Minnesota to Greenville,Simpsonville area questions

[davit]

Originally Posted by Knudson's

Really noone has heard of these deals ? I found them on craigslist.com.

"Rent to Own" is right up there with payday loans, similar to a land contract and weighted heavily in favor of the seller. Of course, if they are on Craig's they can't be that bad

[grannynancy]

One thing we found when we were looking is that if you want "country" or "edge of town" - Simpsonville may not be for you.

We moved to Simpsonville and like it, but it is very suburban and likely that country land next to you is likely to be a subdivision in the future. Land runs at a premium.

If my grandkids were not here and we wanted country life, we would be looking at Travelers Rest in a heartbeat.

If you want to be able to go shopping and do anything and everything you can pretty much find it all in Simpsonville or off of Woodruff Road.

[grannynancy]

Oh if you want to look at taxes you can see what people pay on property taxes and all kinds of neat stuff on www.gcgis.org - it will also give you historical sales data and can run comps. SC taxes can be a bit tricky for personal property and real estate,

MSN earth has some awesome aerials where you can look at a house from all angles

Here is some tax info
Welcome to the South Carolina Department of Revenue

[ckeegan]

Originally Posted by Knudson's

Thanks for the info . Where can I find info about the taxes ? I have looked online in the past . Here in minnesota there is no tax on food or clothes.
I would like a house as I curently own a home in Minnesota so going from a house to a complex is kind of a scary thought . I am not sure how long it will take or if I will sell my home up here as the market is bad . I may rent it out to family of friends .
To be honest in a perfect world I would find a home in the country or on the edge of town .
One more thing I have seen on Craigslist.com is rent to own deals . Do you folks know anyone who has done this ? Have you guys heard of these companies . Any info is great !
Again you guys are great and thank you for all your help.
Jeremy

Originally Posted by davit

"Rent to Own" is right up there with payday loans, similar to a land contract and weighted heavily in favor of the seller. Of course, if they are on Craig's they can't be that bad

I don't know that I would rank it up there with payday loans, but the agreement is usually weighted toward the seller's benefit since the purchaser is denying them their obvious goal of an immediate sale. No different than a car dealer charging interest on a car loan, since you're not buying it outright with cash.

Originally Posted by grannynancy

One thing we found when we were looking is that if you want "country" or "edge of town" - Simpsonville may not be for you.

We moved to Simpsonville and like it, but it is very suburban and likely that country land next to you is likely to be a subdivision in the future. Land runs at a premium.

If my grandkids were not here and we wanted country life, we would be looking at Travelers Rest in a heartbeat.

If you want to be able to go shopping and do anything and everything you can pretty much find it all in Simpsonville or off of Woodruff Road.

You can live easily live in Simpsonville and have the "country feel". That's one thing I love about living off of Woodruff Rd. Sure people complain about the traffic all the time, but it has everything practically anyone could ever need, and if you drive down a side street (Butler, SC-14, Five Forks, Scuffletown, Jonesville, etc) for 5 minutes you'll probably see a cow.

Originally Posted by grannynancy

Oh if you want to look at taxes you can see what people pay on property taxes and all kinds of neat stuff on www.gcgis.org - it will also give you historical sales data and can run comps. SC taxes can be a bit tricky for personal property and real estate,

MSN earth has some awesome aerials where you can look at a house from all angles

Here is some tax info
Welcome to the South Carolina Department of Revenue

Only if you're willing to trust that the assessor measured the house right. During the last reassessment, my old house actually grew by 120 square feet according to the assessor's website, which was news to me. Put as much weight on the gcgis comps as you would on zillow's ability to determine value. (FYI, they use the same data)

[grannynancy]

Originally Posted by ckeegan

IYou can live easily live in Simpsonville and have the "country feel". That's one thing I love about living off of Woodruff Rd. Sure people complain about the traffic all the time, but it has everything practically anyone could ever need, and if you drive down a side street (Butler, SC-14, Five Forks, Scuffletown, Jonesville, etc) for 5 minutes you'll probably see a cow.

You can right now - but if you look at zoning that is all zoned for residential or light commercial [stores] development so that "country" feel will go away in the future. It always pays to know what the plans are for adjacent properties. It seems to me there is more country feel in the area West of Simpsonville than the area East, but that the development on the east side is more consistently nice homes.

One good thing is there are a lot of streams, and therefore protected flood plains, so you can find a house that backs up to woods that cannot be developed if you are careful in your selection. That is what we did. We back up to an intermittent feeder creek that feeds Gilder Creek. Gilder is known to flood but we are high enough up that is not a problem. Because of the large Gilder creek flood plain, we see a lot of wildife and birds. [Including a breeding pair of pileated woodpeckers]

The current zoning shows the area south of Lee Vaughn to be rural in nature but they are already allowing tighter development than the current zoning.They are also still allowing cul de sac development, something the long range plan advises against.

Lot sizes here seem to run small though in anything new. Some of the 80s homes have good lot sizes. We got .4 acre on a 2003 home, which seems large by Simpsonville subdivision standards for sure.

Another consideration is homes built after 1993 MUST have Radon mitigation systems. Greenville County has high radon levels so I would not touch any home without radon testing. SCDHEC has a list of approved testing firms - the little passive things you get at Home Depot are not as good as 48 hour testing using an air sampling device.