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The real cost of owning a home

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Re: The real cost of owning a home

#831

Post by zamadatix »

nerdralph wrote: post #598
saalweachter wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

Sounds like two different ways of saying the same thing. Each is planning on certain expected return which will have allocated costs for maintenance accounted for as part of the agreement to provide the housing service (which is what the contract will describe in detail).

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#832

Post by barchar »

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…

You are also not a charity and need to pay _yourself_ profits on the home you own yourself. Otherwise you're no different from a landlord offering below-market rent.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#833

Post by deltoidmaximus »

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 own a modest house that I bought close to 20 years ago before the standard deduction changes. The first year the calculated tax savings from itemizing was a whopping $800. This went down every year and at year 7-8 it no longer made sense to itemize. Interest rates are higher now but the standard deduction is way higher now as well. This strikes me as something that was a big deal in the very high interest rate 80s and has then been parroted as a huge benefit for decades after is largely ceased being true.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#834

Post by nazgulnarsil »

monegator wrote: post #324
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…

Yeah, no. Fuck renting. It may be ok for 5 maybe 10 years, while you're figuring yourself out, but after that it's just wasted money. If you buy property it will be yours, forever. You will pass it down, you will be forever part of the community, and your children, and so on. Both my parents come from big farmer families, and lots of poverty. When my grandparents managed to end serfdom in the late 50's and their rent…

the large majority of people do not keep their property until death.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#835

Post by machiaweliczny »

mikeweiss wrote: post #668

Wait if this was true then wouldn't landlords be LOSING money by renting? What am I missing?

At current rates you are losing when renting (excluding possible appreciation), that's why it's hard to sell and easy to rent. Due to low rates before homes went big in value cause you were earning even not counting appreciation, so whoever had credit was maxing it to full for easy money but now situation starts to stabilise / reverse?

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#836

Post by iamalizard »

joshstrange wrote: post #803
iamalizard wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the "included" maintenance is dog shit In my experience it usually is. > Right as I was moving out they wanted to add a $25/mo pet fee If my landlord did that, I'd be quite surprised as he obviously knew I have 2 small dogs when I moved in and they haven't done any damage. Is your landlord managing lots of properties, not just your own? It's the type of added fee I'd expect from a faceless company, not a person I'v…

The place in question for the pet fee was a corporate place. I’ve paid deposits for having a pet before but never a flat rate added fee to every month. As for the WiFi, yeah, they told me they could raise it to 20 and didn’t understand that I had multiple devices that I didn’t want on WiFi or literally didn’t have WiFi (a handful of servers). The WiFi was the captive portal BS so it was hell to try and get anything h…

Awful. I consider myself lucky to have never had the need to deal with these kinds of setups. At first I assumed "WiFi" was used to mean "broadband internet", as opposed to cellular, as I've seen Americans call it that, but it actually is just WiFi, nothing wired?

I've never had to deal with "X devices max", either.

What did you try to get around the limitation? What about a laptop that would serve as a proxy or a router or something?

The "X devices max" is so dumb, anyway. Shouldn't it be the total throughput that matters? It's like those electrical advices that say not to daisy chain power strips as it's dangerous, yet I've had 7-8 power strips daisy chained for decades with no issues. Obviously the issue is not to overload a single socket with too much power, but if you have 50 low-powered devices it's OK. Imagine if our electric company had a "X devices max" policy.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#837

Post by iamalizard »

QuiEgo wrote: post #742
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…

>$515.50 per month for property taxes? That seems soo high. Where I live (Texas), there is no state income tax. They make it up by having high property taxes. It's something like $20,000/year per $1MM of property value. $515.50 would be so nice... > What does this cover - garbage collection, what else? Here, none of that (Garbage is billed by use as a utility, like electricity. You're charged by how big of a bin you…

> Where I live (Texas), there is no state income tax. They make it up by having high property taxes.

I guess that makes some calculations quite different, like what rent should be, how much you can view a property as an investment, what types of businesses you can start there, and so on, compared to other states?

> You're charged by how big of a bin you get).

Are there no communal bins? Or is that for a closed community as opposed to a city? What would you do if you had to throw something out while you were walking around?

I've never been to the US so it's a bit of a culture shock.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#838

Post by xphos »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #671
asdff wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Seemingly he can do every trade. He's under the building doing plumbing or electric one day. Landscaping the next. Doing this is basically illegal in modern day. The requirements to get even one trade license, much less more than one, are set up to make it uneconomical unless that trade is your full-time profession. Who can justify doing a multi-year full-time apprenticeship in each trade when they expect to spend…

Honestly the most shocking think i learned when moving to Massachusetts was that only licenced trade people can request to have work done inspected. This was insane to me. Why would towns not want amature work not to be inspected. It wasn't illegal for a homeowner with poor experience to electrical, gas, HVAC, without a inspection... It was wild, I understand know its like this because its basically impossible to get certified in trades without it being your full time job and scares people from doing stuff on their own. But I think its also really damaging to society because people who don't know what they are doing will still do things and it shows in houses in Massachusetts which have incorrect wiring, bad plumbing, unlevel floors. Its because we overly protect the trade from handyman.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#839

Post by joshstrange »

iamalizard wrote: post #836
joshstrange wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The place in question for the pet fee was a corporate place. I’ve paid deposits for having a pet before but never a flat rate added fee to every month. As for the WiFi, yeah, they told me they could raise it to 20 and didn’t understand that I had multiple devices that I didn’t want on WiFi or literally didn’t have WiFi (a handful of servers). The WiFi was the captive portal BS so it was hell to try and get anything h…

Awful. I consider myself lucky to have never had the need to deal with these kinds of setups. At first I assumed "WiFi" was used to mean "broadband internet", as opposed to cellular, as I've seen Americans call it that, but it actually is just WiFi, nothing wired? I've never had to deal with "X devices max", either. What did you try to get around the limitation? What about a laptop that would serve as a proxy or a ro…

Yeah, to be clear, there were no wires available (I asked, and then begged). Thankfully I was in the middle of buying my house when they made this change and I just dragged my feet until I moved out and never turned in my old cable modem so that I could continue on as I had before for the last month or so I was there.

The device limit was so stupid and for all I know they raised/removed it after I left. Even at 20 devices, it wouldn't have been enough [0]. Had I stayed I probably would have needed to do a wifi->wifi or wifi->ethernet bridge so I could get around the limit and provide internet to the non-wifi devices. Also, just to provide some more info, this was in 2019 so it wasn't like it was the dawn of WiFi and people didn't have lot of wifi devices.

> The "X devices max" is so dumb, anyway. Shouldn't it be the total throughput that matters?

It should be, but that would require some level of critical thinking and the owners of that apartment building had long-since proven they possessed neither the ability or will to think about anything they did, WiFi or otherwise.

[0] Between my partner and I we had: 2x phones, 2x tablets, 2x laptops, 2x Smart watch, 3x servers (not even wifi-supported), smart home hub, smart scale, Xbox, 2x Apple TV, 3x Echo Dots, 3-4 smart plug wifi devices, and then I had a work laptop and a few work testing devices (phones/tablets) so I blew past the ( raised for me) 20-device limit without even trying. And I'm probably forgetting a few devices.

Re: The real cost of owning a home

#840

Post by iamalizard »

brailsafe wrote: post #768
iamalizard wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For the tools, I had a friend years ago who worked part time as a repairman and he said he always buys cheap as even expensive tools break. He viewed his tools as consumables, almost as disposables. He had a few of each type and said he didn't care when one broke. Not your philosophy or mine (buy expensive when you need to use it a lot) but it seemed to work for him.

I tried to DIY a bike stand. I wanted to make a truing wheel, too. I made something a very basic bike stand with spare materials lying around in less than an hour - just 2 metal desk legs bolted onto a piece of wood, as well as a couple of smaller pieces of wood to hold the front wheel in place (and a few smaller pieces where needed). It works for my bike only because of the geometry and it's definitely not great but it does the job! I watched some videos on how to make a good stand and it seems possible to DIY something really great for a fraction of the price. Sure, your time and labor costs money, but it would be satisfying to make something good yourself. I'm thinking of making another stand in a couple of months.

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