261–270 of 317 posts
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What does space have to do with renting vs buying? You can rent whole houses, too.
I'm talking about the tradeoffs, with space being one example. You can certainly rent a whole house, at what will most likely be more than the owner's mortgage so if you want to compare apples to apples on the final dollar amount, you're going to have to give up a few things.
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What does space have to do with renting vs buying? You can rent whole houses, too.
Slightly OT, but when renting a house you don't generally have a lot of security. At the end of your lease (which is typically only a year long), if the landlord wants to move in or rent to someone else or sell the place, you've got to pack up and get out. Moving every year or two can quickly add to the cost. Note: This obviously applies more to renting an entire house than an apartment in an apartment building.
Sorry, I am not from the USA, so I don't know the peculiarities of your peculiar housing market.
Couldn't you just negotiate a rental agreement that gives you more protection?
A search for "toilet" "bathroom" and "poop" yielded no results however, as did searches for "kitchen" "cook" "stove" and "range." Assuming OP eats food (hackers still do that, no?) and poops, it seems there is more to this living arrangement than is described in this article.
I don't know the situation but put a gun to my head and force me to speculate and I'll say "This guy is living on a friend's land & relying on the resources in his friend's house." There's no shame in that but it's disingenuous to sweep it under the rug and pretend your abode is an "alternative" to a house when it in fact relies on a house.
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True, to an extent. But considering that some people still live in unkempt shacks, there is some room for improvement. Mass producing the dome parts seem like a nice proposition. Might not even be for housing at first but as an addon for a existing house. Say you wanted to clear your garage and store your stuff somewhere else in the property. Maybe for government-sponsored housing programs. Or, I don't know, Africa?…
Africa would be an awesome idea, but you'd have to do a lot of work with the locals to get them to see this as a viable shelter. I worked on a project that tried to bring new types of homes to Haiti. This was a HUGE problem because if the locals don't like it (no matter how cool) your idea won't take off. The fact is that most Haitians thought that wood and corrugated metal were what a "house" was (assuming you could…
What land is this put on? Did you buy it or is it a friend's? Maybe I missed that part, I didn't read the whole article closely; it's kind of an important question because it may change your project price from $2,100 to $302,100 depending on your location. A search for "toilet" "bathroom" and "poop" yielded no results however, as did searches for "kitchen" "cook" "stove" and "range." Assuming OP eats food (hackers st…
Don't get me wrong; I found the article really cool. Really cool. Inspiring, in a way. And major props to the author for hacking this all together. But I agree: there's a side of this story not being discussed, and it's a pretty important side. Implying that someone can live on little more than $2,100 in building materials seems like a bit of a stretch, and I'm curious to know how much of one.
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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.
>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,…
* Landlord can decide to sell the house any time
* Improvements and diy projects are a pain, have to negotiate with landlord (if possible at all)
* In the category of standalone house type properties, rental inventory is vastly inferior to inventory available for purchase
* Hard to do any lasting improvement or landscaping with the axe of eviction via rental sale hanging over one's head
Some architect correct me but isn't a spherical-shaped house the worst case scenario for insulation? you have the biggest volume of air to heat/cool down with the largest surface to insulate and for heat to come in or go out, plus a pretty small surface footprint.
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wow that's interesting - didnt know that its different in germany. 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.
> The rental policies there must then suppress house prices because its much more cost effective to rent than to buy It's not that straightforward: Someone have to buy the units that goes onto the rental market as well, so it depends on how attractive property investment is vs. other investment opportunities. In the UK, cheap access to "buy to let" mortgages coupled with high returns as people were unable to afford t…
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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…
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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.
Either would be appropriate, though I did mean flatmates. 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 "Mov…