You react to your perception. No one truly sees the world as it is, we all have our own biases and lenses.

I always tip on the subtotal. No need to tip on sales tax.

I'm an architectural technician. I literally design and build homes for a living. One of my primary tasks is to submit and obtain approval for planning and permits.

Yes, the city absolutely has a copy of the plans on file. For over a decade I griped and complained about lack of digital submission of plan, physical was required specifically because the city retains copies and didn't have the digital infrastructure in place to store electronic copies long term. My city installed this infrastructure only in about 2018.

Further I have done a number of renovations of old buildings. Our primary focus is infill and intensifying neighbourhoods, usually brownfield sites like old mills and factories. I've gone to the city on a number of occasions for plans. They generally had everything post 1950, and has spotty coverage on stuff between 1910 and 1950.

I literally have a print of an old factory plan framed behind me, and I got said copy from the city.

So unless I'm a movie character and don't know it, you absolutely can get copies from city Hall in any municipality I've worked in.

Or just quit the moment things don't go your way. Please let us know how that works out for you.

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That depends on what kind of filter you have.

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Each spring and fall do a visual inspection of your home both inside and out. Flush your water heater once or twice a year, and replace the sacrificial anode once every three or four years. Check your water softener weekly, and clean out the salt bin once a year. Have your furnace tuned up once a year. Use Drano Max Gel in all your drains once a year. Use root kill in your lateral sewer line once or twice a year, and one gallon of lye once per year. A good rule of thumb is to expect to spend 1% of the value of your home on maintenance and repairs every year, e.g. if your home is worth $200,000 then expect to spend about $2000 on repairs.

Oh, I do know they have really cheap (relatively speaking) hand held scanners that realtors will use to create online tours, so that could probably be done a lot cheaper. From what I've seen though, they're not nearly as good as the nicer scanners.

Haven't actually worked with them myself, but with what I can remember, rather than actually producing a fully three dimensional digital copy of the site, they produce... More like a set of flat images, that it tries to stretch and add depth to, which causes weird distortions, and you can really only look from set stations, rather than being able to view things from any angle or position in a fully 3d environment

I could be wrong, not my area of expertise, that's just what I half remember from seeing a handful of examples a year or two ago

I regret every decision I make the first month. I just hate change. But after that month things get better. I felt regret when I got my cat, when I left my awful job, when I started my good job, when I started dating my bf. I always regret making changes, but after a while I can enjoy the benefits and I truly enjoy my choices.

Adding to this: PRINT the photos...
I did the electrics in a house and the owner made photos of every nook and cranny ...and deleted them by accident.

Things always work out in the end. If they aren't worked out yet, you're not at the end yet.

"Financial experts don't want you to know this one simple trick!"

Yes, of course. Stay out of their way and no one cares if you’re on your build site.

I'm not aware of any businesses that offer it for small residential real estate, but the technology for point clouds is 100% ready to handle stuff like this.

Even with a nicely upper middle class home, the square footage should be low enough to run scans in just a few hours. I'm not a construction guy or handyman, so this just guesswork on my part, but I'd imagine your tolerance are pretty loose, too, which would bring down the time and cost considerably

Assuming they own the equipment, and aren't renting, a local company could easily scan, register, and export a point cloud for 5-10k, maybe less. Maybe set up a nice recurring payment to host the point cloud on a cloud for you in perpetuity, and get some cash on the back end too.

I understand that's not exactly cheap to the average person, but in the scope of purchasing a house it's not a huge additional expense either. I know real estate varies a ton by area, but in the places I've lived, any halfway decent home, even in awful neighborhood seems to pushing half a million, so if you're in an area where you can get a house for like 150k, I understand you might not agree, and that's reasonable

A good idea. BUT, you also need to record the location location and direction you're facing. Bring a whiteboard and write stuff like "Downstairs powder room, facing front" and put that in the frame. Without walls and fixtures, it can be really hard to tell what you're looking at -- that's especially true if, for example, you're taking a photo of the ceiling.

AS an added benefit, if your handwriting is neat enough, then Google photos will recognize it and then you can just do a search for "powder room" and you'll get all the photos from there.

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Lol as if 4 walls and a roof is some patented concept. Like I get that home are slightly more complex than that, but that's such a ridiculous notion.

This is a myth perpetuated by the movies. You can’t go down to the “hall of records” and look at blueprints for every building to find out where the heating ducts are that lead to the treasure room. Once the city finalizes all of its inspections it gives the plans back to the builder and doesn’t keep a copy.

Wow. It’s like building architects and software architects should get together and figure out some standards on how to document stuff.

Is the $150,000 expected to be in large bills or assorted?

Also if possible, ask them to put in empty conduit between floors and rooms. This can be super useful for adding wires and the like in the future.

• wipes away tears of laughter *

It was "next owner" that made me laugh haha

Also, Kleenex.