Would encourage anybody who has a historic home pre-1940s to keep their original windows and just restore them. Unless you get 4 and 6 pane windows, the energy savings are minimal.
Please take Brent Hull with a grain o' salt if you own an old home. Anything pre-catalog is different and does not really fit a recipe. Brent is opinionated but doesn't often broadcast that he's expressing opinion instead of fact.
Love Brent, though! He has a vision of old houses and pushes it.
It's more of a breeding facility. The locals call it the "Monkey Farm". They probably want them to be as disease free as possible for the labs that buy them.
There is also a controversial "Monkey Island" on Morgan Island in St. Helena Sound.
Before I commented, and did a search to read about Alpha Genesis. Their website says one of their services is conducting experimental research on monkeys as designed by the customer.
I am not saying you are wrong. Your comment suggests you know the facility or at least live in the area and have some personal knowledge which certainly trumps anything I know (limited to searching the internet). After seeing your comment above, I did another search and the very top result was Google generated with a Q&A about this facility and the monkeys getting loose - and the first Q/A I saw had an answer that stated the monkeys at the facility are injected with disease (it is a confusing QA and I question the origin of what is posted).
I think one of the main issues with pricing is the deferral of taxation for the sale of rental or investment properties. A lot of people are seeing housing as a potential retirement savings account that can be reinvested and also produce income at the same time.
If I had $100k to put as a down payment on a $500k house, and was able to rent at a rate that would pay, mortgage, taxes and upkeep. In 30 years, even assuming the price of housing stayed the same, it would have been a pretty good investment.
What is better though is if anytime within the 30 years the house doubles in price. I can sell it tax free and have enough money to buy an even more expensive house and potentially have a better retirement.
As long as I keep shifting the money from one house to another, I never pay taxes. I am also able to continue to rent the property and bring in a nice continuous income.
The fun little trick to this is you have to find a new property within 45 days of selling the previous property to keep the tax deferral benefits.
I think this 45 day window combined with low interest rates and limited inventory caused most of this crazy increase in housing prices.
Unfortunately, the landlords have increased their rents to correspond with local housing prices, and normal hardworking people are getting squeezed more than they ever have been.
I don't think this is sustainable, and as soon as there is a drop in renters in an area, and the rental properties start losing money. The housing prices will start to fall. The question is how long this will take.
> The fun little trick to this is you have to find a new property within 45 days of selling the previous property to keep the tax deferral benefits.
This is a 1031 exchange [0], when selling a business and buying a "like" business -- if you can identify the new one within 45 days of selling the old and close within 180, you can defer (not avoid) the long term gains on the deal. So let's say you bought a gas station in a crappy part of town, but you want to sell it and buy a bigger/better/more profitable one by the highway, this is how you do it. If your "business" is rental housing, then you can do the same thing.
Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance isn't. Why would you want to pay 15-20% long term gains tax on your gas-station trade-up if you didn't need to?
> Unfortunately, the landlords have increased their rents to correspond with local housing prices, and normal hardworking people are getting squeezed more than they ever have been.
It's just supply and demand -- capitalism at work. I don't think that many landlords are altruistic enough to not want match their rates to the "competition" (in this case housing prices).
Unfortunately, I feel that this is quite common in small businesses. I put in the same 10 years that you did, and would constantly propose large improvements to the owners. They were almost always shot down, and just result in me having to deal with the same problems.
Most of the time, I feel that it is just the owner’s fear of losing control of some part of their business. Sometimes it’s just fear of change.
I decided to go into a different career path entirely and am working for myself now. It has helped my mental state incredibly.
I know it is scary, but sometimes you just have to take the leap.
I mean, I don't blame the owner entirely. Maybe they're perfectly happy with what they have. If someone really knows their business well, maybe it isn't worth putting effort behind a brand new thing that customers couldn't give two flips for. If you aren't seeking new customers, there isn't a strong business appetite to innovate unless customers are complaining. If you're too eager for customers, you're probably putting too much emphasis on thin product feature checklists to sell sell sell! Somewhere in the middle is where I think the sweet spot is, and org that isn't comfortable with its market share but unwilling to throw caution to the wind in order to make every sale. That isn't exciting? Great, then find a company that better fits what you want in your career. Job/employment isn't always a good fit for what you're looking to fulfill in your career, and those are perfect opportunities to leave.
Came to recommend his online course as well. You aren't going to find a better handtools introduction series IMO. You might be able to piece one together from Chris Schwarz, Sellers, Roy Underhill, and some others. But Common Woodworking is designed and offered specifically for someone like OP to get started IMO.
Brent Hull is a good resource on historic windows and outlines the reasons to keep them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6mAmIrN5qY
Plus, the original windows look significantly better and will last longer.