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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#401

Post by jandrese »

bell-cot wrote: post #138
jandrese wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That maintenance has to happen one way or another, hiring someone to do it can add quite a multiplier to the price. For example, I was recently looking at water heaters and called 4 different plumbers to get a quote. All of them came in around $5,000 for the job. The water heater they quoted costs $1,000 retail at Lowes. If you know what you are doing it isn't even difficult to install. That said a layperson probably…

> If you know what you are doing it isn't even difficult to install. How much time does it take to acquire & refresh the skills and code knowledge, and how many water heaters can you amortize that over during your life?

The skill is in being able to solder pipes together, something that is useful to learn as a general skill. It doesn't even need specialized equipment, just a torch, some flux, and a spool of plumbing solder. There is also a tiny bit of electrical work, but that's literally just matching the colors and using a couple of wire nuts.

The building code stuff is more of a bugbear.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#402

Post by hx8 »

Fernicia wrote: post #145
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #119

>"renting is just throwing your money away" 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?). Their entire improvement section is also something renters tend to not think about. It's a weird situation when renting that you aren't…

> 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.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#403

Post by bix6 »

SirMaster wrote: post #290
bix6 wrote: post #39

“Smart” people always tell us to rent. But ask any regular person if they’d rather own a home or rent and they will say own. Who cares about xyz costs or a lower investment return. The entire point is to have a stable base from which you and your family can thrive.

I'm just a single guy, why do I need more than a small apartment which is like 1/4 the monthly cost of a home mortgage payment. I put the other 3/4 of that cost into index funds. Also saves me time not having to do things like mow and shovel which is quite valuable to me.

I said family which isn’t a reality for you yet.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#404

Post by [deleted] »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #193
bix6 wrote: post #39

“Smart” people always tell us to rent. But ask any regular person if they’d rather own a home or rent and they will say own. Who cares about xyz costs or a lower investment return. The entire point is to have a stable base from which you and your family can thrive.

Smart people always tell us to buy a cheap used Honda. But ask any regular person and they will say they’d rather have a new Porsche.

[deleted]

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#405

Post by steveBK123 »

Last summer I was reminded of the dichotomy of owning vs renting during the crazy heat wave in NY.

Both my coworker and I had AC issues. For him, he called his landlord and that was it in terms of hassle. He then went after his landlord for a rent reduction due to the AC being an issue for a week.

I instead had to buy a portable unit as a stopgap while I dealt with finding contractors to give me quotes on a new central air system which cost 5 figures and probably 20 hours of time.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#406

Post by dominotw »

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…

you prbly bought an old aging home

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#407

Post by bix6 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #193
bix6 wrote: post #39

“Smart” people always tell us to rent. But ask any regular person if they’d rather own a home or rent and they will say own. Who cares about xyz costs or a lower investment return. The entire point is to have a stable base from which you and your family can thrive.

Smart people always tell us to buy a cheap used Honda. But ask any regular person and they will say they’d rather have a new Porsche.

O so they suggest buying instead of renting as well? Thank you :)

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#408

Post by netule »

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…

To add to the list: Replacing bad wood, pest service, aging appliances, fence maintenance, septic emptying (depending on your location), flooring wear and replacement, grouting and caulking, pest control, exterior cleaning, etc.

It can occasionally feel like an endless stream of tasks.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#409

Post by mothballed »

kube-system wrote: post #219
01100011 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and many homes thus slowly degrade in value Except in my experience the lack of upkeep doesn't actually affect the value all that much. In many places the vast majority of the price is the land and people seem less interested in valuing based on the condition of the structure. It may affect time to sell, but that seems about it. Sure some credits might be offered during escrow for some repairs, but again often the…

That depends on the market and how much deferred maintenance we're talking about. In some places buyers will bulldoze perfectly good homes just to build a different one, just because the land is so valuable. In other places, there are abandoned homes that municipalities can't even give away because the cost to bulldoze is more than the land is worth. If the place you're in looks more like the former, maintenance does…

At least where I'm from, the cost of a property with a burned-out unusable house on it is always a shit-ton more than land value, since running utilities to a house site, dealing with the paperwork, etc. is way more expensive and precarious than the cost to bulldoze. If there was a house there you can just raze to foundation and rebuild it without having to trigger a clusterfuck with the utility company or septic re-evaluation.

Also if the house is at least mortgagable by someone then buyers will still bid the price up to infinity on debt even if the house is only usable for bulldozing. The land value itself is also way lower for places without a house since the land value is loanable in one case and not the other.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#410

Post by shimman »

dominotw wrote: post #406
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…

you prbly bought an old aging home

Every home will become old and aging...
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