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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#651

Post by Gigachad »

laughing_man wrote: post #629
mc3301 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plumbing: plumber. Electrics: electrician. Most other things (besides obvious big things like foundation, drainage, roofing, load supporting areas) can be done with a good "fix it all" kinda person, or (with patience) youtube.

Plumbing isn't all that complicated, really. There are things you have to understand, but a little research will take you a long way. I only call the plumber when I don't have the equipment I'd need, like cameras and snakes.

In many countries you are legally required to use a licensed plumber and electrician.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#652

Post by bombcar »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #512
sakopov wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basically, if you can rent in a place that landlords start suffering, you’re going to do well.

And if you buy in a place where renters start suffering, you’ll do well.

Every decision is easy when you have the future data now, which you never have.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#653

Post by hahajk »

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…

> interest you pay is insuring the bank against bad debtors

I thought that was the govt:

> Loans securitized by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to dominate the market, comprising around 52 percent of all balances at roughly $6.5 trillion. Government-backed loans, such as those insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) or Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), account for 19 percent or $2.5 trillion. FHA loans are designed for first-time and lower-income buyers and make up 12 percent of balances, while VA loans that are available to U.S. military veterans comprise 8 percent.

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/08/a-chec...

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#654

Post by Gigachad »

eikenberry wrote: post #524
m463 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper. Honestly, it sounds like you enjoy it. If you are doing it with that frequency I think you just are "into" your house.

Most homes are fixer-uppers. They graduate to that after just a couple decades. I owned 2 homes, both in the 20-30 year range in 2 different cities.. combined (sometimes both) they needed... new roof, new hot water heater, kitchen and bathrooms updates and water mitigation, pest damage and control, leaky pipe fixing, wood deck replacing, furnace and AC replacements, basement flooding issues, foundation issues, probab…

Apartments are the middle ground. I bought one about 4 years ago and haven’t had to do anything. Any issues like water heaters and such get handled by the building management. Eventually I’ll have to repaint and repair the internals but it’s been good so far.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#655

Post by bombcar »

BirAdam wrote: post #535
sakopov wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The HOA is something I could fight, but mine is currently cheap. The taxes, however, are infuriating. I’m getting taxed on unrealized gains after having paid taxes when buying the home. There is nothing I can do about the taxes, and if I do not pay my home will be taken. Essentially, I cannot own my home in any meaningful sense.

[dead]

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#656

Post by bombcar »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #220
jandrewrogers wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer corporate rentals precisely because there is less idiosyncratic risk. They boringly have a strong incentive to keep you renting the same place as long as possible. The cost of owning absolutely does increase over time. The mortgage payment is just one part of the fully burdened cost. Furthermore, there is a real risk of an unexpected $20k expense that you have to pay for. Owning is less predictable than rent…

You can buy home repair insurance if you want to transform unexpected repair expenses into predictable monthly payments. It's a bad idea for exactly the same reasons renting is worse: Someone else has to approve repairs and contract the labor. My experience with corporate landlords is that they're incentivized to maximize income, which is emphatically not the same as keeping you renting the place as long as possible.…

The sweet spot is a landlord who used to live in the house and still considers it “theirs” and trusts you as a steward, so they repair quickly (or even trust you to get the repairs done and send them the bill) and don’t want to deal with vacancies.

They’re more common than you’d think.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#657

Post by bombcar »

specproc wrote: post #76
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'm the UK at least, it's also common for the renter to pay council tax, which is analogous to property taxes in other countries. I imagine this is also likely passed through in the cost of rent in other places. That said, it's totally possible to have a legal and fiscal framework that makes renting affordable and safe. The government, particularly in Western countries with insane pressure on the rental market, needs…

The government should build simple cheap houses, and “rent to own” them to people, thereby instilling a baseline.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#658

Post by pavon »

kxrm wrote: post #566
memcg wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realtors often have a list of contractors they rely on to help potential sellers get their homes ready for sale. I have found and used recommended roofers, plumbers, HVAC and electricians from a local realtor that wants my future business.

I would caution seeing a Realtor as an easy way to avoid doing your homework on someone. I did this long ago and the Realtor's recommendation was one of the worst I have ever worked with. There is, unfortunately, no shortcut to finding quality handymen.

Seconded. What Realtors value in a contractor is someone who will respond quickly and do a job that looks good on the surface to avoid delaying closing. For the most part they don't know whether the job was well done and will hold up over time since they are already on to the next house.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#659

Post by tamimio »

And you know the funniest part: you actually don’t own it at the end, you are on a different (worse) type of rent contract called property taxes, that if you stop paying them you lose all that! So to rent nowadays is better: it’s controlled, you can bailout any month for whatever reason, be it a bad neighbor or another personal stuff or just getting into a better newer building, you don’t pay anything for maintenance, and sometimes all utilities are included too.

Meanwhile owning is all burden, plus you don’t actually own it, you do all maintenance, and taxes aren’t controlled. Additionally, you are already paying for an inflated asset because of the speculation prices rather than actual cost.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#660

Post by skew-aberration »

laughing_man wrote: post #641
skew-aberration wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were renting, you would still be paying for the fence, utilities, roof, etc (quoted prices for fence/hvac are very high btw). If every renter on the street had significant free money to invest, why wouldn't the landlords increase rent? The only thing stopping them is the availability of other land / houses to buy, which acts as leverage for the renters. As land gets bought up over time, zoning becomes more res…

Usually when you're renting you're not in a detached dwelling, which is more expensive. On a per-unit basis, it's a lot cheaper for the landlord to maintain your unit than it is for you to maintain a separate house. Renting a house just makes no sense, IMO, unless you have a family and you know you're going to be moving soon. Also, rents don't increase just because you have extra money. People take the cost of living…

Where I live, people do indeed rent houses in large numbers. This is typically not because they wouldn't prefer to buy - it is because they can't afford to. This would describe such a large number of people globally that I'm shocked you aren't aware of this.

'Rents don't increase just because you have extra money'. Could you elaborate? Also, I said if everyone has more money, rent increases

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