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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#761

Post by marcus_holmes »

defrost wrote: post #688
marcus_holmes wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused - so are you working on your house every single weekend, or not? Because that list clearly says "once a week" for one item and has a ton of stuff on it that looks pretty regular, like if you're not doing it every weekend then it'll mount up to be a real problem that takes you all weekend.

Different homeowner - most of the high frequency stuff there is quick and easy to do regularly with practice and it slots in pretty well with just living. It's more in order with keeping yourself, your dishes, your clothes clean and exercising. Slightly physical stuff (eg: hedging - waving a weighted object about from ground level to above head level for 20 to 30 feet say) is desirable to some - cheaper than gym work…

I get that, and agree. It's just the whole "every weekend is overblown" and then listing stuff that you need to do every weekend thing that didn't make sense.

All weekend every weekend I'd agree is probably overblown, unless you enjoy it as a hobby. Or as you say, an alternative to the gym.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#762

Post by rahkiin »

kccqzy wrote: post #612
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…

There are plenty of psychological drawbacks as well. Consider for example that the fence between your house and your neighbor has become dilapidated. But your neighbor thinks it is fine and will not pay for a replacement. What do you do? Replace the fence without cost sharing? Argue with your neighbor on the condition of the fence? Or even after your neighbor has agreed, the act of selecting a mutually acceptable con…

Instead you rent, and your landlord agrees that it is fine.

So now you look at a shitty fence. Which you could have done when owning the house too

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#763

Post by stevenhuang »

archagon wrote: post #721
stevenhuang wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control is nice for the select few that get it but results in worse overall conditions for renters by distorting market conditions. It's a stop gap band-aid feel good measure, not an effective long term solution. More housing supply and densification is the solution.

More housing supply is not a solution to landlords deciding to evict tenants or raise the rent for arbitrary reasons. ("The housing market is great for sellers right now and I want to sell my house." "My niece wants to live in the city." "I don't want tenants with pets/children." etc.) Renters deserve stable housing just as much as homeowners and that requires some degree of regulation.

> More housing supply is not a solution to landlords deciding to evict tenants or raise the rent for arbitrary reasons.

Irrelevant. Sensible tenancy laws are important but are unrelated to discussions of housing affordability.

To fix the affordability crisis the long term solution is to address the structural issues caused by imbalanced supply vs demand as result of market distortions.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#764

Post by rjh29 »

greedo wrote: post #422
abalashov wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This is why I'm a preferential life-long renter, although I think the primary reason is that I can't stand living anywhere for more than 2-5 years. So much friction to move, unwinding this risky position very expensively, with loads of transaction fees stacked--I can't understand the appeal. Even owning a condo was enough for me to realise I don't want to own my own bare metal, and that I look at housing as a…

Moving every 2-5 years sounds like one of the rings of Hell from Dante.

Staying in the same place for decades seems like hell to me too.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#765

Post by archagon »

stevenhuang wrote: post #763
archagon wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More housing supply is not a solution to landlords deciding to evict tenants or raise the rent for arbitrary reasons. ("The housing market is great for sellers right now and I want to sell my house." "My niece wants to live in the city." "I don't want tenants with pets/children." etc.) Renters deserve stable housing just as much as homeowners and that requires some degree of regulation.

> More housing supply is not a solution to landlords deciding to evict tenants or raise the rent for arbitrary reasons. Irrelevant. Sensible tenancy laws are important but are unrelated to discussions of housing affordability. To fix the affordability crisis the long term solution is to address the structural issues caused by imbalanced supply vs demand as result of market distortions.

It is directly relevant to the comment I was replying to:

> Landlords do whatever the hell they like with zero consequences. Thats not a game I’d like to play with a 40 year horizon of unknowns.

Rent control (and tenant protections in general) help ensure that this does not happen. My landlord can't raise my rent more than x% a year, so I won't have to leave my apartment just because he's found a richer tenant. I'm quite secure in my housing barring a full-on condo conversion of the entire building with no further renting allowed.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#766

Post by kakacik »

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…

... and thats why I prefer very much big apartment. There is concierge who takes care of all the outside, and we handle just the inside. Which in past 3 years meant 1 plumber and 2x heating specialist (but that was to give digital controls for floor heating for each room). My and my wife time is way more expensive than his.

House? All the land with endless lawn mowing and vegetation maintenance, the fences, all the connections, outside of the house, roof, garages. Its even more - most houses have boilers, many have heat pumps, solars etc. Plus all the internal stuff. Generally the biggest issue is usually some form of water damage over time.

No, thank you, we have 2 small kids and have more passion activities mostly in the mountains than we can handle. I could never make maintaining property into passion, its hobby at best but hardly something that would make me feel alive like say rock climbing or ski touring does. Being slave to the property sounds like a bad life choice if avoidable. If that means kids have to play outside of our property during 6 months of usable summer time instead of our backyard thats fine price to pay. And anyway you have neighbors in both cases. There is the part of having to agree as a collective, but most people are reasonable and you only need >50% of the votes.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#767

Post by silverlake »

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…

I bought a fully renovated house as my first house. Unfortunately the builder was a moron. I spent 10 years with near constant repairs. Every house on my block has the same story: different builders, same shoddy quality. I was lucky to find a buyer that paid the asking price. I’m now happily renting again. I’ve always had great luck with rentals fixing things immediately.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#768

Post by brailsafe »

iamalizard wrote: post #636
brailsafe wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $515.50 per month for property taxes? That seems soo high. What does this cover - garbage collection, what else? I agree, but the what else is that property taxes are often the largest source of income for a city budget, if not the sole source, so everything that goes into running a city; road maintenance and police usually make the top. > Can't you do it for like 5-10 $ yourself? If you don't have any tools, maybe…

> property taxes are often the largest source of income for a city budget Hadn't considered that, thanks. :) > I personally don't value faucets that much, but if I were replacing one, I don't see why I'd get a crappy one. I realize I don't know how faucets cost in the US so 185 could be close to what one would pay even to DIY it. > If someone said to me "I'll give you $400 to fly to Europe and cut down a large tree t…

> Unless it's for a one-time job where I just buy whatever's cheapest (within reason). Not surprisingly, I have had to use such tools multiple times shortly after that "first and only" job was done. Yet surprisingly, the cheap tool usually does the job.

This tends to be how I approach tool investments, especially on the hobby side side of things. If I'm trying out a new interest, I'll get something on the cheaper end, and if I find myself continually pursuing the hobby, then I'll upgrade. Same for work, I'll use the minimum viable tool until it starts getting in my way, or I know I'd just enjoy the process more by spending more. Growing up poor makes every actual investment quite painful.

Last year, I reached my breaking point with my old computer; running Docker containers was just not serviceable anymore, so I upgraded substantially.

Right now, I know I need to get a bike stand and a wheel truing stand. Technically I don't actually need them, I could do it some other way or pay a professional (what I normally do), but the set of good tools will encourage me to keep trying it myself.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#769

Post by jstanley »

Paracompact wrote: post #494
jstanley wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing that most people are able to buy houses on borrowed money, so their housing investment is effectively levered up 10x or more, at least at the beginning. It's not a choice between $1m in housing appreciating at 3% and $1m in stocks appreciating at 9%. It's a choice between $1m in housing appreciating at 3% or $100k in stocks appreciating at 9%.

The borrowed money isn't free from interest. There's no numerical sense in borrowing money at 5%+ interest to fund an investment appreciating at 3%. Some schemes might advantage it further (such as leveraging your mortgage with your retirement funds) but then we might as well also discuss further disadvantages compared to renting, such as upkeep and property taxes. Back around 2020 when mortgage rates very briefly di…

Fair point!

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#770

Post by dubeye »

The real point of home ownership is control, you have complete ownership and responsibility which comes with pros and cons.

I used to love renting but now value the control above all else. I suspect having kids is the largest factor in the shift

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