[JViello]

Originally Posted by wavehunter007

PLENTY of homes in the Northeast and Connecticut don’t have basements

The coast of Connecticut and Long Island, NY have been hit with more major hurricanes have have experinced more hurricnae damage than the coast of Georgia… even though Georgia is further south.

I'm not wanting to get into an argument with you, but you seem to be exaggerating some things and using selective data to make your points. You play with data for a living so you know what I'm talking about.

This where my mother would probably pull me aside and say "play nice, you don't always have to win".

When you say "Plenty" it makes it sound like it's common. It's not, and you know it. The majority of homes here have some form of a basement. To say otherwise is being disingenuous. On the other hand VERY FEW homes have basements South of DC and East of the Mississippi. It just is what it is.

As for the coast of Georgia getting hit by less hurricanes - perhaps you are correct, but you use qualifications such as "major hurricanes". Yea, nevermind the "minor hurricanes". Moreover, you use a selective piece of the coast that has a natural curve which would allow it to be missed by said storms as they hammer into the Carolinas. Pull up the coast of SC and/or NC and compare the data. Lets also not forget that even in places like Charlotte that may not see major wind damage, get deluged with rain and flooding when these storms come marching in from the coast.

I would take one major hurricane in 50 years over 25 category 1 storms and tropical storms that flood streets and homes and give me a pit in your stomach wondering if it's going to intensify.

Lets not torture the data to "be right". Yankeerose00 has some valid points and concerns and should not be badgered into "submission" or dismissed altogether.

Just a thought.

[aroundthecorner059]

I have not yet seen one house in CT that does not have a basement.

[wanderintonc]

Originally Posted by aroundthecorner059

I have not yet seen one house in CT that does not have a basement.

I owned one without a basement. My new one has a basement, though. I never worried about tornadoes-we would have hid in an interior closet.

[wavehunter007]

Originally Posted by JViello

I'm not wanting to get into an argument with you, but you seem to be exaggerating some things and using selective data to make your points. You play with data for a living so you know what I'm talking about.

This where my mother would probably pull me aside and say "play nice, you don't always have to win".

When you say "Plenty" it makes it sound like it's common. It's not, and you know it. The majority of homes here have some form of a basement. To say otherwise is being disingenuous. On the other hand VERY FEW homes have basements South of DC and East of the Mississippi. It just is what it is.

As for the coast of Georgia getting hit by less hurricanes - perhaps you are correct, but you use qualifications such as "major hurricanes". Yea, nevermind the "minor hurricanes". Moreover, you use a selective piece of the coast that has a natural curve which would allow it to be missed by said storms as they hammer into the Carolinas. Pull up the coast of SC and/or NC and compare the data. Lets also not forget that even in places like Charlotte that may not see major wind damage, get deluged with rain and flooding when these storms come marching in from the coast.

I would take one major hurricane in 50 years over 25 category 1 storms and tropical storms that flood streets and homes and give me a pit in your stomach wondering if it's going to intensify.

Lets not torture the data to "be right". Yankeerose00 has some valid points and concerns and should not be badgered into "submission" or dismissed altogether.

Just a thought.

You are mostly correct….

however the poster acted as if “by default” every house in the Northeast States has a basement…which is untrue. Also, I never said most house down south "do" have a basement. As I mentioned a few years back, one of the reasons I post here occasionally, is there seems to be little representation of the coastal and eastern Connecticut environment. I have noted that most of the posters are down in FFC or outside of Hartford.

You must remember your areas of CT….are newer and more affluent than many parts of Connecticut…especially eastern Connecticut. You would be surprised how many homes in New London, Windham, and eastern Tolland Counties are built on slaps because they are cheap, or how many old houses in rural areas have no basements. There are thousands of cottages and small coastal homes along the eastern Connecticut coast that have only a 3-foot crawlspace…or on slab. However, I do agree, MOST houses (70/30) have basements in CT/NJ/MA…etc. Remember ….not all of Connecticut looks like FFC or suburban Hartford/New Haven. You’d be quite surprised at some of the things you’d find in rural eastern Connecticut.

As far as hurricanes…you are wrong there. I only used the coast of Georgia to make a point that weather hazards are not just a “north/south ratio. Long Island and Connecticut…have a shorter return period for hurricanes (winds or 74 –mph)…and major hurricanes (winds over 111-mpg)…. than Georgia and many other states (Virginia, parts of the Florida West Coast, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New England). As far as “25 minor hurricanes in Georgia…. Georgia has only been directly hit twice (2-times) by a hurricane since 1950. Connecticut/Long Island has been hit 7 times in the last 50 years. You are also right, that places like Charlotte have been deluged with rain and flooding often....but the fact remians that the worst urban hurricane flooding to this day....occured in the 1955 hurricanes that weakened and passed over Connecticut and dropped 1 to 2 feet or rain.

You ‘d be shocked to learn (as I was)…they formed the National Hurricane Center in the 1950’s because of hurricane strikes in the North Atlantic States. The lull in hurricane and major hurricane activity since Gloria in 1985 ….will not last forever. Trust me.

Again, I get your point…my only issue is people think the Northeast is like the Pacific Northwest or Colorado... that it's “severe weather free”…which is just scientificlly untrue.

[Yankeerose00]

For the few homes in New ENgland that don't have basements, the few people without one could always run to a neighbor's house and hide in theirs. New Englanders may be reserved but they aren't cold hearted and I'm sure they would let a person hide in their basement.

I remember learning in college years ago how statistics can be misleading and one of the examples was the one tornado from the 1950's that killed a lot of people in Mass. Because of that one tornado, when they rank states for people being killed by tornadoes, MA will rank high, though realistically, if you take away that one tornado from the 1950's, MA is not a high risk state at all.
Sorry, I must have wrote it wrong. I didn't mean that if a place doesn't have sirens, that it's low risk, I mean, the truly high risk states have sirens. Not all towns within that state has sirens, but at least sirens will exist in the state. I dont' know of any northeast states that have sirens anywhere. My parents area in TN doens't have sirens but a couple hours away they do.
There is risk of anything anywhere but I just would like to warn anyone from NE moving down south, to prepare themselves because the weather is different. Snow storms are no longer your biggest threat. Now you have a bigger monster to deal with. And there won't be basements to run into. But some people don't care. I've still met people from TN and Florida who said they would rather deal with tornadoes and hurricanes than snow. Of course the same people that say this haven't actually "dealt" with either. I think they would change their tune if their homes was destroyed by a tornado, and they God forbid lost a family member. At the very best, all of your things are gone that you'll never get back, like photo albums. You never have to worry about that in a snow storm!
I think that the south has a lot of pluses and there are tons of New Englanders in TN and they love it there. I think you just have to prepare yourself for threat of tornadoes and not brush it off.

Here is data from the 2006 tornadoes that destroyed my aunt's house. It literally ripped away half of her house. She was lucky enough to be in the other half. Two of her neighbors were killed. There were 73 tornadoes on this day.
But anyway, my original point was the New England, specifically CT, is a wonderful place to live and if cold weather and snow is the worst thing to complain about, then we are doing pretty good. I hate this notion that the northeast has horrible weather and the south has such wonderful weather. It's just not true.

April 6–8, 2006 Tornado Outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[wanderintonc]

Originally Posted by Yankeerose00

For the few homes in New ENgland that don't have basements, the few people without one could always run to a neighbor's house and hide in theirs. New Englanders may be reserved but they aren't cold hearted and I'm sure they would let a person hide in their basement.

]

Oh, I would not have run to a neighbors (actually, the whole development does not have basements). You're pretty safe in an interior closet or bathroom-you want a place with no windows or exterior walls. I am from here but lived a couple years in Texas as a kid-where tornadoes are common. I learned how to deal with them, best you can. They don't usually have basements there, so you figure the safest place in the house out (in advance!) to go.

I think in CT, where we get the most danger and damage is from trees falling in storms, and road conditions. Like, if we have an ice storm and power goes out, you inevitably have people die from fire or CO poisoning from trying to stay warm. Not so much the weather itself that kills folks, but the residual effects.

[njohnson]

Originally Posted by JViello

Honestly, I feel your pain. My last recent trip to SC was because of the lure of cheap housing. But in the end, looking at what you get as a whole I didn't find more value as a package.

What I like about here, is if you are smart and patient, you have options.

There ARE properties in "rich" towns for under 300K. In subdivision land elsewhere in the nation, people are segregated by enconomic status. "This subdivision only has homes from 400K - 600K and this subdivision is 150-250K" type thing.

So people start flashing their "subdivisions". "Well, we live in Winegate Estates" and guess what? Unless you have 500K you are not living in Winegate estates, you WILL live in Crunchy Meadows instead - period.

At least here you CAN buy a home in Avon or Glastonbury, live in the same town, go to the same schools and not be forced to pay $750K for a home.
If you look around, you WILL find that gem and/or deal.

If it helps, let me share my experience. After looking for about 8 months, I found a 50 year old custom built home on a private road (Sort of public now - the town kind of took it over just not on paper), on over 2 acres, up on the Case Mountain Ridge in Manchester overlooking the CT River Valley. It was on the market for about 6 months and even I passed by it many times and decided to "have a closer look".

Well, when you pulled up it wasn't pretty. The original owner passed and it was sitting for a while. The landscape was overgrown, the backyard looked horribly overgrown and small etc etc. BUT, I decided to get out and not do the typical "drive by". Walked into the backyard which had a WALL of vines and overgrowth so thick you couldn't put your hand through it.

I punched a hole through, walked past and the lot opened up to this beautiful once meadow now filled with small saplings with old stone walls and a commanding view of the Valley.

Now I was getting excited. So I went back and looked in the windows. Yea, it needed updating here and there, but over all it was a nice 4 bedroom ranch style home with the back of the house actually two story due to the sloping landscape (Which levels out after the rear of the house) with a wallk out basement that has another 1300sf of "ready to go" space.

Nice original oak floors, steel beam in the basement, drywall with plaster skim coat on the walls (People pay big $$ for that these days) etc etc.

I purchased the home for $180K in 2002. Instead of doing the "Extreme Makeover" remodel and gut the place all at once and dump $100K into it...over the years I've been working on the house slowly and using the "paygo" method.

First step was to go through and repaint, basic repairs etc.

Then came the land clearing. A Chainsaw and two months of weekends, some landscaping over time and it's now a beautiful lot. Most people come over and are shocked at what was hiding underneath...then they walk out on the back deck and the jaw drops from the view.

Then came turning the 4th bed into a dining room, bathroom remodel, kitchen etc. Next will be turning the downstairs into a HUGE family room and game room as it's literally the "first floor" of the house on the backside with windows and doors.

Yea, it's been 6 years but the home is now worth about $300K in today's market and we took our time and did most of the work ourselves.

So you can certainly find a home in CT for "not a lot of money"...you just have to be real "Yankee" - creative and smart and willing to roll up your sleeves.

Well said and I def get your point. I am a very visual person being in design so I can look past most of the things such as landscaping and some curb appeal elements as my family has a great touch in landscape design. I also have a couple friends who are professional tilers and builders that said they will lend a hand with any interior work that is needed so I feel lucky to have such friends.

What we have found to date in our searches is trouble finding the location we want (not on a major road, not near wetlands, near good schools, not adjacent to any high power lines, etc).

We both know this will be our first home so it will have to be sold probably within 6 years or so. This makes resale one of our primary concerns. Modern family lifestyles have changed so much within the last 50 years that to me I am not sure if it makes sense to say buy a house with 1.5baths and spend $40K adding a new bath and reconfiguring a layout or just spending $45K when buying the home to get the bath already. This is our dilemma with a number of items that are more major and require permits, foundations, layout configuration changes, etc. I know for best resale for today's family I'd like to have a minimum 3BR, 2.5BA, 2Car Gar, .25 acre lot.

I am looking for that hidden gem though, some were close but a few major problems have always seemed to creep up, especially on some of the older homes we've looked at. We are in love with craftsman style homes and some colonials but we've had a tough time as craftsman homes were never really big here compared to out west. We may have to settle with a colonial and when the market bounces back sell and build out craftsman dream house.

Originally Posted by Yankeerose00

I agree that it is pricey, however, in my extensive research on areas to live, I found that CT did give you the most for your money and I found that other places were not as cheap as cracked up to be. Not to mention the fact that in most southern cities, the salaries suck! So CT still came out ahead for us. Of course it really would depend on your line of work but for my husband and me, we were actually "poorer" when we lived in Florida than we will be in CT.

I guess the bang for your buck depends on what you are looking for. Sure some areas are deceptive but in addition to home prices we do have a fairly high cost of living here with high energy and tax costs in addition to the high home prices. We do make more money in general although this differs person to person and I think this is a factor more with specific jobs such as education. I am self employed and my clients are all over the country so location has no effect on my income, I would probably be able to live a much higher level of life in terms of what I personally could afford however my girlfriend would probably be adversely affected.

I did, just as a gauge look at Raleigh, NC (I almost moved there with an ex a few years ago) and found some pretty spectacular 2500-3000sq ft homes for rough $250,000 exceeding all our requirements including having schools rated 8's and 9's which would put it at a level of say Glastonbury. This was just as a gauge though, there are a number of factors that would have me pass on moving there. This was just to see how much bang I could get for my buck house-wise in another location.

The biggest turn offs with places like Raleigh and many places in the South is how they build their homes. They pretty much clear hundreds of acres of land, parcel them into tiny .17 acre lots for the most part and build tract homes everywhere. This would kill resale values with so much inventory as people would rather just buy a new home than a used one. You don't see this happen much in CT and the only area around here I can think of that is similar is on the Cromwell / Middletown border.

[kidyankee764]

Originally Posted by aroundthecorner059

I have not yet seen one house in CT that does not have a basement.

Same here, and I've lived in CT my whole life. Even the few people I know who are homeowners in eastern CT have basements. Granted there are many beach cottages/bungalows that are built on slabs but this is not the norm. I wouldn't go so far as to say basements vs slabs is 70/30. I don't even think 30% of the state's population resides in the eastern 2 counties in CT. I highly doubt that, but it would be interesting to see what it really is.

I remember reading a few years ago that the safest town in the nation from natural disasters was Cheshire, or maybe Enfield? I know it was a town in central Connecticut. What we see here is nothing to what friends of mine in VA, CA, FL and ID have experienced. Tornadoes in CT are very rare and even if they do touch down, they rarely stay down and fizzle up. There are stats, then there is real life. JMO

[wavehunter007]

Originally Posted by Yankeerose00

I remember learning in college years ago how statistics can be misleading and one of the examples was the one tornado from the 1950's that killed a lot of people in Mass. Because of that one tornado, when they rank states for people being killed by tornadoes, MA will rank high, though realistically, if you take away that one tornado from the 1950's, MA is not a high risk state at all.

Your're right...I couldn't agree more.

but my original point is still valid….there is still some risk in the Northeast (CT, NY, NJ, MA, DE, MD…ect) for severe weather…no matter how small. You seem to intentionaly keep omitting this. Also, snowstorms are NOT anywhere near the biggest threat ANYWHERE along the East Coast from Rhode Island south…tropical cyclones are (hurricanes). Hurricanes have killed FAR MORE people and caused FAR more damage than snowstorms. In fact, to my knowledge, I don’t think anyone in the last 50 years has died in a snowstorm in Connecticut or anywhere south of Connecticut.

When was the last time a snowstorm (the few wimpy ones we even have) ever did this to the Connecticut coast….

[njohnson]

But how many hurricanes have we had that directly hit us? The only I can think of in my lifetime has been hurricane Gloria back in the 1980s which had 2 fatalities in CT. I did some research and there have been 6 hurricanes to hit CT since they've been keeping records. Usually by the time they get here the threat has been diminished significantly as well due to the colder water and distance from the South. That's not to say they aren't destructive but are a relatively rare occurrence and they typically don't have the power that they do in the South.

Snowstorms hit every year and while they may not directly kill people I would say tens are killed every year indirectly from over exertion while shoveling or accidents on the road as a result of the snow and ice.