Housing prices in the North!

So ladies and gentlemen I will do something which is usually uncharacteristic of me and go on a little rant.

As many of you know I am in the military. I recently got orders to be stationed in Upstate New York and I have to tell you, I have NEVER had so much trouble finding a place to live before in my life.

The rental housing market up here is absolutely atrocious. Much of this is likely due to me not being used to living in the North but the houses up here are much different than the South and they are EXPENSIVE. They are mostly old houses built in the 19th century and most look very run down. I have been living in a hotel for a week now searching through every website available and calling every real estate company in the area trying to find a decent place to live that isn't super expensive. When I lived in the South i paid $675 for a 2 bedroom house. Up here everyone is charging at least $1100 a month minimum for a run down looking house of the same size. And since these homes were build so long ago many of them have crazy layouts such as 4 bedrooms and one bathroom and those funny looking bathtubs.

I went to look at a few places yesterday and it looks like these houses were built for hobbits. They are huge on the outside but the inside isn't what I thought it would be. I am a short guy and my family is short, but the upstairs in these places is so small that even I have to duck to get through the door. How am I supposed to take a shower in that weird looking tub when I cant even stand up because Ill hit my head on the slanted roof?

And the basements....Most of them are unfinished basements that look like dungeons that haven't seen the sight of a human being in decades. They looked like a scene straight from a horror movie. And the houses that have finished basements that you could actually go in expect you to pay like $1600 for rent.

And the heating bills? I'm used to going to the thermostat on the wall and turning it up when I am cold. What is with this fuel oil, propane, kerosene, natural gas thing? The locals are telling me to try and get natural gas because its the cheapest and the others will run me the tune of about $2500 a year. Or I could chop wood and use the fireplace. No, Im not going to chop wood and use a fireplace this is 2014 I want to turn the thermostat up when I am cold. If these heating oils and whatnot are so expensive and the houses are freaking huge why don't they put the natural gas system in there? Some guy told me he paid $800 one month to heat his house using propane....That is ridiculous.

And why the hell don't most places here have a garage? The places in the South have garages and up here it gets like -40 degrees in the winter. You would think it would make logical sense to have a garage ATTACHED to the house. Thats the whole point of a garage so I don't have to walk outside and dig through 3 feet of snow to get to my garage to get in my truck.

This place absolutely price gouges the military which is why the locals are so mad and they hate us because the rent prices are so high. I don't blame them, even with my housing allowance I can barely afford to rent most of these places I see why the locals are complaining about not being able to afford it. None of these places are worth the money they charge for rent. I could rent a 3 bedroom house near the gulf in Florida for the amount of money they are charging up here for these run down old houses with backwards layouts and those funny looking bathtubs and ceilings designed for dwarfs.

If a landlord wants to charge $1300 for a 2 bedroom house then the least he can do is get up and clear the freaking snow out of my driveway during the winter time and cut his own grass. I was on the phone with a guy arguing about that yesterday. Im like man you are expecting me to pay $1300 a month for your 2 bedroom house with absolutely no utilities included and you won't even come dig my truck out of the driveway for me in the winter? Im from the South I don't want to do that. He says sure I can do it for an additional fee included in the rent. What the hell? How much money do you want no wonder your house has been on the market for months.

And everything else up here is expensive too! Quit smoking if you move up here cigarette prices are damn near double what they are in the South. And gas prices are a good 40 cents more.

I have 2 prospect places that I am trying to decide on. One is a 2 1/2 bedroom place that actually looks decent inside for once. It has a partially finished basement and a little kitchen that looks like the owner started to turn it into an apartment then said screw it one day. Its on a nice quiet street in a peaceful neighborhood. The guy wants $1300 I said I might do it for $1200, hes saying $1250 so Ill see...The other one is an older huge 4 bedroom 2 bath house with a dungeon basement and those funny looking bathtubs that is literally sitting right next to two businesses. Im like why the hell did you put the house there that is random...Its cheaper but its on a busy road which is more noise.

Sorry for the long rant. These are the thoughts of a Southern boys first time living in the North to where its cold as hell, the houses are old, the rent is ungodly expensive, heating is expensive, cig prices are expensive, I couldn't bring my guns, and they have those stupid looking bathtubs. I hate those bathtubs...

My new Northern friends, help me please. Tell me that it will be ok lol. I have been all over the world and I have never wanted to go back home to the South more than I do now and I have only been here for 5 days.

 

That's the biggest drawback of the military. It's a random shot as to where you might get stationed. Some places are decent, some a great, some are horrible. This place constantly gets voted as the worst military installation in the entire military, not just the Army, but the entire military. Ive known people who have literally turned down a promotion and retired when they got orders to come here.

Meanwhile a buddy of mine just sent me a text picture of him and his wife snorkeling in freakin Hawaii with a caption that says "Hey bro hows the weather up there " Lucky punk got an assignment to Hawaii, another buddy of mine got stationed in Savannah Georgia and is living in a beach house with his family on the freakin Atlantic Ocean.

But I got an assignment to this frozen godforsaken hell hole.

On a positive note the people here are extremely friendly in these neighborhoods. Everyone waves and smiles and whatnot when I drive by. A random lady stopped and welcomed me to the neighborhood when she saw me looking at a house for rent. Even the people at the front desk of the hotel are very nice and supportive and always cheer me on when they see me leaving in the morning looking for a house to rent. They even get on the computer and look up places and give me information on my way out in the morning which is really nice of them.

Hopefully once I actually find a place and get settled I will feel better. Right now I am just irritated from living out of a suitcase in a hotel and having a hard time finding a house. Every time I find anything that looks livable it's always either too far from work, uses propane heating which is too expensive, or is in a bad neighborhood. Or like what happened 2 days ago when i found the perfect place in the perfect neighborhood for a good price and by the time I got there to see it and call the realty company some other Army guy already put a downpayment on it. I almost threw my laptop through the window that day lol. I told the lady on the phone that I would give first months rent, last months rent, AND the downpayment right now and move in within 20 minutes if they overruled that other guy. She said no lol.

 

I wouldn't really be THAT concerned with the rent if it weren't for the heating bills during the winter. Locals said this place gets on average 200+ inches of snow per year and temps that dip into the -30+ range. So paying $1100-$1300 for rent wouldn't be THAT bad if I wasn't going to get stuck with a heating bill in the $300 dollar range for the cheapest heating source. Im used to electric heating in the South which is technically the most expensive but we rarely had to blast the heater constantly. Even in January we rarely got below 40 degrees so it didn't take much to keep the house warm. My electric bill was rarely more than $100. Up here they are talking about weather so cold that the INSIDE of your car freezes.

Plus with the price of gas here I can't really afford to commute too far to work. My truck gets gas mileage comparable to an Abrams battle tank. Plus the locals have recommended that I don't live more than 20 mins or so away from the base if Im not from the area because they get some nasty snow storms and white outs and that 20 min drive could easily turn into a 2 hour one. Although I am a bit experienced with snow having been stationed in Colorado Springs for years but it never really snowed more than a few inches there because we were in a valley. They measure snow in FEET up here, Im not used to such conditions.

The sad part is that the landlords here KNOW everything that I just said. It's almost a sin how they calculate their rental rates based on our military housing allowance. They know exactly how much money we get (its public knowledge) and they market their houses for those prices. They know that a single Soldier makes X amount in housing money and he will likely want this type of apartment so they charge X amount of money. They know that a Soldier with dependents makes X amount of housing money and will likely need a 3 bedroom house so they charge X amount of money. I'm talking almost to the dollar.

I spoke to a lady at a real estate company on the phone a few days ago and told her what I was looking for and what my budget was. She then started naming places and I told her they were above my budget. She flat out asked me if I was in the military and what my rank was. Naively I told her and she said, and I quote. "Oh you make X amount of money for BAH, you can afford this place". I was like what the hell? No, its out of my budget just because thats how much I get doesn't mean Im going to give you every dime of it. I stopped telling people my profession after that phone call.

EVERY SINGLE HOUSE within 20 miles of the base is priced gouged for the military because they KNOW we don't want to commute or we can't commute because of the conditions up here. Most of us aren't from this area. The houses in the small towns outside of 20 miles are priced accordingly because they know the military isn't out that far. It is almost criminal how I can rent a 3 bedroom 2 bath house with a full finished basement and some utilities included for $1000 a month in a town 30 miles away. But the same exact house within driving distance from the base is $1600 a month.

Either the town next to this one has different tax laws allowing landlords to rent for cheaper or this town is 100% price gouging the crap out of the military which is absolutely wrong. I honestly believe its the latter and everyone Ive talked to from the locals to the housing office on base has said the exact same thing. Base housing is completely full and the waiting list is 2 years long for this reason. The landlords here KNOW that and they KNOW the military has no choice but to live out in the community and we HAVE to pay these ridiculous rental prices because we have nowhere else to go.

Within 5 days I have seen exactly why this place gets voted as the worst military installation in the Armed Forces.

 

Is that something that I could safely have running while I'm not home? I don't want to come home from work to a cold house and have to get the stove running and wait for everything to heat up.

 

Sounds good to me, this is actually the first time I have ever heard of such a thing. I have been house hunting for months on the internet prior to coming here and I have yet to see a house with that pellet stove.

Im assuming that its not a heat source that I can control with a thermostat its like a stove that I have to put the pellets in and light right? Perhaps the convenience of using a thermostat is why so many people still use the expensive propane and heating oils rather than the stove?

 

Is this stove something that I could buy and put in the house? I have found a very nice house that is very reasonably priced but I didn't want to get it because it uses propane for heat and I heard that propane is extremely expensive. I believe that may be why it has been on the market for so long although its a very nice looking home. If its possible I would like to use the pellet stove instead of the propane in order to save money if it isn't too expensive to get one.

 

Will do, thank you for your insight.

 

Well the problem with this area is the military base. I picked up the local paper and read the opinion section and was shocked to see the locals pretty much wanting to burn the base to the ground. Everyone I ask says they hate the base being here, not the Soldiers particularly but the base itself because of what it has done to the housing market. The rental prices around here are based on military housing allowance rates which is more money than most of the locals can afford. Landlords know that the base housing is full and they know how much the military gets for housing allowance so they price their houses accordingly. Almost to the dollar, they could at least make it LOOK like they weren't doing that...

Everywhere from craigslist rants and raves to the local newspaper is full of locals talking about how they wish that base would go away. They said it didn't use to be like this with the high rental rates but ever since the base expanded and more Soldiers came everyone jacked the rent prices up because they knew Soldiers made more money.

The next town over about 30 miles away has reasonably priced homes. Thats because that is outside of the military bubble and they know most of us aren't willing to travel that far to work. Its only within 20 miles or so of the base that the houses are ridiculously priced because landlords know that Soldiers are going to rent them because we literally have nowhere else to go since base housing is full.

Unfortunately we don't have the option of saying "no we refuse to pay that much". We have to live somewhere and since base housing has a steady 2 year long waiting list we are forced to live in the community and pay the ridiculous rental rates.

It got so bad here that the base flat out threatened to put the largest realty company in the area on a blacklist for Soldiers because they knew they were blatantly price gouging the military. The only reason they didn't flat out blacklist that company was because it was the largest one here and the housing market is so bad that if we weren't allowed to rent from them then we literally wouldn't have anywhere to live.

I understand supply and demand but damn. This is like all oil companies deciding they are now going to charge 10 bucks a gallon for gas because they know people have no choice but to buy gas because they have to have it. That sort of practice just isn't right.

 

I have no issues with the distance itself. My issue is with the weather up here. Most of us military folks get sent here, we arent from this area and this place is the coldest and gets the most snow of anywhere in the continental US. So that 30 min drive could easily turn into a 2 hour commute in bad weather. For a Southern boy driving in a snow storm is bad news. I have a 4x4 truck but still...

Plus with the amount of gas my truck burns the cost of fuel would pretty much equal out to the price of a house in town anyway. Driving 30 miles or so each way to work would mean Im spending $60+ every 4 days to fill my truck up which would make payer cheaper rent almost irrelevant.

 

Oh yes, I was stationed in my lovely home in the South before I got sent up here and it was always funny seeing the Northern boys about to die when summer hit down there.

"Holy crap it's hot as hell! Its so hot and humid I can barely breathe! Who the hell thought it was a good idea to but a base in this boiling hell hole!?"

Meanwhile I am walking around laughing wondering what the big deal is...

And I will be saying the same thing only opposite and the Northern boys will be laughing at me here in a few months when winter hits and Im saying "Holy crap it's FREEZING up here, It's so damn cold my lungs hurt I can barely breathe! Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put a base up here in this frozen hell hole?!"

Meanwhile they will be walking around perfectly comfortable and laughing at me lol.