What we wish we knew before getting married and buying a house

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple, and today we’re doing something a little different than we have done before. I’m going to immediately preface this as this is not personal advice for you. This is a bit of a reflection on some of our experience.

Courtney: We have been married for over 12 years now. We have been homeowners for just over 11 of those years. I know full well this is going to be extremely unrelatable or irrelevant to some of you. If that is the case, feel free to skip this one.

Courtney: If you yourself are either a uh new homeowner, an aspiring homeowner, particularly in America, then maybe we’ll have a few things that might be interesting for you to hear. Or if you just want to hear, you know, just how deeply insufferable our capitalist hellscape is, then stick around.

Courtney: But I thought it might just be interesting, having uh been married for the amount of time we have, for having owned a home for the amount of time, we’ve learned a lot of things that we did not know before we embarked on these endeavors. And we’re gonna go ahead and just share some of those things with you all for your education and/or entertainment. So let’s start like 11 and a half years ago, maybe almost 12, because uh almost 12 years ago.

Courtney: Although we have talked about before the fact that we got married via uh Kansas common law, so we did not have a marriage or a ceremony uh, didn’t have a traditional marriage certificate or license, things like that. Which is wonderful, 10 out of 10, do recommend if you are in a state that allows common law.

Courtney: But even though we did not have a wedding ceremony, there was still a little tiny part of me, which I look back on now and think, this was extremely silly. But at the time, I still wanted to sort of have that, like, being engaged experience. And just living in the area that we do, there are a lot of events for, like, married couples-to-be. There are, like, conventions with all sorts of vendor tables and giveaways and things. And most of it was not ever going to be relevant to us, ’cause sometimes it’s like, here are options for wedding venues, here are options for caterers. Obviously that wasn’t going to be relevant, but there were also things that were on our horizon, like furniture. We were renting a house for a year before we bought the one we currently live in, and for that entire year that we lived there, it was half furnished uh at best.

Royce: Yeah, it was just a smattering of the things we had previously owned independently in a smaller space.

Courtney: Yeah. So I am, if embarrassment was an emotion I was more prone to experiencing, I would be embarrassed to say that I went to these conventions already married, already filing our taxes together as a married couple, and going in and like getting a big, and they were usually pink, like a big pink sticker that’s like, bride to be, and then you’d put it on your shirt to walk around, and then all the vendors knew. And they’d have for like— they suspected that brides would be coming with their whole wedding party, so they’d have like the bride-to-be, they’d have like mother of the bride, they’d have like maid of honor, so that all the vendors could immediately identify who like the prime decision makers would be.

Courtney: Oh, that’s so cool. And I would just fully go alone. I would go alone to these conventions and put on a bride-to-be sticker just to see what happened, or if anything there was interesting.

Courtney: And, uh, uh zero out of 10, do not recommend. They were actually quite miserable.

Courtney: Of course, like a lot of these conventions, you’ll also see like home and garden shows, or conventions for expecting or new parents, and— I have been to conventions like this as an attendee. I’ve also been a vendor at these things, so I’ve been on both sides of the table. I don’t enjoy either experience.

Royce: It’s a great way to get your email or phone flooded with communications.

Courtney: Yes, because damn near every table will have like a fishbowl drawing, uh, giveaway, like give us your name, phone number, address, email address and we’ll put you in the bowl and we’re gonna do a big drawing and you’re gonna win this spectacular thing that you want and are here for. And especially at events like these, like home and garden shows and wedding shows, like you’re talking about getting like free catering or a free venue or, you know, free new windows on your house. So things that would be an enormous expense, so of course, even though the chances of you winning are slim, but then every table has one, and then you just get called incessantly uh for the rest of your life. But every now and then you do win something, but—

Royce: Is it really something?

Courtney: It’s very timeshare-coded, like, you won a prize, you have to sit through our sales pitch to get the prize. And being familiar with these tactics before even going in, I recall thinking, you know, this is gonna be a really annoying sales pitch, this is going to be an insufferable couple of hours, probably don’t need it, probably don’t want it, not gonna buy anything, but I, I can sit through a sales pitch for a couple hours and then get you know, a free cruise or whatever the hell it was. Although one of those was, I’m going to come to your house and try to sell you a water purification system.

Courtney: And I was so ready, I was so prepared. I have gotten extremely proficient at scaring away door-to-door salespeople. And it gives me so much joy and an incredible story every single time.

Courtney: So I was like, yeah, you want to come to my house to sell me water purification and then give me a free cruise? Bet. I’m going to see how fast you will leave my house because I’m being just utterly strange in your presence.

Courtney: But then of course they give you this little certificate for this free cruise, and I had never been on a cruise before. I wasn’t interested in paying for a cruise, but if you want to give me one, sure, I’ll be— I’ll try anything once.

Courtney: Which is not true. There are some things I will never try. A cruise is something I would try once. But I remember trying to book that thing, and there was like, no availability for like, three whole years, and they’re like, wait for more availability to come up, but then the certificate was like, only good for three years, so you just genuinely could not book it.

Courtney: But that was the least of our concerns, ’cause it was just me, it was like, a guy coming into my kitchen and pouring water into a cup while I called attention to all the vast mounds of human hair that were in my studio and all the little oddities and creepy antiques around our house deeply unsettles the average person who does not know me or the story of why I have any of these things. So at least I got a good story out of that. But more often than not, anything that we did try to pursue, for the most part, deeply regretted. One of them, because we actually had to sign a, uh like, non-disclosure agreement, we can’t even say the name of the company that screwed us over. But there was a company that promised us something for free, just come to our sales pitch, et cetera. And this was one where they made both of us show up.

Courtney: And it was this high-pressure sales tactic, which is never pleasant. During this period of time, I would be deeply upset sitting through presentations like this. But if they could genuinely make a case for how this would save me money, I would consider it. I am now at a phase in my life— where the moment I get a whiff of high-pressure sales tactics like this, I’m done. I’m done. I don’t care, I, I don’t want to save money if it means doing business with you. I’m done.

Courtney: But unfortunately, I hadn’t developed this impulse 12 years ago.

Royce: Yeah, 12 years ago Courtney was like, well, if I can scam the scammers.

Courtney: Well, yeah, I was good at scamming scammers when we’re talking about like, conning carnies at uh my local state fair. I had a proven track record of coming out on top in these situations. I don’t know if I ever shared that story on the podcast, but maybe that’s for another day.

Courtney: So this particular company made enormous promises. It was like, kinda at first soft-pitched like a Costco kind of a situation, like you pay a membership and then you get access to Heavily discounted things, but instead of primarily being groceries, of course Costco has some larger things, it’s like, this is almost exclusively for larger things. It’s for home renovations, it’s for furniture, it’s for appliances, things that like, we were going to need in the near future anyway.

Courtney: And their promises sounded too good to be true. But they like, put it all in writing, essentially they’d say, you know, we have access to buy all of these different things, and we will not only price match anything you find anywhere else, but we guarantee we can get it for you uh at like, a certain percentage discount. Like, we will always be this percent lower in price than the lowest price you can find elsewhere.

Courtney: So that sounds great. That sounds very good. We, at the time, in this rental house, had like a small dining room. We didn’t have a table. So we, uh, that room was just empty for— it ended up being the entire time we lived there, because this was going to be our first purchase at this place we got this membership, was a dining room table.

Royce: Yeah, and we’ve also never really been have-meals-at-dining-room-table kind of people either.

Courtney: Eh, we go through phases where we try.

Royce: Short phases.

Courtney: We, uh, are sitting at our dining room table now to record this podcast, as we always do. But more importantly, uh, we play D&D at the dining room table.

Courtney: So that is— that’s a big one. But, you know, they have all these catalogs you can look through and you know, sort of go shopping that way. But since they promised they will beat any price by a guaranteed percentage, I also really like physically looking at things.

Courtney: So I decided to go to some local furniture stores. And I looked at the dining room tables and I found one that I absolutely loved. I want to say it was probably Nebraska Furniture Mart or something.

Royce: Yes.

Courtney: Beautiful table, beautiful chairs. After seeing this table, this was the only table I wanted.

Courtney: And I just hoped that this company we had signed on to this membership with— because this is how shady it was. They were giving us all these promises for like, and this was like a lifetime membership, like, for the rest of your life, any major home purchase you make, we are going to beat the price of our competitors by at least this percentage. So they were truly making it sound like, you know, especially if you’re newly married, if you’ve recently bought a house, if you’re going to recently buy a house, think of all of the big purchases you’ll eventually need to make. What if you can guarantee right now those will all be at this heavy discount?

Courtney: So we decided to try it, and I go back to this company to see if they have this particular table. in their like, catalog inventory, and they do! But the price advertised was higher than the one at Nebraska Furniture Mart. But I have paperwork I signed that says you’ll beat all of these prices, right?

Courtney: ’Cause they also, they did the thing that night, ’cause we were like, oh, let us think about this for a while, and they’re like, you don’t get to think about this, if you don’t get your m membership tonight, you are banned for life. You can never join the club if you don’t buy in tonight, which was profoundly irritating, of course.

Royce: Yeah, I have a couple comments about high-pressure sales and lifetime guarantees and, and things like that, but that’s for after you finish this train of thought.

Courtney: Oh, okay. So I showed them the price tag at Nebraska Furniture Mart, and I’m like, uh, actually Nebraska Furniture Mart is like a couple hundred dollars cheaper than your advertised price, so what gives? And the way they made it seem like, just prove it’s cheaper somewhere else and we’ll just, we’ll lower our price because it will always be like this.

Courtney: They fought me on this for weeks. For weeks, I was going like back and forth in emails and on the phone with them, and I don’t even remember what excuse they had.

Courtney: But they were trying to say, well, we can’t beat this price because— and none of that was in the paperwork that we signed that has all of these guarantees, so I was like, I don’t care. None of— there is no exception in the paperwork that I signed.

Courtney: So eventually, they agreed. Okay, we will get you this table at the discounted percentage that you’ve been promised. So at this point, I’m irritated, but I got the discount, right? So I’m, um I’m now like, well, this is unfortunate, but I guess it’s just going to be a fight every time I have to buy something from them. And clearly now I know, in addition to that, I really need to do my due diligence and shop around and genuinely find the, the like smallest price. ’Cause even though they say their prices are already lower, the very first thing I tried to buy proved otherwise.

Courtney: But it took so long for this table to come in. We’re talking like almost an entire year. Maybe it was ah a full year. I think it was only supposed to be like two months and it ended up being pushed back and back and back.

Royce: It was pretty close to a full calendar year because we didn’t have to move the table.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: We were only in this rental house for a year before purchasing a house. And the dining room table that we’re sitting at right now was shipped to this house.

Courtney: That was another fight because we had our original address for like shipping information for this table, but it kept getting pushed back and back and back and back. And then we moved and I had to call them and say, hey, we don’t live at that house anymore. So can you send the table to a different house? And for a while they were like, well, once the order’s placed, we can’t change it. any details.

Courtney: I’m like, but I don’t live in that house anymore. You have to send it to my new address.

Courtney: So it is a very heavy table. So I guess it’s kind of good that we didn’t have to physically move it from one house to another, but still waiting an entire year to get this table was just absolutely not worth it. But after we did get the table, I don’t even remember what else I was gonna look in there. catalogs for, but there was like another purchase we needed to make because we bought a house. We moved into the house that we are going to stay in for a long time. So now we’re really assessing, you know, what bits of furniture do we need? Um, is there like an appliance we need to buy?

Courtney: And I tried to go back and they were just closed. They were gone.

Royce: Like the actual office storefront?

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: What gives?

Courtney: So I tried calling them and yeah, found out from like corporate that this particular franchise like completely went under. I was like, okay, well, I’ve been a member for a year, I’ve purchased one thing that took a year to come in, and the discount wasn’t that great and I had to fight to get it, so can you give me my money back for the membership that we paid? And they were like, no, no refunds, no exceptions. I said, but I, I literally can’t— I bought a lifetime membership and I got a year out of it. What do you mean I, I can’t get a refund? And they said, well, you can, uh, try talking to the actual local franchise. How do I do that?

Courtney: They closed.

Royce: They disappeared.

Courtney: They disappeared.

Royce: Wasn’t there some kind of clause like if you don’t purchase enough merchandise within like the first year or so that you can get— wasn’t there an exit clause? I feel like we got our money back somehow for that.

Courtney: It wasn’t an exit clause, it was me fighting with people for an extremely long time.

Royce: Oh, okay.

Courtney: I got bounced back and forth between the local franchise and the corporate headquarters many times, and then I started like threatening them with legal action, with like, I, as soon as the threats came out, what they offered me was not our entire membership refund back, it was like, our membership minus the cost of the table with the price that was in their catalog, not the price that I bought it for. But in order to get that, they made us sign a fucking NDA. So we basically bought a table for the retail price and had a series of headaches.

Royce: Yeah, hopefully things like these are becoming less common, or at least easier to avoid, because when I think back around that time period, the purchases that I had feelings of regret around were those sort of like high-pressure this sounds good, but, you know, maybe— but it’s oftentimes not immediately good. It’s like theoretically this will save you money in the long term, mhm which is where the like lifetime warranties come into play, which is only effective if the company still exists some time during your lifetime when you need to try to get your money back. And if they, they actually honor that, if they don’t switch to some other shell company or completely go out of business.

Courtney: Well, uh this company that made us sign this, they did like, company-wide file for bankruptcy, and they did, for a while, shutter like, all of their stores. But they didn’t completely go under, they still exist today, and even though they have also filed bankruptcy like, again?

Courtney: Like, two or three times since this happened to us? They’re like, opening more locations again, so, and I, I obviously can’t say the name of the company, ’cause I signed a paper to get a partial refund, but it’s really not about this one company, it’s about companies that operate like this.

Royce: Yeah, corporations have way too many ways to get out of things, so I think the way that you protect yourself is to just not engage on those terms ever.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Which, yeah, like you said, you’ve gotten to the point now where the moment you feel a high-pressure sales situation, you’re like, no, I’m out.

Courtney: I’m out.

Royce: I want to take my time and research because in the modern era of online shopping, there are more resources and guides and consumer reviews and just product that exists than you can— than normally one location can provide. And I think when you’re talking furniture, it is a lot of either go online and look at what the world has to offer or go to like a secondhand store that’s local or something like that.

Courtney: I mean, local and secondhand is like the best we got right now. Like, if you can find a nice vintage table, like, even if it takes you some time, like, finding exactly the right piece of like unique antique furniture that you need, there are no greater joys. That’s been our tactic for a while now is, oh, I want a desk.

Courtney: Let me look up the, you know, vintage thrift secondhand antique stores. And if I don’t find one today, I will be patient. Something will come up.

Courtney: Because part of our logic at the time too was, well, we should probably start thinking about when we do make purchases, let’s get something, you know, nice and durable that will last a long time, because a lot of what both of us had were like temporary pieces, cheaper things, uh, before we got married. So it’s like, okay, if we’re going to replace these, let’s do it with something that will theoretically be like our dining table for the rest of our lives. And sometimes you can get new furniture that is of a quality that will last that long. Sometimes you think it will and it won’t.

Courtney: So quite honestly, if you can find something vintage or antique that is still still in really good quality enough that it’s being resold. Like, you know that thing lasts. It’s proven that it lasts.

Courtney: I think there was only one other company that operated like that that we did make a purchase from.

Royce: Yeah, I can only think of one. That was the kitchenware stuff.

Courtney: Yeah, because I— it was for like, I want to say like crystal wine glasses were the freebie on that one.

Royce: Yes.

Courtney: So it’s like, come to our sales pitch and you’ll get like a set of these like nice— and they had a few different options, but of course my eye was drawn to like these black crystal goblets. I was like, oh, they’re so beautiful! If you will give me this, I will sit through anything you have to tell me.

Courtney: But, um, yeah, that sales pitch was like, here’s some nice china, which I am a sucker for china. I really am. Um, and like pots and pans.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: Which again, we, we just had like hand-me-down things and assortment of things. We didn’t have like a nice set between the two of us.

Royce: That is one of the cases where, um, we have had these items for a long time. They came as a set. They were kind of, they were kind of expensive and they were pushed heavily, as in like, if you walk out the door, it’s going to be more expensive if you wait to deliberate on it.

Royce: Like you’re getting a discount if you sign right now.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Um, they’ve been useful, they’ve held up. The heavy, like, pots and pans are under one of those, like, theoretically if something goes wrong during your lifetime you could get your money back, but don’t hold your breath kind of things.

Royce: The thing is—

Courtney: I do still like our glasses in China.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: I think we probably could have found better pots and pans if we did research.

Royce: That’s the thing. I do almost all of my cooking in a single carbon steel flat-bottomed wok. Sometimes we pull out some of the other things for like soups or stews or whatever, but—

Courtney: Well, you had not discovered the ways of the wok 12 years ago though.

Royce: Yeah, they have become, they have become, um, low-use items for the most part. And had I known what I know now, you know, I could have saved some money back then, basically.

Royce: That being said, I am also not someone who cares for matching sets of things. So I would rather have a kitchen of mismatched, very specialized things than a set that you could put on a counter and it all looks like it belongs together.

Courtney: And part of the problem too is, I mean, hyper-consumerism is such a problem. Things you can get secondhand can be just gems. In some places, depending on, you know, social situations, it can be seen as almost like shameful having secondhand things, which, if you’re in a place or stage in your life where that is the case, um, I um really hope that passes sooner than later.

Courtney: But the bigger issue is like when you get married or you buy a house, there may be people in your life who want to like celebrate that and give you a gift. And even though we didn’t have a wedding, we did have like— a housewarming party. Like a first Christmas going to visit your family after we got married and things like that. And since we both lived independently before cohabitating, like, I already had like used utensils, like I had forks and spoons and knives. You also already had your own utensils.

Royce: Yeah, we both had all of the basics, which is basic kitchenware, um, you know, things to eat on, things to eat with. The kitchen was the biggest overlap. I mean, there’s obviously like, all of a sudden we have too many bedsheets.

Royce: And—

Courtney: Yeah, well, because then we already had like more silverware than we needed for a two-person household. And still people who were like supportive and wanted to help but uh didn’t know us very well would just like give us a set of silverware. And it wasn’t like, nice silverware, or like, actually silver silverware, it was like, here is a set of silverware that has like, black plastic handles, in a brand new box, here you go. And now we’re like, great, now we have four sets of silverware between the two of us. What are we gonna do with this?

Courtney: So really, I think the biggest like, financial mistakes in like, buying cheap things weren’t even ours. It was people around us who were buying us cheap things that we didn’t need.

Courtney: And that happens so often. Like, I know that doesn’t just happen to us. That happens to people all the time, whether it is like you’re getting married or even if you’re single and it’s a gift just for you. If you’re like moving out for the first time, if you’re going to college, like you’ll start to get those like, oh, you’re on your own. Here’s a thing you need. sort of a gift, and those are often new, but they’re often cheap and, you know, riddled with plastics and things like that.

Courtney: And there, it just gets to be so much. It is disgusting how much gets accumulated. And that’s why if you can get secondhand, if you can give away your excess to people who need it, like, um, um I’ll just throw this out as an example.

Courtney: Like, there, there’s all kinds of mutual aid events that you can find locally. Locally, there are like franchise activism types of mutual aid. In Kansas City, we have a branch of the Really Really Free Market, for example, where once a month you can show up and there’s just all kinds of things. Everything is free. You can bring things, you can take things, you can do both.

Courtney: I’ve also been aiding in a new mutual aid event that has started for Johnson County on the Kansas side. It’s the 3rd Saturday of every month at Antioch Park.

Courtney: And it is just a share fair. Everything is free. We’ve got a ton of clothes, we’ve got books, we’ve got plants, we’ve got breakfast. It’s amazing.

Courtney: And it’s not only a place where if you have also accumulated things that you do not need, you can bring it, but you can take whatever it is that you need also. And that is just a way that we can stop buying so much and generating so much waste.

Courtney: It’s absolutely wonderful. You are welcome to come to ours if you are anywhere in the Kansas City area. But please just look it up to see if there are any things like that around you, whether it is a really, really free market or a local endeavor.

Courtney: Because I’ve been saying, like, I brought our excess silverware to this. We just had an extra blender. We just had an extra coffee pot. Things that we don’t need, but I think about that, you know, new college student student moving out for the first time who doesn’t have anything of their own. Let me give you the extra nonsense I have.

Courtney: Some of it has never been used because I got this gift when I didn’t need it. So we really have to share around the excess.

Courtney: Definitely has me, you know, over the years has had me rethinking not only how I shop for myself, but also how I shop for others. If I am trying to give a gift or whatnot.

Courtney: But moving on from scam companies and high-pressure sales tactics and doing things like buying furniture and appliances when you’re entering a new stage in your life, let’s talk about what we’ve learned buying and owning a home.

Royce: Oh yeah, you can’t trust anyone to do anything right.

Courtney: Moral of the story.

Royce: That’s a little extreme, but basically there isn’t enough oversight in areas of expertise that people ranging from uh home inspectors to lawn care specialists to foundation companies to really any work where you’re hiring someone to come in and, you know, do something on your house, there is a chance that they have basically learned the basic levels of their job and don’t have the higher-level knowledge that, for example, with foundation, an actual structural engineer would have and might be able to spot or fix some issues, but will often miss or misdiagnose others.

Courtney: Yeah, so let’s start back at the beginning and break this down piece by piece. When we bought our home, I played realtor. I have never been a realtor. I was not licensed. I just did a lot of research and trusted myself um to figure out the contract work.

Courtney: And it did take a lot of extra time. So not everybody has the time or abilities to research and learn these things.

Courtney: Um but in our case, I did, and we definitely did benefit from it. I negotiated down the house price quite a bit from the listing price.

Royce: The other thing to keep in mind is if you do try to do all of the communications and research that are— that’s necessary to make a home purchase, that means you are not hiring a realtor. Mhm Realtors on average in the US get paid 6% of the listing price of the house. And for a purchase like a home, that is a lot of money.

Courtney: Yes. So immediately cutting out that out of the sale, but also things like for example, at the time this house went up for sale, it needed a new roof. And they said, uh we’re going to put in the contract that we will replace the roof before the closing date. I did some research about the roof that they were expecting to put on, the like color and material that they wanted to put on.

Courtney: And I did all that research ahead of time. And I told them, forget it.

Courtney: Take the price of the roof off of the house on top of the other things we’re negotiating with. And I am fully prepared to you know, replace the roof after we close. That just gave us more time and freedom and flexibility to actually do that research and decide on a roof that we wanted, not just whatever they were going to put on, which at the time they’re selling the house is going to be whatever they think they can do for cheapest that will get them the most money.

Royce: That’s one thing that kind of irritates me about home sales in general is that you’re expected to make everything nice and pristine. So most people will go and paint the house, and then they’ll sell it to someone who probably doesn’t like the paint colors of the house. So then they immediately repaint it.

Royce: Uh-huh.

Courtney: Yeah. I also see that as being very wasteful. But I was happy with that choice that, um, for the most part, I think went as well as possibly could have for us.

Courtney: There were, and there’s no way to avoid this entirely, there were a couple of surprises about the state of our house that came like a couple years down the road that we would have hoped would have been seen on the home inspection, which we did get. And the home inspector we got came highly recommended, has been working in this state for an extremely long time, etc., etc.

Courtney: Did point out a couple of like, mostly superficial things, and one or two slightly bigger concerns he wanted us to ask some questions about. But for the most part, he was like, yeah, lots of this is great. Um, including, he said, foundation looks great. Oh, how wrong he was.

Courtney: And of course, they always say when you do buy a house, you should have, you know, enough money left over in savings that you can take care of it and maintain it. You shouldn’t spend every single cent you have buying a house. But it’s still nice to have a little bit of a heads up if a major, major expense is in the near future. And lo and behold, uh, we did have major foundation work that needed to be done. So we did what, again, we thought was our due diligence by getting a variety of companies out to diagnose the problem, give us quotes, tell us what they were going to do before we made our decision. The company we decided to go with was primarily for two reasons. It wasn’t the cheapest quote, and it wasn’t the most expensive quote. It was a little middle of the road, but we particularly at the time trusted it because it was one of the local companies, which was my preference.

Courtney: But also the guy who came out to look at the house and take measurements and give us an explanation, Said he was an engineer. And he said that is one of the reasons why their company is different, because all the other companies just send out salespeople who are just trained to do a limited diagnosis and aren’t themselves engineers. But he said, I am an engineer, and this is why I know these things better than these salespeople will. And that sounded good to us.

Courtney: We signed the paperwork with one company, but on the day the company came to start doing the work, it was an entirely different company. And when we asked about it, at first I think someone said, oh, you know, we’re just contracted to do this. Uh, but then throughout the process, we ended up finding out that the company we signed a contract with Got bought out by this bigger company that was like headquartered in another state, trying to expand really rapidly. Knowing what I know now, I would not have let uh a company I did not sign a contract with touch my house without extensive conversations and revisiting the terms of that contract. Because yes, theoretically, if one company buys out another, they also buy out the contract, but they had a different idea for what to do to our house.

Courtney: They, uh you know, used some different materials. They um ended up making a lot of mistakes or making a lot of promises that were not kept. And it had just been a constant fight for years now. Still an ongoing fight.

Courtney: I had just like, every now and then need to call uh that damn foundation company to try to get someone out again to take this issue seriously. And some of the issues were incredibly obvious, like even in their own branded paperwork where they say like, this is why we do things this way, it’s a lot safer because this, we’ll be able to compare side by side with our house and be like, well, you didn’t do that. You didn’t do this thing that you said needs to be done.

Courtney: I also— I am still glad we bought this house. However, the foundation issues did teach us that there were other avenues where we could have gotten better information sooner. Such as the fact that as soon as we started having foundation work done, we would have neighbors walking by our house, most of whom we didn’t know personally, hadn’t really had a conversation with, but they’d all stop and be like, yeah, I had to do that to my house a few years back.

Courtney: I know how expensive it is. I know how loud it is.

Courtney: And all of a sudden you learn everyone in this neighborhood has had to have similar work to this because it is just the age of the neighborhood, the type of soil we live on, um, the drought.

Royce: The national depletion of the water tables.

Courtney: All those things. So even though we had a home inspector saying, hey, your foundation’s great, if we had had a conversation with anyone in this neighborhood other than the people who were selling us the house, someone would have told us like, yeah, if you haven’t had foundation work yet, you’re going to need to soon. Which is exactly what we told new neighbors of ours who moved in because we knew that house hadn’t had major foundation work yet. And we said like, hey, did your home inspector tell you that you’re gonna need foundation work? And they were like, no, our home inspector said our foundation was great and we’re like, eh, we’ll see about that. And they didn’t believe us, but guess who had major foundation work done last year?

Courtney: So if you can talk to the neighbors of the house you’re trying to buy, you can probably learn a lot of things. Now being very good neighbor— um being very good friends with our neighbors, there were also things that the people selling them the house told them that were outright lies. And we knew that because we’ve lived in this house for so many years, we’ve seen every bit of like, major work and construction that’s happened on the house next to ours. So when they’re being told like, yeah, the siding on this house is completely brand new, we’re over here saying, bullshit! They did not re-side that house! ‘Cause we watched them come in and paint the old, uh siding a different color before they sold it to you. They didn’t redo the siding. It’s just a fresh coat of paint.

Courtney: But of course, all of these conversations where we’re warning them what they’re gonna need to do with their house comes after they bought it too. So because we’ve had this ongoing fight with our foundation company, we made them and finally got them to come and redo some of the work. It again literally took, what, like six years of hounding them before they came back to fix what they messed up? They wouldn’t fix everything that is going wrong, but they fixed some um certain things.

Courtney: The other areas of the house, they were insisting, well, no one could have accounted for this. This isn’t our fault. This wasn’t an error. This is just new issues happening on top of the work that we did. So of course we weren’t buying it and we wanted to get— you know, expert opinion on it.

Courtney: And then we actually met and hired a structural engineer to come to our house and give an entire synopsis of everything structurally that he sees. And just talking to this guy was so illuminating.

Courtney: I would recommend to anyone buying a new house to actually hire not just a home inspector, but an actual engineer.

Royce: Yeah, someone who has an actual active license in their field of expertise, because everyone we talked to so far had basically been technical salesmen. They were people who made contracts, they knew the business, but they didn’t have that area of expertise.

Royce: And this goes into many other things too, like you can hire a general handyman or like a general contractor to come and do a lot of things on your house, but they’re going to miss things that a licensed electrician or a plumber or something or someone like that uh would be able to identify. We’ve hired people to do— we hired some people to do some landscaping-related things immediately after the foundation work because everything is a mess.

Courtney: Because they ripped up like our entire yard and our they had to tear out a porch that was on our house that they didn’t tell us ahead of time they had to tear out. So then we just literally had patch of dirt.

Royce: But it turns out that a lot of people doing landscaping do not have the background training of actual arborists or horticulturalists. Um there is missing information there.

Royce: Now, where we were wrong in our initial round of—

Courtney: Quotes.

Royce: Quotes, yeah. I feel like most people go about this as, well, we’re going to get at least three different quotes from three different companies, and that, for a big thing like this, that’s the wrong way to go about it.

Royce: For a foundation in particular, you should find an independent structural engineer to survey the house. They’re going to do a walkthrough of the house that is longer. Normally, your quote from a, like, foundation company will be each person will come out individually and take maybe an hour to look around, and they’ll be— they’ll all do kind of the same stuff. They’ll—

Courtney: Some of them have different methods.

Royce: Different.

Courtney: Some of them will do the same thing.

Royce: Different methods, different tools, but they’ll take pictures, they’ll measure around. Structural engineer passing through will probably take a good three, four hours, uh, but we’ll do a more thorough job of a lot of it.

Royce: But then you can take that write-up and send it to as many companies as you want and say, I don’t even want to talk to your salespeople. Just quote this job.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: Quote this job exactly. Don’t try to change it at all.

Courtney: Yes. And that was so very illuminating because when we hired the structural engineer, he said, like, first and foremost, what is the reason you’re having me out? But do not tell me anybody you’ve talked to recently, anybody you’ve gotten a quote from. Um, just tell me what you know and observe from your past because I want to remain like, I want you to know that I am completely unbiased.

Courtney: And when we told him sort of the story of our foundation issues going wrong, he did tell us that the company we originally signed a contract with once upon a time were a great reputable company. They did start going downhill and started getting shady in those last couple of years before they got bought out.

Courtney: And he even said, he’s like, yeah, they, you know, there was a rumor that they were lying about uh sending engineers out to quote. And we were like, well, that’s why we went with them, was because he said that he was an engineer and we thought that was better than the salespeople they were sending out. And oh, he got livid. He was like, what was his name? He’s like, I know all of the engineers in the area. And um we gave him the name and he’s like, I don’t know that name.

Courtney: And he said, did— did he say like Engineer Seal or? Like, did you see his official engineer seal? Or his stamp?

Courtney: We’re like, no, I don’t think so. And he’s like, any engineer who’s like, signing work will have a seal. They’ll have an engineer seal. And so he’s like, for your knowledge going forward, if anyone says they’re an engineer, ask to see their seal. If they don’t have one, they’re not an engineer.

Courtney: We’re like, okay, noted. And when we told him the company that actually did our work, because they bought out that first company, he was like, oh, um he’s like, yeah, they’ve been messing up a lot of things. I know exactly kind of what to expect if they worked on your house.

Royce: Yeah, we got a lot of foundation company gossip, both from the structural engineer and from the smaller companies mhm who are like, fixing these guys’ issues is like 90% of our work.

Courtney: I mean, hell, we didn’t sign an NDA with this company, so I don’t know why we’re skirting. It’s Thrasher. Horrible work, horrible salespeople, horrible customer service. They will mess up your house, and you will spend literal years fighting with them. When other people in our neighborhood had to have their obligatory foundation work done, all I had to say to them was, for the love of God, do not even get a quote from Thrasher. But yeah, this engineer was—

Royce: Horrible.

Courtney: Wonderful. Gave us not only a proper diagnosis for what we need to ultimately do to fix the foundation issues, but gave us a few heads up on other things, um, like the structural stability of our deck, which was not even on our radar. And he was not only able to tell us like, here are safe uses of this, here are um unsafe uses, but here’s why. And he would explain the actual— science behind why it would be more structurally sound if we did X, Y, and Z. And he also gave us like different levels.

Courtney: He’d say, you could hire someone to do this, and in my report, all you have to do is hand them the report and ask how much. But he also just gave us like, you know, if you want to do this yourself.

Royce: Yeah, here’s your $100 DIY fix for the center of your house sinking in. Go get a $30 bottle jack, like, uh, and a really sturdy piece of lumber, jack the middle of your house up, and then put some metal shims in place and call it a day.

Courtney: Okay, man, appreciate the honesty. And yeah, like, you will be paying for an engineer’s time whether you’re trying to buy a house or if you’re trying to diagnose an issue that you need to repair. And that right on the front end sounds worse than getting free quotes from a whole bunch of companies, but when there is so little oversight and so many companies are outright lying about their credentials to your face, spending a little bit of money up front to know that you’re getting an expert who actually has an engineer seal, that will save you far more headache in the long run and probably more money because our foundation work was not cheap, but it also didn’t fix everything.

Royce: That’s the thing. In any sort of project, the most expensive thing you can spend time or resources on is a mistake.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: I did, while you were talking, pull up our paperwork from the inspection to look at his seal, because he made a big point of like, well, I’m going to send you paperwork and there’s going to be a seal on it. And yeah, it is full name, uh, state uh of license, and a code or a number identifying them.

Royce: But anyway, that was one of the big ones.

Courtney: The biggest, for sure.

Royce: We have had other work done on our home that was done well that we don’t really have complaints about. A lot of homeownership, though, is a couple dozen new hobbies. The thing is, is you can’t reasonably bring someone in to fix every little issue.

Royce: So you, you figure out where your line is and what things you’re going to do yourself.

Courtney: Honestly, if like, if we could go back in time to tell ourselves things that we know now, even with the foundation issue, I think this particular house was the right answer for us. So I would hope that if we knew major foundation work was on the line, we wouldn’t have completely changed our mind. But things like learning how to garden sooner could have, you know, saved us the trouble of, you know, hiring a landscape company that did not know what they were doing, and most of the plants they put in completely died, despite the fact that we said, we don’t really garden, can you put things that are like really resilient and not gonna die? And they said, sure, and then everything died. And then a few years later, we got into gardening, especially you, and now you know so much more about plants, and we have food, and we have— native wildflowers.

Courtney: And—

Royce: Yeah, if you’re going to have any amount of land, some um basic ecological knowledge is nice to know. It’s good to know some simple methods to prevent runoff if you’re on a hill, or ways to get materials in effectively. Like, if you have a big project in place, don’t go to your hardware or lawn and garden store and get like 30 individual bags of dirt or gravel or sand or whatever. Go to a big company that is going to drop it off on your driveway or in your yard.

Courtney: um shout out Chip Drop.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: What a bargain.

Royce: Yeah. So in the area that we live in, there are enough arborists going around trimming trees year-round all the time. And the way that they normally do business is they, they have their contract, they go cut tree limbs, they move them, they chip them on the street, and then they have to find somewhere to drop those wood chips off. They usually have to pay to put them at, you know, whatever landfill discard place that those wood chips go to. Well, you can sign up for a free service, at least in some areas of the country, to say, hey, my driveway is a place you can drop off wood chips.

Courtney: Yep, you can drop off those wood chips right here, baby.

Royce: It’s free. The consumers of this service are the arborists who are saving time and money by having a closer drop-off point so they can go back and continue doing work. Because oftentimes the places that they have to go to get rid of these wood chips are like on the outskirts of the city. They’re places with with more land.

Royce: So they are paying to use this network, and you’re getting a few tons of wood chips for free, provided that you have a place for them.

Courtney: Yep.

Royce: And that’s really helpful if you are doing some major landscaping and you need a lot. And if you have too much, flag down your neighbors.

Courtney: Yeah, because they will want them.

Royce: But yeah, gardening is such a long-term project. Gardening or landscaping in general is such a long-term thing that it would have been nice to start earlier.

Royce: If you’re looking to get into something like that, some of the best resources I have found have either come out of a nearby regional agricultural school or something like a botanical garden.

Courtney: Yeah, local schools and local botanical gardens will often have really friendly guides for like, here are plants you want.

Royce: Right, gardening guides that are already tailored to your area, databases of either native plants or plants that just do very well in your area without needing a lot of care. There have been some I’ve found that are very good about searching specifically for plants that will grow in the dry areas of our yard or the lower sun, like higher shade areas.

Royce: Oftentimes, if you are just searching the internet in general, it can be difficult to track that down in a reliable fashion. And oftentimes when you go to things like YouTube videos, a lot of the very prominent gardeners on YouTube come from some of the climates where it’s very, very easy to garden.

Royce: And so if you follow their directions exactly, there’s a good chance it won’t work in your area.

Courtney: Yeah. Uh Gnomes forbid we ever have another global pandemic or similar catastrophe that uh all of a sudden has two% interest rates on housing. But I not only know many people who were able to buy a home because of that window of time and the decreased prices, but having already owned our home, that was a significant enough difference from our original mortgage that we did refinance during that period.

Royce: Yeah, that was kind of a hassle paperwork-wise, but it was, it was worth it. I know refinancing loans can be financially questionable depending on the difference in the interest rates and, and how much you have to pay up front to— in order to refinance in the first place. But if it’s a loan that you’re going to be paying off for a long time, taking advantage of a—

Courtney: Significant dip.

Royce: Yeah, a financial— a new financial situation in order to like renegotiate those terms can be nice.

Courtney: So I guess the main morals of the story are: reject all high-pressure sales tactics in any scenario, no exceptions. Seek genuine, neutral, third-party expertise, even if it takes a little more time and money to do so. At least for major endeavors, it will save you money, time, and stress in the long run. And find some ways to collectively reject Hyper-consumerism.

Courtney: Get involved in local mutual aid endeavors, develop a community, seek uh the wisdom of fellow gardeners, and grow your own food if you can, if you have land to do so. If not, there are often community garden options uh that you can get involved in, which is not only a great way to help out the community, but also a great way to learn if you are new to skills like this.

Royce: If you are really tight on space, there may be other options as well. I have never gotten into hydroponic gardening, but I’ve read about it a little bit. It can be very space efficient and water efficient. There’s a learning curve, but there are options there if you’re really motivated.

Courtney: And I think that is probably going to do it for today. As I said at the top of this episode, a little different from what we normally do, but hopefully it was still a little informational. Informative, even.

Courtney: So as always, I am going to leave you off with today’s featured Marketplace vendor, Burger Shack Creations, which is a startup shop to sell a range of artwork and crafts based in Australia. The shop currently holds a lot of different Pride flag merch options. Specifically a lot of digital downloads.

Courtney: There are some rainbow flag, trans flag, lesbian, bi— you can get a whole bundle of a variety of pride flags if you prefer. Great for making stickers or buttons. As per the usual, the link to find Burger Chat Creations will be in the show notes on our website as well as the description box if you happen to be listening on YouTube. And as always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.

Courtney: Don’t get scammed!