All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

@Josh Stack

I hate to be the one to mention this, but internationally, organized crime does this carefully in well-chosen urban-residential pocket neighborhoods. First they drive the value of the neighborhood into the ground. Then they engineer a complete turnaround.

Drug ghettos, by definition, need to be easily accessible from multiple areas of the city. You need to be able to get in, buy your product, and get out. The drug trade will drive values into the ground. But once the ground has been properly poisoned, the gang running the neighborhood buys just as much property as they can and moves in. Much of the property is converted into war zone apartments. Sooner or later, the pocket neighborhood is going to come under serious scrutiny and the cops move in. The gang moves out, which stops the drug trade and much of the crime. They keep the war zone apartments and get paid, because the tenants know who they're renting from and no one screws a hooked-up landlord on rent. Neighborhood prices inevitably rise. The war zone tenants move out. The area starts to gentrify. The real estate investment herd stampedes. The neighborhood is "revitalized."

The politicians take a bow. The gang sells the (now prime) property it's been holding for a massive profit. Win for the local authorities, bigger win for the gang.

@Kristina Inglis

Call up Steel City Landcape, Inc. and get an estimate.

I have no affiliation with this company, do no business with them, and cannot imagine I will ever have a need to do business with them. But I've seen their landscape maintenance, and they reliably do good work for larger properties and developments.

@Jill F.

You've made an astute and thoroughly relevant point.

@Dylan Snyder

I assume you're not interested in becoming a structural engineer.

"How Your House Works," 2nd edition, Charlie Wing, is an invaluable resource in a million ways. You learn the absolute basics and fill in any black spaces you might have.

"Renovation," 4th edition, Michael Litchfield, has been the bible of residential renovation for a long time. The book will give you a birds-eye view of most the processes necessary to renovate a house and is filled with solid information.  It's certainly where you should start on practically every project you might think up in a house. The book is somewhat uneven. The sections on plumbing and electrical work are significantly better than those on carpentry and finishing.

J Scott's book on estimating costs and repairs (The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs) is the single most valuable beginner's resource you can buy on the subject of rehabbing so you can at least talk the same language as your contractors. I do not know J Scott, I've never talked to him, I have no plans to do business with him, but the book is like a giant exclamation point in the extensive shelf of mediocrities on the subject.

"Fundamentals of Residential Construction," 4th edition, is a textbook on how the homebuilding industry works.

"Modern Carpentry," 12th edition, is a very good trade-school text.

Now, for what you specifically asked about:

"Renovating Old Houses," by George Nash, is a good, but not a great text. There's a lot of stuff in it. But renovating old houses is really not easy, and there's a lot of stuff you'll need to know. Most of the people who do it brag about doing uneven jobs. And sometimes a junkheap is just and only that, a junkheap.

@Tim Wittenborn

It's like the world stepped aside for a moment, isn't it? Good on you, Tim!

Good for you. No garbage about Jesus blessing your ambition. Get your money and go about it like a man, not like a good Christian girl who parades her purity ring about while she takes in the butt every Friday night, because everyone knows it's the sex that God can't see.

@Aaron Mikottis

Aaron, I've known poor people of a nobility of spirit that I suspect you are incapable of comprehending just yet. Your resume, publicly posted online, indicates that you were homeschooled until 2009, when you entered the Illinois Institute of Technology, from which you graduated summa cum laude in 2014. That makes you what, all of 23? A bit young to learn such towering contempt for your fellow human beings and God's children, made just as you are, in His image.

Someday you might actually get to know a few members of "the miserable poor," see the things many, many of them do for their families, and understand their problems and their limitations. With real luck, you might learn to understand the damage done to their psyches by need, want, the offhand cruelty of the world, and the crushing despair they live with.

Perhaps then you'll learn to feel the shame of what you've written in your bones for the rest of your life.

Mark 21: 31-46

"But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will tell those on his right hand, ‘Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?’

“The King will answer them, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

“Then they will also answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?’

“Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

@Roger S.

Aye, there's the rub. To quote something other than the NT.

@Bob B.

I have no idea. I know they were poor. After all, if John can be said to be a reliable gospel, I know they didn't have the scratch to whistle up more than two little fish and five loaves of bread to feed 5000 men (John 6:1-14). Not coincidentally, this is another fine example of Jesus telling people not to worry about making a living and worry about God instead.

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." (John 6:35)

I also know Jesus is identified in Mark 6:3 as a τέκτων, a builder, rather than as the more familiar English translation, "carpenter." The word τέκτων is the root of the Greek word αρχιτέκτονας, which we are more familiar with written in English as "architect."

We can safely assume the τέκτων Jesus would have had about 15 years on jobsites growing up. The most current theory in academic circles is that Jesus was likely involved in the rebuilding of the Hellenistic city of Sepphoris, a day's walk from Nazareth.

I too am something of a τέκτων, and I've been at it for quite a few years. If I had a group of men who followed me around and did what I told them to, I know exactly how I would make a bare living...fixing houses. How many dudes do you know with 15 solid years of general building experience, a brain on their shoulders, and a good-sized crew like that who go hungry anywhere in America?

But that's just my personal theory.

All I really know is that the historical JESUS WAS POOR.

The man was born in a stable, lived in a miserable little hamlet (have you seen Nazareth?), had to do miracles to have food for his followers, rode into Jerusalem on an ***, drove the moneychangers (rent-seekers) out of the Temple, was crucified between two thieves, penniless, had to rely on the charity of his friends to take care of his mother, was buried at the expense of his friends.

I simply cannot understand how this utterly straightforward example of a life of poverty becomes an instrument of justification for divinely-inspired cash flow in the minds of so many people.

I keep on waiting for someone to pop up here and tell me Jesus would have been a hard-money lender if things had just gone a bit differently.