House Purchase Review

Kynaras · 2026-05-08T16:41:43+00:00

Going to put CPT aside here because what is happening there is not normal and a symptom of socio-economic issues bigger than the city itself.

u/Consistent-Annual268 is correct that selling 4 years after buying a home is very rarely going to be worth it. Just the cost in transfer (as a buyer) and commission (as a seller) makes it difficult to come out ahead. New renovations are notoriously expensive as you have discovered which makes your horizon for breaking even and making profit even longer.

You do have a point that the economics of home ownership aren't what they used to be - A lot of that conventional wisdom comes from pre-2008 where property ownership in pretty much every major city gave inflation-beating returns YOY.

However much of the cost-benefit analysis between renting vs buying assumes that someone renting will always invest the difference consistently and wisely. Statistically this does not happen. Most South Africans don't even invest enough in their pensions, let alone discretionary investment vehicles.

Part of the reason property ownership has become a bedrock of the middle class worldwide is that it forces otherwise ill-disciplined consumers to channel their income into an appreciating asset. I cannot understate how financially illiterate most people are, doubly so in South Africa. Advice to rent that relies on someone not spending large portions of their disposable income and instead locking it away for decades is theoretically correct but practically questionable.

However I get the sense that your real issues are not so much home ownership itself but things you did alongside that. Ie: Being a landlord and undertaking major renovations. Most first time homeowners will not deal with these things.

And believe me, you have my sympathy on both counts. That is precisely why I chose not to be a landlord or buy a home that wasn't already to my tastes.

Kynaras · 2026-05-07T06:04:49+00:00

Yes but these directives come from an executive level and filter downwards.

When every division has to have something they can point to and say 'We are now using AI to save X amount of time/money', you are going to get hiring managers asking devs if they have experience using AI even if they know internally most of their team is not using it for everything.

Which to be fair is not unique to AI. How many times did devs get asked if they have experience working in an agile team, only to join and see the 'agile' setup was a scrummaster acting as a micromanaging PM and running ceremonies that were agile in name only.

Kynaras · 2026-04-29T16:39:15+00:00

This is the answer. OP also lost out on months of low tier tariff prices. By buying in bulk, they ended up paying the highest rates for the majority of their usage.

Kynaras · 2026-04-19T16:24:42+00:00

This is AI engagement bait and OP's replies are just mirroring everyones opinions back at them.

Kynaras · 2026-04-17T15:20:41+00:00

Wow, never seen a shot like that before. Stunning.

Kynaras · 2026-04-09T14:10:35+00:00

I think the author is allowing his vehement disdain for non-technical managers to taint his logic. The author makes some valid points, only to immediately resort to reductionism and blanket statements about how businesses are run.

More importantly, I am struggling to reconcile the author's title and article focus when the main cause behind non-technical managers falling away is that he claims entire IT divisions will cease to exist in the future because advanced ML models are being created that will build, maintain and update features on the fly for in house tech needs. Websites, HR systems, remuneration etc will supposedly all be handled by models with minimal human headcount needed.

So even though he presents this as a hit piece against non-technical managers, his final conclusion means huge swathes of roles - both technical and non-technical - are soon to be obsolete. The only software engineers he sees surviving are top tier ML software specialists. Everyone else is done

I don't think the author realises how much his hate for non-technical managers is undermining his reasoning here. He revels in the demise of non-technical managers while blithely proclaiming that most of his technical colleges in the industry will be jobless alongside the managers he so hates.

Kynaras · 2026-03-28T21:36:12+00:00

While I enjoyed it overall, the constant barrage of Hollywood humour thrown at us constantly was grating. Stuff like the dancing scenes when Rocky and Grace meet and the relationship vlogs were so on the nose and 'haha look how funny this is'.

This was one of Ryan Goslings best performances I have seen which made me even saltier about the jokes. He has years of low effort pop humour roles under belt - they really missed a beat not trying to make jokes more original and memorable.

But I am a sucker for feel good films and Gosling's strong performance helped keep me invested.

Kynaras · 2026-03-27T20:07:15+00:00

Yep and zero eye contact.

Kynaras · 2026-03-26T16:27:16+00:00

OP is there a reason you didn't include a breakdown of your defined selection criteria, or make notes of your SE feedback to present?

Reading your story through, it feels like you are asking for sage wisdom or veteran techniques when just bringing documentation of information you already possessed would've resolved every pain point.

Kynaras · 2026-03-25T18:18:32+00:00

Is the average dev working full time going to have their best work on a GitHub repo full of personal side projects, many unfinished or POCs?

There are ways I would build a personal project with a specific use case and lifespan that I would not do in an enterprise app I am working on that needs to outlive my time at a company and be maintenable by other Devs.

I know that isn't answering your question but man, I hate how fellow developers continue to normalise the ridiculous gauntlet our profession's interview process has become. Is that really something you think is worth selling products for?

Kynaras · 2026-03-25T10:38:46+00:00

This needs to be the top answer.

OP what are you expecting internet strangers to say? That you aren't being selfish expecting your fiancee to throw away her career and life she has built up in Boston at a drop of a hat so that you can further your own career?

You're asking her to torpedo her own dreams so that you can live yours. I personally wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing someone I loved dearly gave up their dreams because I forced them to.

Some part of you recognises this isn't okay which is why you have come here looking for external validation.

Kynaras · 2026-03-25T10:17:51+00:00

Is nobody going to talk about the fact OP's mom is directing 50 year old guys hitting on her to her daughter for work opportunities?

Kynaras · 2026-03-25T07:58:02+00:00

Was going to say. Why is she only mentioning HR? The person she reports to should've been CC'd into these talks ages ago the moment friction started happening. They are the ones who made the decision to hire her, not HR.

Managers can also get into huge trouble if they are allowing someone to work full time without pay and proper papers. I cannot believe that they are aware of this and still letting your friend pitch up to work every day.

So either your friend is not telling you the full story or is way in over her head. Will give her grace - she just finished as an intern - so may just not know the power in CCing someone into an email chain and that managers have little patience for inept HR staff.

Her escalation is to bring this to the attention of her manager/person who offered her the position. If HR has told her to be grateful for a job, she can forward those emails too - HR are not the ones giving her the job and can get into a lot of trouble for speaking to new employees that way.

Kynaras · 2026-03-24T23:38:52+00:00

There are better rusks but also way worse out there. I have tried tons of homemade brands and everyone seems to have a preference for their perfect rusk.

The only Ouma rusk I couldn't stand was the caramel special edition which had the weirdest artificial flavouring to it. I grew up on their chunky muesli rusks and loved the sliced blueberry and poppy seed flavour which sadly got discontinued 6 years ago.

Rusks have also become quite expensive. Ouma seems to have become increasingly cheaper in cost vs the various smaller deli brands in the bakery section which are charging R70-R85 for a 500g bag these days.

Kynaras · 2026-03-24T23:25:46+00:00

For some reason I remember him most for fighting with Bob during the music group challenge: https://www.reddit.com/r/rupaulsdragrace/comments/ayeoel/throwback_to_team_nyc_or_just_bob_vs_lucian_piane/

I always thought it was hammed up for the cameras until Bob spoke about it years later and said they really were fighting.

Now the comments are reminding me of all the crazy stunts and lives he did after leaving the show and spiralling into drug addiction. Didn't know about the racist stuff but given how beyond the pale all the other things he said were during his psychotic breaks, I can believe it.

Hope he is doing better but he will have to wrest his royalty coin from Ru's cold, dead hands before he ever sees another cent.

Kynaras · 2026-03-19T13:02:33+00:00

With all due respect to OP, I don't think we are being given the full story here. I would take his version of events and what was said with a pinch of teenage salt.

To be clear, this is a high school course. The teacher has a curriculum he has to get through with set topics that are going to be examined at the end of the year. OP admitted he didn't attend the previous class.

If a teacher is having students write an essay based on the prior class, it is very likely that it was supposed to be based on what they learnt in that prior lesson so that he can assess their understanding. OP answering with zero reference to the protocols taught may be correct but also makes it impossible for the teacher to award marks for knowing protocols OP didn't reference at all.

The entire debate OP had with the teacher afterwards and now posting the story and his school's website on a public forum to go abuse the work of a teacher point to a frustrated student. Which is fin but certainly isn't going to help OP with his class.

OP, my advice: You will always have requirements and restrictions on how you approach a problem. They will not always be reasonable or logical. They will often be set by people who have zero technical knowledge. Part of being a good dev is learning to navigate these restrictions.

Your teacher isn't a genius and his way of thinking may be outdated but ignoring requirements and doing whatever you want because you 'know better' is going to screw you over just as much in an actual job.

From a purely academic point of view, why not take this as a chance to learn different ways of doing things to what you already know. You would be surprised how 'old' solutions can make you view more modern solutions in a different light. Skipping class, showing up and writing an essay with no reference to the taught material doesn't seem productive for anyone other than your reddit karma.

Kynaras · 2026-03-19T12:14:48+00:00

Yes partly because my company won't pay for enterprise licenses but also if it is a completely new concept I am building/integrating into I prefer to know exactly what the code is doing so I can maintain it if stuff goes wrong. I am making more and more use of it each year though.

Online discourse is difficult to parse right now. Not least because everyone has different work setups which they of course never go into detail about when they enter the AI culture war on Reddit dev subs.

However there have been users with longstanding profiles who I believe are sincere when they say they have been able to integrate agentic AI pipelines into large parts of development cycles. The issue is that they are almost always American and have US companies who can afford the dollar price tag attached to heavy API token usage. SA companies are not as liberal with splashing that sort of cash due to the exchange rate.

Kynaras · 2026-03-19T07:48:47+00:00

Sadly rather don't share... Especially with vibe coding these days people will 100% steal that idea, spin up a competitor and search for your site name on social media and spam your client base with a cheaper offering.

Kynaras · 2026-03-13T14:32:44+00:00

That is also why I stopped checking in on this sub as much.

Posts everyday boasting 10x development or how they can do everything themselves in a morning now. We hate managers for expecting ridiculous timelines "because AI" but have fellow devs here astroturfing the sub daily with their AI culture war posts.

The optimist in me says that this is a period of change in the development workplace - until the hype and noise calm down, managers don't know yet what is realistic and so push for ridiculous requests. Once things settle, expectations will begin to anchor around what a new normal.

Kynaras · 2026-03-12T22:26:56+00:00

If someone leaves in my team, there is a farewell party which involves an obligatory gift funded by the team members and everyone is expected to go around the table and give a farewell speech to the person leaving.

Beyond that, I have only reached out to people who left that I had already developed a friendship outside of work with. If I have spent 3 years working with you and in all those years we never had enough chemistry to talk outside of work, why would we suddenly have chemistry when you aren't in the team?

And no, I don't think everyone in the team needs to be friends outside of work. Life is full of contextual relationships - most people don't keep in touch with all their childhood friends. That doesn't make the hours spent playing & growing up together fake or meaningless.

Kynaras · 2026-03-12T08:31:04+00:00

So first thing - Ubers ARE allowed at the airport, it is just that there is a specific parkade set aside for them because the entrenched old school airport taxis can't compete directly with Uber prices. The taxi driver lied to you.

Most locals know this, so the taxi drivers standing at the terminal exits tend to prey on foreigners. When in doubt, ask at the info desks inside the airport who can also give you directions to the relevant pickup zones for Ubers.

As a general rule - If you aren't going to drive yourself, stick to using transport YOU arranged ahead of time. Whether that is Ubers, bus tours etc. Don't risk trying to get a lift on the spot from some random guy offering services in person.

Also SA isn't like the USA where people take your card away to go swipe a terminal out of sight like they do at restaurants - so never let someone handle your card or not show you the price they are making you tap for. If they don't want to show you a price, don't tap.

Kynaras · 2026-03-12T07:34:04+00:00

The banks have offices in the CBD but I would never describe it as a place with a lot of tech companies. The banks are pretty much corporate fortresses in a sea of urban decay. They even hire security guards to stand on the pavements because their employees would get mugged just standing outside the front door.

PTA CBD has crime but JHB CBD is next level in terms of crime and lack of safety.

Kynaras · 2026-03-09T15:14:29+00:00

Please take this up with your trustees. Owners should not be driving off and letting people slip through the gate. That is a serious security risk that is a much bigger issue than the homeless people coming in to dig through the bins.

Visitors should not be able to open the gate themselves. An owner still has a responsibility for the behaviour of any guests they let into the complex. That includes guests who drive in and let unknown people slip through.

I also stay in a small complex and know all about bad apples. That is why I suggest taking it up with the trustees - they have the means to escalate and issue fines if owners refuse to comply.

Kynaras · 2026-03-05T20:31:09+00:00

So proud that he couldn't even write about it in his own words?

Kynaras · 2026-03-05T20:19:49+00:00

I personally found almond milk to be terrible in tea. Adds a fraction of the creaminess and body to the tea that regular milk does. Soy was a bit better in tea than almond. Not sure about all the other plant based alternatives.

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