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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#511

Post by asdff »

Felger wrote: post #485

Not surprised ownership is not cheap in the US. West EU here, bought a new, architecturally wrong (yikes) house in 2012. I knew its conception would spell trouble, and sadly I was not disappointed on this part almost right off the bat. But the location and the price (right on the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and economical fallout / market bottom) were good. After 14 years it cost an average of $130 per mon…

There are places in the US that are cheap still. Midwest you can still get 150-250k homes today, decent ones at that too. Large american style, 4 beds with 2 car garage sort of thing.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#512

Post by tomjakubowski »

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…

If the market can bear it, those increased costs typically get passed down to renters too. Landlords are usually averse to covering expenses that don't go towards equity. If they can get away with it, they want to charge rent greater than mortgage interest + insurance + maintenance + taxes.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#513

Post by fuomag9 »

throw0101c wrote: post #209
tim-tday wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can buy low and sell high it’s worth it. Especially if you’re positioned to buy when you can lock in low mortgage rates. Above 6% you might be better off putting your down payment into the stock market and renting. It’s also more likely that you’ll feel good about spending money to improve the home if you think you can get the money back when you sell. (And then you get to live in a more pleasant place for yea…

> Especially if you’re positioned to buy when you can lock in low mortgage rates. Above 6% you might be better off putting your down payment into the stock market and renting. "Locking in" a rate for multiple decades is mostly (only?) an American thing: * https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15214842.2020.1... * https://www.investopedia.com/why-your-30-year-mortgage-exist... * https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/07/…

In italy not only you can lock it, you are allowed to change bank for lower rates (surroga) without any penalty

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#514

Post by steveBK123 »

no_wizard wrote: post #454
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…

Condo is suppose to be that nice hybrid but they became enshittified long ago and have routinely proven to be bad deals for the average buyer in too many circumstances. The US doesn’t understand how to make the housing market functional. I’d love to have a condo where a great many things are handled by the association but the math never maths, as they say, and a great deal of the issues is because condo associations…

I’ve rented in a rental, rented in a condo, owned in a condo and owned a sfh.

Condos are in a lot of ways worse for ownership. You have communal costs you can’t control, risk of irresponsible neighbors (leaks), and limitations on who/what/when/how of repair or renovation you want to do within your own unit. All of which introduces coordination overhead, cost and time.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#515

Post by asdff »

ball_of_lint wrote: post #484
asdff wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends where you live. In the midwest you might legitimately need to mow 3x a week and you might have a huge lot. If you say screw it and let it go to knee high weeds, city might show up and cut your grass and fine you for it.

3x/week is wild. I'd get a different type of grass at that point.

Just what happens with the rain load during the peak growing season. Later in the summer it will switch to a more drought condition though and there won't be so frequent mowing. But the peak parts, yeah, not much I don't think you can do via strain selection given the quantities of rainfall.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#516

Post by asdff »

Ntrails wrote: post #505
asdff wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends where you live. In the midwest you might legitimately need to mow 3x a week and you might have a huge lot. If you say screw it and let it go to knee high weeds, city might show up and cut your grass and fine you for it.

Buy a house without grass :)

Actually illegal in a lot of the midwest I'm not even kidding.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#517

Post by blks »

wwweston wrote: post #463
vardalab wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot to include the actual living costs if you invest. You're not gonna be able to contribute $2,500 a month. You would be able to contribute not that much , around here rents are $2,500 a month.

That point is in the analysis after the bullet points (in phrases like "minus 400k you would have probably paid in rent" and "you need to consistently have rent-payment-level disposable income to make this work. Many working people don't."). I considered putting it up in the bullet points. Apparently deciding against that lost my expressions of this point to some readers, including yourself. But yes, this is why the…

Then analysis that includes buying a home should as well include investing $rent amount every month in addition to mortgage.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#518

Post by groby_b »

asdff wrote: post #470
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…

>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…

> He's under the building doing plumbing or electric one day.

I believe I've encountered that guys electrical work, and it ain't sage :)

(I.e. there are a few of those "fix it all" guys, but they're not always code compliant. They do get stuff done, though)

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#519

Post by sokoloff »

thrance wrote: post #174
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up. And while I agree that it’s nice to customize things to your preferences, this has a downside in that it’s easy to get carried away and overspend. Might as well get the nicer finishes when you are remodeling,…

> There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up. Not my experience, at all. All landlords I've had were lazy assholes who did the bare minimum, but never forgot to increase rent on the 1st of January, every single year. Paying someone else for no other re…

Where should housing come from if not by paying someone for it (either by the month [renting] or for an eternity [buying])?

My uncle built his own house; it took him ages (and still hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the materials and land).

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#520

Post by fuomag9 »

rambambram wrote: post #369

For me, the biggest 'cost' seems to be peace of mind. I rent my place, and even thinking about all this home owner sh!te gives me a headache. To each their own, and I'm probably pissing money away, but I want to live with the feeling that I can quit this 'housing subscription' (that's what it is, just another subscription) within a month and not even have to think about it.

Meanwhile italian subscriptions have on average 6 months notice in advance for quitting it...
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