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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#591

Post by benaduggan »

iamalizard wrote: post #582

I'm not from the US but I find some of these numbers ridiculous. $515.50 per month for property taxes? That seems soo high. What does this cover - garbage collection, what else? > Cut down trees that were too close to the house: $2,800 I could've likely flown to the US, cut down your trees for a few hundred and flown back home for that much money. Why so expensive? I'm beginning to question the other numbers. > Repla…

> What does this cover - garbage collection, what else?

That's the fun part, it doesn't even cover garbage!

Jokes aside, property tax in the US typically go towards safety net funding for your community. So a lot to schools, public safety, roads/infrastructure, etc. There are definitely some places where garbage is covered in that, but a lot of places garbage collection is privatized in the US.

Sometimes hearing about how much it costs to cut down trees makes me want to quit my job. I think a lot of that is probably for liability insurance though? Both for worker injury risk and for risk of property damage. It will cost a lot to fix a house that has a tree fall through it. But also since those are market rates, it's still a very good idea to ensure they have legit insurance. You are usually SOL if they don't.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#592

Post by loeg »

iamalizard wrote: post #582

I'm not from the US but I find some of these numbers ridiculous. $515.50 per month for property taxes? That seems soo high. What does this cover - garbage collection, what else? > Cut down trees that were too close to the house: $2,800 I could've likely flown to the US, cut down your trees for a few hundred and flown back home for that much money. Why so expensive? I'm beginning to question the other numbers. > Repla…

It's $515/mo on a $757,000 house. This comes out to 0.82%/year, which is pretty typical by US standards.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#593

Post by ChuckMcM »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #561
ChuckMcM wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this. But some additional flavor to emphasize the 'don't do it for financial reasons' aspect. In the late 90's I, like a number of my married friends, 'owned' a house in the Bay Area. Dot coms were going crazy, the economy was insane, and people who got big equity payouts were buying places with their stock. At the height of all that, my Sun stock holdings were enough to pay off the remainder of my mortgage but…

Thank you for sharing! > I still got complaints from my financial advisor that she could get us a better return than that, but I didn't care. I wanted more certainty than that. Seems to me that she is the one hurting more because your choice undermined her commission lol

Not really, she does fine. She really does think I am over conservative in my risk tolerance. Sadly you don't get to re-run the experiment if you don't like the outcome (that being my risk intolerance speaking).

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#594

Post by hunterpayne »

01100011 wrote: post #500
hunterpayne wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of my life, fixed income was outperformed by inflation. Indexed funds returned double fixed income over that entire period. Either you are in your 20s or you aren't nearly as good at investing as you think.

I'm fine with keeping most of my post-tax cash pile in cash equivalents. I don't think you understand investing if your only measuring stick is returns. You do sound like a finance bro though given you took time out of your day to trash talk someone for something they didn't even claim.

If your investment return is less than the rate of inflation, you are literally getting poorer. Sort of defeats the purpose of an investment. It isn't much better than literally keeping it in your mattress. Just because you don't understand that, doesn't make it not true. And software I wrote probably has managed or touched your money at some point.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#595

Post by chipper02 »

profdevloper wrote: post #235
busch_j wrote: post #206

Maybe I missed it in the article but it doesn't seem to mention that you deduct mortgage interest on your taxes in the US? This isn't something you get renting and it effectively lowers your monthly payment.

That's technically still true according to the tax laws here, but Trump raised the standard deduction during his first term in office so where I previously took an itemized deduction and claimed my mortgage interest from my taxable income, it's now more beneficial for my (basic) tax situation to claim the standard deduction. I appreciate the simplicity, but I'm no longer getting a tax benefit for home ownership.

I pay less under "orange man bad" than I did under "Prof Autopen the funder of perpetual war."

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#596

Post by iamalizard »

loeg wrote: post #592
iamalizard wrote: post #582

I'm not from the US but I find some of these numbers ridiculous. $515.50 per month for property taxes? That seems soo high. What does this cover - garbage collection, what else? > Cut down trees that were too close to the house: $2,800 I could've likely flown to the US, cut down your trees for a few hundred and flown back home for that much money. Why so expensive? I'm beginning to question the other numbers. > Repla…

It's $515/mo on a $757,000 house. This comes out to 0.82%/year, which is pretty typical by US standards.

What kind of expenses are covered by that? I can only think of garbage collection and collapses of the street that affect your property.

Where I live I pay rent on a relatively small ~150000 $ house and have no idea how much the property taxes are as the landlord pays them but if they were ~1/5th of 500 $/month, I'm sure my rent would've been higher than what it is now.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#597

Post by loeg »

iamalizard wrote: post #596
loeg wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's $515/mo on a $757,000 house. This comes out to 0.82%/year, which is pretty typical by US standards.

What kind of expenses are covered by that? I can only think of garbage collection and collapses of the street that affect your property. Where I live I pay rent on a relatively small ~150000 $ house and have no idea how much the property taxes are as the landlord pays them but if they were ~1/5th of 500 $/month, I'm sure my rent would've been higher than what it is now.

Police, fire, schools.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#598

Post by nerdralph »

saalweachter wrote: post #237
waffleiron wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix Most landlords I've dealt with are an absolute pain to deal with when something breaks. It's often not that easy, maybe in high-cost / luxury rentals. Arguing over what is normal wear-and-tear, while knowing you cannot afford decent legal advice, and you also can't pay for the "unexpected repair" is just as bad. > And you can’t have just your kitc…

I've dealt with two kinds of landlords. The good one(s) acted like their job was providing the service of housing. They had a budget and paid themselves a salary, and if there was money left in the repair budget at the end of the year they used it for improvements to the properties. The bad ones treated it as an investment. My rent money went into their own pocket, and any expenses -- repairs, taxes, mortgage payment…

My wife and I have a few rental properties that I manage. They are investments, chosen based on return on investment and equity (ROI/ROE). Maintenance costs were factored into those calculations. We take care of repairs not because our job is "providing the service of housing", but because we are honest and would not sign a lease (or any contract) in bad faith. When the lease says the property includes appliances, then we ensure broken appliances are fixed or replaced promptly. If/when we can't make a reasonable ROE on a rental property, we don't cut corners to squeeze a bit more profit out of it, we sell it and invest the money elsewhere.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#599

Post by 999900000999 »

I had a rental which was great up until the last 2 months where the landlord sent a prospective tenant to view it twice a week.

No regard for my personal privacy. At a point a real estate agent just walked into my home without any notice. Even after this the showings continued.

I’ve had truly awful landlords and some very good ones.

Although unless you own a house in the woods it seems like someone needs to mess with you. You’re hoa fines you for not mowing enough , etc.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#600

Post by HDBaseT »

waffleiron wrote: post #125
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,…

> Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix Most landlords I've dealt with are an absolute pain to deal with when something breaks. It's often not that easy, maybe in high-cost / luxury rentals. Arguing over what is normal wear-and-tear, while knowing you cannot afford decent legal advice, and you also can't pay for the "unexpected repair" is just as bad. > And you can’t have just your kitc…

You hit the nail right on the head.

As a renter, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Contacting your landlord to get something resolved is a nightmare. Majority of the the time they will refuse to cover it and refuse to send someone out.

Majority of the time they will also not let someone come fix it, without approval, because you aren't not allowed to make modifications to someones property.

We had a fan which died upstairs in a bedroom. The downstairs had an aircon although it was a living room. We requested the fan get replaced multiple times, 13 months late (two different rent increases later) the fan was still not replaced. A third price increase without the fan being replaced and we moved.

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