241–250 of 317 posts
the dome looks nice but is stuff like this really a viable alternative for anyone other than a small well-off slice of the population? how does the cost of not having a kitchen compare to what you save in building materials?
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Why is rent wasting money? I am not entirely sold on that idea. If you have a lot of cash that you do not need to access in a foreseeable future then maybe.
You are not building equity when renting. If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home. Mortgage payments (minus interest) are then just going back into your own pocket vs. rent which is going into your landlord's pocket. Even if you never want to do your own maintenance, you can pay a handyman and still be far ahead in cash.
Even in the big inflation years I recall the over under on this as closer to seven years. Depends on your circumstances of course.
So run the numbers: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...
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European here! Here in Germany a great deal of people are renting instead of buying houses including me and I never felt it harming. To the contrary, I could freely relocate within the country several times in the past years without hassle. Owning properly in my mind seems like a chain holding me down which would have been very restrictive in my early adult years. I also see people that did buy a house and now have 3…
Yes, renting in Germany is very different to the USA or UK. In Germany, if you pay your rent the landlord pretty much can't legally get rid of you. Similarly, the amount they can increase your rent is legally capped. It's very much set up to encourage long-term rental and your rights while renting are extremely strong and well-protected. In the UK (and I assume the USA) the landlord can (with a few months warning in…
The rental policies there must then suppress house prices because its much more cost effective to rent than to buy, especially if you can put the extra money you didn't spend (on purchase of a house) into another form of investment.
I wonder if that system is better long term than the ups and downs of the market like the US/UK's.
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You are not building equity when renting. If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home. Mortgage payments (minus interest) are then just going back into your own pocket vs. rent which is going into your landlord's pocket. Even if you never want to do your own maintenance, you can pay a handyman and still be far ahead in cash.
You are not building equity when renting. If the net cost of renting is lower than the net cost of renting money to own a mortgage, then you've still got the option of investing in other assets which may appreciate over time. Say, a business. Which represents real net economic growth, not merely asset inflation. If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home. Stating that as a blanket…
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You are not building equity when renting. If the net cost of renting is lower than the net cost of renting money to own a mortgage, then you've still got the option of investing in other assets which may appreciate over time. Say, a business. Which represents real net economic growth, not merely asset inflation. If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home. Stating that as a blanket…
wait, is under water here to mean literally under water - as in sinking into the ocean?! Or is that jargon for something?
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Why is rent wasting money? I am not entirely sold on that idea. If you have a lot of cash that you do not need to access in a foreseeable future then maybe.
You are not building equity when renting. If you plan to be in a location for more than a year, it's worth buying a home. Mortgage payments (minus interest) are then just going back into your own pocket vs. rent which is going into your landlord's pocket. Even if you never want to do your own maintenance, you can pay a handyman and still be far ahead in cash.
To paraphrase another response, this is so wrong it physically hurts. This type of nonsense is exactly what causes people in their early 20's to buy a $350,000 house and end up foreclosed on 18 months later.
Running any rent v. buy calculator for my area shortly before buying my home (at the end of 2010) told me that I needed to be in the area (e.g. within a 30-minute commute by car) for 7 years to break even on the purchase of a home. After that the benefits of buying quickly took over the benefits of renting, but for those first 7 years it is technically a financial loss.
This is just flat-out dangerous and wrong "advice."
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I noticed that "get roommates" also wasn't on the list.
Literal roommates — who share a sleeping room? Or flatmates who just share an apartment living room, kitchen, etc? I've never not lived with the second kind of roommates (as an adult), but in a city like NYC or SF, that still is much more expensive than the stuff on the list.
In college I and many other adults had literal roommate, including some who lived in off-campus apartments. My father tells a story, back in the 1960s, of a place he lived for a few months where there were more people than beds. They used hot-bunking, since some worked nights.
In any case, if your reference is living in a city like NYC or SF then the item "Move to foreign country where it's cheaper to live" should be changed to the more generic "Move to a place where it's cheaper to live."
The emphasis on "foreign country" is why I agree with jquery's comment that the list is 'about status and "conspicuous authenticity", not about actually living cheaply.'
If you can work in a forest in Sweden, then you can also work in Buffalo, where the cost of living is about 1/2 of that NYC. Or for that matter, you can work from a forest in New York State, and save the price of airfare.
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>Why is rent wasting money? It's isn't. The idea that it's wasting money, or that you're paying someone else's mortgage, or whatever other argument is thrown out there are part of one of the biggest financial misconceptions going. Do the cost/benefit of renting vs ownership, accounting for maintenance, taxes, interest rates, macro-economic conditions and whatever else and the costs should be very similar. Of course,…
> The idea that it's wasting money, or that you're paying someone else's mortgage, or whatever other argument is thrown out there are part of one of the biggest financial misconceptions going. That I believed this was assumed, and that I was comparing _renting to purchasing a house_ was also assumed (but probably not so clear!). I was comparing renting to what the dome-builder was doing. With that said, renting vs. o…
- $900 rent - Rent increasing 3%/year (default) - $356,000 home with 3.5% down (FHA minimum), closest I could get to a $1,400/mo mortgage since the parent said $1250 didn't get the amenities of a $900 rent - Home values increasing 2%/year (default) - 3.75% mortgage rate (my current rate) - 1.25% property taxes (default)
From the NYT Rent v. Buy calculator: "If you stay in your home for 30 years, renting is better. It will cost you $209,282 less than buying, an average savings of $6,976 each year."
At this point it's a lifestyle decision. Either you want to own a home or you don't.
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Sure, if you're looking at the final dollar amount. Other factors need to come into play when you own a home. My rent was about $1000/month with utilities for about 1000 sq. feet. I now pay a mortgage of $1375/month + about $75 in average monthly utilities. But with that I get a home with 1600 sq. feet living space, not including the finished attic or the unfinished basement and the 7500 sq. foot lot I now have to mo…
What does space have to do with renting vs buying? You can rent whole houses, too.
Note: This obviously applies more to renting an entire house than an apartment in an apartment building.
Is this significantly cheaper than a standard frame structure with comparable amenities? I priced out the materials for building a small "office shed" with no electricity or running water, and came up with a price tag of something like $2000 for a 10x10 structure, assuming completely conventional 2x4's, fiberglass insulation, and off-the-shelf doors and windows. I've not yet followed through on it, but I feel pretty…
If you go to a typical Home Depot, at least around here, they have a wide variety of outdoor "garden sheds" on display for all price ranges from $1K to $6K or so. You're talking about one around the $4K size, just a little too small and underengineered to frame a garage door opening.
Then you need to add the additional stuff, insulation, windows, etc. You can add that as you go. Its cheap to frame in a window opening and later install a window.
My grandfather turned a very large garden shed into what amounts to a workshop when I was a kid. I guess a workshop with plumbing is a small house.
I would advise anyone making an outdoor workshop or whatever to do the substantial structural reinforcement needed to install doors at both ends. Not just for convenience of driving cars thru, but the incredible opportunity for shade and ventilation two doors provides. The structural reinforcement required was huge / amazing all I remember was multiple 2x10 beams.. without a cross member its susceptible to folding from wind unless the joints are ridiculously overbuilt, which they were... An a-frame would have been infinitely simpler structurally than trying to make something that looks like a conventional garden fence.