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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#481

Post by hawaiianbrah »

colordrops wrote: post #337
darknavi wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> House maintenance and projects have taken up most of every single weekend of mine for the past few years. Mine come and go but it's no where near every weekend since I've purchased in 2019. What sort of things occupy this much time?

Not gp, but I bought a fixer-upper and it was at least weekends for the first two years, then slowed down quite a bit after that. Now it comes in fits and starts similar to you.

I bought a fixer upper a few years ago. It was a solid six month stretch of various projects of various sizes rushing to be done before my child was born. Since then it’s been very chill, though I did just spend about another six months renovating a bathroom down to the studs myself, but I took that upon myself for the thrill of it.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#482

Post by bombcar »

asdff wrote: post #470
dividefuel wrote: post #315

Beyond financial costs, I was caught off guard at how much time home ownership took up. House maintenance and projects have taken up most of every single weekend of mine for the past few years. Part of it is simply that I bought a house with more space than the places I usually rented. More to clean, more to maintain, more things that can go wrong, etc. But the biggest thing is that I'm the only one in charge of main…

>But the biggest thing is that I'm the only one in charge of maintenance. There's no one person I can call for every single problem. Keeping track of regular maintenance, performing that maintenance, and learning how to DIY things takes a lot of time. And even if I want to pay someone to do it for me, I still have to research contractors, coordinate estimates, and schedule the project. And I still need to learn enoug…

If you treat your house like a rental that you rent to yourself, you can avoid a bunch of headaches - mainly because you’ve given yourself “permission” to spend on it.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#483

Post by sethammons »

darknavi wrote: post #330
dividefuel wrote: post #315

Beyond financial costs, I was caught off guard at how much time home ownership took up. House maintenance and projects have taken up most of every single weekend of mine for the past few years. Part of it is simply that I bought a house with more space than the places I usually rented. More to clean, more to maintain, more things that can go wrong, etc. But the biggest thing is that I'm the only one in charge of main…

> House maintenance and projects have taken up most of every single weekend of mine for the past few years. Mine come and go but it's no where near every weekend since I've purchased in 2019. What sort of things occupy this much time?

Not op, for for me: I have a 4" hole in my cedar siding that I have to craft a custom replacement board for due to a woodpecker. I have a leak in _two_ bathroom shower fixtures that drip into the basement. The first, I started fixing and realized the copper pipe needs to be re-routed. The second, I just turned off the water; I'll get to it later. I have two retaining walls with water routing issues. I need to figure out a mega-gutter or I need to otherwise route a lot of water coming off my roof. I have a broken window that needs replacement. I had to board it up for now because I can't get ANYONE to come out in the middle of Montana. I will be learning how to replace a window in log siding sometime this summer. My water heaters are on the fritz and might be to blame for tripling my propane usage this winter. I need to fix those. My pool pump needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed it. My chainsaw needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed that. My riding lawnmower hit a rock and broke the spindle so I had to tear that apart and replace that. I still need to get out and clean my gutters. And do trimming in the yard. Oh, and I had a couple of pine trees come down over winter, so when my saw is back up and running, I'll go cut up some of those. And an apple tree died; need to cut that up and plant a new tree. And I have some boat maintenance to do, my oil gauge stopped responding this season so I'll tear that apart maybe this weekend. I have an outbuilding that seems to be leaning. I need to hook up a plumb-bob and make some measurements and monitor. More yard work. More maintenance. I'd like to job most of it out and just do the fun stuff if I could actually get anyone to come out.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#484

Post by ball_of_lint »

asdff wrote: post #473
m463 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper. Honestly, it sounds like you enjoy it. If you are doing it with that frequency I think you just are "into" your house.

Depends where you live. In the midwest you might legitimately need to mow 3x a week and you might have a huge lot. If you say screw it and let it go to knee high weeds, city might show up and cut your grass and fine you for it.

3x/week is wild. I'd get a different type of grass at that point.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#485

Post by Felger »

Not surprised ownership is not cheap in the US.

West EU here, bought a new, architecturally wrong (yikes) house in 2012. I knew its conception would spell trouble, and sadly I was not disappointed on this part almost right off the bat. But the location and the price (right on the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and economical fallout / market bottom) were good.

After 14 years it cost an average of $130 per month on maintenance, mainly to correct on multiple occasion the conception issues aformentioned after the 10y warranty. Utilities are about $170 per month. And taxes are now about $1700 per year (rise 3-4% every year)

This $250k purchase must have cost less than $2k in fees, the credit was... well no credit. Spent almost 100% of my savings except some cash for my business. On the overall this house cost me less than $500 per month so far. Not really surprising for a new house, certainly.

And its market value rose by 60% in 14 years.

Yep, ownership is (was ?) very profitable in the west EU, mind the location.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#486

Post by em-bee »

lnsru wrote: post #343
em-bee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the nice thing about renting in germany. there this would not work, the owner can sell the house but they can't kick out the tenant. so whoever is buying is taking over the tenant. and while you can ask a tenant to move out if you need the house for yourself, that too has to consider the needs of the tenant. if they have kids in school it is almost impossible to remove them unless you go out of your way to hel…

That’s a very nice theory. Decent real estate first buyer will not even consider rented property. But there are enough unscrupulous shady people who will buy the property at a great discount and get the tenants out. You will be right according the law, but still mistreated. Will you enjoy abuse waiting 3 years for a court? Probably not. It’s not their first rodeo.

most rented property in germany is owned by large firms who make renting out homes their business. for them, that is not an issue. most homes that people buy for themselves are not even available on the rental market. as you say, people who want to buy a home for themselves will not consider rented property. i believe that is true in germany too. if it happens then it is a rare edgecase, and they will be able to find out in advance if the tenant is willing/able to move out.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#487

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#488

Post by com2kid »

kube-system wrote: post #65
com2kid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the job, you can also do it better yourself than what you can reasonably pay for. I built a custom shelf for my closet. It'd have costed me an arm and a leg to have someone else do that, even with a tech worker's salary. I also built a custom walk-in closet. It took me a day, saved me over 2k and I got a better quality closet out of it. (You find find built yourself a walk-in-closet kits that are easy to…

It definitely depends on the job. Enjoyment is certainly a factor too.

There is that famous study from a few years back where people value IKEA furniture they put together themselves more highly than pre-built stuff of a better quality.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#489

Post by edoceo »

hibikir wrote: post #451
pc86 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the answer - there are plenty of move-in ready, turn-key homes that require basically zero maintenance unless you want to remodel or change something, but those cost more (sometimes a lot more) than the ones that need more TLC or true fixer-uppers.

Eventually the maintenance comes back again: The turn-key homes have typically had most of the things that needed maintenance replaced, but they eventually come back, and they can be quite the headache. See the wonders of having a plumbing stack going past its useful life, land resettling leading to having to do regrades, or lift concrete slabs, or just general tree maintenace.

Don't do your own trees! Wood is very heavy! It wiggles a lot! Dragons!

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#490

Post by asdff »

alistairSH wrote: post #393
ragall wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What maintenance is there to do exactly ?

Yard work, gutter cleaning, power washing exterior, cleaning windows, bi-annual HVAC service, exterior paint (especially if the house has any wood) and trim upkeep. And as the house ages, you get things like repainting interior rooms, more frequent plumbing issues, major HVAC repairs, roof replacement, repaving driveway, electrical upgrades, remodeling, etc. We downsized to a townhome to avoid some of that (half the…

You could just not do any of that stuff. Most people don't power wash their exterior or clean their windows. They don't call in hvac service, maybe just change the furnace or ac filter and probably plenty don't even know to do that. Exterior paint has become pretty rare in places that see weather but even then you can let it go to hell. Plenty do. Maybe some trim board will rot. Ehh. Priced in probably already when you bought it with that. Driveway you can also let go to hell, plenty of people use actual gravel or dirt. Roof replacement, plenty of people let that go too long. Repainting interiors, again something you don't have to ever do.

Is it good to do these maintenance items? Sure. But also, the house isn't going to come down if they aren't done. You go around your city right now you will find very few homes are actually upkept to this level. Most see the bare minimum to avoid the city fining you for the grass being too long, and many are sold in whatever state they are in.

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