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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 weeken

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 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 enough about the project to determine whether they're doing it right! Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one.

darknavi 4mo ago
> House maintenance and projects have taken up most of every single weekend of mine for the past few years. Mine come and go but it's no where near every weekend since I've purchased in 2019. What sort of things occupy this much time?
- colordrops 4mo ago
  Not gp, but I bought a fixer-upper and it was at least weekends for the first two years, then slowed down quite a bit after that. Now it comes in fits and starts similar to you.
  - pc86 4mo ago
    This is the answer - there are plenty of move-in ready, turn-key homes that require basically zero maintenance unless you want to remodel or change something, but those cost more (sometimes a lot more) than the ones that need more TLC or true fixer-uppers.
    - hibikir 4mo ago
      Eventually the maintenance comes back again: The turn-key homes have typically had most of the things that needed maintenance replaced, but they eventually come back, and they can be quite the headache. See the wonders of having a plumbing stack going past its useful life, land resettling leading to having to do regrades, or lift concrete slabs, or just general tree maintenace.
      - edoceo 4mo ago
        Don't do your own trees! Wood is very heavy! It wiggles a lot! Dragons!
        mindslight 4mo ago
        IMO the key to doing your own trees (or presumably having them done for less money) is having enough room around them that you can just drop them whole, rather than having to hire someone with a bucket truck and/or climbing spikes to disassemble them from the top down.
    - asdff 4mo ago
      Even with fixer uppers the house is usually functional and fine. Just people think the bathroom is too ugly to poop in, so they have to spend five figures and rip out the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else, to replace it with new walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else.
      - laughing_man 4mo ago
        More like the bathroom is too ugly to poop in because there's a leak behind the shower and now there's mold growing on the wall.
        asdff 4mo ago
        That might be why some people renovate, but for most its because they think the color is wrong and they don't like the fixtures. Queue squandering money to achieve the same functionality and all the material waste throwing out the perfectly good fixtures and such and buying newly built fixtures and such.
  - hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
    I bought a fixer upper a few years ago. It was a solid six month stretch of various projects of various sizes rushing to be done before my child was born. Since then it’s been very chill, though I did just spend about another six months renovating a bathroom down to the studs myself, but I took that upon myself for the thrill of it.
- atoav 4mo ago
  Houses are very different. I grew up in a guest house (so: three floors, a cellar, 14 flats/rooms) that has various layers from various ages. The foundations are hundreds of years old, most of the rest 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s. If you're living in a new house you may have peace for a few decades, but at the cost of everything piling up the longer you wait. Exchanging corroded drain pipes someone thought was a good idea to bury in concrete is especially fun. At some time door hinges break, window mechanisms break. Water pipes clog, electrical is outdated (e.g. landlines are out, ethernet or fiber is in). The intercom breaks, wasp nests are under every second roof tile, there is a water intrusion in the cellar, a storm knocks down the fence, the washing machine breaks, the garage door motor dies, the asphalt on the runway cracks and needs a tar pour, the attic needs to be insulated, a portion of the roof needs to be retiled, the wooden parts of the facade need to be repainted, a drainage needs to be dig to avoid water piling up into a garage, a doorway has to be added to a repurposed storage space. And mind, I was the son of the house, this is only some of the stuff I worked on before I moved out with 18. There was constantly something to be done. What and how much is mostly a function of (1) the age and build quality of the house and (2) your own standards when it comes to maintenance.
  - steveBK123 4mo ago
    I think it's a U shaped curve probably... lots of stuff breaks initially due to mistakes/defects, and then 10/20/30 years out. The sweet spot is moving into home renovated 5-10 years ago. I've lived in a new construction condo as well as a 1970s home that had renovations in 1990s and 2010s. New construction you deal with a lot of defects that show themselves in the first few years. You also contend with modern construction just being lower quality materials in a lot of cases unless you do a high end build for yourself. So the floors, cabinets, etc are going to wear out much faster. My 50 year old house of course had a ton of deferred maintenance from previous owner that resulted in break-fix work on plumbing, heating, cooling, siding, roofing, etc. I type this as I have 2 faucets, a fence, some driveway potholes and paver stones to mend, an irrigation head to replace and a new central air unit coming in next week. Dishwasher was replaced 2 months ago.
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  I'm a heavy DIY person who does almost everything myself and I'm also confused about the comment above. The only periods where housework took up every single weekend were during renovations, which can take extra time on an old house like mine. Simply maintaining a house shouldn't take up every single weekend unless you have a humongous old house on an extremely large property.
- sethammons 4mo ago
  Not op, for for me: I have a 4" hole in my cedar siding that I have to craft a custom replacement board for due to a woodpecker. I have a leak in _two_ bathroom shower fixtures that drip into the basement. The first, I started fixing and realized the copper pipe needs to be re-routed. The second, I just turned off the water; I'll get to it later. I have two retaining walls with water routing issues. I need to figure out a mega-gutter or I need to otherwise route a lot of water coming off my roof. I have a broken window that needs replacement. I had to board it up for now because I can't get ANYONE to come out in the middle of Montana. I will be learning how to replace a window in log siding sometime this summer. My water heaters are on the fritz and might be to blame for tripling my propane usage this winter. I need to fix those. My pool pump needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed it. My chainsaw needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed that. My riding lawnmower hit a rock and broke the spindle so I had to tear that apart and replace that. I still need to get out and clean my gutters. And do trimming in the yard. Oh, and I had a couple of pine trees come down over winter, so when my saw is back up and running, I'll go cut up some of those. And an apple tree died; need to cut that up and plant a new tree. And I have some boat maintenance to do, my oil gauge stopped responding this season so I'll tear that apart maybe this weekend. I have an outbuilding that seems to be leaning. I need to hook up a plumb-bob and make some measurements and monitor. More yard work. More maintenance. I'd like to job most of it out and just do the fun stuff if I could actually get anyone to come out.
  - anonymars 4mo ago
    Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UZFI-8D5uA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UZFI-8D5uA - 40sec ("What does it look like I'm doing?!)
    - sethammons 4mo ago
      haha, yes. I love this clip
- dividefuel 4mo ago
  Coming back a few days later, but here's my current todo list: - Lawn care - Pool care - Trim back trumpet vine in side yard - Fix a leaking drip irrigation adapter - Prune dead branches in liquid amber tree - Repair / replace squeaky dryer parts - Replace washing machine seal - Trim back ivy near maple tree - Cover sprinkler valves that are in the sun - Replace dining room light bulb - Trim trees off the fence - Pull privet stalks - Paint bare spots on front patio Most of these are probably 30-120 minutes of work.
goosejuice 4mo ago
I've rented a studio all the way to a 5 bedroom house. The difference in maintenance/upkeep for me has mostly been the yard. There's also the fact that cities typically have more demands on landlords.. meaning renters foot the bill/time on more maintenance items more in some areas. I think that's often overlooked when weighing the costs. I sadly don't get much benefit out of renting beyond freedom of movement and higher cash on hand in my current place. Sometimes I've lost my freedom to stay though. I have a, perhaps irrational, fear of getting stuck with a house.
ragall 4mo ago
What maintenance is there to do exactly ?
- bluesummers5651 4mo ago
  There is an ever-expanding list of maintenance tasks depending on the age of the house and its systems, all with different periodicities. A roof will typically not need to be replaced very often (let's say once every 20 years), but cleaning gutters at least annually is a must because overflowing gutters can lead to foundation issues, rot, etc. Depending on the size of the yard and what vegetation it has, yardwork can be at least a couple of hours a week in the warmer months. Making sure drains are clear is good practice to avoid catastrophic failure. And there's always random things like a fence board that needs to get replaced, chipped door that could use repainting, trim that needs replacing, etc. Newer houses will have (hopefully) fewer of these menial tasks, but as houses age things inevitably need attention due to the fact that it has to weather the elements and daily use all the time. How much an individual homeowner cares about the minor cosmetic things vary, but skipping out on regularly checking the major stuff can lead to incredibly expensive problems like flooded basements, structural issues, major leaks, etc.
- alistairSH 4mo ago
  Yard work, gutter cleaning, power washing exterior, cleaning windows, bi-annual HVAC service, exterior paint (especially if the house has any wood) and trim upkeep. And as the house ages, you get things like repainting interior rooms, more frequent plumbing issues, major HVAC repairs, roof replacement, repaving driveway, electrical upgrades, remodeling, etc. We downsized to a townhome to avoid some of that (half the walls are shared, so no exterior upkeep for those; smaller yard; fewer rooms).
  - netule 4mo ago
    To add to the list: Replacing bad wood, pest service, aging appliances, fence maintenance, septic emptying (depending on your location), flooring wear and replacement, grouting and caulking, pest control, exterior cleaning, etc. It can occasionally feel like an endless stream of tasks.
bluesummers5651 4mo ago
100%. We bought a house because we wanted to be able to adjust our home to our family and lifestyle and we both like futzing around with homeowner stuff like repairing things and having a big garden to grow stuff right outside our door. I don't envy the people who get into homeownership and learn that they actually hate being their own general contractor (or don't have the money to pay someone else to be their general contractor because they hate being one).
dominotw 4mo ago
you prbly bought an old aging home
- shimman 4mo ago
  Every home will become old and aging...
  - dominotw 4mo ago
    yes but you dont have to live there
  - onecommentman 4mo ago
    But at varying rates determined by use, design and location. I recommend desert living if you want low maintenance, or even a graceful manageable decline. Maybe not true adobe that requires regular remudding, but frame-stucco or stabilized adobe. Becomes more charming with age. Taos Pueblo has been around for 1000 years…
abalashov 4mo ago
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 cloud service of sorts, where much of what I pay for is just for all operational questions to be someone else's problem and to relieve myself of the burden of owning and liquidating what I would otherwise have to CAPEX. For me, it's hard to put a price on the reclamation of _time_ spent otherwise thinking about those issues, to say nothing of the money. I just don't have time to think about even 1/60th of what's involved in getting vendor quotes for roof reshingling or painting or whatever, and even if I do have the time, I'd rather pull my fingernails out than spend it that way. I sure do miss that mortgage interest deduction, though. I had no desire to accrue equity in the property--and indeed, if I had more equity, I would have lost even more money than I did in the 2008 crash--but I loved my super high-interest loan. It meant that my most of my housing payment was tax-deductible, and that's fantastic. My only regret, besides buying itself, is that I didn't take out an interest-only mortgage. However, this isn't a Great Recession sob story. The condo would be way too much work and cognitive bandwidth theft even in the best of times, and that's like a tenth of the structural, landscaping, etc. issues one has to think about with an SFH. No thanks, man. I have other stuff to do.
- greedo 4mo ago
  Moving every 2-5 years sounds like one of the rings of Hell from Dante.
  - abalashov 4mo ago
    Moving is no fun at all (and also costs money! deposits, movers and the rest of it), but the only thing worse is staying in one place. I just can't do it. I mean, of course I tell myself this is the last time we're ever moving, and that this is the forever spot. However, experience suggests this is never, ever the case, and there's no actual precedent for that.
  - 4mo ago
hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
> There's no one person I can call for every single problem. There absolutely can be if you want to pay for the service. Look up home concierge / residential management services, like Para Home Services.
- abalashov 4mo ago
  True, but you still have to cough up. The benefit of renting is that it's an SEP (Someone Else's Problem).
  - hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
    Of course that’s a benefit of renting. How does that relate to the OP _homeowner_ saying one downside of ownership is they don’t have a single number to call for any maintenance issues?
    - abalashov 4mo ago
      I guess on the face of it, it's not related. I didn't read his comment as literally lamenting the lack of a number, or even someone to orchestrate, but rather to imply that there's nobody on the hook for it in all facets. With a landlord, you just call the number and magic happens and it's free to you (in theory, not always in practice).
      - hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
        Heh, gotcha. Yes, as a homeowner, the buck stops with you since you own it.
  - mchusma 4mo ago
    There are also home warranties or tech solutions/concierges like tidy.com. The issue historically is that these concierge things are expensive (should be solved by tech/ai) and the warranties create their own class of problems (claim frustrations etc). But home ownership is expensive, no way around it. But the work in coordinating etc doesn’t fundamentally need to be.
no_wizard 4mo ago
Condo is suppose to be that nice hybrid but they became enshittified long ago and have routinely proven to be bad deals for the average buyer in too many circumstances. The US doesn’t understand how to make the housing market functional. I’d love to have a condo where a great many things are handled by the association but the math never maths, as they say, and a great deal of the issues is because condo associations aren’t well regulated and they often don’t account things correctly.
- abalashov 4mo ago
  I had this, but as you say, it's risky. I do like renting condos, though -- not my problem either way.
- steveBK123 4mo ago
  I’ve rented in a rental, rented in a condo, owned in a condo and owned a sfh. Condos are in a lot of ways worse for ownership. You have communal costs you can’t control, risk of irresponsible neighbors (leaks), and limitations on who/what/when/how of repair or renovation you want to do within your own unit. All of which introduces coordination overhead, cost and time.
- bell-cot 4mo ago
  > The US doesn’t understand how to make the housing market functional. I'd say the US understands how to make the housing market functional, but there are more-powerful interests pushing the market in other directions - financialization, extraction, NIMBYism, social exclusion, ...
m463 4mo ago
I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper. Honestly, it sounds like you enjoy it. If you are doing it with that frequency I think you just are "into" your house.
- asdff 4mo ago
  Depends where you live. In the midwest you might legitimately need to mow 3x a week and you might have a huge lot. If you say screw it and let it go to knee high weeds, city might show up and cut your grass and fine you for it.
  - bombcar 4mo ago
    “Mow & snow” will eat most of your life, if you let it.
  - whaleofatw2022 4mo ago
    The weeds are the hard part. But as far as when I owned my own home, cutting the grass was just part of my routine and at least guaranteed some physical activity instead of working all day during covid.
  - ball_of_lint 4mo ago
    3x/week is wild. I'd get a different type of grass at that point.
    - asdff 4mo ago
      Just what happens with the rain load during the peak growing season. Later in the summer it will switch to a more drought condition though and there won't be so frequent mowing. But the peak parts, yeah, not much I don't think you can do via strain selection given the quantities of rainfall.
      - halostatue 4mo ago
        Fescue grasses mostly flop over rather than stand tall. Most lawns in North America are Kentucky Blue or ryegrass which are what produce the eyesore. But lawns in general are a pestilence.
asdff 4mo ago
>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 enough about the project to determine whether they're doing it right! The thing is, you can actually find these people. My landlord has one. Sage old handiman who knows everything about how the building works and fixed half of it himself already. Seemingly he can do every trade. He's under the building doing plumbing or electric one day. Landscaping the next. Installing appliances. Paint and drywall. Roofing. Most of the time it's him by himself, but he will occasionally bring out his crew of similar sage old handimen who know seemingly everything there is to know. You don't need a contractor. They will give you the runaround. You need to find a handiman like this. Not easy I'm sure, but they are out there.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  If you treat your house like a rental that you rent to yourself, you can avoid a bunch of headaches - mainly because you’ve given yourself “permission” to spend on it.
  - natebc 4mo ago
    wait ... There are landlords out there who will "spend on it"? Mine took 3 weeks to replace a broken HVAC when it was 35 degress out. 5 days to fix a toilet that when flushed dumped sewage into my downstairs neighbors ceiling. Maybe if you're treating yourself as a tenant but your run of the mill rent extracting (or worse, middle man) landlord is the cheapest creature on the land.
    - bombcar 4mo ago
      There are, but they're often found in places where the rent pressure isn't so great (e.g., there are many options for renters). When demand is so high or prices are fixed, everything else goes out the window; because what are you going to do, move?
rmwaite 4mo ago
Agree completely about the time thing. Indeed, every time I’ve fallen into the trap of somehow believing I’ve moved “past” the time sink it inevitably has bitten me down the road when something breaks or I learn about some maintenance task I should have been doing but didn’t even know existed. More than anything, I’ve come to admire those who learn how to do this stuff consistently because it is hard.
- CrimsonCape 4mo ago
  Haha for example, to the homeowners out there, you should change your water heater anode rod ASAP if you have not. Good luck getting the rod out, because the caps on the water heater get corroded shut. And did I mention you need to drain the hot water heater to do so. You ever tried draining a hot water heater when that task has not been accounted for in the design? You need a way to drain it.
paul7986 4mo ago
I owned two single family houses both built in 2002. I am not handy at all and only will do remodeling when im going to sell a house. I was fortunate with both houses needing very little maintenance over the 7 years i lived in them. If i did need a maintanence guy my realtor has a good number of great reliable contractors in her back pocket. Realtors who have been selling houses in your area for MANY years usually have a great rolodex of solid, reliable contractors at their disposal vs. going online and rolling the dice.
cm2012 4mo ago
Once you get a good handyman, just need a good electrician and plumber
chrisweekly 4mo ago
"Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one." Respectfully, that assertion isn't really supported by your anecdote.
shrubble 4mo ago
The frustrating thing is, that for not much more spent at the time of construction, we could have nearly maintenance-free homes for 80 years or more. Like, why use wood in an climate like the American South, where there are multiple species of termites that like to eat wood? I was a member at a maker space - the building has been around since the 40s or 50s and never damaged by a hurricane - why? The roof (with a rubber rolled roof on top) along with the rest of the building is made out of concrete.
- BobbyTables2 4mo ago
  I’ve always wondered why the South uses black asphalt shingles. Aside from being the worst possible color, they like neither the hot summers, the hailstorms, nor the hurricanes. The level of stupidity exceeds California homes using sun-baked wood shingles that can be torched off from the suggestion of a single spark.
  - xnx 4mo ago
    Job security for roofers. Individual home buyers are too dumb to understand or too busy too think about tco. There's a reason you don't see shingles on commercial buildings.
- jandrewrogers 4mo ago
  It probably depends on where you are in the South and also cost sensitivity. If you are hugging the Gulf Coast then you do see a fair amount of cinder block in new builds, at least in wealthier parts. As you move north, you enter either the South Carolina or New Madrid seismic hazard zones. Building codes require reinforcing new masonry construction to modern US seismic standards which adds significant expense. Older masonry construction that pre-dates the current seismic standards are typically grandfathered in but you might not want to be inside it during one of the infrequent strong earthquakes. The US uses wood because it is abundant and cheap. But people also forget that most of the US is subject to strong earthquakes, so the alternative to wood is massive amounts of steel which is expensive. The original masonry construction in the US was mostly destroyed by earthquakes. Where I live a new house is required to survive a M8.5 earthquake without material structural damage. If you avoid the use of wood in construction, the amount of steel required to meet that standard tends to be cost prohibitive. Steel construction also requires much more expensive labor in addition to the material costs.
sharts 4mo ago
Time not spent drinking, etc. To some that’s a win
kamaal 4mo ago
>>Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one. Same could be said about Real estate investments. I know people who look up real estate investors as an inspiration as something they want to do themselves. One day trip scouting for properties, is enough to make them quit when they realise most of it is lots of irritating driving, due diligence, legal work, loans etc. Hard things have little competition for a reason, process is a high attrition journey.
kakacik 4mo ago
... 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.
- nsvd2 4mo ago
  Where I live (major city) because of zoning there are few apartment buildings and basically 100% are only for rent, not individually owned units. So if you want to own where you live it must be a townhome or detached house.
silverlake 4mo ago
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.
wink 4mo ago
> Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one. Kinda depends on the prices. Where I live you can be lucky to find anything resembling a living house for under 1m EUR. First you'd have to be able to do a calculation and say 'I can afford that', only then it makes sense to ask the lifestyle question. FWIW, my parents had to spend the first 1-2 years renovating a lot in their house (in the 90s) but after that it wasn't really that much of ongoing stuff. Small garden helps a lot though.
epolanski 4mo ago
+1, my SO was so hard to "have our place", that we essentially dedicated two years of our lives to it (from finding the place, negotiating, legal stuff, renovations, etc). It gave us two extremely stressful years, you're just not prepared for it. And yes, we have way more things to think now than we used to. It's going to financially pay off when I'll be close to 60 (I'm 38). I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again, I like my house, but sure I'd be much wealthier (hell, I sold my investments in 2021 to buy it) and care free.
warumdarum 4mo ago
Get good at one thing that needs regular doing, trade work with other homeowners who got good at another thing.
headroom 4mo ago
This is my experience as well. Maintenance of the house and the property is a huge time sink, but the worst offender is the distance to everything and how you need a car. Driving around constantly in suburbia is absolutely maddening. Oh and the car needs maintenance too. Changing tires, service appointments, keeping it clean, shovelling snow so you can get to the store. We sold the house and moved to an apartment in the city last year. Now I have time to hang out with my family, we have all these restaurants and things to do everywhere. Got rid of the car and I bike to work. My maintenance now is pretty much: - Mow collectively owned lawn once per summer - Spring and autumn cleaning of collectively owned spaces. One or two chores. Last autumn I cleaned a carpet. This spring I cleaned two bathrooms and checked the fire alarm batteries. Then each time we had a barbecue after the chores. - Service bicycles when needed - Make sure food isn't rotting in the fridge Oh and I have time for hobbies too. My kids have way more friends now (playgrounds are really spread out in the suburbs and they are mostly empty) and the area we moved to is a lot calmer than in the suburbs where teenagers would roam around and be loud because there was nothing else to do. We might get something like a summer home to be close to nature when it's nice to be (currently we rent a cabin for a few weeks in the summer) but just everyday living is so much better in an urban environment. For context we live in Europe.

darknavi 4mo ago

> House maintenance and projects have taken up most of every single weekend of mine for the past few years. Mine come and go but it's no where near every weekend since I've purchased in 2019. What sort of things occupy this much time?

colordrops 4mo ago
Not gp, but I bought a fixer-upper and it was at least weekends for the first two years, then slowed down quite a bit after that. Now it comes in fits and starts similar to you.
- pc86 4mo ago
  This is the answer - there are plenty of move-in ready, turn-key homes that require basically zero maintenance unless you want to remodel or change something, but those cost more (sometimes a lot more) than the ones that need more TLC or true fixer-uppers.
  - hibikir 4mo ago
    Eventually the maintenance comes back again: The turn-key homes have typically had most of the things that needed maintenance replaced, but they eventually come back, and they can be quite the headache. See the wonders of having a plumbing stack going past its useful life, land resettling leading to having to do regrades, or lift concrete slabs, or just general tree maintenace.
    - edoceo 4mo ago
      Don't do your own trees! Wood is very heavy! It wiggles a lot! Dragons!
      - mindslight 4mo ago
        IMO the key to doing your own trees (or presumably having them done for less money) is having enough room around them that you can just drop them whole, rather than having to hire someone with a bucket truck and/or climbing spikes to disassemble them from the top down.
  - asdff 4mo ago
    Even with fixer uppers the house is usually functional and fine. Just people think the bathroom is too ugly to poop in, so they have to spend five figures and rip out the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else, to replace it with new walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else.
    - laughing_man 4mo ago
      More like the bathroom is too ugly to poop in because there's a leak behind the shower and now there's mold growing on the wall.
      - asdff 4mo ago
        That might be why some people renovate, but for most its because they think the color is wrong and they don't like the fixtures. Queue squandering money to achieve the same functionality and all the material waste throwing out the perfectly good fixtures and such and buying newly built fixtures and such.
- hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
  I bought a fixer upper a few years ago. It was a solid six month stretch of various projects of various sizes rushing to be done before my child was born. Since then it’s been very chill, though I did just spend about another six months renovating a bathroom down to the studs myself, but I took that upon myself for the thrill of it.
atoav 4mo ago
Houses are very different. I grew up in a guest house (so: three floors, a cellar, 14 flats/rooms) that has various layers from various ages. The foundations are hundreds of years old, most of the rest 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s. If you're living in a new house you may have peace for a few decades, but at the cost of everything piling up the longer you wait. Exchanging corroded drain pipes someone thought was a good idea to bury in concrete is especially fun. At some time door hinges break, window mechanisms break. Water pipes clog, electrical is outdated (e.g. landlines are out, ethernet or fiber is in). The intercom breaks, wasp nests are under every second roof tile, there is a water intrusion in the cellar, a storm knocks down the fence, the washing machine breaks, the garage door motor dies, the asphalt on the runway cracks and needs a tar pour, the attic needs to be insulated, a portion of the roof needs to be retiled, the wooden parts of the facade need to be repainted, a drainage needs to be dig to avoid water piling up into a garage, a doorway has to be added to a repurposed storage space. And mind, I was the son of the house, this is only some of the stuff I worked on before I moved out with 18. There was constantly something to be done. What and how much is mostly a function of (1) the age and build quality of the house and (2) your own standards when it comes to maintenance.
- steveBK123 4mo ago
  I think it's a U shaped curve probably... lots of stuff breaks initially due to mistakes/defects, and then 10/20/30 years out. The sweet spot is moving into home renovated 5-10 years ago. I've lived in a new construction condo as well as a 1970s home that had renovations in 1990s and 2010s. New construction you deal with a lot of defects that show themselves in the first few years. You also contend with modern construction just being lower quality materials in a lot of cases unless you do a high end build for yourself. So the floors, cabinets, etc are going to wear out much faster. My 50 year old house of course had a ton of deferred maintenance from previous owner that resulted in break-fix work on plumbing, heating, cooling, siding, roofing, etc. I type this as I have 2 faucets, a fence, some driveway potholes and paver stones to mend, an irrigation head to replace and a new central air unit coming in next week. Dishwasher was replaced 2 months ago.
Aurornis 4mo ago
I'm a heavy DIY person who does almost everything myself and I'm also confused about the comment above. The only periods where housework took up every single weekend were during renovations, which can take extra time on an old house like mine. Simply maintaining a house shouldn't take up every single weekend unless you have a humongous old house on an extremely large property.
sethammons 4mo ago
Not op, for for me: I have a 4" hole in my cedar siding that I have to craft a custom replacement board for due to a woodpecker. I have a leak in _two_ bathroom shower fixtures that drip into the basement. The first, I started fixing and realized the copper pipe needs to be re-routed. The second, I just turned off the water; I'll get to it later. I have two retaining walls with water routing issues. I need to figure out a mega-gutter or I need to otherwise route a lot of water coming off my roof. I have a broken window that needs replacement. I had to board it up for now because I can't get ANYONE to come out in the middle of Montana. I will be learning how to replace a window in log siding sometime this summer. My water heaters are on the fritz and might be to blame for tripling my propane usage this winter. I need to fix those. My pool pump needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed it. My chainsaw needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed that. My riding lawnmower hit a rock and broke the spindle so I had to tear that apart and replace that. I still need to get out and clean my gutters. And do trimming in the yard. Oh, and I had a couple of pine trees come down over winter, so when my saw is back up and running, I'll go cut up some of those. And an apple tree died; need to cut that up and plant a new tree. And I have some boat maintenance to do, my oil gauge stopped responding this season so I'll tear that apart maybe this weekend. I have an outbuilding that seems to be leaning. I need to hook up a plumb-bob and make some measurements and monitor. More yard work. More maintenance. I'd like to job most of it out and just do the fun stuff if I could actually get anyone to come out.
- anonymars 4mo ago
  Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UZFI-8D5uA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UZFI-8D5uA - 40sec ("What does it look like I'm doing?!)
  - sethammons 4mo ago
    haha, yes. I love this clip
dividefuel 4mo ago
Coming back a few days later, but here's my current todo list: - Lawn care - Pool care - Trim back trumpet vine in side yard - Fix a leaking drip irrigation adapter - Prune dead branches in liquid amber tree - Repair / replace squeaky dryer parts - Replace washing machine seal - Trim back ivy near maple tree - Cover sprinkler valves that are in the sun - Replace dining room light bulb - Trim trees off the fence - Pull privet stalks - Paint bare spots on front patio Most of these are probably 30-120 minutes of work.

goosejuice 4mo ago

I've rented a studio all the way to a 5 bedroom house. The difference in maintenance/upkeep for me has mostly been the yard. There's also the fact that cities typically have more demands on landlords.. meaning renters foot the bill/time on more maintenance items more in some areas. I think that's often overlooked when weighing the costs. I sadly don't get much benefit out of renting beyond freedom of movement and higher cash on hand in my current place. Sometimes I've lost my freedom to stay though. I have a, perhaps irrational, fear of getting stuck with a house.

ragall 4mo ago

What maintenance is there to do exactly ?

bluesummers5651 4mo ago
There is an ever-expanding list of maintenance tasks depending on the age of the house and its systems, all with different periodicities. A roof will typically not need to be replaced very often (let's say once every 20 years), but cleaning gutters at least annually is a must because overflowing gutters can lead to foundation issues, rot, etc. Depending on the size of the yard and what vegetation it has, yardwork can be at least a couple of hours a week in the warmer months. Making sure drains are clear is good practice to avoid catastrophic failure. And there's always random things like a fence board that needs to get replaced, chipped door that could use repainting, trim that needs replacing, etc. Newer houses will have (hopefully) fewer of these menial tasks, but as houses age things inevitably need attention due to the fact that it has to weather the elements and daily use all the time. How much an individual homeowner cares about the minor cosmetic things vary, but skipping out on regularly checking the major stuff can lead to incredibly expensive problems like flooded basements, structural issues, major leaks, etc.
alistairSH 4mo ago
Yard work, gutter cleaning, power washing exterior, cleaning windows, bi-annual HVAC service, exterior paint (especially if the house has any wood) and trim upkeep. And as the house ages, you get things like repainting interior rooms, more frequent plumbing issues, major HVAC repairs, roof replacement, repaving driveway, electrical upgrades, remodeling, etc. We downsized to a townhome to avoid some of that (half the walls are shared, so no exterior upkeep for those; smaller yard; fewer rooms).
- netule 4mo ago
  To add to the list: Replacing bad wood, pest service, aging appliances, fence maintenance, septic emptying (depending on your location), flooring wear and replacement, grouting and caulking, pest control, exterior cleaning, etc. It can occasionally feel like an endless stream of tasks.

bluesummers5651 4mo ago

100%. We bought a house because we wanted to be able to adjust our home to our family and lifestyle and we both like futzing around with homeowner stuff like repairing things and having a big garden to grow stuff right outside our door. I don't envy the people who get into homeownership and learn that they actually hate being their own general contractor (or don't have the money to pay someone else to be their general contractor because they hate being one).

dominotw 4mo ago

you prbly bought an old aging home

shimman 4mo ago
Every home will become old and aging...
- dominotw 4mo ago
  yes but you dont have to live there
- onecommentman 4mo ago
  But at varying rates determined by use, design and location. I recommend desert living if you want low maintenance, or even a graceful manageable decline. Maybe not true adobe that requires regular remudding, but frame-stucco or stabilized adobe. Becomes more charming with age. Taos Pueblo has been around for 1000 years…

abalashov 4mo ago

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 cloud service of sorts, where much of what I pay for is just for all operational questions to be someone else's problem and to relieve myself of the burden of owning and liquidating what I would otherwise have to CAPEX. For me, it's hard to put a price on the reclamation of _time_ spent otherwise thinking about those issues, to say nothing of the money. I just don't have time to think about even 1/60th of what's involved in getting vendor quotes for roof reshingling or painting or whatever, and even if I do have the time, I'd rather pull my fingernails out than spend it that way. I sure do miss that mortgage interest deduction, though. I had no desire to accrue equity in the property--and indeed, if I had more equity, I would have lost even more money than I did in the 2008 crash--but I loved my super high-interest loan. It meant that my most of my housing payment was tax-deductible, and that's fantastic. My only regret, besides buying itself, is that I didn't take out an interest-only mortgage. However, this isn't a Great Recession sob story. The condo would be way too much work and cognitive bandwidth theft even in the best of times, and that's like a tenth of the structural, landscaping, etc. issues one has to think about with an SFH. No thanks, man. I have other stuff to do.

greedo 4mo ago
Moving every 2-5 years sounds like one of the rings of Hell from Dante.
- abalashov 4mo ago
  Moving is no fun at all (and also costs money! deposits, movers and the rest of it), but the only thing worse is staying in one place. I just can't do it. I mean, of course I tell myself this is the last time we're ever moving, and that this is the forever spot. However, experience suggests this is never, ever the case, and there's no actual precedent for that.
- 4mo ago

hawaiianbrah 4mo ago

> There's no one person I can call for every single problem. There absolutely can be if you want to pay for the service. Look up home concierge / residential management services, like Para Home Services.

abalashov 4mo ago
True, but you still have to cough up. The benefit of renting is that it's an SEP (Someone Else's Problem).
- hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
  Of course that’s a benefit of renting. How does that relate to the OP _homeowner_ saying one downside of ownership is they don’t have a single number to call for any maintenance issues?
  - abalashov 4mo ago
    I guess on the face of it, it's not related. I didn't read his comment as literally lamenting the lack of a number, or even someone to orchestrate, but rather to imply that there's nobody on the hook for it in all facets. With a landlord, you just call the number and magic happens and it's free to you (in theory, not always in practice).
    - hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
      Heh, gotcha. Yes, as a homeowner, the buck stops with you since you own it.
- mchusma 4mo ago
  There are also home warranties or tech solutions/concierges like tidy.com. The issue historically is that these concierge things are expensive (should be solved by tech/ai) and the warranties create their own class of problems (claim frustrations etc). But home ownership is expensive, no way around it. But the work in coordinating etc doesn’t fundamentally need to be.

no_wizard 4mo ago

Condo is suppose to be that nice hybrid but they became enshittified long ago and have routinely proven to be bad deals for the average buyer in too many circumstances. The US doesn’t understand how to make the housing market functional. I’d love to have a condo where a great many things are handled by the association but the math never maths, as they say, and a great deal of the issues is because condo associations aren’t well regulated and they often don’t account things correctly.

abalashov 4mo ago
I had this, but as you say, it's risky. I do like renting condos, though -- not my problem either way.
steveBK123 4mo ago
I’ve rented in a rental, rented in a condo, owned in a condo and owned a sfh. Condos are in a lot of ways worse for ownership. You have communal costs you can’t control, risk of irresponsible neighbors (leaks), and limitations on who/what/when/how of repair or renovation you want to do within your own unit. All of which introduces coordination overhead, cost and time.
bell-cot 4mo ago
> The US doesn’t understand how to make the housing market functional. I'd say the US understands how to make the housing market functional, but there are more-powerful interests pushing the market in other directions - financialization, extraction, NIMBYism, social exclusion, ...

m463 4mo ago

I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper. Honestly, it sounds like you enjoy it. If you are doing it with that frequency I think you just are "into" your house.

asdff 4mo ago
Depends where you live. In the midwest you might legitimately need to mow 3x a week and you might have a huge lot. If you say screw it and let it go to knee high weeds, city might show up and cut your grass and fine you for it.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  “Mow & snow” will eat most of your life, if you let it.
- whaleofatw2022 4mo ago
  The weeds are the hard part. But as far as when I owned my own home, cutting the grass was just part of my routine and at least guaranteed some physical activity instead of working all day during covid.
- ball_of_lint 4mo ago
  3x/week is wild. I'd get a different type of grass at that point.
  - asdff 4mo ago
    Just what happens with the rain load during the peak growing season. Later in the summer it will switch to a more drought condition though and there won't be so frequent mowing. But the peak parts, yeah, not much I don't think you can do via strain selection given the quantities of rainfall.
    - halostatue 4mo ago
      Fescue grasses mostly flop over rather than stand tall. Most lawns in North America are Kentucky Blue or ryegrass which are what produce the eyesore. But lawns in general are a pestilence.

asdff 4mo ago

>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 enough about the project to determine whether they're doing it right! The thing is, you can actually find these people. My landlord has one. Sage old handiman who knows everything about how the building works and fixed half of it himself already. Seemingly he can do every trade. He's under the building doing plumbing or electric one day. Landscaping the next. Installing appliances. Paint and drywall. Roofing. Most of the time it's him by himself, but he will occasionally bring out his crew of similar sage old handimen who know seemingly everything there is to know. You don't need a contractor. They will give you the runaround. You need to find a handiman like this. Not easy I'm sure, but they are out there.

bombcar 4mo ago
If you treat your house like a rental that you rent to yourself, you can avoid a bunch of headaches - mainly because you’ve given yourself “permission” to spend on it.
- natebc 4mo ago
  wait ... There are landlords out there who will "spend on it"? Mine took 3 weeks to replace a broken HVAC when it was 35 degress out. 5 days to fix a toilet that when flushed dumped sewage into my downstairs neighbors ceiling. Maybe if you're treating yourself as a tenant but your run of the mill rent extracting (or worse, middle man) landlord is the cheapest creature on the land.
  - bombcar 4mo ago
    There are, but they're often found in places where the rent pressure isn't so great (e.g., there are many options for renters). When demand is so high or prices are fixed, everything else goes out the window; because what are you going to do, move?

rmwaite 4mo ago

Agree completely about the time thing. Indeed, every time I’ve fallen into the trap of somehow believing I’ve moved “past” the time sink it inevitably has bitten me down the road when something breaks or I learn about some maintenance task I should have been doing but didn’t even know existed. More than anything, I’ve come to admire those who learn how to do this stuff consistently because it is hard.

CrimsonCape 4mo ago
Haha for example, to the homeowners out there, you should change your water heater anode rod ASAP if you have not. Good luck getting the rod out, because the caps on the water heater get corroded shut. And did I mention you need to drain the hot water heater to do so. You ever tried draining a hot water heater when that task has not been accounted for in the design? You need a way to drain it.

paul7986 4mo ago

I owned two single family houses both built in 2002. I am not handy at all and only will do remodeling when im going to sell a house. I was fortunate with both houses needing very little maintenance over the 7 years i lived in them. If i did need a maintanence guy my realtor has a good number of great reliable contractors in her back pocket. Realtors who have been selling houses in your area for MANY years usually have a great rolodex of solid, reliable contractors at their disposal vs. going online and rolling the dice.

cm2012 4mo ago

Once you get a good handyman, just need a good electrician and plumber

chrisweekly 4mo ago

"Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one." Respectfully, that assertion isn't really supported by your anecdote.

shrubble 4mo ago

The frustrating thing is, that for not much more spent at the time of construction, we could have nearly maintenance-free homes for 80 years or more. Like, why use wood in an climate like the American South, where there are multiple species of termites that like to eat wood? I was a member at a maker space - the building has been around since the 40s or 50s and never damaged by a hurricane - why? The roof (with a rubber rolled roof on top) along with the rest of the building is made out of concrete.

BobbyTables2 4mo ago
I’ve always wondered why the South uses black asphalt shingles. Aside from being the worst possible color, they like neither the hot summers, the hailstorms, nor the hurricanes. The level of stupidity exceeds California homes using sun-baked wood shingles that can be torched off from the suggestion of a single spark.
- xnx 4mo ago
  Job security for roofers. Individual home buyers are too dumb to understand or too busy too think about tco. There's a reason you don't see shingles on commercial buildings.
jandrewrogers 4mo ago
It probably depends on where you are in the South and also cost sensitivity. If you are hugging the Gulf Coast then you do see a fair amount of cinder block in new builds, at least in wealthier parts. As you move north, you enter either the South Carolina or New Madrid seismic hazard zones. Building codes require reinforcing new masonry construction to modern US seismic standards which adds significant expense. Older masonry construction that pre-dates the current seismic standards are typically grandfathered in but you might not want to be inside it during one of the infrequent strong earthquakes. The US uses wood because it is abundant and cheap. But people also forget that most of the US is subject to strong earthquakes, so the alternative to wood is massive amounts of steel which is expensive. The original masonry construction in the US was mostly destroyed by earthquakes. Where I live a new house is required to survive a M8.5 earthquake without material structural damage. If you avoid the use of wood in construction, the amount of steel required to meet that standard tends to be cost prohibitive. Steel construction also requires much more expensive labor in addition to the material costs.

sharts 4mo ago

Time not spent drinking, etc. To some that’s a win

kamaal 4mo ago

>>Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one. Same could be said about Real estate investments. I know people who look up real estate investors as an inspiration as something they want to do themselves. One day trip scouting for properties, is enough to make them quit when they realise most of it is lots of irritating driving, due diligence, legal work, loans etc. Hard things have little competition for a reason, process is a high attrition journey.

kakacik 4mo ago

... 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.

nsvd2 4mo ago
Where I live (major city) because of zoning there are few apartment buildings and basically 100% are only for rent, not individually owned units. So if you want to own where you live it must be a townhome or detached house.

silverlake 4mo ago

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.

wink 4mo ago

> Home ownership is definitely a lifestyle choice first and foremost more than a financial one. Kinda depends on the prices. Where I live you can be lucky to find anything resembling a living house for under 1m EUR. First you'd have to be able to do a calculation and say 'I can afford that', only then it makes sense to ask the lifestyle question. FWIW, my parents had to spend the first 1-2 years renovating a lot in their house (in the 90s) but after that it wasn't really that much of ongoing stuff. Small garden helps a lot though.

epolanski 4mo ago

+1, my SO was so hard to "have our place", that we essentially dedicated two years of our lives to it (from finding the place, negotiating, legal stuff, renovations, etc). It gave us two extremely stressful years, you're just not prepared for it. And yes, we have way more things to think now than we used to. It's going to financially pay off when I'll be close to 60 (I'm 38). I'm not saying I wouldn't do it again, I like my house, but sure I'd be much wealthier (hell, I sold my investments in 2021 to buy it) and care free.

warumdarum 4mo ago

Get good at one thing that needs regular doing, trade work with other homeowners who got good at another thing.

headroom 4mo ago

This is my experience as well. Maintenance of the house and the property is a huge time sink, but the worst offender is the distance to everything and how you need a car. Driving around constantly in suburbia is absolutely maddening. Oh and the car needs maintenance too. Changing tires, service appointments, keeping it clean, shovelling snow so you can get to the store. We sold the house and moved to an apartment in the city last year. Now I have time to hang out with my family, we have all these restaurants and things to do everywhere. Got rid of the car and I bike to work. My maintenance now is pretty much: - Mow collectively owned lawn once per summer - Spring and autumn cleaning of collectively owned spaces. One or two chores. Last autumn I cleaned a carpet. This spring I cleaned two bathrooms and checked the fire alarm batteries. Then each time we had a barbecue after the chores. - Service bicycles when needed - Make sure food isn't rotting in the fridge Oh and I have time for hobbies too. My kids have way more friends now (playgrounds are really spread out in the suburbs and they are mostly empty) and the area we moved to is a lot calmer than in the suburbs where teenagers would roam around and be loud because there was nothing else to do. We might get something like a summer home to be close to nature when it's nice to be (currently we rent a cabin for a few weeks in the summer) but just everyday living is so much better in an urban environment. For context we live in Europe.