As a homeowner what weighs me down most is insurance, by a large margin. It keeps increasing while the coverage decreases. It’s a huge racket in my opinion
Racket.
A racquet is what you hit your insurance adjuster with when you’re tired of his racket.
Do you live in Florida?
Oklahoma 🙃rates go up each year due to tornados, at least that’s what they say. Even though i live in a heavily populated area that’ll never get hit.
I had to put a new roof on cause of softball sized hail caused by the infamous may 2013 storm that damn near leveled Moore Oklahoma. But other than that, no storm damage ever
Even though i live in a heavily populated area that’ll never get hit.
I don’t think tornadoes care.
In Arkansas we got a tornado in town. It was a huge wakeup call since people always think it won’t hit where they are.
There are multiple businesses that I personally used that got wiped out by the tornado.
Yeah I feel like Joplin proved that all wrong too.
Was the idea that tall buildings might break up wind shear that would feed the tornado?
I think so. When i lived in the foothills of the Smokey Mountains, common wisom was that we didn’t have to worry about tornados because of all the hills, which is basically the same idea. Then we had one touch down anyway. I think tornadoes just don’t care anymore, almost like they’re more energetic for some reason… like the climate has changed somehow…
That’s what the people living in Dallas said. Then a tornado hit the middle of a dense neighborhood.
I live near the coast where we never get tornadoes because the weather is moderated by the water or something, but now we’re getting a couple tornado watches every season - they’re coming
Have you shopped other companies for rates? I switched earlier this year and cut my insurance costs by more than half! Was fucking ridiculous how it just kept climbing.
On paper, owning a home is almost always more expensive than renting — about 14% more, on average, after factoring in expenses like insurance, taxes, and upkeep.
I’d be interested in seeing how they arrived at the 14% number.
When I bought my first home a couple of decades ago I moved out of my 1 bedroom apartment which I was paying a monthly rent of $700/month into a small starter home with a mortgage of $1000/month. 20 years later that exact same apartment rents for $1350/month. All of the years I lived there my house payment never rose higher than the $1000/month mortgage payment while the rent on the apartment apparently continued to increase year over year. Meanwhile I ended up selling the starter home for $110,000 than my purchase prices nearly 20 years ago.
So is their 14% number just calculated on the first month of each (renting vs buying)?
Once you factor in things it mentions like insurance, taxes, upkeep along with others like a down payment then it’s very easy to see where the 14% numbers comes from. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s only 14%. There’s a lot of additional and hidden costs with home ownership.
The difference is those “costs” are going towards buying equity that you then get to keep. Maintaining a house is expensive but it is an asset that maintains value. This article really doesn’t seem to understand that which shows a very basic misunderstanding of the wealth math that goes into home ownership.
Renting may be cheaper month to month but you’re literally pouring that money down a black hole never to be seen in your hands again.
Granted, building equity doesn’t matter when you’re already have no cash paycheck-to-paycheck for either.
This is more of a case where the article doesn’t take the time to explain the nuance. Everyone knows home ownership increases equity. Which is why it costs more.
I rent a house for $4600/mo. To buy this same house in the same neighborhood, it would be roughly $1.6m, tho prices are starting to fall a little on these higher cost neighborhoods, so let’s say $1.5m for a deal.
With a 20% down-payment on a 30 year fixed rate loan, it would be close to $10000/mo (including insurance and property taxes).
Also, the lions share of your mortgage goes to paying down interest for the first decade or so.
So let’s say $1k goes to principle per month. You’re still burning twice as much money owning as renting.
The only financial upside is that you may be able to sell for more than you paid. Minus Realtor fees, whatever renovations / maintenance you made over the years, etc.
The current market is insane.
Edit - so I’m not talking in complete generalities, I glanced at the interest/principal ratio. No idea how accurate this is.
After a year of mortgage payments, 31% of your money starts to go toward the principal. You see 45% going toward principal after ten years and 67% going toward principal after year 20.
https://www.americanfinancing.net/mortgage-basics/mortgage-payment-explained
I don’t know what the ratio is in the first year, maybe 100% interest?
So at a monthly payment of $9800, $7864 of which is towards mortgage, that’s $2437 / mo towards principal from years 2-9.
So essentially you’re burning $7363 instead of $4600 for the hope that your house increases in value when you sell it.
Fiscally speaking. There are a lot of other pros and cons to owning.
That is the state of the buy v rent trade-off on that house TODAY. In 10 years, the rent on that house will go up but the mortgage will stay the same. Regardless of the equity you build in owning (which can be leveraged for other things even if you don’t sell), your “rent” stays fixed while renting goes up every year.
Companies are able to take longer term stances and can sustain short term losses. They buy a house and keep it for 10 years, long enough that those losses transition to profits.
That’s making done huge assumptions that you have no way of knowing will be reality.
Rent may go up. It may go down.
Housing prices may go up. It may go down.
Locking yourself into a mortgage for “fixed rent” may end up closing you hundreds of thousands more than apples to apples rent. Taking the above scenario, you’re paying about $360k more in the first 10 years than you would renting, if rent prices don’t go up over that time period.
Yes, both rent and housing tend to go up over time. But who knows what the immediate future holds anymore. Housing prices are starting to contract. There’s more push for high density housing, which people generally think will lower rent (I disagree, but I’m against the grain here).
One thing I’ve learned from economists is that despite all their expertise, they’re very bad at predicting big events that have huge impacts on the economy. And we’ve been getting a lot of those the last few decades.
Oh come on, that’s being extremely, EXTREMELY… I can’t find the word. Not pedantic, not pessimistic, and not near sighted. Whatever the term is for when you take the absolute extreme edge case to try making a point.
Rent will always go up over time due to inflation. Yes, you might have dips for a year or two, but landlords will always raise the rent based on inflation at the minimum. And regardless of big drops in house prices during economy crashes, your mortgage does not go up over time outside of adjustments to taxes and insurance. Even when there was the worst housing crash in US history in 2008, my rent never dropped. My rent kept going up every single year by the maximum amount the city allowed under rent control. Housing prices dropped, which allowed me to buy a house. And in your case where you talk about losing $360k due to buying instead of renting over 10 years, you are ignoring that $245k will be going to buying down the principle (amortization calculations for a 6% loan on $1.5M for 30 years). You spent $552,000 at a bare minimum, assuming no rent increases (impossibly unlikely), and have 0 to show for it. The owner spent almost exactly twice that but has $245k in equity on top of whatever equity had grown from house prince inflation over 10 years. Every year it gets better for the homeowner, especially when you hit 30 years and have paid off the house… while you are still renting.
In reality, when I bought my house 12 years ago my mortgage was $3900 (with taxes and insurance) and rent would have been $4000. Now, my mortgage is $4100 and rent is $6000.
Now, I’m also ignoring the money that can be made investing the money you save renting vs buying. But if we use your assumptions, then there is no guarantee you’ll make money investing your money.
How would your point of view differ if you had bought your house right before the crash? Your entire outlook on the wisdom of paying yourself via principal vs a landlord seems to be based on your particular (lucky) circumstance that you got into the market at a time where your monthly cost for mortgage was comparable to rent prices at the time. So locking it in time was a good decision.
That is not the case anymore. I have presented numbers to support that argument, even if it’s overly simplified for simple calculations.
And you’re seemingly ignoring the distinct possibility that housing prices may tank, at which case locking your rate at twice comparable rent would be a terrible situation.
Right now, my money is parked in other investments. We are keeping an eye on the housing market, but paying $300k as a down-payment for the privilege of doubling my monthly housing cost does not seem like a financially prudent decision, when my money is making more in its current investments. And given that if we took a loan out now, we’d probably refinance for a lower interest rate at a later time, reseting the interest/principal schedule anyway.
This is the reality of the market right now. Your outlook is not applicable in today’s paradigm.
No, not all of them. Insurance, property tax, and maintenance do not go to equity.
Not to mention mortgage interest.
deleted by creator
These are very region dependant. My state has no income or sales tax, but the property taxes are higher, my 1 acre with a mobile home is basically 3k. It’s almost certainly cheaper than renting, but you can’t just make sweeping statements like that.
deleted by creator
Sounds like you have the fortune of living where these things are cheaper. In Ontario, home insurance is much higher and property tax being less than 1K a year is completely unheard of.
Only $1k/year in property taxes? I found this really hard to believe, then looked it up to find that Boston has one of the lowest property tax rates in the nation at an average of .49%. Consider yourself lucky I suppose, most of us are paying quite a bit more yearly. If the home you own is in fact a condo, I guess this makes more sense.
deleted by creator
The property tax on my house is $7000/year… and that is with a fixed assessment from 12 years ago. If I were to buy my house today, my tax would be $21000/year.
deleted by creator
Once you factor in things it mentions like insurance, taxes, upkeep along with others like a down payment then it’s very easy to see where the 14% numbers comes from.
So you’re agreeing with me that they’re only comparing the first month of ownership of the house with the last month of renting? There’s no factoring in the long term rise in rents to their math?
There’s a lot of additional and hidden costs with home ownership.
There certainly are, but its very situational. A 100 year old home will have very different upkeep costs than a 10 year old home. A home in a hurricane zone will have different upkeep than one that isn’t.
I mean neither of us know how they arrived at the 14% number. So your comparison is not really relevant and I would say it’s not a good one even. But in a generic/average month-to-month overview, home ownership is almost always more expensive.
I had a long reply typed out exploring the various aspects and raising questions to the methodology and applicability of the advice in the article to different groups of people in different geographies and stage of life. However the tone of replies seems to just want to accept the article as is. Its a yahoo finance article, so the depth is pretty shallow and only speaks in broad generalizations. Your reply is doubling down on exactly that. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but it looks like the there isn’t a desire in this thread to explore it any further.
So we’ll just accept the article answer which you summarize well: “generic/average month-to-month overview, home ownership is almost always more expensive.”
Conventional wisdom says keep renting folks and don’t question it.
Replace central air: $8k Deadwood 40+ year old trees: $6k Remove & replace concrete driveway without killing the 80 year old pine who’s roots are buckling it: $8k Remove particle board siding and replace with vinyl: $12k New water heater (+ new requirements for not having a pressure bomb in the house): $3k
Owning a home for three years has been more expensive than renting for a couple decades. Sure the mortgage is $500 a month less then rent, but the loans/credit card + interest for all the above is killing us.
Seriously considering one of the brand new apartments in the up and coming district for only $2k a month if we can sell the money pit with outdated everything!!
I am confused, my thought process went like this:
So it’s more expensive to own then rent?
Unless you own it and rent it out to others?
Nobody would be a landlord if a dwelling cost more to maintain then to rent out.
So something doesn’t add up.
I believe they are taking into account the cost to purchase these days since interest rates are higher, ergo high mortgage payments.
As someone else mentioned most landlords have locked in rates at this point. Not many new landlords.
I agree, and came in here to say the same thing. I think the data is being skewed by the fact that many (not all, of course) rental properties are subdivided into multiple units (or built that way in the first place). People commenting about how it’s considering modern costs, well, they must not have read the first two sentences of the article:
On paper, owning a home is almost always more expensive than renting — about 14% more, on average, after factoring in expenses like insurance, taxes, and upkeep.
But the difference has grown much more extreme in recent years as just about all homeownership costs have ballooned.
The only way you can arrive at that 14% number is if you’re averaging in multi-unit apartment buildings. Very few, if any, landlords are out there subsidizing their non-family tenants by charging less than the normal costs of ownership. If most landlords are losing money year over year, well… at that point just sell the property.
When you mortgage a home as an investment property, you are leveraging your money 5-1 (on a 20% down payment)
If rent covers 90% of the mortgage, you still make an absolutely huge profit amortized over the loan.
If you consider the tax incentives (interest write off, depreciation, capital gains deferment, pass through deduction) the gap in the rent can be covered.
Consider paying 50k down on a 250k house, the. Paying an additional 15 percent over the life of the loan (around 40k) to cover for gaps in rent.
Over the life of the loan you turned 90 grand into 250 grand (and a house is an appreciating asset, so it will likely be worth more than 250 by the end of it all)
Deduct depreciation (value of the home minus land value over 27.5 years) and carry over losses can even make up for the gap of rent you pay entirely over time.
This is exactly the kind of math that normal people don’t get when it comes to this conversation. Every industry has some convoluted, obscure, non-intuitive way to actually make money when it doesn’t sound like you should. You have to think in different ways and in longer terms.
Even then though, it’s not as amazing as it seems. Real estate is not the only sector that can make profits on leverage. In fact, pretty much any publicly traded company relies on leverage and debt. If you buy a share of an index fund, you’re buying shared of companies, most of them taking advantage of the same leverage you would when buying a rental property.
But basically no broker is going to give you a million in margin on a 200k account, and you don’t get margin called on mortgages (typically) the way you do with margin accounts.
You missed the point. My point is that even if you buy stock on 100% equity, 0 margin trading, you still are investing on margin. You are investing on margin because those company stocks you are buying themselves used these leverage techniques in their own operations.
This is only looking at a point in time, not the life of the loan. In the US at least, we have fixed rate loans (many countries do not have that). So your “rent” when you mortgage a home is fixed for 30 years. When you rent, your rental costs increase with inflation every year. While it might be 14% higher to mortgage than rent right now, in a few years your mortgage will stay the same while your rent will have increased. Yes, there are repair/maintenance costs, but after 5 years or so you are saving enough per month to pay for those repairs.
deleted by creator
Cost of materials and demand for contractors. Even if you DIY it, everything is 3x as expensive as it was before covid. The price of lumber never really went back to where it was before covid. Its clearly price gouging.
Yeah, it sucks and really fucks with the “building equity in your home” narrative that updating/remodeling has. Now every fucking thing costs so much, that is very unlikely I get back out what I pay for updates in a home sale price later on. It seems like even maintaining your home is for the ultra-rich, now.
Building equity through improvements has pretty much always been a lie, the win was enjoying that improvement. The vast majority of improvements don’t actually net a higher sell value than their cost.
That’s definitely true to an extent! Like if you’re looking at spending several hundred dollars on a new tub or something for your bathroom when it’s already pretty updated, you’re not going to see much return for that. But if your bathroom is straight outta the mid 80s and hasn’t been updated at all, you’ll probably get more bang for your buck that way (very long-term speaking).
Or things like replacing the roof or old AC units, or honestly just painting and replacing light switches, can add a bit to the eventual sales price. Not a ton, but not nothing. It’s all things a buyer will potentially weigh when looking at your home. Just like they will…questionable diy decisions lol
The price of lumber never really went back to where it was before covid.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber
The price in at the start of 2020 was ~$377.55 per thousand board feet.
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
$377.55 in January 2020 is $460.34 in July 2024 dollars.
The price of lumber in July 2024 was $423.27.
So it’s gotten back down to and fallen below pre-COVID-19 prices in real terms.
It does look like the price has risen from July 2024 to November 2024, so it’s presently higher, but it has not stayed above pre-COVID prices since the end of COVID-19.
Lumber prices are actually currently where they were for much of 2018.
Yeah thats an interesting statement right?
Because when I look up a chart I see the same thing.
But when I go to buy lumber, and especially sheet materials, its all still 2.5x - 3x what I was paying in 2019. So as an individual which should I believe? The lived experience I have is the one that took the money out of my account when I bought the lumber.
Some examples: This was $15 in 2019/20: https://www.homedepot.com/p/15-32-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-Sheathing-Plywood-Actual-0-438-in-x-48-in-x-96-in-20159/206827282
(You might get a different price. For me, its $26)
And this was $25 in 2019/20: https://www.homedepot.com/p/3-4-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-Hi-Bor-APA-Rated-Sheathing-Pressure-Treated-Plywood-95360/202087831 (You might get a different price. For me, its $60)
Non-treated 2x4 were $2, and treated were $3.5 in 2019/20: https://www.homedepot.com/p/2-in-x-4-in-x-96-in-2-Premium-Grade-KD-HT-Stud-058449/312528776 https://www.homedepot.com/p/2-in-x-4-in-x-8-ft-Standard-Better-Hi-Bor-Pressure-Treated-Lumber-95344/202087781
(You might get a different price. For me, its $4, and $6)
Its a reflection of the same presentation that the Democrats tried to make about the economy: “Look at these abstract metrics disconnected from your lived experience, they say that the economy is great!”
But thats irrelevant if the most reliable form of data I have, my lived experience, disagrees with it. The reality is I live in an old house and it needs some serious repairs. I have to put some of them off because the cost of materials is just ridiculous, let alone trying to find contractors to do work at anything less than robber baron prices.
You probably have to look at the price that Home Depot is paying for it, not the price they’re charging you.
Why would I or anyone else give a flying fuck what Home Depot paid for the lumber they’re selling me? I can’t buy it at their price; I have to buy it at whatever retail price they (or Lowes, or Ace, or TrueValue, or 84, or whoever…) have set.
If the wholesale price of lumber – which is not accessible to normal people – has fallen but the retail price is still high, all that means is that these retailers are price gouging which is exactly what the original commenter was talking about.
Whoa there, I was just trying to make sense of the discrepancy.
Again. Think about what you are asking.
You are asking me to make some additional abstraction beyond my lived experience. When you ask me to do that, what does that do to my confidence in your rhetoric?
I was just trying to make sense of the numbers. We are all acutely aware of the retail price gouging.
This ignores the difference after 5-10 years. Rent keeps going up.
Maintenance cost and property taxes too though.
Still cheaper to own, if you have the initial funds or loan to buy and know you won’t be leaving the area for awhile. If you rent a property those maintenance and tax and insurance and interest costs associated with owning it are just passed on to you in to your rent, plus a profit margin so the owner can make money off renting it out to you. Owning the same property would cost less, over time, and not just that, but you would have something to show for it.
What you forget is the cost of opportunity: the money that is stuck in a house is money that would yield income if it was invested somewhere else. Long term stock markets typically return 7%+, while rental return (or the rent you save by buying) can be anywhere from 3 to 7% depending on market, minus maintenance and other holding costs.
So there’s no fast and hard guarantee that owning or renting is best - you need to run a proper simulation with the right parametres taking everything into account. In markets with low rental returns, renting is typically optimal.
Where is the money that is stuck in the house, that would hypothetically be able to be invested if not spent on the house? You have to pay to live somewhere, and if you’re paying less to purchase than rent, that is money saved which is available to invest. Do you mean the up-front downpayment money needed to acquire a mortgage in the first place (typically 10-20% of the purchase cost), that could be invested in the market instead for a higher return than slowly building equity through principal payments?
Let me give you an overly simplified example. You are in a property market where rental yield is 3% (happens in some cities)
You could put a million dollar into buying a house and save $30k in rent every year
or
You could rent a million dollar house for $30k, and invest your million dollar in the market at 7%, returning $70k per year
Obviously this gets more complicated with mortgages, taxes, maintenance, interest rates, etc. but the gist of it is that owning your home always comes with an opportunity cost, every dollar of house equity is a dollar that isn’t invested somewhere else. Depending on circumstances, renting might be the most economical choice.
This is interesting. I do get that if you have initial money to buy a house outright, there are better mostly safe things you can invest in, to get a higher return on investment than a house. If I got a 30 year mortgage in 1994 and paid $1M over that time to pay it off on say, a 5% fixed rate with no PMI or downpayment required, the purchase price was probably closer to $500K assuming 2.5% average annual inflation. And average housing inflation since then was more like 2.8%, so factoring in maintenance and taxes and insurance, guessing no real appreciation over that time. But the quality of life difference to an apartment of the same cost would I think in most cases more than make up for it.
I think where I’m stuck is, we’re starting from the idea of having $1M in hand to start out with to buy a house outright or rent + invest, where a much more common situation is either: I have not got anything saved up, so I can neither invest nor get a mortgage without an initial downpayment; or else, I have enough saved up for a downpayment or PMI and hopefully a secure enough income to pay the mortgage every month.
In my case, mortgage + escrow + maintenance costs are still less than half what I was paying for my cheapest studio apt nearly a decade later, and a much better quality of life because of the extra savings. My neighbors are renting a nearly identical house, and it’s criminal how much they have to pay to stay there. I wouldn’t be able to afford rent here.
What even is maintenance?
Thousands per year, usually.
My rent went down year over year.
What is your mortgage on the tent?
We livin in a new gilded age, bruh.
I might still not understand but… Landlords have to pay insurance as well. Why would they be the exception. They have all the same costs and also want to make a profit. How can rent be cheaper then?
Because if you buy a house, it’s just you and the bank, so you need to cover the banks risk for you as an individual, meaning higher interest rates. Larger purchases, or a group of houses are covered by different loan types, flexible rates at for example international rated plus half a point… and that is mich cheaper. The rate might fluctuate… but if the government strongarms the fed to keep the loans practically free, companies borrow for free plus half a point. And that is a lot of difference.
Two things: first, landlords aren’t entitled to a profit, and second, landlord input costs might be completely different from an owner resident.
On the first point, if the landlord’s costs are $2000/month, and the market rent for that unit is $1900/month, the landlord would rather lose $100/month on a lease than lose $2000/month on a vacant property.
On the second, it might be that the landlord bought the place when it was much cheaper, or has a much lower interest rate than what is available today. So if the landlord’s costs are $2000/month for a property that would now cost $4000/month at today’s purchase prices and interest rates, but can rent for $3000/month at a profit to himself.
Similarly, some volume landlords can spread certain costs around and not pay nearly as much as an owner resident. It might cost $1200 to hire a plumber to do a 6-hour job, but it also might cost $150 to simply have a plumber on the payroll to do that job, if you’ve got enough steady work that it’s cheaper to have him around.
It might be that a homeowner also bought home when it was cheaper. Come on, get a grip.
That’s not part of this comparison. The comparison in this article and the metric it covers is for people who are renting versus buying in 2024. The renter in 2024 can rent from a landlord who purchased in 2010, and is borrowing at 2020 interest rates. But a buyer today is buying at 2024 prices and 2024 interest rates.
Because on average, I imagine very few rental homes are brand new constructions/purchases so their mortgage is a couple years old and lower than if someone bought that same home today.
Because markets aren’t perfectly rational. If they were perfectly efficient, no company would ever be able to make a profit at all. But we don’t live in that perfect Econ 101 world, and companies can make profits because inefficiencies exist in the economy. As such, sometimes rent can be more expensive than owning.
Do they mean “buying” instead of “owning”?
deleted by creator
But having a mortgage does put you on the path to becoming one.
Have a mortgage you pay for long enough, and you’ll end up with ever decreasing payments, then no mortgage, and a house.
Have rent you pay for long enough, and you’ll have ever increasing payments, and never own a cent of the property when you quit.
For me, my apartments was proprietary of the bank till i managed to full repay the loan.
deleted by creator
Yeah, but, after X years you own your house.
After X years of renting, you got nothing.
Depending on where you live, much or all of that value goes away if it’s 35-50 percent more expensive to own. Especially if you choose to invest the savings.
That’s some rich dad poor dad BS. Means nothing if you can’t afford the additional y cost over renting, plus with interest rates where they’re at……so much of that monthly payment is still going nowhere.
You don’t have to pay the mortgage in thirty years and eat the entirety of the interest. I paid mine off in three.
There’s no way I’m not saving money over renting at this point. I pay less than $1000 a month to live in a place that would cost $4000 a month to rent.
What year did you buy your home, and what cost? What is it worth today on Zillow or your site of choice?
I bought in early 2020 and it’s now worth about 50% more than it was.
I kinda lucked out, because I bought right before everyone realized that we were screwed with COVID and were going to be stuck in their houses because the government had no idea what they were doing. I say “kinda lucked out” because I watched Trump deliver a speech as the stocks tanked in the corner, and realized he had no idea how to handle it. After watching it I turned to my spouse and said, “I know it sounds crazy, but I think we should buy a place right now.” I also had been looking for some time and realized that mortgage rates were near all time lows.
All time low rates + stuck in small places = everyone that can buy a bigger place will buy a bigger place.
Ah, very wise. You must see how people didn’t get matching 50% raises, matched with even higher interest rates… unfortunately the time of paying off your home early might be behind us, at least for a long while.
Yeah with current mortgage rates and prices…it’s definitely rougher.
Applying a little extra to principle – if you ever have it – still helps a lot with the amount of interest you’re paying.
By February, I will have put $100k into a house in stuff that’s nearly invisible - replace fence, repair leaking pool equipment, stabilize foundation, repair plumbing, and replace exterior ‘wood’ that was really watelogged mdf. My mom paid $220k 11 years ago. I’ve inherited it - and the $130k mortgage balance. My son is helping me by living there and covering the mortgage payment and I’m pulling money out of retirement to make repairs. It would likely take another $100k to update the 1980s kitchen, bathrooms, electrical, and 20 yr old hvac. Oh yeah, plus $10k/yr in taxes and insurance! Anyone want to buy a house?
repair leaking pool equipment
You have a pool. You are already head and shoulders above most people, including people who are also mortgaging a property.
It’s green and has been unusable for most of this year. It’s essentially a pond.
Highly dependent on where one lives I guess. My friend just rented a new apartment and his rent is over double what my mortage payments are. That’s also money he is never getting back where as in my case my house is paid in about 15 years after which I own the damn thing and the monthly mortage payment drops off entirely. Excluding mortage, the montly cost of owning my house is 275€ which includes water and electricity.
Excluding mortage, the montly cost of owning my house is 275€ which includes water and electricity.
That’s also excluding regular maintenance or emergency repairs that a landlord would be (often reluctantly) responsible for. It is also possible to do big, expensive, necessary renovations on a house and have it hardly affect the value at all.
Its funny because the conventional wisdom is that rent is “throwing money away”
The article talks a lot about mortgages. How does the math work if you pay in full at the time of purchase?
Renting could never compare to owning, as Equity is the biggest source of wealth for the middle class in the US. Not owning equity to pass on to your kids is one of the worst mistakes you can make. IF you can afford that sort of thing.
How have we screwed up as a society, much less species, when shelter is seen as a financial investment rather than what it is, a thing we literally need to survive?
Well, as houses don’t magically appear out of thin air, I guess it has been like this since we started building permanent shelter.
Until relatively recently, it wasn’t that uncommon to just go and find some unused land and build a house on it. No intergenerational wealth required.
unused land
Unused by white people?
Kids? I’m not a fan of parasites
Congratulations.
Raising your kid(s) right is better than passing any monetary wealth on to them. If they grow up knowing that they’re set and will inherit your money/house, they may get lazy and just depend on that wealth. That money will be gone after the 3rd generation.
Your parents zipcode is the best indicator of your success in life. We don’t live in a merit based situation. This isn’t up for debate. Most Americans get most of their wealth as the equity their parents owned that they got from their parents all the way back to the homestead act. My FIL has a nice house. His dad bought it for him with a home equity loan. He bought at least three of his kids homes with home equity loans (no not the one I married) he still owns that home, and his kids do too, and their kids will probably have their parents help them with buying a home. That’s the majorly of net worth of all of these people.
deleted by creator
So you can’t afford that sort of thing? Well if you can’t afford that sort of thing, I guess you’d never say you could afford that sort of thing.
Equity is pointless when your $30,000 roof and $20,000 HVAC break at the same time and you’re taking out a 20 year home equity loan to replace them. (And good luck with the $70,000 windows.)
Yes, If you can’t afford it, it can be a totally unrealistic thing.
2-4x reality, but yeah…
I don’t know about that - I had my roof replaced (by insurance thankfully) about a year ago, and it was ~26k. HVAC out of pocket a couple years ago was about 15k. Not fun!
It depends on how big your house is.
I paid $10k for a 4 ton 15 SEER AC this summer (this depends on location I suppose). I paid $13k for a normal roof replacement last year.
1600 sqft house.
Yeah, if you bought recently, you’re a fucking moron lol
My house is paid for so I’m gonna say nope - even with maintenance and taxes, etc
I don’t think your case is what the article describes.
