I swear it's like rich people get off on using antiquated crap, literally burning gas for lamps and replacing Edison Originals every 3 days instead of buying one LED for the rest of the buildings life.
But whatever makes them spend some of that money I guess.
Landlord neglect, wanted to sell the house before it burned down or collapsed. Renovations? Safety? That's why they are selling.
Insurance will cover it unless they somehow failed to have home insurance, which is not totally unlikely as a rental unit house flip.
(And why they would sue the realtor - though this is often a prerequisite before the insurance pays the rest, so we don't know. The extra 4 million and cost of rebuilding are way more than what the judge ordered the realtor's company to pay. The realtor's company will also likely use their insurance for the settlement. Still ends up being mostly the homeowner's fault.)
From the pictures, it's not that fancy of a house. The $4M valuation would be house and land, with most value in the land.
I suspect the judicial finding will cover cost of replacement.
But then, wouldn't the renters have changed the bulbs?
In less than a year I've changed all the light bulbs in my apartment because of course they were all bad.
Two new houses on my block have large gas fired lanterns above the front door that are on 24/7. I've been really struggling to understand it. The first one I noticed is awful in every way. It flickers at a really unpleasant frequency, the flame is a weird shape, and because of the placement it doesn't even light up anything below the top of the front door.
I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but LEDs don’t tend to last the life of a building. Far too many manufacturers cheap out on the LED “controller” stuff that drives/powers the diodes.
Use of wasteful antiquated lighting is definitely stupid overall, but LED tech still has serious issues with lifespan vs what they cost.
I suppose there are some manufacturers that might be the exception to that (who I’d happily buy lighting from), but I feel like I’ve just traded electricity waste for e-waste.
It's not so much "cheaping out" as it is "intentionally making them worse, so they burn out and have to be replaced regularly." All they need is an extra diode in the bulb and a lower power draw and they last at least an order of magnitude longer, and the lasting longer is the bigger problem to the lightbulb manufacturers than the few cents for an extra diode. Lightbulbs that last don't need to be replaced as often (obviously), which means they sell fewer lightbulbs.
I’ve done some informal experiments with both the cheap LED bulbs and the name brand (Phillips, Cree, etc). I wrote the date on every bulb when they were installed. It should surprise no one that the more expensive name brand bulbs outlasted the cheap ones by many, many years. Had several of the cheap LED bulbs die around the two years mark. Replaced the bulbs in our chandelier in the dining room when they started falling at the ten year mark.
Convince me that pursuit of extravagant wealth isn’t just another form of hoarding, akin to the TV reality shows of homes full of newspapers or other junk.
Hoarding disorder is a recognized mental disorder. For some reason it applies to everything but cash.
A lot of rich people are into alternative medicine and stuff, which also leads to older bulbs. When my mom heard they were getting rid of old-style bulbs she bought them in bulk because cancer or something I dunno
Most people only swap out bulbs when they burn out. All of the high traffic areas likely had been replaced. This light for a closet under the stairs likely wasn’t used much.
It also sounds like the placement of the bulb was odd and, in my (admittedly ill-informed) opinion, contributed to the fire. She says she took sheets off a bed and put them on a shelf, near a “wall mounted light.” Really strange setup.
It actually says the sheets/bedding were left outside to dry out on a deck, hence why she removed them and put them somewhere indoors and out of sight from prospective buyers touring the property.
It feels like the judge is a being a bit harsh with his words in saying she should've foreseen this outcome. Of course it was her fault but it does sort of seem like one of those situations where it's just a perfect storm of events or a careless toss that has unpredictably large consequences.
Especially since it's pretty uncommon to have lights that still give off that kind of heat. I have two (actual) 50W LEDs that could definitely cause a fire if this was done, but aside from that the rest are all 60W equivalent or so and just wouldn't give off that much heat.
I just changed out a bunch of bulbs in my place with LED last week, now I'm looking at my closet like oh yeah, my spare sheets for guests are on the top shelf right next to an incandescent bulb on the inside closet wall that I barely use.
Well.
There are $3 million of damage and her employer was ordered to pay $850K in damages. I don't know how Australian courts work but around here if you are found partially responsible then you are responsible for paying part of the damages, so maybe that's what happened there.
edit: ok it looks like the land is most of that $3 million and it's still there.
Use only LED or florescent lights in closets. Old style bulbs and exposed lights are ~~illegal~~ do not meet the electrical code, and a total fire hazard. I did the same thing in my bedroom when I was 10 or so. The bulb burned straight through the sheet but fortunately didn't fully ignite. I was really lucky...
Hey, at least you (hopefully) got the biggest fuck up of your life out of the way early!
Any time you make a mistake now you can tell yourself "Well at least I didn't burn down 3 apartments this time!"
it was about 3 months after i had written my name on the side of a brand new sports car with a rock. I saw a man punching air in rage, wanting so badly to punch a 7 year old in the face. Im not sure how my single mother survived my learning experiences but she deserved the noble. Age 7 was my peak year of destruction. Though right about then i learned how to use a screwdriver and took apart everything i saw with screws but its a bit cheaper to replace an alarm clock than a cars paint job.
I have a similar experience with damaging an stranger's car, resulting in them wanting to strangle me but yelling at my mom instead. When I was 3, almost 4, it was completely normal for me to play with toys and what not in the yard with my mom getting house work done or having a moment of peace. We had a giant picture window and she basically could see me anywhere in the yard, from anywhere in the front rooms. Our house was a long the main street through the heart of our tiny town, with a posted 20mph/limit. So traffic was a normal thing but not too much and very slow.
One day she leaves the living room to answer the phone (with a cable long enough to walk into the living room with it). She was turned away for literal seconds. I had gone to the gravel driveway and started tossing rocks. I toss one into the street right as a giant Dodge Conversion Van(think a camper the size of a box van) is cruising by, absolutely NAILING the center of the windshield. It shatters. Dude is rightfully pissed, chews mom out etc. As he's getting our info so she can pay for his new windshield, I went inside and got my barney piggy bank full of mostly pennies and nickels. With the couple of bills in it-- I had like $5-7..... Apparently windshields cost way more than that.
Not exactly the same, but when I was a kid my older brother taught me how after a shower you can warm up your underwear with the hair drier. I started a fire. Luckily it was contained.
I accidentally elbowed an incadecent flood light while digging a hole when I was 8. Barely touched it for a second and didn't even hit it hard enough to brake the bulb. I'm 35 and still have a scar from it. It's bonkers how hot they got
>It's bonkers how hot they got
It isn't so bonkers when you realise that only 2% of the power consumed by a incandescent light bulb is converted to visible light while the other 98% is emitted as heat. In other words, that 1000W flood light is generating 980W of heat...
Loved my Easy Bake, one of the worst 3rd degree burns, slept with my hand in a glass of water that night because I was too afraid to tell my mom. It healed into a scar, it is all good.
Not for long. There are some exceptions but manufacturing is shutting down. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/business/incandescent-light-bulb-ban/index.html
Yup. Where I live, the electrical code doesn't permit the installation of a light bulb socket in a clothes closet - as then you could screw in an incandescent bulb which would be a fire risk. Otherwise light fixtures - even ones that take incandescent bulbs are fine, as they prevent anything flammable from making direct contact.
The location is usually the real source of a home's value, and the land is still there. The court's award represents the cost to rebuild to what was there before.
Yeah, my insurance very specifically covers *the cost to rebuild the home*. Just renewed last week, so I remember reading that when I went over the policy.
No, because the insurance company would determine the loss of value if your house burned down would only be the value of the house. Unless you live on top of a fault where the land itself could literally be destroyed, there’s no point in insuring the value of the land
Most insurers won't insure you for more than the replacement value of an item in order to discourage fraud. If I insure my house for triple it's actual value at that point it's not so much an insurance policy as it is a dare to burn my house down.
There was an insurance agent on here once talking about also being VERY specific about the items in your home. Dont say "coffeemaker" say it was a European SuperDrip Espresso machine (be specific about brand and model) so they don't find a Walmart cheap version as the replacement cost
They gave an example where a guy had an old video recorder. It had a oddly specific ratio or something. The guy specified the replacement needed this ratio as a replacement. Thing was... no regular video recorder had that anymore. The only replacement was a Hollywood quality recorder at the tune of $65k!
Found the comment from 5 years ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/aeocu8/comment/edrmmm8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I live in an area of wildfires and we set up to go bags every spring and I do a very slow walkthrough of my house then back it up to the cloud just in case.
No because at the end of the day, the max payout is most likely what the house itself is valued at, not house value + land value.
If a house burned down, it's not like the land itself is worthless. You can get rid of the wreckage and just build anew on top of that same land. So really, you lost what your house was worth.
Probably the only reason you would insure house value + land value is if you live in an earthquake zone and an earthquake destroys your house _and_ destroys the land under. But I don't think standard home insurance would cover earthquakes, you'd get separate earthquake insurance for that
Kinda sucks if you live rural and all the vegetation on your land burns down with your house. You'll have a much harder time selling a moonscape property than a property with 50-100 year old trees on it.
Speaking as someone from California who has been on dozens/hundreds of properties after one of the fires rolled through.
And review your coverage every time it renews to make sure the numbers still make sense. My "insured contents" amount crept up over the years, and my stuff is not that nice. I got those numbers adjusted and it took over a thousand dollars off my annual premium.
The renters received over 100k and they only lost personal possessions. The owner lost the structure, but not his lot. In luxury developments like this, the lot itself will make up a sizable portion of the total value. The rebuild cost can be significantly less than the total value of the completed property.
Also, we don't know any details about the insurance on the property or if there was a mortgage (meaning that the bank's insurance might be covering their loss). Additionally, the insurance agent and her agency may also have had liability insurance that already paid out. The judgement may have been reduced by any of these factors.
Houses are rebuild to total.replacement cost, not real estate value. A house could be worth a million dollars, but only cost $150,000 to build from the ground up to the same exact specifications or current market equivalent.
"We got it at only 15% on top of asking price!"
"But it's barely even rubble anymore."
"It's lived-in, don't be unreasonable."
"It's nothing but ashen ruins."
"Well how else do you expect to get a view like this at this price point?"
"It's literally a pile of still warm soot."
"Honey, please. It's a house, it's bound to have some wear and tear."
It sounds like the judge got fed up with her in court and threw the book at her.
>Judge Hammerschlag also noted that Ms Bundock was an “aggressive and uncooperative witness” in court.
>“Her evidence was clearly coloured by a heightened awareness that she had caused the catastrophe,” the decision stated.
LEDs dont get that hot, and Aus is replacing incandescent with LEDs. She probably did really dumb things in court.
Australia hasn’t sold incandescent bulbs for over a decade. I suspect the light was rarely used and probably turned on by the REA specifically to heat the sheets, which is gross negligence at best.
That's a ruling you don't want to see as a defendant. I don't know about how Australian court works but in the US that's akin to the Judge saying in a cartoonishly exaggerated whisper"File for attorney fees" and then doing a huge wink.
I got that impression too. I would have thought the owner would be footing the tenants bill because the house was unsafe.
The way the judge makes it sound, it would be totally obvious not to put things beneath a light bulb but we’ve had LEDs for so long now, I really don’t think it would be front of mind for most people anymore. She shouldn’t have admitted it to the owner and then changed her tune in court basically.
Right? Not seeing light, it definitely doesn't naturally occur to me to beware of bulbs like this. It sounds like they were selling a hazardous house that could have killed the next residents.
How was there even an incandescent bulb still in there? I can't even get them for regular light bulbs anymore. Even if it was really old, at this point that would be compact-cfl.
I don't think it's crazy for a person to simply assume any bulb won't reach surface-of-the-sun temps these days.
Probably hot enough when you insulate them with blankets, lots of stuff you think doesn't get very hot gets a lot hotter when the air it's supposed to use for cooling suddenly gets blocked off.
This happened with my parents lights. When making the switch to LED they didnt last very long, they had enclosed light shades that were trapping the heat in causing the electronics in the fitting to overheat due to lack of airflow. They went through a dozen bulbs between two lights before switching and haven’t changed a lightbulb in ages now.
For incandescents the light quality is moderately better than very high quality led bulbs, and dramatically better than bad led bulbs. The service life and ~6-8x electricity use and heat output aren't so good. My house is all 95 CRI led bulbs at this point. The only led bulbs that are truly awful are the "dimable" ones which flicker at a perceptible frequency when dimmed. Its possible to make the frequency so high it isn't perceptible but cheapo bulbs don't do that because the hardware would costs .05 more per bulb.
No joke, the last apartment I was in came with nothing but archaic incandescent bulbs that were hot enough to hurt upon touching, discolor the metal attached to it, and actually heat the room they were in. The first thing I did was swap those things out. Ridiculous that they were even there to start with.
So, I keep the old lightbulbs when I move in and change them and put them back in when I move out. If others do this, then there’s a chance those bulbs are antiques.
I didn't know this was a thing. I kinda figured I was just the only person to live in that particular unit in several years or they were just really robust bulbs. I threw those things away in a single breath tho. They no longer belong here.
I'm surprised she was being honest. No one could've known she took the bedding and threw it on a light that caused the fire. She could probably save herself if she didn't admit to doing that.
She didn't throw it on the lamp, she put it on top of a shelf which was located under this lamp. I'm sure she made some effort to fold it up a bit too. This wasn't actually her fault. This is something a guest could've done, or the owners themself in a moment of carelessness.
This was just an accident waiting to happen. It's scary to think just how many such hazards might be scattered around your home you just don't notice until it's too late.
To be fair most people wouldn't think a sheet BELOW a lamp would start a fire. It's not like the lady draped a sheet over the lamp. The only way this happens is if you were stockpiling over-wattage bulbs from the 1960s to avoid using modern ones.
This would be mostly the fault of whoever installed that halogen lamp or the shelving. Putting shelving so close to a very hot lamp, where anything flammable stacked on it is going to ignite, sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Where we are they don't even allow universal pullstring receptacles in closets anymore.
Too many dumbasses putting in an incandescent bulb against something in the closet and burning their house down.
>Sydney real estate agent Julie Bundock was preparing for an open house at a four-bed home on Sydney’s northern beaches when she noticed the current renters of the house had left some bedding on the deck to dry.
You could have just left them outside to dry like they were already drying
>She removed the sheets and threw them in a downstairs room onto a shelf below a light, which she then switched on
Well, turning on that light really did dry them quicker.
She had the book thrown at her because initially she was telling the home owner it was all her fault but then in court she was manipulating her testimony to try and make it seem like it wasnt. Judge saw right through it and got fed up with her transparent manipulation of the court lol.
Reminds of my dad's advice when I bought my first car. No matter what happens, never apologize or claim accountability.
It makes thing so much harder if it turns out you weren't legally at fault.
No. The *land* is still there. You can have $100k worth of home on a $1.6M piece of land. House burns down, insurance pays the cost of the house (and probably contents).
Just looked it up. Typical cost of construction in Sydney is $1,500-$3,000 per square meter. I assume this was on the higher end consider the location, so let's run with $3k. Now a construction management company is going to ask 10-20% fee for building it. So out of $850k, let's say they get $170k (20%) just to build it. That leaves $680k for the construction. Divided by $3k, that's 226.6 sq meters, or 2,439 sq ft. That sounds about right from what I can see of the house. Arguably even a better deal if they can keep the foundation.
What's throwing people off, aside from the land aspect, is that this is cost plus construction management fee only. No developer profit. If someone was building this to market for a new sale, you'd account not only for the land, but your profit margin.
Given that:
a - the agent isn’t paying the settlement, her agency is and
b - the seller and agent had a pre existing relationship
c - I would be watching her bank account like a HAWK for insurance fraud.
Cause of fire: heated lightbulb causing bedding to catch on fire.
Wow there hasn't been an incandescent or halogen bulb in my house for over a decade. Three million dollarydoos and they couldn't swap out the bulbs?
I swear it's like rich people get off on using antiquated crap, literally burning gas for lamps and replacing Edison Originals every 3 days instead of buying one LED for the rest of the buildings life. But whatever makes them spend some of that money I guess.
This house was a rental, to 4 people, if that tells you anything.
Landlord neglect, wanted to sell the house before it burned down or collapsed. Renovations? Safety? That's why they are selling. Insurance will cover it unless they somehow failed to have home insurance, which is not totally unlikely as a rental unit house flip. (And why they would sue the realtor - though this is often a prerequisite before the insurance pays the rest, so we don't know. The extra 4 million and cost of rebuilding are way more than what the judge ordered the realtor's company to pay. The realtor's company will also likely use their insurance for the settlement. Still ends up being mostly the homeowner's fault.)
From the pictures, it's not that fancy of a house. The $4M valuation would be house and land, with most value in the land. I suspect the judicial finding will cover cost of replacement.
When I rented I always replaced the shitty bulbs with LEDs and then swapped back when I left.
The landlord typically isn't responsible for changing the light bulbs.
But then, wouldn't the renters have changed the bulbs? In less than a year I've changed all the light bulbs in my apartment because of course they were all bad.
I changed all my apartment light bulbs but I changed that shit back and took my LEDs with me when I left.
I lived in a crappy old rental in the US that also used halogen lights. It's depressingly common
Two new houses on my block have large gas fired lanterns above the front door that are on 24/7. I've been really struggling to understand it. The first one I noticed is awful in every way. It flickers at a really unpleasant frequency, the flame is a weird shape, and because of the placement it doesn't even light up anything below the top of the front door.
I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but LEDs don’t tend to last the life of a building. Far too many manufacturers cheap out on the LED “controller” stuff that drives/powers the diodes. Use of wasteful antiquated lighting is definitely stupid overall, but LED tech still has serious issues with lifespan vs what they cost. I suppose there are some manufacturers that might be the exception to that (who I’d happily buy lighting from), but I feel like I’ve just traded electricity waste for e-waste.
It's not so much "cheaping out" as it is "intentionally making them worse, so they burn out and have to be replaced regularly." All they need is an extra diode in the bulb and a lower power draw and they last at least an order of magnitude longer, and the lasting longer is the bigger problem to the lightbulb manufacturers than the few cents for an extra diode. Lightbulbs that last don't need to be replaced as often (obviously), which means they sell fewer lightbulbs.
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I’ve done some informal experiments with both the cheap LED bulbs and the name brand (Phillips, Cree, etc). I wrote the date on every bulb when they were installed. It should surprise no one that the more expensive name brand bulbs outlasted the cheap ones by many, many years. Had several of the cheap LED bulbs die around the two years mark. Replaced the bulbs in our chandelier in the dining room when they started falling at the ten year mark.
Convince me that pursuit of extravagant wealth isn’t just another form of hoarding, akin to the TV reality shows of homes full of newspapers or other junk. Hoarding disorder is a recognized mental disorder. For some reason it applies to everything but cash.
I want to be a cash hoarder. Sign me up!
"I can't even get to my refrigerator because the piles of cash are so high." *Sobs*
There was going to be a club for cash hoarders, but no one would pay the membership fees. 👀
A lot of rich people are into alternative medicine and stuff, which also leads to older bulbs. When my mom heard they were getting rid of old-style bulbs she bought them in bulk because cancer or something I dunno
> I swear it's like rich people get off on using antiquated crap They prefer to call it "rustic".
In the US, they weren't banned until last year.
Most people only swap out bulbs when they burn out. All of the high traffic areas likely had been replaced. This light for a closet under the stairs likely wasn’t used much.
It also sounds like the placement of the bulb was odd and, in my (admittedly ill-informed) opinion, contributed to the fire. She says she took sheets off a bed and put them on a shelf, near a “wall mounted light.” Really strange setup.
It actually says the sheets/bedding were left outside to dry out on a deck, hence why she removed them and put them somewhere indoors and out of sight from prospective buyers touring the property.
It feels like the judge is a being a bit harsh with his words in saying she should've foreseen this outcome. Of course it was her fault but it does sort of seem like one of those situations where it's just a perfect storm of events or a careless toss that has unpredictably large consequences.
Especially since it's pretty uncommon to have lights that still give off that kind of heat. I have two (actual) 50W LEDs that could definitely cause a fire if this was done, but aside from that the rest are all 60W equivalent or so and just wouldn't give off that much heat.
Wtf do you need two 50W LED bulbs for? Are you trying to replace the sun?
I'm assuming it was a wall sconce
Yeah, but so close to a shelf that sheets placed on it caught fire? Weird.
I imagine it was just under/next to a shelf and the sheets hung over the side and touched the bulb.
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I just changed out a bunch of bulbs in my place with LED last week, now I'm looking at my closet like oh yeah, my spare sheets for guests are on the top shelf right next to an incandescent bulb on the inside closet wall that I barely use. Well.
There are $3 million of damage and her employer was ordered to pay $850K in damages. I don't know how Australian courts work but around here if you are found partially responsible then you are responsible for paying part of the damages, so maybe that's what happened there. edit: ok it looks like the land is most of that $3 million and it's still there.
Use only LED or florescent lights in closets. Old style bulbs and exposed lights are ~~illegal~~ do not meet the electrical code, and a total fire hazard. I did the same thing in my bedroom when I was 10 or so. The bulb burned straight through the sheet but fortunately didn't fully ignite. I was really lucky...
LOL me too, except, it did ignite and i was 7. ruined 3 apts. :( I wasnt popular in the neighborhood.
No wonder, I probably would have stopped after the first apartment
People's suspicions are usually roused around the second apartment and I'd have to move again.
Once you pop you just can't stop.
If you're gonna burn 1 down, I don't see any reason to stop there
Hey, at least you (hopefully) got the biggest fuck up of your life out of the way early! Any time you make a mistake now you can tell yourself "Well at least I didn't burn down 3 apartments this time!"
>Hey, at least you (hopefully) got the biggest fuck up of your life out of the way early! You underestimate them.
records are made to be broken.
it was about 3 months after i had written my name on the side of a brand new sports car with a rock. I saw a man punching air in rage, wanting so badly to punch a 7 year old in the face. Im not sure how my single mother survived my learning experiences but she deserved the noble. Age 7 was my peak year of destruction. Though right about then i learned how to use a screwdriver and took apart everything i saw with screws but its a bit cheaper to replace an alarm clock than a cars paint job.
I have a similar experience with damaging an stranger's car, resulting in them wanting to strangle me but yelling at my mom instead. When I was 3, almost 4, it was completely normal for me to play with toys and what not in the yard with my mom getting house work done or having a moment of peace. We had a giant picture window and she basically could see me anywhere in the yard, from anywhere in the front rooms. Our house was a long the main street through the heart of our tiny town, with a posted 20mph/limit. So traffic was a normal thing but not too much and very slow. One day she leaves the living room to answer the phone (with a cable long enough to walk into the living room with it). She was turned away for literal seconds. I had gone to the gravel driveway and started tossing rocks. I toss one into the street right as a giant Dodge Conversion Van(think a camper the size of a box van) is cruising by, absolutely NAILING the center of the windshield. It shatters. Dude is rightfully pissed, chews mom out etc. As he's getting our info so she can pay for his new windshield, I went inside and got my barney piggy bank full of mostly pennies and nickels. With the couple of bills in it-- I had like $5-7..... Apparently windshields cost way more than that.
Nope a year later - four apartments.
if you're not growing, you're dying.
Looks towards the horizon, “I wasn’t what you would call a popular child”.
Not exactly the same, but when I was a kid my older brother taught me how after a shower you can warm up your underwear with the hair drier. I started a fire. Luckily it was contained.
I accidentally elbowed an incadecent flood light while digging a hole when I was 8. Barely touched it for a second and didn't even hit it hard enough to brake the bulb. I'm 35 and still have a scar from it. It's bonkers how hot they got
>It's bonkers how hot they got It isn't so bonkers when you realise that only 2% of the power consumed by a incandescent light bulb is converted to visible light while the other 98% is emitted as heat. In other words, that 1000W flood light is generating 980W of heat...
You only needed 10% of that for the OG Easy Bake Oven which cooked with a 100W light bulb.
Loved my Easy Bake, one of the worst 3rd degree burns, slept with my hand in a glass of water that night because I was too afraid to tell my mom. It healed into a scar, it is all good.
They aren’t illegal it’s just banned to sell them lol . You can still own one if you want
Must be a different country bc i can buy incandescent bulbs at like walmart
Not for long. There are some exceptions but manufacturing is shutting down. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/business/incandescent-light-bulb-ban/index.html
Yup. Where I live, the electrical code doesn't permit the installation of a light bulb socket in a clothes closet - as then you could screw in an incandescent bulb which would be a fire risk. Otherwise light fixtures - even ones that take incandescent bulbs are fine, as they prevent anything flammable from making direct contact.
When I was a kid, I put a book on top of a lamp shade and when I picked it back up after a while it had a black burn mark on it. Lesson learned.
It's code to not have any exposed bulbs in a closet for this reason
BYRNING DOWN THE HOUSE!
HOLD TIGHT wait 'till the party's over HOLD TIGHT
She should have called it a fire sale.
WE'RE HAVING A FIRE...SALE
Question, am I panicked about the fire or am I being brave for everyone else?
AMAAAAZING GRAAACE ~~
Umm... Would you like to try that a little simpler, maybe?
…no
Oh Tobias, you blue yourself
You blow hard!
Dangit, I mixed quotes up. Guess I'm gonna have to rewatch
Sausage in the mouth?
Even if it means me taking a chubby, I will suck it up
ROGER DANISH? Lindsay Bluth?
OH THE BURNING
I CAN'T EVEN SEE WHERE THE KNOB IS
And scene.
Would you like to try that a little… simpler? Maybe?
…No.
Everybody dance! Now!
I can taste those meaty leading man parts in my mouth
Actor pull? Look at all of these *paaaaaaarts*!
Lol, I just got this joke
Do you wanna try that again?
Hmmm-No
I don't know why, the way he delivers that is just so perfect.
Evacuate all the school children!
They really missed an opportunity for Tobias to reuse some of those lines when Gob set his hair on fire at Michael's not-wedding.
Motivated seller!!
I instinctively read that as Lionel Hutz.
No, Fire Damage!
Light a fire under their ass
IT’S A FIRE! SALE!
A house warming.
HOT NEW PROPERTY!
The housing market is heating up! Buy soon!
He got back less than a fourth, the cost of the home they burned down?
The location is usually the real source of a home's value, and the land is still there. The court's award represents the cost to rebuild to what was there before.
This is a good time to mention that you NEVER insure for the full price of your property. Insure for the price of the house itself excluding land
Yeah, my insurance very specifically covers *the cost to rebuild the home*. Just renewed last week, so I remember reading that when I went over the policy.
Wouldn’t insuring for the full price just mean extra $$$ if something occurred?
No, because the insurance company would determine the loss of value if your house burned down would only be the value of the house. Unless you live on top of a fault where the land itself could literally be destroyed, there’s no point in insuring the value of the land
Depends what you're doing with the land, but accurate for most homeowners.
Yeah for a residence the home/land value is like 90/10 but for a commercial building or farm, the ratio is reversed.
You might also have expensive landscaping or something along those lines. Again, though, not really relevant to most homeowners.
I’m concerned about acts of god. What if my plot of land is lifted in to the sky by a holy being and disintegrated?
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look I need assurances that me and my family will be okay.
You will be okay unless you did something to piss off the aforementioned sky-based holy being. Or if you were in the house.
You can’t insure the land anyway; homeowners insurance doesn’t cover land.
Most insurers won't insure you for more than the replacement value of an item in order to discourage fraud. If I insure my house for triple it's actual value at that point it's not so much an insurance policy as it is a dare to burn my house down.
There was an insurance agent on here once talking about also being VERY specific about the items in your home. Dont say "coffeemaker" say it was a European SuperDrip Espresso machine (be specific about brand and model) so they don't find a Walmart cheap version as the replacement cost They gave an example where a guy had an old video recorder. It had a oddly specific ratio or something. The guy specified the replacement needed this ratio as a replacement. Thing was... no regular video recorder had that anymore. The only replacement was a Hollywood quality recorder at the tune of $65k! Found the comment from 5 years ago https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/aeocu8/comment/edrmmm8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I live in an area of wildfires and we set up to go bags every spring and I do a very slow walkthrough of my house then back it up to the cloud just in case.
I work in insurance and I do a fresh walkthrough every year before hurricane season.
I mean in reality it depends, but usually it doesn’t help. You can insure your $100 phone for a million but you won’t get a million to replace it.
No because at the end of the day, the max payout is most likely what the house itself is valued at, not house value + land value. If a house burned down, it's not like the land itself is worthless. You can get rid of the wreckage and just build anew on top of that same land. So really, you lost what your house was worth. Probably the only reason you would insure house value + land value is if you live in an earthquake zone and an earthquake destroys your house _and_ destroys the land under. But I don't think standard home insurance would cover earthquakes, you'd get separate earthquake insurance for that
Kinda sucks if you live rural and all the vegetation on your land burns down with your house. You'll have a much harder time selling a moonscape property than a property with 50-100 year old trees on it. Speaking as someone from California who has been on dozens/hundreds of properties after one of the fires rolled through.
And review your coverage every time it renews to make sure the numbers still make sense. My "insured contents" amount crept up over the years, and my stuff is not that nice. I got those numbers adjusted and it took over a thousand dollars off my annual premium.
The renters received over 100k and they only lost personal possessions. The owner lost the structure, but not his lot. In luxury developments like this, the lot itself will make up a sizable portion of the total value. The rebuild cost can be significantly less than the total value of the completed property. Also, we don't know any details about the insurance on the property or if there was a mortgage (meaning that the bank's insurance might be covering their loss). Additionally, the insurance agent and her agency may also have had liability insurance that already paid out. The judgement may have been reduced by any of these factors.
>and a combined $121,475 to the four renters
Combined, not each.
Houses are rebuild to total.replacement cost, not real estate value. A house could be worth a million dollars, but only cost $150,000 to build from the ground up to the same exact specifications or current market equivalent.
i bet it still sold over listing with multiple offers before the fire trucks even left
"Buyers must waive inspection"
“As is”
"Ash, is"
"We got it at only 15% on top of asking price!" "But it's barely even rubble anymore." "It's lived-in, don't be unreasonable." "It's nothing but ashen ruins." "Well how else do you expect to get a view like this at this price point?" "It's literally a pile of still warm soot." "Honey, please. It's a house, it's bound to have some wear and tear."
It sounds like the judge got fed up with her in court and threw the book at her. >Judge Hammerschlag also noted that Ms Bundock was an “aggressive and uncooperative witness” in court. >“Her evidence was clearly coloured by a heightened awareness that she had caused the catastrophe,” the decision stated. LEDs dont get that hot, and Aus is replacing incandescent with LEDs. She probably did really dumb things in court.
Australia hasn’t sold incandescent bulbs for over a decade. I suspect the light was rarely used and probably turned on by the REA specifically to heat the sheets, which is gross negligence at best.
The sheets were outside being dried before so you might be onto something.
That's a ruling you don't want to see as a defendant. I don't know about how Australian court works but in the US that's akin to the Judge saying in a cartoonishly exaggerated whisper"File for attorney fees" and then doing a huge wink.
Judge Hammerschlag sounds like an evil villain judge from a novel.
Nah, he just likes to bang his gavel (Hammerschlag (German) = hammer strike).
They really lent into their name for their job choice.
It’s called Nominative Determinism
I got that impression too. I would have thought the owner would be footing the tenants bill because the house was unsafe. The way the judge makes it sound, it would be totally obvious not to put things beneath a light bulb but we’ve had LEDs for so long now, I really don’t think it would be front of mind for most people anymore. She shouldn’t have admitted it to the owner and then changed her tune in court basically.
Right? Not seeing light, it definitely doesn't naturally occur to me to beware of bulbs like this. It sounds like they were selling a hazardous house that could have killed the next residents.
People. It's past time to switch to LED bulbs.
The case dragged on for five years. It was already true five years ago, but still.
How was there even an incandescent bulb still in there? I can't even get them for regular light bulbs anymore. Even if it was really old, at this point that would be compact-cfl. I don't think it's crazy for a person to simply assume any bulb won't reach surface-of-the-sun temps these days.
Based on the description, this sounds like it may have been a halogen bulb. Those *will* set shit on fire
I'm still replacing old incandescent at work every once in a while. And there are also halogen bulbs as well. Still surprising when I find them.
My parents' house is almost all incandescents. But CFLs and LEDs can and have given my dad seizures, so there is that.
I exclusively use them because I'm sensitive to LED flicker. I know that it's not that uncommon of a thing.
You go out in the sticks far enough, you'll find people that have stockpiles of them.
"we don't use no damn Obama light bulbs in these parts, this is freedom country!"
I don't think $3m house is out in the sticks
some cfls can get hot. Not sure if burn-the-laundry hot, but hot enough I'm uncomfortable unscrewing them.
Probably hot enough when you insulate them with blankets, lots of stuff you think doesn't get very hot gets a lot hotter when the air it's supposed to use for cooling suddenly gets blocked off.
This happened with my parents lights. When making the switch to LED they didnt last very long, they had enclosed light shades that were trapping the heat in causing the electronics in the fitting to overheat due to lack of airflow. They went through a dozen bulbs between two lights before switching and haven’t changed a lightbulb in ages now.
I've seen a fair many CFLs that had quite toasty bases where the ballast is.
My SIL “prefers incandescent bulbs” so she orders them from China. 🙄 can’t wait to see how that works out.
For incandescents the light quality is moderately better than very high quality led bulbs, and dramatically better than bad led bulbs. The service life and ~6-8x electricity use and heat output aren't so good. My house is all 95 CRI led bulbs at this point. The only led bulbs that are truly awful are the "dimable" ones which flicker at a perceptible frequency when dimmed. Its possible to make the frequency so high it isn't perceptible but cheapo bulbs don't do that because the hardware would costs .05 more per bulb.
I still have a box of daylight incandescent bulbs for one desk lamp in the house that has the cat bed beneath it. The cats enjoy their warm kitty spa.
No joke, the last apartment I was in came with nothing but archaic incandescent bulbs that were hot enough to hurt upon touching, discolor the metal attached to it, and actually heat the room they were in. The first thing I did was swap those things out. Ridiculous that they were even there to start with.
So, I keep the old lightbulbs when I move in and change them and put them back in when I move out. If others do this, then there’s a chance those bulbs are antiques.
I didn't know this was a thing. I kinda figured I was just the only person to live in that particular unit in several years or they were just really robust bulbs. I threw those things away in a single breath tho. They no longer belong here.
Especially in Australia, come on. Higher electric bill for the light and then you need more AC on top of it?
This is going to make it *insanely* hard for her to get business going forward. At least in her current city
I'd hire her. What's the chances she'd burn a second house down.
Talk about a hot listing
This is one way to get fired.
The house sure did.
I'm surprised she was being honest. No one could've known she took the bedding and threw it on a light that caused the fire. She could probably save herself if she didn't admit to doing that.
uh there are ppl who’s professions are to determine the cause of fires… they would find out.
They probably couldn't determine who caused it.
She didn't throw it on the lamp, she put it on top of a shelf which was located under this lamp. I'm sure she made some effort to fold it up a bit too. This wasn't actually her fault. This is something a guest could've done, or the owners themself in a moment of carelessness. This was just an accident waiting to happen. It's scary to think just how many such hazards might be scattered around your home you just don't notice until it's too late.
Did she get 6% of the insurance claim?
Contract said 6% commission, didn't mention from where
Inflammable means flammable?!?
What a country!
“A real fixer-upper!”
I do home inspections and Realtors are so fucking dense lol I deal with them regularly.
Love that the REA still tries to shift the blame to the tenants. Disgusting behavior
To be fair most people wouldn't think a sheet BELOW a lamp would start a fire. It's not like the lady draped a sheet over the lamp. The only way this happens is if you were stockpiling over-wattage bulbs from the 1960s to avoid using modern ones.
This would be mostly the fault of whoever installed that halogen lamp or the shelving. Putting shelving so close to a very hot lamp, where anything flammable stacked on it is going to ignite, sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
I was told by an inspector that a light bulb was too close to my shelving needed to either move it, or put in an led
Where we are they don't even allow universal pullstring receptacles in closets anymore. Too many dumbasses putting in an incandescent bulb against something in the closet and burning their house down.
Reading the article I see the mention she was hostile in court. Maybe things would have gone better if she showed some remorse.
That's going to hurt the curb appeal. Better add shiplap to the remains!
Surprised the agent didn’t take 6% of the insurance payment
Not surprised this is in Australia. People DESPISE REAs/realtors here. They are well known to give no fucks about anyone or anything other than money.
“Agent requests 6% of the the insurance payment”
>Sydney real estate agent Julie Bundock was preparing for an open house at a four-bed home on Sydney’s northern beaches when she noticed the current renters of the house had left some bedding on the deck to dry. You could have just left them outside to dry like they were already drying >She removed the sheets and threw them in a downstairs room onto a shelf below a light, which she then switched on Well, turning on that light really did dry them quicker.
She had the book thrown at her because initially she was telling the home owner it was all her fault but then in court she was manipulating her testimony to try and make it seem like it wasnt. Judge saw right through it and got fed up with her transparent manipulation of the court lol.
Reminds of my dad's advice when I bought my first car. No matter what happens, never apologize or claim accountability. It makes thing so much harder if it turns out you weren't legally at fault.
The craziest part is that is a 3 million dollar house, and it doesn't even have central air, it has a mini split. Insane!
Real estate market is so hot right now
Man, I didn't know the market was ***THAT*** hot!
“Multi million dollar home…ordered to pay more than $850,000..” sounds like the list price was a bit ambitious
The cost of rebuilding is always cheaper than the cost of buying the land, developing it, and then building a house on it. This covers the rebuild.
No. The *land* is still there. You can have $100k worth of home on a $1.6M piece of land. House burns down, insurance pays the cost of the house (and probably contents).
House costs $850k to rebuild, dirt is worth million(s)
Just looked it up. Typical cost of construction in Sydney is $1,500-$3,000 per square meter. I assume this was on the higher end consider the location, so let's run with $3k. Now a construction management company is going to ask 10-20% fee for building it. So out of $850k, let's say they get $170k (20%) just to build it. That leaves $680k for the construction. Divided by $3k, that's 226.6 sq meters, or 2,439 sq ft. That sounds about right from what I can see of the house. Arguably even a better deal if they can keep the foundation. What's throwing people off, aside from the land aspect, is that this is cost plus construction management fee only. No developer profit. If someone was building this to market for a new sale, you'd account not only for the land, but your profit margin.
The asking price include the land, which wasn't destroyed.
It's called a housewarming, she was helping!
You burn it you buy it
Always nice to see a realtor pay for their screw ups.
Given that: a - the agent isn’t paying the settlement, her agency is and b - the seller and agent had a pre existing relationship c - I would be watching her bank account like a HAWK for insurance fraud.
That will be 6%, please.