Comment on Servers go Brrrrrr
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks agoSoooo… there are openly available public databases containing information on how fancy a kitchen you own…?
On one hand that’s completely hilarious.
On the other hand that’s frighteningly dystopian.
To say it with the latest officially elected German youth word: “Das crazy.”
smh@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Yep. For example, search for parcel “176-194-030” in the Hartford, CT tax assessor’s search. It should bring up a McDonald’s fast food building (I chose that because it’s less creepy than singling out some random person’s home.)
Screenshot of the parcel info page
There’s even a little drawing of the building. The purple is the first floor and the blue is the “canopy” or, I guess, awning outside. The “interior” tab on this site doesn’t list the kitchen quality, but does say the insulation is “typical” and 40% of the building has sprinklers. My guess is different cities and towns track different things in their tax assessments.
Oh! IIRC, Germany has the thing where the kitchen doesn’t stay with the house. In the USA, they’re firmly attached.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Coming from a country where even the streetview pictures have to be blurred if the people living there wish so, this uncompromising publication of people’s home information is totally fascinating!
And also I am wondering now, what a half and a 3/4 bath is… ;-)
BTW: While it is true, that the kitchen is not part of a German house or flat, it nonetheless typically is also firmly attached (big screws into our rather firm brick walls).
And contrary to exaggerating Youtube-clips, in most cases it stays and is privately and quietly sold by one tenant to the next, out of obvious practical considerations.
Also because of the “does not belong to the building” rule, when buying a home, it is a good idea to estimate the value of an existing kitchen at the upper end and reduce the official price for the rest of the home price accordingly, thereby reducing the estate sales tax by a few bucks. (Sales tax is only for the building, and the kitchen does not belong to the building, so…)
smh@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
a half bath is a toilet+sink. A 3/4 bath is a toilet, sink, and shower (but not a tub). 3/4 bath can be fuzzy: if it’s the only bathroom in the home, it will often be called a full bath.
I’m not sure if we had to pay an estate sales tax when we bought this place. We pay town taxes every 6 months automatically through our mortgage. We also paid a recording fee for the town to record the condo sale. There were a lot of fees, tbh.
And yes, you got me, I heard about German kitchens from YouTube.
Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Buyer fees are unfortunately quite high in Germany, can be up to ~10% of the property price. Add to that the fact that houses or flats are generally more expensive than in the States, you quickly have additional costs of 50000€ or more (would be roughly the same in $) which you can not cover by the credit, but have to pay in liquid cash.
This is a major hurdle for many and a likely part of the reason why so many people live in rented apartments here instead of buying.