u/ReignOfHairor

Hi all!

I've spent probably ten hours on repointing subs for the past couple of years, and I'm royally confused. (Below, I'm numbering the premises that I've been told, for ease of feedback on whether they are accurate.)

Here's the problem: my house foundation (100+ years old) has fieldstones with large voids in the mortar (big enough to put my arm in).

My foundation also has occasional spalling brick with gaps in the mortar.

1. From what I've been told, the foundation is going to take on some water no matter what. (Is this true? It might be.)
2. Thus, I should want the infiltrated water to slowly wash away the mortar (which is easily repointable). This is much better than having infiltrated water cause fieldstones to crack or bricks to spall (both of which are much harder to replace).

If the mortar is harder than the fieldstone/brick, so the story goes, then the water will go through the fieldstone/brick, freeze, and crack it. (I'm in a very cold climate.) Old brick, so the internet says unhelpfully, is somewhere between 220 and 4500 PSI.

Thus, many Reddit threads, and limestone salesmen, have insisted that I MUST use natural hydraulic lime (NHL) to repoint both foundations. They insist that any amount of portland cement is a disaster, and that I must use the same material as was originally used (presumably lime).

3. They also say that NHL is self-healing, because it cures with water rather than with air. That sounds good, if true.

But whenever I talk to anybody at a masonry supply store, they look at me like I have two heads. They've never heard of anybody patching with NHL. (And I can only find one place in the entire northeast that sells NHL.) They tell me that I'm wildly overthinking the problem. Am I really better-educated on this than all the masons in my city?

4. And if NHL 2.0 has a compressive strength of 290-1000 PSI, why is that any softer (and thus better) than Type N (750 PSI) or Type O (300 PSI)?

5. Is it any different for fieldstone than for brick?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! (I want to do it right, but if I had just spent those ten hours of research on using portland cement like everyone else, I'd probably be halfway finished the job already...)

https://preview.redd.it/icj1ls1vr8bh1.jpg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=390665dbee66fb58bfaf5c7f6e336ea2550ab548

https://preview.redd.it/w3xii32vr8bh1.jpg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=de4dbdedaf98d7a3fb8307c5aa161f79e808c828

https://preview.redd.it/t9316s1vr8bh1.jpg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5776fd08621ebbae3ee2fa3467994a0c17d703e7

https://preview.redd.it/f081bs1vr8bh1.jpg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44f6e5c084ad6bcc00d87e0d473ca3ae03bc1aee

I'm an American tax resident. I bought a house in another country that makes a small profit. I pay that country something like 15% in taxes on the housing profit. That country doesn't give me any exemptions on housing income, so that 15% of tax starts with the first dollar of profit that I earn.

I have to report that small profit to the IRS. But that 15% that I paid in the other country should count as a credit against my American taxes, so I don't get double-taxed, right?

I've filled out Form 1116 to try to claim that tax credit. As far as I understand, Form 1116 tries to calculate how much you would have paid in taxes if that other country had American tax laws. Guess what? If I'm doing it right, then the IRS tells me that I shouldn't have paid ANY foreign-country tax, because the basic personal exemption would have covered it. But in that other country, I don't get any exemptions. So now the IRS wants to double-tax me on that foreign country housing income, for which I already paid foreign-country income tax.

Is that really right? Am I doing something wrong? This is driving me crazy.

Thanks!

Hi folks,

I'm an owner-occupied in a 3-unit. But for the next year, I'll be away.

During my first year of owning, all three of the tenants in Unit 2 got locked out of their suite (by forgetting their keys). (They're all students at a good nearby university, but they sometimes they do absent-minded things like this.) This coming year, I won't be around to let them in.

Should I install lock boxes (with combinations) for each unit, so that they have a backup?

Or is this a bad idea, because they could theoretically figure out how to change the combinations, and lock me out of my own lock boxes? Or other reasons?

Thanks!

New homeowner of an owner-occupied rental property here. When it comes to most of my rental-related expenses, I can write them off against my rental revenue. In the early years, that definitely creates a loss to help offset my overall personal income tax bill. That was part of the calculation of buying a multi-family property in the first place.

However, with the biggest of big-ticket expenses (over $2500), I have to depreciate them over 27.5 years. So I can only write off 1/27.5th each year. I don't like it, but OK, as with Social Security, I'll grudgingly accept the robbery of my present self in order to pay my future self.

But what happens if I sell the house after, say, 10 years? Then for a first-year big-ticket expense, I only get to write off (over the years) 10/27.5ths (37%) of that expense. For a tenth-year big-ticket item, I only get to write off 1/27.5th (3.7%) of that expense.

Is the IRS assuming that it's not really an expense, because if I spend (say) $5500, then my eventual house sale price will increase by $5500, so I'll get all that money back eventually? That doesn't seem fair, because 1) most home improvements don't get 100% back in sale price improvements; and 2) the time value of money makes the 10-years-into-the-future $5500 increase in sale price worth less than the this-year $5500 I paid for it.

Is this why there are so many slumlords who never improve their properties?

Make it make sense! Help a guy out.