Impressive! Do you own a sawmill?

Thanks, and no, We hired a local mill to saw, mill, and dry the flooring, then my wife and I laid and finished it. The kit was from Cedar Knolls log homes in Plattsburg NY.

 

Thanks, and I'm not sure, I'll have to dig for them.

 

What does "sell for spite" mean? I guess you couldn't afford the taxes and sold your house very cheap to get rid of the real estate quick? I 'm sorry if that's the case, it's a real pity to be forced to part from your own creations.

We say "I sold it for a piece of bread" here in Greece.

 

We say "I sold it for a piece of bread" here in Greece.

Here we say "Por chaucha y palitos" Green beans and small (wooden) sticks.

Certainly nothing that it could cost too much to get.

 

What does "sell for spite" mean? I guess you couldn't afford the taxes and sold your house very cheap to get rid of the real estate quick? I 'm sorry if that's the case, it's a real pity to be forced to part from your own creations.

We say "I sold it for a piece of bread" here in Greece.

In reality, we could afford the taxes, but nothing else! We had no public water, gas or sewer available, and were being taxed at a much higher rate per foot than our neighbors. We used the grievance process to dispute our taxes and won. The next year, the town assessed the house even higher! We grieved that one saying we were being assessed higher than our neighbors, so the town said you couldn't compare a log home to a traditional one. We then used comparable log homes from the town and were told that this wouldn't work because the homes weren't in the same neighborhood!!!! We spoke to one of the county officials who said he tried arguing with the town assessors valuation and was told to butt out. We sold the house to cash in on all the sweat equity we built into the home, and used the proceeds to buy our next home with a small mortgage. Luckily, it was at the peak of the real estate boom here, and we did well on the sale price.

To "Spite" means to hurt, or annoy someone.

The spite part comes in when I go to the town and say how much LOWER our taxes are now, how much money we save, how much nicer these town officials are and how IGNORANT our former assessors were to force the citizens to sue them in court, and cost the town so much money to defend their foolish pride. We really loved that house and property, but realize it's only a building, and we are able to enjoy more things without that hanging over our heads. I guess you could call it "Bittersweet"

 

Speaking of that Georacer, how are things in Greece? we see the protests on the television, but it would be nice to hear a personal perspective on how this affects the average joe (you)

 

In reality, we could afford the taxes, but nothing else! We had no public water, gas or sewer available, and were being taxed at a much higher rate per foot than our neighbors. We used the grievance process to dispute our taxes and won. The next year, the town assessed the house even higher! We grieved that one saying we were being assessed higher than our neighbors, so the town said you couldn't compare a log home to a traditional one. We then used comparable log homes from the town and were told that this wouldn't work because the homes weren't in the same neighborhood!!!! We spoke to one of the county officials who said he tried arguing with the town assessors valuation and was told to butt out. We sold the house to cash in on all the sweat equity we built into the home, and used the proceeds to buy our next home with a small mortgage. Luckily, it was at the peak of the real estate boom here, and we did well on the sale price.

To "Spite" means to hurt, or annoy someone.

The spite part comes in when I go to the town and say how much LOWER our taxes are now, how much money we save, how much nicer these town officials are and how IGNORANT our former assessors were to force the citizens to sue them in court, and cost the town so much money to defend their foolish pride. We really loved that house and property, but realize it's only a building, and we are able to enjoy more things without that hanging over our heads. I guess you could call it "Bittersweet"

dill holes.

 

I guess things are as bad as in Spain or Portugal. People are getting poorer and taxes are getting higher. Something's gotta give. In our case it's the citizens who start to protest about the situation.
The protests are generally peaceful, but the problem is that there are people paid to create violent episodes to give riot police an excuse to barge in and all hell breaks loose. People don't die however.
Traffic in the town center is often closed and the employees' strikes frequently disable public transportation and services.
Another thing is that people in the rural country are generally ignorant of the situation too, their only source of info being the TV.

I actually live pretty close (about half a mile) from the places you see on TV, but I can't hear a thing! Where I live I have other problems to face: Uncontrolled entry of immigrants from the middle east has severely downgraded the neighborhood's level and there's a rise in criminality and racist incidents. The real estate price has dropped below the floor and the big fish is already buying. Of course none of you are showed that.

 

WOW!! I guess we should count ourselves lucky so far, other than high unemployment, some local cities and towns and one state going broke, We are pretty quiet. Things might get ugly since businesses have gutted our retirement plans like 401K, and pensions, and now the government wants to slash out social security and medicare benefits... Thanks for sharing.