8 ms·

Beyond the financials, the psychological impact of both being able to make greater-than-superficial changes, and having extremely predictable payments for years

• elicash 4mo ago
  > I redid/improved... We are extending the fence in our backyard. However, getting rid of the parking means the project will likely detract from the value of the home. But since we don't have a car, let alone two, it makes sense for us to do the project anyway. Despite the warning of our realtor when we purchased the home. I've noticed a lot of folks are afraid to personalize their homes because of concern about the value when they eventually sell.
  • throwaway894345 4mo ago
    Yeah, I agree with this. We have one car and no kids and every time we talk about some remodel. For example, we're talking about remodeling our kitchen and getting rid of our wildly oversized (read "normal American") appliances in exchange for more storage, counter, and floor space but the first thing friends and family talk about is resale value. Firstly, my home isn't principally an investment vehicle. Secondly, I'm pretty sure I can find a buyer who can conceive of popping over to the grocery store around the corner a couple times a week rather than pretending like they're living off the grid and have to drive 100 miles to the nearest town to buy their monthly provisions for a family of 13. :)
  • globular-toast 4mo ago
    There was quite a funny reddit thread where the OP was afraid to put up shelves because of property value.
    • rwmj 4mo ago
      Everyone has a landlord inside them apparently!
  • foobarian 4mo ago
    Once upon a time I had a car, a daily driver. I kept it clean, vacuum/wash/polish with crazy waxes and the works. Stressed out about people riding with dirty shoes, drinks, etc., and when I asked myself why, the usual self-justification was "ah it's for the resale value." Hearing relatives get charged various fees at lease returns just fed that attitude, even though I owned the car outright. One day it was time to replace the car, so I brought it to the dealer as tradein. They scanned the VIN, looked in their computer, and just quoted me a price without ever looking at the car, either cosmetics or mechanicals. That was the day I decided that I own the cars, not the other way around, and this attitude slowly expanded to real estate too ;). So now there is a clover field in our front yard and I ripped out the irrigation too. When we eventually sell this home in 2060 the buyers can take it or leave it
    • Our_Benefactors 4mo ago
      Of course, you should never sell the car to the dealer and should always make the effort to sell private party, which will often get you 50% or more greater than the dealers best offer.
      • foobarian 4mo ago
        Yes there are all those arguments. But it's a lot more work for still a pitiful amount of money. Then on top of that after COVID dealer gave me $5k tradein for an Ecoboost car with a leaking cylinder wall, check engine light, missing parts, etc. where KBB was less than that. I really don't get it.
        • Our_Benefactors 4mo ago
          > But it's a lot more work for still a pitiful amount of money It’s really not a lot of work and if $2000+ for a few hours work is pitiful, I envy your financial position. List on Craigslist at bottom market prices (you’ll still come out way ahead of the dealer), aggressively filter out tire kickers, sell it within 3-4 showings. The law is very favorable to people being allowed to sell their personal vehicle without jumping through additional regulatory hoops.
• throwaway894345 4mo ago
  I agree with this, but there's also the psychological impact of being able to easily move when you get a new job or when your state government allows agriculture/industry to poison your water or whatever the case may be. You may also buy a property only to find out you have a certifiably insane neighbor and you can't easily move out because said neighbor has created a dispute that requires disclosure to prospective buyers and you are under water (as is the case for a friend of mine). While this is admittedly a niche case, there are millions of such things that can happen where you are suddenly under water (including a mortgage crisis) and flexibility becomes an advantage. I don't think there's a clear psychological winner between renting and buying.
• shadowpho 4mo ago
  > and having extremely predictable payments for years I’d argue rental is more predictable. Housing has a huge amount of upkeep — $10k ac, $5k water heater, $20k roof…
  • hdgvhicv 4mo ago
    American homes are weird that roof costs are something that occurs. Last house I owned in the U.K. was 60 years old, original roof. Was advised it might need $10k of work if I wanted to out 10kWp of solar on it to the weight of the tiles. $180 a year into a “roof fund” doesn’t seem extreme to me.
    • deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
  • mholm 4mo ago
    Predictable for a year or two, yes. I know how much I'll be paying a decade from now, exempting property tax and insurance fluctuations.
  • tomjakubowski 4mo ago
    If you don't have cash savings as a homeowner, you can leverage a home equity loan or line of credit to cover those emergency bills. In times of extreme low interest rates, it may even be beneficial to do that vs. paying with cash. If your household is a typical HN high earner, and you are early in your mortgage's amortization schedule, the tax money you save by deducting interest can fund a $10k emergency repair fund too. Maybe even in less than a year.
• zeroonetwothree 4mo ago
  There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up. And while I agree that it’s nice to customize things to your preferences, this has a downside in that it’s easy to get carried away and overspend. Might as well get the nicer finishes when you are remodeling, right? After all you’re paying so much for labor anyway. And you can’t have just your kitchen nice, now you need to upgrade the flooring in the whole house. And soon your small $30k improvement is $150k
  • throw0101c 4mo ago
    > There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up. "Rent is the most you'll pay for housing, but mortgage and property taxes is the least amount."
  • waffleiron 4mo ago
    > Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix Most landlords I've dealt with are an absolute pain to deal with when something breaks. It's often not that easy, maybe in high-cost / luxury rentals. Arguing over what is normal wear-and-tear, while knowing you cannot afford decent legal advice, and you also can't pay for the "unexpected repair" is just as bad. > And you can’t have just your kitchen nice, now you need to upgrade the flooring Yes you can. There is no need to have everything perfect... Edit: > You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up. If this was even close to coming even with the added cost on rent, no one would be a landlord. It's obviously a lot less than rental overhead. So people could just set that aside (or get insurance).
    • jjice 4mo ago
      I've found that it's pretty much split between if I have a landlord that's just a guy with a few houses vs a property management company. When I lived in a complex (cheaper than my current rent by a mile because it was in NC), maintenance would be over in a matter of hours. When I've had a single guy, it's often days (unless it's a truly urgent issue). I'm under a guy that just manages 20 or so doors now and he's a good dude, but I have to wait a longer time, generally, like when my heat wasn't working at the beginning of the winter and his plumber had the flu. Luckily it wasn't bad weather yet, but I definitely felt the potential for strain.
• brailsafe 4mo ago
  > Beyond the financials, the psychological impact of both being able to make greater-than-superficial changes, and having extremely predictable payments for years without worrying about substantial rent increases, is substantial. As a renter in a place that protects renters from radical increases year over year, I'd argue the only compelling sense of stability would be trading the risk of being evicted for that of losing the house > I redid/improved the bathroom to exactly what I wanted. I renovated the kitchen. I added panelling to the walls. I added a few outlets to rooms that needed more. I think this is an interesting differentiation that would either be very compelling for a hobbyist or carpenter, or someone who works on cars, but it's also crazy to me if I frame homeownership this way. I don't think a condo would really provide the surface area for such customization *if* I were a person to be interested in doing it, nor would a townhouse or duplex. It seems that at least in my city, the premium to be able to do something as common as paint the exterior of your home, is like $2.5m CAD, or $1m more than a newish townhome, or $1.5m more than modest condo, or $10000/m more (just on the mortgage) than renting a sufficiently sized place. That's partly because the kind of place I can rent is dramatically smaller than the minimum size of a place that has a modifiable exterior, and it's one of the most expensive cities. I guess it's sort of a framing that makes clear how dystopian the class divide is; I don't have any interest in painting my house, but if I did, I'll never be able to, and if I could (at the current rates), I'd have to be incredibly unimaginative to allocate that much to the house that could hypothetically be painted. I guess people who value the concept of a home in that way more than anything else would simply move someone where they can buy one, but I value so many other things more than hacking away on the walls that it's an absolute no-brainer to continue renting where I want to live despite the ambient sense that I have no sense of permanence secured by land
• crabbone 4mo ago
  I absolutely don't see these as benefits... Living in the Netherlands, apartments owners typically have to pay "VVE" (service fee for the ongoing upkeep of the building where your apartment is), while house owners typically pay out of their pocket for any repairs they have to do. This was my first time living in a house as opposed to an apartment. It's been three years of bitter regret, and I'm very eager to sell the damn thing and leave the nightmare behind. In the last three years, I had to re-paint the roof, replace the garden fence and a bunch of related stuff in the garden, replace the water boiler. I had to climb on the roof of the house to rake the leaves at least twice a year (not expensive, just scary). I had to repaint areas of the house because the previous owner did a crappy job painting them. But, most importantly, it's a piece of junk. It's a typical front brick wall with the rest of the house made of wood covered in dry wall. Its foundation is going to skew and sink because... that's the general condition of everything in the Netherlands: the ground water is too close to the surface, so the foundation is too shallow. I can't hang anything heavy on the wall because the wall can't support it. Every wall is crooked and bent and so is the ceiling, so, for example, it's not possible to put a curtain railing on the ceiling... Everything is made of perishable materials which will last five to ten years tops, and then everything needs to be torn down and redone. Looking at how my neighbors are spending their lives on the hamster wheel of infinite repairs... I want absolutely none of this. Some people enjoy sinking their time and finances into this black hole, but I'd rather just buy hard drugs for the same price all the way until I die. It's just an arduous and unrewarding toil.
• akudha 4mo ago
  “Extremely predictable payments” - I don’t own a home, so I don’t know about this - I have heard mostly horror stories about HOA. Can they hike maintenance fees arbitrarily? Also, what about insurance? Last I read, at least in FL, insurance cost is out of control, is that still true?
  • strongpigeon 4mo ago
    HOAs can be a big variable cost, yes, especially in the case of underfunded condos associations with a lot of delayed maintenance. Insurance can vary a lot, but is usually a much smaller amount than your mortgage payment (though I only have experience with the PNW). But yeah, for a single family home in a not-too-flood-prone area it'll be very predictable.
  • bluefirebrand 4mo ago
    I dunno about the USA, but for much of the world the answer is really simple: don't buy in places that have HOAs
  • dghlsakjg 4mo ago
    Don’t buy a home in an HOA and avoid living in a place with extreme high risk of property destruction. Neither are requirements of owning a home. HOA complaints typically are about control not really cost, and the terms are disclosed before purchase so not unpredictable at all, you are allowed to see the full financials and can see the financial health of the organization before committing. Insurance costs are directly correlated to risk, the costs are only as out of control as the risks (which are well known in Florida). E.g. if insurance expects to have to replace a roof every 5 years on average, and to replace a house every 30 years, expect to pay for 1/5th of a roof and 1/30th of a house in your insurance bill, on top of all the other risks.
    • lacksconfidence 4mo ago
      It really depends where you live. Around here every home built since ~1970 has an HOA. The cities have demanded them, because they can push some of the work like re-paving streets onto the HOA as part of the founding documents.
• rwmj 4mo ago
  This depends on what country you live in, but in the UK renting is (even after recent changes) quite precarious. The landlord can kick you out with a few months notice. They can require regular inspections. They can send workers around to "fix stuff" without you really agreeing to it. Even if you never renovate your bathroom, the security and privacy of owning your own place without landlords bothering you is worth every penny.
• tencentshill 4mo ago
  >says local homeowner, 2007
  • mholm 4mo ago
    I was in middle school in 2007
• intrasight 4mo ago
  > I redid/improved I said it this way to my GF this weekend: "If I own the home, I can choose to do irrational things like demolishing things that are perfectly fine". She was like "Perhaps you should rent, LOL."