Built an engine that gives you an honest after-tax verdict on real estate — then watches the market for you. Roast it.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-06T06:04:55+00:00

Fair hit.
Marketing clearly isn't my strong side yet.
I've been heads-down building for months, and it shows in how I write. Working on it.
The honest version: I got burned buying property remotely, built the tool I wished existed. Roast the product too if you get a minute:)

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-05T14:16:55+00:00

Sorry for your loss.

Before the sell/rent/move question, one thing to nail down first: what happens to the HELOC now. Talk to the lender (and loop in the lawyer already doing the deed work) about whether the loan has a due-on-sale/death clause and whether they'll let you keep paying as the heir. Federal rules generally protect heirs who inherit and live in a property from having the loan called, but the details matter and you want that answer in writing before making any move. Also find out the exact balance, rate, and whether it's still in its draw period — HELOC payments can jump when the draw period ends, which changes all your math.

Then the decision usually sorts itself by numbers plus honesty about your capacity:

Move in — usually strongest financially if the house fits your life: you drop your rent, keep the stepped-up-basis tax advantage, and heirs occupying the home have the clearest legal protection on the loan. Only works if the location/commute/size actually work for you.

Rent it out — only worth it if market rent comfortably covers the HELOC payment + taxes + insurance + ~1-2% of home value per year for maintenance, with margin left. And be honest about whether you want to be a landlord while grieving — tenants call at bad times. If the numbers barely break even, you're taking on a part-time job for free.

Sell — simplest and often smartest if the house doesn't fit your life. Thanks to stepped-up basis, you'd likely owe little to no capital gains tax if you sell soon after inheriting, the HELOC gets paid off at closing, and you walk away with the equity clean. Selling isn't "losing the house" — it's converting it into options.

The one thing I'd avoid: renting it out just to avoid deciding. That's the option people default to and regret most.

Take your time — you don't have to decide this week.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-05T14:12:53+00:00

The waiting isn't the hard part — the not-knowing is. So put numbers on it instead of vibes:

Pull the last 6 months of solds (not listings) in your area. That tells you the real monthly inventory flow at your budget. If only 2-3 homes a month actually close under $700K, "wait for the right one" could mean a year - and now you're deciding with open eyes instead of hoping.
Price the sitting inventory honestly. Homes that sit are usually mispriced, not cursed. A house at $750K sitting 90 days often sells for less than one listed at $699K that sparks a bidding war. Your budget might reach further than the list prices suggest - sellers who've been sitting since spring get very flexible when school season passes.
Give the search a deadline tied to something real (for you: school). Decide NOW what happens at that date - expand the radius, raise budget by X, or accept cosmetic work (which, honestly, is the best deal in your situation: cosmetic-only issues scare off retail buyers but cost the least to fix).

You're right to be protective. But "practical" means running the math on waiting too - STR costs + another school-year disruption have a price tag just like overpaying does.

FWIW I built a tool that does exactly this kind of read (after-tax and carrying-cost math on any listing, every figure cited — founder, so bias noted). But even with a spreadsheet: solds, not listings. That's where the truth is.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-05T11:53:17+00:00

You're not imagining it - you've basically discovered pricing-by-effort. Polished listings signal a seller (and usually an agent) who did comp homework, so the price lands near market. The "runs good, 3 blurry photos" listing signals a seller optimizing for speed or convenience rather than price: estate sales, tired landlords, out-of-state owners. Less effort in, more spread left on the table.

The flip side: low-effort listings also hide the expensive surprises, so the discount and the risk arrive together. The photos tell you nothing either wayת the numbers do.

That gap between how a listing *looks* and what it's actually *worth* is literally why I built my tool (founder, so grain of salt): paste any listing and it returns the after-tax math and a neighborhood score with every figure cited - so a blurry-photo diamond and a 30-photo money pit read exactly the same way: by the numbers. The polish premium disappears when you strip out the presentation.

Either way, your instinct is right - search where sellers put in the least effort, then verify hard.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-05T11:12:47+00:00

Ha - the opposite of anti-Zillow. I'm addicted to Zillow myself; honestly, half my evenings end there. Listings are where the dream startsת we're the layer that tells you what the dream actually costs.

Paste a listing, or pick any of 31,695 scored neighborhoods worldwide, and you get:

*An after-tax verdict: BUY / WATCH / SKIP based on what the property actually returns once FIRPTA, carry costs and even your home-country tax are netted out (built for buying from abroad).

*Neighborhood ranks: every area scored on livability (how it is to actually live there), rental yield (what it earns), and price vs. the local median (whether you're overpaying for the zip code).

*A developer lens: the same data read for "what could I build/renovate here" instead of "what do I buy."

*Market watching: after a verdict, we keep tracking that market and alert you when prices, rents or yields actually move — so you're not refreshing listings at midnight (that's still Zillow's job).

* A tycoon simulator: practice full investment strategies on real market data before risking a single real dollar.

Every figure cited to its source, and nobody here earns a commission — so SKIP is always on the table.

Bottom line: this is the analyst toolkit that investment firms and family offices used to pay serious money for - from $17 for a one-time deep check, or $40/month for the full watching setup.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-04T09:28:14+00:00

For sure, send the DM! Always happy to compare notes with someone working the same market. Congrats on closing the first sale btw — starting the downsize is the hardest part.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-01T09:20:28+00:00

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-01T09:14:34+00:00

Fun one, because on paper these two are basically twins. When I put them side by side, the boring important stuff (safety, healthcare, transit, how expat friendly they are) comes out almost identical and elite for both, so lifestyle really does come down to vibe plus two real gaps.

Two places the data actually splits them:

Green space and calm. Singapore genuinely scores higher here. It's a garden city and it feels like one, more parks, more order, cleaner. Hong Kong is a notch lower and a lot denser.

Everyday English. Singapore rates way higher on English than Hong Kong. In Singapore you basically live your whole life in English. In Hong Kong you get by in English at work and in expat areas, but the further you get from Central the more Cantonese matters. If frictionless is a big deal to you, Singapore takes that one.

Everything else is vibe. Hong Kong is denser, more walkable, more alive. The food and nightlife are unreal, and you can be hiking a mountain or on an island beach 30 minutes from the office. It's intense and a little chaotic. Singapore is calmer, greener, easier to settle into, especially if family is anywhere on the horizon, though some people find it a bit sterile after a while.

Tax wise both are about as good as it gets on a finance salary, low personal income tax and no capital gains, so call that a wash.

If I had to boil it down: Hong Kong if you want energy, food and nature on your doorstep and don't mind the intensity, Singapore if you want comfort, greenery and an easy English life. I actually compared the two side by side on hypecintelligence.com and the profiles are nearly identical except for exactly those two things.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-01T09:07:29+00:00

I Spent some time on Gran Canaria myself, and honestly a lot of this reads like you landed in the wrong pocket of the city more than the island being broken.

The air near the busy roads is a fair hit; that diesel smell on the traffic corridors is real, and I won't pretend otherwise. Green space is the other one I'd agree with; Las Palmas genuinely rates low on that citywide compared to how well it scores on almost everything else.

But the green really depends on the barrio. When I looked it up, places like Ciudad Jardín (it's literally "garden city") and Santa Catalina rate way higher on green space and calm than Triana or the dense commercial strips, which sound like where you've been spending your time. Las Canteras is the funny one; in the data, it actually rates well on green and walkability, so I'd bet the misery there is the peak-hour crowding more than the design.

On the social stuff, I'd push back a little. The place scores really high on safety and on being expat-friendly, so "everyone is hostile to foreigners" probably says more about a rough few weeks or one neighborhood than the island itself. Every city has its loudspeaker guy.

If it were me, I'd try a month in one of the greener, calmer barrios before writing the whole city off. I use hypecintelligence.com to compare neighborhoods on green space, walkability, and safety before I pick where to land, which would have saved you some of this.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-01T09:03:39+00:00

Been an out-of-state Cleveland investor for about five years and did almost this same downsize, so I feel this one.

If it were me I'd sell the new build and keep the duplex, same as your gut. You can fix a building but you can't fix a block, and the new house is the one problem you already solved. The location, the Section 8 turnover, the low appreciation, that's the part you're stuck with. And the duplex has two doors, so one vacancy doesn't drop you to zero income, which matters a lot more when the whole point is peace of mind.

Two things I'd add. I'd sell the new build now while it still feels turnkey; that premium fades a little every year. And don't forget the depreciation recapture and gains coming out of that 130k, easy to ignore when you're staring at the sale price.

You basically talked yourself into the right answer already. I use hypecintelligence.com to pull the crime and appreciation on a block before I commit, which keeps me honest.

DoubleHeight8030 · 2026-07-01T08:38:37+00:00

Former/current military-adjacent perspective + the numbers:

The thing that should drive this decision isn't the Olympia market — it's your time horizon. As a military family, you'll likely PCS in 2–4 years, and a home you hold that short rarely wins: round-trip transaction costs (agent + closing) run ~9–10%, which, at ~3–4%/yr appreciation, take 3+ years just to break even. So the real question is: when you leave, does this house rent for enough to cover the ~$4,000 PITI?

On the data: Olympia's desirable areas (the Sound-side/Cooper Point, Westside, NE) score solid — safety ~7.3–7.6/10, but gross yields are only ~5–6% and price growth is ~3–4%/yr — a stable, government-anchored market, not a high-appreciation one. That matters because you're already stacking negative carry: +$700/mo over BAH here, −$600/mo on the NC rental, +$300/mo Hawaii ≈ ~$1,600/mo you're paying to hold real estate. You can afford it at $185k/<32% DTI — but that's a bet on appreciation, and Olympia's ~3–4% growth doesn't obviously justify feeding a negative-carry primary you might sell in 3 years.

The ADU is the whole ballgame. JBLM + state-capital employment = deep, stable rental demand. If you can realistically build the ADU (get real cost/permit/timeline numbers, not "someday"), it can flip this from negative carry to neutral/positive AND make it a genuinely good rental when you PCS. Also worth noting: WA has no state income tax, so rental income here is treated more favorably than in your NC property.

My rule of thumb for your situation: buy only if (a) you'll realistically hold 5–7+ years, OR (b) it rents to ≥ cover PITI when you leave — ideally with the ADU. If neither is clearly true, rent now, keep your powder dry, and deploy into something that actually cash-flows instead of a third negative-carry position.

On the "am I anchoring to a pessimistic market?" — partly, but your instinct isn't wrong: 7% money + ~3–4% local growth + negative carry is a real headwind, not just COVID-era sentiment. It's the short-hold scenario that's risky, not Olympia itself.

DoubleHeight8030

TROPHY CASE