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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#381

Post by steveBK123 »

vikingerik wrote: post #197
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…

Yes, this is broadly correct. The free market will (roughly) arbitrage out any differences between owning and renting. The hidden factor is that whatever money you have in house equity represents opportunity cost that it isn't in investments. If you have 400k in a house and the stock market returns 6% over inflation, then the opportunity cost is 2k per month in interest, which is comparable to what you'd pay in rent.…

The liquidity problem with homeownership as well is that it's a lump sum.

If you own $400k of stocks, you can sell any increment of dollars you want over time. You can take profit, you can take money out to cover needs, etc.

With a house, sure you can "take out home equity" but its just a loan against your home you have to eventually sell to cover or pay back.

It's like having a $400k position in your companies stock that you can only sell all at once with a 10% round trip transaction fee.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#382

Post by alistairSH »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #309
y1n0 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HOA drama sucks for sure, but just outside of my HOA controlled neighborhood, I see also the houses with junk cars in their yards and grass gone to seed. As much as I hate many stupid rules and seemingly unfair application of them, I do like that it mitigates against people that just don't give a shit about their property or the impact of their life choices on others.

> HOA drama sucks for sure, but just outside of my HOA controlled neighborhood, I see also the houses with junk cars in their yards and grass gone to seed. You don’t need a potentially abusive and/or rent-seeking HOA for this. My locality controls for all of these potential issues through local ordinances.

Sure, but you don't need to buy in an abusive HOA community.

I live in a "town" (Reston, VA) that has a notoriously strict HOA. But, it mostly applies to buying/selling and home additions. And it's very consistent. Each subdivision within Reston also has its own HOA that's run by the owners and in charge of regular community upkeep. It works out, as long as you perform due diligence up front and know what you're buying. I don't know anybody who would claim it was abusive or rent-seeking - just mildly annoying sometimes.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#383

Post by mfrye0 »

Another point not really mentioned in here is the type of home. Buying a condo has absolutely been the worst decision of my life.

It was our first home after getting married. The condo HOA will probably go down as the most disfunctional HOA in California history - not exaggerating. It has/will cost an obscene amount of time/money that I will never get back.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#384

Post by harel »

I enjoy the maintenance, doing what I can myself, trying to learn if I don't know. When the house was renovated (read rebuilt internally completely), we chose to stay in it during the works. It was fascinating. And, houses (usually) increase in value. Some more than others.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#385

Post by Der_Einzige »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #129
foobarian wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time I had a car, a daily driver. I kept it clean, vacuum/wash/polish with crazy waxes and the works. Stressed out about people riding with dirty shoes, drinks, etc., and when I asked myself why, the usual self-justification was "ah it's for the resale value." Hearing relatives get charged various fees at lease returns just fed that attitude, even though I owned the car outright. One day it was time to re…

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.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#386

Post by brabel »

funksta wrote: post #325
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…

Leverage is great when prices are increasing, but not when prices are moving in the opposite direction. The recent 40-year trend of decreasing interest rates lulled a lot of people into the belief that real estate leverage is an unalloyed good.

> I bought my current home in 2011 for $420k, and the Zillow currently estimates its value at $757k.

Well yeah, in the last 20 to 30 years in most countries the story has been the same. My parents bought a house in Brazil in the early 90's for 30k and we're now selling it for 400k. My relatives in Australia bought a house in Adelaide for 400k around 5 years ago. Prices exploded there and it's now around 700k. They got 300k dollars in a few years while actually earning less than that in salaries over the same period.

On the other hand, me, in Europe, managed to lose money on a house I bought 10 years ago because I overpaid (at the time it was really hard to buy as competition was huge) and after COVID, prices in my region fell 20% and never recovered... Also, I invested too much on a new building in the property which people in this country don't actually value a lot, so the investment did not pay off.

But before that I had made 60k on an apartment in just 2 years. So, while I know too well that the housing market can be unpredictable, I would continue to bet on it going up in most markets since the conditions which made prices increase have not changed.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#387

Post by tootie »

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,…

I always consult this calculator: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-cal...

It forces you to make some assumptions on market returns and such, but it gives a pretty clear picture. The biggest variable is how long you expect to live in the same place (longer favors buy) and the next biggest is the ratio of average rent to average housing payment. The inflection point being that if you live in one place long enough to pay off the mortgage, then it obviously starts to be much more advantageous to buy, but that requires you predicting your life 30 years in the future.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#389

Post by huhkerrf »

alistairSH wrote: post #382
TimorousBestie wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HOA drama sucks for sure, but just outside of my HOA controlled neighborhood, I see also the houses with junk cars in their yards and grass gone to seed. You don’t need a potentially abusive and/or rent-seeking HOA for this. My locality controls for all of these potential issues through local ordinances.

Sure, but you don't need to buy in an abusive HOA community. I live in a "town" (Reston, VA) that has a notoriously strict HOA. But, it mostly applies to buying/selling and home additions. And it's very consistent. Each subdivision within Reston also has its own HOA that's run by the owners and in charge of regular community upkeep. It works out, as long as you perform due diligence up front and know what you're buyi…

Genuine question: how can you know ahead of time? I could imagine you could have an HOA that seems reasonable until you get to know them.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#390

Post by pc86 »

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,…

The house gives you a place to live, so the PFI plan is either a huge miscalculation (not a great place to start when you're making a numerical argument) or intentionally disingenuous. Interest rates are closer to 6.7% which means your $2500/mo doesn't even cover your principal and interest of $2600 which is to say nothing of PMI (which will be required since you didn't put 20% down), homeowner's insurance, HOA fees, or property taxes. If you're getting a $2500/mo mortgage, what's rent for a similar house? Could be $2k/mo, could be $3500/mo. And don't forget that other than insurance and taxes, your mortgage payment is capped for 30 years. After the initial post-purchase increase, taxes are usually capped to some degree as well. For most people rent is capped for at most 1 year. So every year you rent you will have less money to invest, and eventually you'll have to start taking money out of that account because your rent has surpassed what your mortgage payment would have been 5, 10, 15, 25 years ago.

When you run the numbers honestly it's really, really hard to get similar gains renting as you can buying, especially 30 years in the future.

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