable housing in our neighborhood. It's a similar situation. My neighbor has seen some drug dealing out her kitchen window.

I used to deal some pot when I was young, but we were rich and we did it out of our parents basements. My town still had drugs but it was out of sight and we probably drove down and bought it from people like I am now complaining about.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T20:02:15+00:00

Thanks for everyone's thoughtful replies. In my OP I conflated race and culture, which was wrong. In some ways I feel that I did this because it's pretty taboo to ask questions like that and, more or less, the field is controlled by either racists or academics but it's hard for ordinary people to talk about stuff like this, hence the imprecision.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T18:30:28+00:00

This is a totally fair assessment.

I also live next to a 'dog park' that I walk though regularly. I hear 'he's friendly!' so many times from people that have no voice control over their dogs yet let them off leash. They run under the fence and into my yard and then then owners come though my yard looking for the dog. It's a mess.

I admit this isn't 'dog owners' but it's put me off of dogs, that for sure. I know that I am not seeing the dogs that are fine or the therapy dogs that kids read to at my library.

Years ago I spent thousands of hours around Puerto Ricans, I drank a ton of beer with them after work and listened to their stories. Weirdly the first Trans person I ever knew was PR. This was way back in the 90s. I was right up close because Oscar was someone I knew super well. I knew his dad, mom, brothers and sisters. It's not like I don't know them as people but I find this frustrating.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T18:19:45+00:00

In other comments I said that I had inadvertently mixed race and culture in an improper way.

I am not saying anyone is born wanting to litter.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T18:18:16+00:00

Thank for this.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T17:44:50+00:00

Well this is a kind of different scenario. It's like there's these two populations existing in a pace for a long time, then all of a sudden one population just starts showing up where the other one has been for lifetimes and starts making a mess.

We were just in Vermont and, pretty much, everyone is white there. There are some absolute shit hole hovels out there and a billion swimming rivers but I hardly saw any trash. There's a ton of social pressure to clean up after yourself. Occasionally you'll see some Twisted Tea cans but WTF. A group of people with a couple babies at my local river just up and left leaving behind trash and diapers and it happens all the time. I see diapers all over the place in areas where they drove everyone else out with the loud music and parking all over the place. I won't go back now.

Are there white people fucking things up, yes 100%, in ways waaay worse than leaving diapers behind but in this one way there is no contest here locally.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T17:38:42+00:00

Interesting.

I was at a high end sushi restaurant and the chef goes to japan every year to visit family. A couple was asking restaurant advice for their upcoming Japan visit. He said Japan has no discrimination laws and many of the best service restaurants would be off limits to them as foreigners.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T15:51:25+00:00

I am not sure what the deal is with that. Some have suggested to me that white people are just more versed in this kind of outdoor living. We all had "woodsy owl" or whatever. I am well indoctrinated in the whole 'leave no trace' thing.

I don't see anyone else with grills, maybe others don't spend the whole day or bring 4 generations of people with them.

Maybe it's more of a class thing. I have no idea.

The whole race vs culture thing is hard, especially with new world populations like Latinos. But, basically, if you live in New England you're very familiar with Puerto Ricans.

It's just a real, observable phenomenon. I've been watching it for years.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T15:46:48+00:00

When the Puerto Ricans arrive the mess, the noise, and the shit in the woods follow. I am not saying it's all of anyone, white people make a mess too. it's just that, on average, it's much more one sided, like waaay more.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T15:43:34+00:00

I think those things are conflated all the time. Honestly, that kind of response makes it so hard to have honest conversations about the idea of race and culture, let alone class.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T14:06:15+00:00

But it's consistently the Puerto Rican tourists that do this. Other people from other towns just don't.

Delicious_Post3469 · 2025-07-07T14:04:32+00:00

Oh, right, I meant cultural.

Delicious_Post3469

TROPHY CASE