I will play devil’s advocate and note that when you own a home you are responsible for all the costs of the house, not just the mortgage. I’ll see myself out.
Ain’t that the truth. In the past 2 months my garage door spring, water heater, and dryer unit all decided to take a shit. Drained my savings pretty quick.
Same. It’s a good thing I pay hundreds less per month on a mortgage instead of the going rent rate, which enables me to have savings in the first place. Not being forced to move every year and incur the equivalent costs of an appliance or two also helps.
For me the biggest reason to buy is simply quality of life. On paper, sure, renting comes with ease of mind. You don’t have to do maintenance and the landlord takes care of everything. However, the responsible landlord is the personal finance analog of the physicist’s spherical cow. Landlords are in the business to make a buck. They never do any maintenance unless absolutely forced to do so by either the law or market conditions. If the city isn’t going to condemn the property, and as long as they can keep it rented, they don’t give a damn. However, when something at the landlord’s house needs fixing, it’s undoubtedly fixed quickly and properly.
I like owning a house because it ensures that I can actually have a pleasant place to live. Landlords have no incentive so keep their properties actually livable rather than just inhabitatable.
I don’t recommend everyone do it but it’s not rocket science. Follow proceedure and respect the danger. Most of you operate multi tonne motor vehicles, you can do it.
Sure, but I don’t stand on a ladder, stick a screwdriver into the flywheel, and then tell my friend to fire it up.
I understand that is exaggerated and oversimplified, but having an old garage door spring miss my face by inches because it failed as I walked below it was a terrifying experience. In a car, the car is a crumple zone. In a garage door spring, your skull is the crumple zone (assuming that you’re interacting with it in such a way. I also tend to not put my face in front of cars that are prepared to accelerate.)
When I was younger we had one of the older-style “2 big springs” doors and needed to replace the springs. The new ones were a bit shorter, so we had to close the doors a little harder. No problem.
About 20 minutes later there was a sound like an explosion in the garage. One of the new springs broke where the hook went into the door from the strain of being stretched so tight, and it shot across the room and was sticking out of the man-door on the other side of the garage.
I had my grandparents’ house inspected before buying it, and the inspector said that a couple of the springs (same type) were not installed correctly; that the extra cable coming from the door to the track was supposed to be routed through the spring to hold it in place in case there was a failure. The garage doors were already concerning me, so I hired a garage door company to take a look, and update the springs.
The technician told me that an inspector pointing that out is really strange, because that’s an incredibly niche detail for an inspector to know. The tech looks at the spring, checks out the garage door, etc. All the while, I’m standing under the track. The tech was about to open the garage door, and said, “hey, take a few steps back. No reason to risk standing under that, in case it fails.” I took three steps back, and then there was a loud bang, and the spring suddenly whipped across in front of me, bounced back once, and then lazily swung back and forth in front of me.
I still sometimes panic walking under my garage door tracks.
We spent $45k on repairs in two years. Wiped us out. But my only debt is still my one mortgage. The house is only worth about $250k. But I’m good on my roof, foundation, water heater and HVAC for quite a few more years.
I’ll add to this a bit. I know so many people who want to buy a fixer upper to save money. We went that route, and while my mortgage is sort of low, the repair costs are insane. I did all the work myself, and we spent over $100k in 5 years. Houses are expensive to own if you care about them.
Fixer uppers are better the less you give a shit. For example mine i will be sealing the basement and redoing the bathroom. Aside from that i don’t give a fuck about the dated walls and floors. I don’t care about the kitchen cabinets or the stains on the counter top.
Give less shit, and give more time. Fix the absolutely major things now, and do something smaller every year. Unless you’re planning to flip the thing, you have time.
Mine was the look under the siding and find shitloads of water damage. Don’t tell the county how many studs I replaced.
Add that to the horrible repairs done prior and I’ve been working constantly to get it to “not giving a shit” levels of OK. Sucks a bit, but I love our home now. Landscaping isn’t done yet though.
Yeah, my bf & I were made homeless when our previous landlord decided to sell our home, we believe because it had plumbing problems that he didn’t want to pay to fix. We thought about making an offer, but he was asking over twice what he paid for it, and there was quite a bit of damage to the parts of the property that we weren’t living in: water, fire, termite. It cost us thousands to move out, even with nowhere to move to.
I’m glad I live somewhere with enough protections for renters that I would not lose my home if the landlord sold it to a new owner. It’s crazy to me that landlords in other places can just kick people out when they feel like it
Based on your name, it’s one of the German-speaking countries. While yes, the law is more in favor of tenants than landlords, here in Austria our landlord’s way of kicking us out (because he wants to sell the place) is by not extending our befristet Mietvertrag. So now we have to buy our own because paying mortgage is cheaper than renting ¯\(ツ)/¯
In my case at the time it was just an effect of being poor. At least one scenario I had a legal case, but I couldn’t afford the costs to bring it forth and it would cost more in legal fees than the case was worth. I simply didn’t have the time or resources, especially since I had to focus on moving and getting security deposits together so as to not be homeless.
The protections are there, they just are not for certain economic classes since there’s an exploitable time window to operate within.
Yeah, I think here (Los Angeles) the only reason outside of breaking the lease you can be evicted is if the landlord wants to personally live in the home or it’s getting demolished.
If you own a home then of course you should keep at least this amount in liquid cash. If you don’t, u are dumb. And yes, if you can afford a home, you can afford to have a liquid cash reserve of this magnitude.
You’re out of your fucking mind guy. USDA Rural loans are 0% down, fixed interest 30 year loans and if normal people would go take a first time homebuyer class they would know that. My wife and I bought our house for 250k, nothing down and roughly 1500/mo mortgage. 5.9%. If you’re trying to buy in a suburban area idk what to tell you other than the country is pretty nice. And we have never had $15k in actual savings outside of our checking accounts.
I will play devil’s advocate and note that when you own a home you are responsible for all the costs of the house, not just the mortgage. I’ll see myself out.
Good point, but I think we all know that’s not the reason.
your credit rating also has to be higher for a mortgage. OP may have massive debts already so they can’t really sustain more.
Ain’t that the truth. In the past 2 months my garage door spring, water heater, and dryer unit all decided to take a shit. Drained my savings pretty quick.
Same. It’s a good thing I pay hundreds less per month on a mortgage instead of the going rent rate, which enables me to have savings in the first place. Not being forced to move every year and incur the equivalent costs of an appliance or two also helps.
For me the biggest reason to buy is simply quality of life. On paper, sure, renting comes with ease of mind. You don’t have to do maintenance and the landlord takes care of everything. However, the responsible landlord is the personal finance analog of the physicist’s spherical cow. Landlords are in the business to make a buck. They never do any maintenance unless absolutely forced to do so by either the law or market conditions. If the city isn’t going to condemn the property, and as long as they can keep it rented, they don’t give a damn. However, when something at the landlord’s house needs fixing, it’s undoubtedly fixed quickly and properly.
I like owning a house because it ensures that I can actually have a pleasant place to live. Landlords have no incentive so keep their properties actually livable rather than just inhabitatable.
Dryer is often tenant owned anyway. Spring is cheap if you’re brave. Water heater you can get for the difference in this posts’s rent and mortgage.
Doesn’t muddy the waters a bit.
What a beautiful epitaph
I don’t recommend everyone do it but it’s not rocket science. Follow proceedure and respect the danger. Most of you operate multi tonne motor vehicles, you can do it.
Isn’t it the second most common method of losing fingers, right after table saws?
Sure, but I don’t stand on a ladder, stick a screwdriver into the flywheel, and then tell my friend to fire it up.
I understand that is exaggerated and oversimplified, but having an old garage door spring miss my face by inches because it failed as I walked below it was a terrifying experience. In a car, the car is a crumple zone. In a garage door spring, your skull is the crumple zone (assuming that you’re interacting with it in such a way. I also tend to not put my face in front of cars that are prepared to accelerate.)
Oh yes. Big springs are dangerous, respect them or get sprung.
My poor poor anaconda…
When I was younger we had one of the older-style “2 big springs” doors and needed to replace the springs. The new ones were a bit shorter, so we had to close the doors a little harder. No problem.
About 20 minutes later there was a sound like an explosion in the garage. One of the new springs broke where the hook went into the door from the strain of being stretched so tight, and it shot across the room and was sticking out of the man-door on the other side of the garage.
Don’t fuck with garage springs.
I had my grandparents’ house inspected before buying it, and the inspector said that a couple of the springs (same type) were not installed correctly; that the extra cable coming from the door to the track was supposed to be routed through the spring to hold it in place in case there was a failure. The garage doors were already concerning me, so I hired a garage door company to take a look, and update the springs.
The technician told me that an inspector pointing that out is really strange, because that’s an incredibly niche detail for an inspector to know. The tech looks at the spring, checks out the garage door, etc. All the while, I’m standing under the track. The tech was about to open the garage door, and said, “hey, take a few steps back. No reason to risk standing under that, in case it fails.” I took three steps back, and then there was a loud bang, and the spring suddenly whipped across in front of me, bounced back once, and then lazily swung back and forth in front of me.
I still sometimes panic walking under my garage door tracks.
That’s not at all a niche detail. An inspector who fails to call that out is completely incompetent.
I know exactly how to replace a garage spring, I simply refuse to do it.
We spent $45k on repairs in two years. Wiped us out. But my only debt is still my one mortgage. The house is only worth about $250k. But I’m good on my roof, foundation, water heater and HVAC for quite a few more years.
the devil is in the details nobody talks about.
owning a home can bankrupt you, given all the legal, tax, and liabilities issues involved.
renting doesn’t come with those issues, generally.
I’ll add to this a bit. I know so many people who want to buy a fixer upper to save money. We went that route, and while my mortgage is sort of low, the repair costs are insane. I did all the work myself, and we spent over $100k in 5 years. Houses are expensive to own if you care about them.
Fixer uppers are better the less you give a shit. For example mine i will be sealing the basement and redoing the bathroom. Aside from that i don’t give a fuck about the dated walls and floors. I don’t care about the kitchen cabinets or the stains on the counter top.
Give less shit, and give more time. Fix the absolutely major things now, and do something smaller every year. Unless you’re planning to flip the thing, you have time.
Mine was the look under the siding and find shitloads of water damage. Don’t tell the county how many studs I replaced.
Add that to the horrible repairs done prior and I’ve been working constantly to get it to “not giving a shit” levels of OK. Sucks a bit, but I love our home now. Landscaping isn’t done yet though.
And theres the liability. What happens if you don’t pay. When renting the landlord shoulders that liability, when you take a mortgage it’s on you.
Ain’t that the truth. When you “own” a home, you’re only one $15k disaster away from being homeless.
Slightly preferable to being rendered out of a home due to your landlord making a $15k investment disaster.
In the years I rented I had two (technically 3) homes get sold by a landlord needing the cash.
Yeah, my bf & I were made homeless when our previous landlord decided to sell our home, we believe because it had plumbing problems that he didn’t want to pay to fix. We thought about making an offer, but he was asking over twice what he paid for it, and there was quite a bit of damage to the parts of the property that we weren’t living in: water, fire, termite. It cost us thousands to move out, even with nowhere to move to.
I’m glad I live somewhere with enough protections for renters that I would not lose my home if the landlord sold it to a new owner. It’s crazy to me that landlords in other places can just kick people out when they feel like it
They can’t just kick you out if you have a lease.
Yeah but I believe in a lot of places they can choose to not renew your lease which is effectively the same thing?
Based on your name, it’s one of the German-speaking countries. While yes, the law is more in favor of tenants than landlords, here in Austria our landlord’s way of kicking us out (because he wants to sell the place) is by not extending our befristet Mietvertrag. So now we have to buy our own because paying mortgage is cheaper than renting ¯\(ツ)/¯
In my case at the time it was just an effect of being poor. At least one scenario I had a legal case, but I couldn’t afford the costs to bring it forth and it would cost more in legal fees than the case was worth. I simply didn’t have the time or resources, especially since I had to focus on moving and getting security deposits together so as to not be homeless.
The protections are there, they just are not for certain economic classes since there’s an exploitable time window to operate within.
Yeah, I think here (Los Angeles) the only reason outside of breaking the lease you can be evicted is if the landlord wants to personally live in the home or it’s getting demolished.
If you own a home then of course you should keep at least this amount in liquid cash. If you don’t, u are dumb. And yes, if you can afford a home, you can afford to have a liquid cash reserve of this magnitude.
You’re out of your fucking mind guy. USDA Rural loans are 0% down, fixed interest 30 year loans and if normal people would go take a first time homebuyer class they would know that. My wife and I bought our house for 250k, nothing down and roughly 1500/mo mortgage. 5.9%. If you’re trying to buy in a suburban area idk what to tell you other than the country is pretty nice. And we have never had $15k in actual savings outside of our checking accounts.