Need advice on purchasing home with well/septic

That’s because Jax is actually South Georgia.

 

I recommend the largest pressurized storage tank you can find. Battery back-up is a good short-term solution, but a generator is a must, for a longer term power outage. Sucks not being to be able to flush toilets, shower, prepare food, etc, when the power is out.

Find out how deep the well is. Shallow wells are prone to have more contaminated water than deep wells.

The water & sewer rates in the town in IA have been going up excessively as the EPA has added stricter requirements for waste water treatment. Plus the city manager and council can say they are keeping taxes down, when they rase sewer and water rates. Like someone else said here, I'm happy to spend any amount of money to avoid paying $75.00 a month, or more.

 

Yeah. I think I prefer my well. City water here is about $100/month. I also like it that if something goes wrong I can fix it. When the city has a water problem you are at their mercy.

 

Just curious, because I’m a city boy, how often are you having problems with city water? I can’t ever remember not having water come out of the faucet when I turn it on?

 

Agreed!

 

If faced with replacing the drain field make sure you understand the current reg's. Many places have required sand mounds instead of older style drainage fields...it all depends on the ground make-up. In 1991 I designed my own septic system and had it approved by the sewerage enforcement officer. Funny story, The old guy (must've been 85 at the time) never saw a system like mine that used gravity instead of a solids pump. I showed him my calculations, Reynolds numbers, flow velocity, the whole shebang. He was incredulous "You can do this?"...Sure, I said, I'm an engineer. "A professional engineer?" he asked. "You bet." So as long as I stamped my drawings he was happy. I have the only Nuclear Engineer approved septic system in the county.

 

On a side note, we've lived in our current house for almost 20 years now. We like it. Love it, actually. There are two or three minor changes I'd make if I was to build this house on another site. So, we looked into it. Pulled the prints from the county clerk, asked an architect family member if he'd tweak it to the specs I wanted to change, and then talked with a custom home builder that is a customer of mine. Start to finish we would be looking at damn near 600K to buy the land, build, and finish out a smaller home at a less desirable location.

I absolutely do not understand how it is possible that it costs more, a LOT more, to build a home than to buy an existing one, even a new one.

 

I guess I should have qualified all of my statements in this thread with the fact that I own 35 properties. My exposure is more than normal.

In the last year I had a line freeze and break that comes into the house in extremely cold weather. The valve needed to be shut off at the street. We actually have a key that opens the utility manhole but we couldn’t find the manhole. The city had moved the sidewalk and covered over it. About 2 hours later with water filling the basement we finally got a utility guy there to shut it off. If it was my well I’d just cut the power and fix it.

Many of our issues have been maintenance on their part. I’m not necessarily saying it’s better to have a well. I would say it’s cheaper and I prefer it since I like to have the option to fix things in an emergency.

 

Understood.

On another note, when I was young I wanted to buy a property every year or two and over time pay them off and have my retirement. I got up to 4 and life changed and I didn’t do it.

You, and @nigel smith are the only people I know that have mentioned having a lot of properties. It’s really too late for me to do it now, but I have two kids to guide.

Would you do it again? Seems Niguel wouldn’t from his comments on here, but maybe he’s just joking around?

 

I would definitely do it again (although maybe a little differently) for the following reasons-

-generates a lot of wealth almost automatically
-tax advantageous
-flexible schedule
-it’s rewarding to provide an essential service
-buying and selling property has some intangible excitement

There are some pitfalls. First (despite what the infomercials tell you) you need to start with some money. Also, the real estate business is kinda portrayed as being for everyone. It definitely isn’t. Not many people look at my career in the airplane business and think, yeah I could quit my job and do that. It’s actually the same. Real estate is just as difficult to be successful in as anything else. Lastly, you have to think about your management plan. My take on things might be very different if my wife didn’t manage everything. She was an engineer for Parker Hannifin and quit to do this so that might tell you something.

There’s one other weird thing. People take being a landlord or property owner SO personally. I’ve seen owners literally want to kill a tenant over something they did. If you’re that person, don’t buy properties. You have to look at it like any other business. Sometimes things go well, sometimes they don’t, sometimes people do stupid stuff... just deal with it and move on. Just like you would if you were a teacher or engineer or whatever.

 

Would I do it again? My knee-jerk reaction is no, but on the other hand I am currently doing a whole lot of what ever the hell I want to on the back of the smoking carcass of my once great real estate empire. The overall tone of the country has strayed far from the culture of personal responsibility that existed when I first started. I don't think that it would even be possible to do what I did in today's world. I have owner financed almost all of my property away. When it comes back, which is roughly 30% of the time, I just resell it as is. That is currently a much more workable business model than residential rentals.

 

One of my friends has a college age kid that somehow hasn't yet unfriended me on Facebook. During a discussion of the beerSARS, one of her friends posted the opinion that landlords expecting rent payments to continue were, "begging money from poor people".

Boggling.

 

Increases in:

• labor costs
• material costs
• code and regulatory requirements
• inspection and impact fees
• permit fees

Many of the increases are in regulation. And in desirable locations, land costs are way up.

Oh yeah, most people want fancier stuff than they had 20 or 30 years ago.

 

Every 2-3 years something happens with my well that costs $2,000

Yesterday I woke up to no water. It always happens on the weekend. This time it was the booster pump. It won’t be fixed tomorrow.

 

I covered all that in my post... New homes, modern shit, desirable location, bigger.... cost less than the estimate to build my design on cheaper land.

 

I was lucky enough to have a young friend I rented to voluntarily move out after getting several thousands of dollars behind in rent. I should have evicted him in February, but he paid me some money and promised to make payments every two weeks. So I was screwed come March... People these days.

 

How? How deep is the well and where do you live?

Always lived(44 years) on private well and septic except for about 2 years on town septic before we last moved. Never any major issues with either. The cost of the town septic @ $600/year was one of many motivating factors to move. That was $6k every 10 years that replaced a perfectly working zero cost septic system. I don't get all the worry in most of this thread, millions of people all over have never known anything but private well and septic and never lose sleep over it.

 

I've lived for nearly 30 years on a well septic. One problem with the well when it was struck with lightning needing a new pump. The septic has been faultless with a tank pumping every 4 or 5 years. Had to replace the pressure unit once, other than that it has been good.