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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#441

Post by malfist »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #385
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, you should never sell the car to the dealer and should always make the effort to sell private party, which will often get you 50% or more greater than the dealers best offer.

The amount of people who refuse to do private party sales and who insist on losing money by trading into the dealer is mind boggling. Americans really get extremely stupid when car related anything comes up.

The sales tax deduction makes up most of the difference between private party and dealer resale. For a lot of people getting that last little bit of equity isn't worth the time, hassle and fraud risk

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#442

Post by hbarka »

vardalab wrote: post #374
wwweston wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love that the two most solid pro-homebuying points I've ever encountered (jedberg's about the psychological benefits, yours about leverage) immediately surface in an HN discussion. It's probably worth making a closer comparison though: * Buying a House on Loan: commit to paying off a $450k loan over 30 years at 5% interest, with an immediate $50k down payment and the home itself as collateral. So ~$2500/mo payments,…

You forgot to include the actual living costs if you invest. You're not gonna be able to contribute $2,500 a month. You would be able to contribute not that much , around here rents are $2,500 a month.

They forgot to mention that they will move back to mom’s house.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#443

Post by panny »

That's the cost of renting money (mortgage), not owning a home. I saved up cash and bought my home in cash. I did not have closing costs. Only the seller did. My closing cost was the price of the home.

I don't plan to sell. I'm not "investing" in the house. I'm living in it. Essentially, my home eliminates the biggest portion of my monthly expenses. I hope my home value goes down, a lot. Then I pay less on the one expense I do have associated with it: property taxes.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#444

Post by hawaiianbrah »

abalashov wrote: post #431
hawaiianbrah wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no one person I can call for every single problem. There absolutely can be if you want to pay for the service. Look up home concierge / residential management services, like Para Home Services.

True, but you still have to cough up. The benefit of renting is that it's an SEP (Someone Else's Problem).

Of course that’s a benefit of renting. How does that relate to the OP _homeowner_ saying one downside of ownership is they don’t have a single number to call for any maintenance issues?

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#446

Post by abalashov »

inanutshellus wrote: post #221
jedberg wrote: post #164

The benefit of owning a home is almost always psychological, not financial. If you take the money you'd use for a down payment and mortgage and invest it instead (after paying rent) you end up in about the same place. But the psychological benefits can be huge. You have much greater control over the place you spend most of your time. You can change it to your liking. You don't have to worry about rent increases or ow…

Neighbors of owned-properties: - care about the long-term effects of their actions - care about the plan of their surroundings - plan to stick around This is a HUGE part of the psychological benefit you refer to of buying. Notably this is equally applicable to any occupant-owned property (e.g. condos > apartments).

This can be good, but can also be quite bad if points #1 and #2 manifest in Karen form...

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#447

Post by craftkiller »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #114
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #12

On the other hand, renting comes with hidden (and some not so hidden) costs too. The main one for me is the inherent precariousness that comes with renting. You don’t know how much longer you’re going to be able to stay in your apartment, whether that be due to rent hikes or the landlord deciding that they want to give the apartment to their nephew or any number of other things. The constant low level stress of knowi…

Why not just sign a longer term lease? Most landlords would love that.

Because as soon as you sign that longer lease, the landlord will only ever do the absolute minimum repairs because you're stuck in that lease. We have been reporting our leaking roof for years...

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#448

Post by jancsika »

> You've probably heard someone say something to the effect of "renting is just throwing your money away".

Then skip to the bottom:

> I bought my current home in 2011 for $420k, and the Zillow currently estimates its value at $757k. I've put a lot of money into it catching up on maintenance, repairs, and improvements, but the appreciation will definitely exceed whatever I've put into it when I decide to sell it.

There you go.

The only counterexample is one that's a truism: author bought at $321k and sold at $333 a few years later. Real estate is a long term investment, same as the funds you'd choose for a retirement account. In both cases if you're buying/selling short term you missed a very important implied premise in the conversation.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#449

Post by mchusma »

abalashov wrote: post #431
hawaiianbrah wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no one person I can call for every single problem. There absolutely can be if you want to pay for the service. Look up home concierge / residential management services, like Para Home Services.

True, but you still have to cough up. The benefit of renting is that it's an SEP (Someone Else's Problem).

There are also home warranties or tech solutions/concierges like tidy.com.

The issue historically is that these concierge things are expensive (should be solved by tech/ai) and the warranties create their own class of problems (claim frustrations etc).

But home ownership is expensive, no way around it. But the work in coordinating etc doesn’t fundamentally need to be.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#450

Post by abalashov »

hawaiianbrah wrote: post #444
abalashov wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but you still have to cough up. The benefit of renting is that it's an SEP (Someone Else's Problem).

Of course that’s a benefit of renting. How does that relate to the OP _homeowner_ saying one downside of ownership is they don’t have a single number to call for any maintenance issues?

I guess on the face of it, it's not related. I didn't read his comment as literally lamenting the lack of a number, or even someone to orchestrate, but rather to imply that there's nobody on the hook for it in all facets. With a landlord, you just call the number and magic happens and it's free to you (in theory, not always in practice).
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