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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#741

Post by QuiEgo »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #327
1970-01-01 wrote: post #305

Completely missed the tech-heavy features of owning your own home: Wire your network however you like. Those walls are yours. Invest in as much solar power as you want. The only limit is the sun itself. Want to be a Ham? Be a ham. The antenna goes wherever you want. Charge your EV as long as you want. The EV charger is yours and only yours. Also, do you want a cat? A dog? A massive tree? Just get it. Nobody can say n…

For virtually all new construction in USA, HOAs influence a lot of your freedom in these items

Gonna disagree with you on this one. For the ham antennas, sure. For everything else though? I've never seen an HoA that stops you from having pets (they may have some rule if you have 100 cats or a rooster, but "normal" variets are not an issue). I've also never seen an HoA give two hoots about network wiring inside your house. EV chargers are also yours to install as you please everywhere I've seen.

Maybe in a condo or something where you don't own the walls, but they are community property? But for single residence, the HoA is usually just a "mow your grass buddy!" nag machine.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#742

Post by QuiEgo »

iamalizard wrote: post #582

I'm not from the US but I find some of these numbers ridiculous. $515.50 per month for property taxes? That seems soo high. What does this cover - garbage collection, what else? > Cut down trees that were too close to the house: $2,800 I could've likely flown to the US, cut down your trees for a few hundred and flown back home for that much money. Why so expensive? I'm beginning to question the other numbers. > Repla…

>$515.50 per month for property taxes? That seems soo high.

Where I live (Texas), there is no state income tax. They make it up by having high property taxes. It's something like $20,000/year per $1MM of property value. $515.50 would be so nice...

> What does this cover - garbage collection, what else?

Here, none of that (Garbage is billed by use as a utility, like electricity. You're charged by how big of a bin you get).

It funds all the things the state and local government does - schools, roads, parks, police, fire, social services, anything tax would normally fund.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#743

Post by bigstrat2003 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #671
asdff wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Seemingly he can do every trade. He's under the building doing plumbing or electric one day. Landscaping the next. Doing this is basically illegal in modern day. The requirements to get even one trade license, much less more than one, are set up to make it uneconomical unless that trade is your full-time profession. Who can justify doing a multi-year full-time apprenticeship in each trade when they expect to spend…

I'm sure it varies from location to location, but my handyman has said that the line here is modifying existing infrastructure versus installing new stuff. The former is fine without a license, the latter not. Thankfully, I've never yet needed him to do work that falls in the latter bucket.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#744

Post by skeptic_ai »

brightball wrote: post #669
thelastgallon wrote: post #667

Home ownership is a 30-year bet that you will have continued income to sustain the lifestyle[1] . It is extremely unlikely anyone will have a 30 year home run, without job loss, divorce, bad health and any number of life events. Most people would be considered super lucky to have a decade of good run. On the other side of the bet are the financial institutions, which will get continued income (as long as you pay) and…

Best advice I ever got on home ownership: Don’t get a loan til you can save 20% for a down payment and then, never get more than at 15 year mortgage. Good advice on both counts. Once you have 20% down you get out of paying PMI (private mortgage insurance) and you can open a an equity line (HELOC) for about 80% of the equity in the house. It’s typically like a super low interest credit card that you can tap for emerge…

[dead]

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#745

Post by testing22321 »

sakopov wrote: post #97
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…

I would argue against this. I'm not sure owning is that much better. At the very least it's just as bad as renting if you bought in the past few years... I bought my home in 2023 and since then my monthly HOA payments doubled, my insurance premiums (nearly) tripled and my property taxes have gone up about $1000. Homeownership went from 35% to 45% of my monthly income. If you bought in the past few years, owning has a…

Rule number one is always don’t buy into a HOA. They’re trouble. Always.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#746

Post by [deleted] »

hx8 wrote: post #402
Fernicia wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you think landlords are running a charity, some part of your mortgage is going to them as profit (over a large enough sample of renters anyways), and some percentage of your rent is covering 'bad tenants' (which you're not, right?). You can make the same argument about a bank not being a charity and making a profit from selling you a mortgage (both are true but are not helpful indicators about rent vs buying…

> You can make the same argument about a bank not being a charity and making a profit from selling you a mortgage So when you rent you have to cover the landlord's profit/risk and the bank's profit/risk because the landlord probably has a mortgage.

[deleted]

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#747

Post by blitzar »

carlosjobim wrote: post #247
bloomca wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest advantage of buying a house is that it forces people to actually put money into a giant savings account which is not easily accessible. Otherwise people just spend the vast majority of the money they have. As an investment, houses are historically mediocre outside of some hot areas.

Why is that good? That is horrible for economic development and employment. It is worse for a country than being nuked.

Contrary to popular belief, people spending all their money buying pointless shit is not good for the economy.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#748

Post by namanyayg »

wwweston wrote: post #365
Galanwe wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That is not the right way to see it. If you have the cash to buy upfront, then yes, real estate is not that good an investment, unless you have a loaded portfolio already and want to diversify a bit, get some high inflation hedge, etc. The real value of buying a home is lever…

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 can live in a house, but you can't eat stocks

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#749

Post by duped »

koolba wrote: post #696
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realtors tend to have a lot of contacts. The realtor I worked with knew “a great guy” for every aspect of the house (roof, plumbing, cabinets, driveways, etc.) due to the fact that she naturally encountered so many of these tradespeople. She would get recommendations from sellers. Either the seller recently had work done in order to improve the home before putting it on the market, or, the seller had some trusted exp…

Realtors are also notorious for recommending service providers that give them a kick back.

Finders fees aren't nefarious
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