T/S: Renting vs. Owning

Right now, though, the pattern is of course in favor of renting in many circumstances, because yeah, the price of real estate right now is fucking absurd - I can't imagine paying for all the maintenance fees on this place or being a homeowner at this point.

Same houses, $300,000 less.

what is not being addressed here is the significant tax relief that a mortgage loan represents. when up to 38% of your paycheck is being paid to taxes, it helps to get some of that money back when you file your annual tax return.

Condo owner = when the drainpipes fail or other household catastrophes occur in the common areas there should be a janitor or board member or someone you can call and complain to. But yes, if my refrigerator were to die I'd be the one responsible for replacing it.

gygax is OTM re. the U.S. provision for deducting mortgage interest. Also, if you own your housing payment will be relatively stable over the years (unless your real estate tax assessment made a big jump, as happened to me this year). Renters, OTOH, are usually subject to rent increases, even in cities where there is rent control. A friend of mine got evicted last year because Adams Morgan rents went so high and she couldn't keep up with the payments.

There's a lot to be said for equity and homebuying and more. I have some vague plans still ticking over for the future, but for now, everything in my rental has worked like a charm, no complaints about the staff and service and it could be worse.

The flip side of that real estate tax increase I mentioned.
:^/

Obviously house prices don't always rocket that way.

I got my rent reduced 20 dollars a month and a check from my landlord cause the property taxes were cut. Apparently in Ontario 20% of your rent is for property taxes and any drop in those taxes means a drop in your rent.

I would love to buy a place but I don't see that happening until we pay off most of our absurd credit card debt and the market for buying stabilizes out here, and we get some kind of savings together. Having just bought a car and found that an exhausting, confidence crushing experience, I don't think I'm capable of buying a big piece of real estate right now.

Not to send people off to other forums, but thefool.com has a really good discussion about the merits of renting vs. buying and someone explains the tax savings of mortgage payments.

But it is worth it, if you really want to get your finances sorted out.

The low interest rates and continued growth of the DC area economy are making housing prices in this area absurd and in my view unsustainable. My parents know of a family that lived up here in the 80s and purchased a house - 10 years later they sold it for less than the price they originally paid.

My bank's calculations have made it very clear that I should continue to rent - to try and afford the kind of property I want, I'd be house broke, and I have train tickets to pay for.

There is something about the whole pursuit of land/place/investment/property that ultimately is fundamentally unappealing to me, I realize. I think it is the same reason why I'm extremely nonplussed with the idea of working for profit in a corporate setting or why I dislike some sort of generic Irvine-like model of what life and living should be like, it's almost like there's some sort of consensual hallucination at play -- though then again that's probably mostly the pressures of Orange County at work.

Also, there's some lingering sense of a crash in my brain for this county -- not a crash in real-estate prices as such, more some sort of full-on economic/environmental fuckup that can't or won't be controlled, where what happens to the value of what's around here is compounded by other factors. I don't mind the idea of living here and enjoying life. I mind the idea of putting down some sort of roots and playing the local developer/real estate game, it feels fundamentally wrong somehow.

Also, prices for both rent and purchase in the major international cities have gone up so vertiginously over the past 20 years that I was getting scared that in my fundamentally insecure profession I'd just get priced right out altogether, so I felt I had to step on the property ladder at some point.

*thinks for a bit* See, I'm trying to gauge this with my own feelings and...*shrug*...I guess it just doesn't bother me. It's strange, but I almost see it as more a status symbol than a necessity -- which is of course odd, shelter being far more than a status symbol. I dunno.

Having said that, I bought a flat because I wanted somewhere I could call home, not because I wanted an investment. One of my pet hates is people talking about where they live as their property, which implies monetary value, rather than their home, which implies cozy warm things like cats stretched out on a rug in front of the fire and dragging your duvet through to the living room and falling asleep in front of the footie on a Sunday afternoon. And that's worth much more than money, obv.

See, phrased in those terms, I very much have a home, a place where I am perfectly comfortable and cozy, almost ridiculously so. I actually wondered if switching from living in a house to living in a solo apartment would be a bit of a drag; on the contrary it was so perfectly nice to have that little compact space and all I need in it. The ownership part almost seems like an unnecessary extra factor.

*Madchen thinks hard and decides not to paint her flat black or make dodgy stains on the carpet, but does hang a dartboard in the kitchen*

(x-post)

I knew I had completed some contemporary rite of passage the first time I went to lunch with coworkers, and talked about real estate.

It's pretty much what happened with me renting at the old house with friends after five plus years of being there, when it was put on the market and then sold -- but I was actually the only one there the entire time and more than one person was telling me that I really should be looking into a place just for myself, because for me the concern wasn't the ownership of the place as much as it was just getting in new people time after time and hoping that everyone would get along. Which I had amazing luck with most of the time but when the house went on the market, at the time the other two housemates were at each other's throats. All I cared about was, ultimately, solitude and formal year-long lease arrangements to be renewed if I felt I could afford it. I got both and believe me, it was SO needed.

Also would your landlord mind if you threw darts at the wall/painted your living room black/got dodgy stains on the furniture? I can do all these things if
I want.

I have no impulse to do the first two and the furniture is my own, so...

less worry about maintenance issues (if your landlord is good), and I like the feeling that I could
pick up and move to another city if something came up without too much hassle (even if I probably won't).

Both very good points. It's a corporate apartment set up, I should note, and while the rent is high the benefits have been pretty strong throughout -- I've actually had next to no maintenance issues all the time I've been here aside from one time when the sink was clogged, I've never had to run the heater in winter and barely needed the a/c in summer, the pool and hot tub are enjoyable indulgences nearby, the location is great, etc. etc.

It's always a factor. There is another one, though, and that is the admission that my family is reasonably well off, which skews things somewhat. They have essentially agreed to help me with any start-up loan needed to establish myself somewhere and helped in building up a large amount of savings for me -- I'm extremely reluctant to ask them for any obligation, though, as it feels like an imposition upon them, while the savings mentioned mostly though not entirely were used to clear out some stubborn debt, which it feels nice to be free of. Indeed, I could almost argue that another reason I'm not fond of the idea of owning is going back into another form of debt again (and similarly with a loan from my folks, though with a hell of a lot better lender's rate). Still, arguably I'm in a situation where there's not as much to comparatively worry about.

I may have stretched that one a bit far.

I also have this feeling that I'm so rarely ever bored with where I live, that it still always feels new somehow -- I felt that in the last two places I lived, where even after five years in both cases it somehow seemed like I moved in yesterday. The feeling of home is intangible and movable from location to location.

Pinkpanther's observation is very sound. I will say this -- I was in fact given the opportunity to buy the house I was in by the landlord first, which was flattering. It would have been too much expense, though, and it would also have been a major fixer-upper. My parents are good with that and always have been, with subtle but strong improvements to all their respective properties over time. I can't say I have much of that impulse, I'm incredibly pre-fab on that front -- and I am DEFINITELY not a home gardener or lawn care type of person!

I'm not entirely certain this makes sense...?

what i'm saying is that buying a home entitles you to one thing: a home (and usually the plot of land it's on, with certain rules imposed). you can work with neighborhood associations on some quality-of-life issues in the area, but don't think that you can or should control everything that goes on in the neighborhood JUST because you own a little plot of land. it isn't all about you -- sometimes projects need to be built, and the construction and noise are a necessary byproduct of that.

I know that some people think that owning a home gives them the right to run the neighborhood but that doesn't describe the majority of people, does it???

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...) (webmail), September 26th, 2006 9:51 AM. (later)

http://media.monstersandcritics.com/articles/1089834/article_images/repoman2.jpg

If I was still using a .sig file, I would totally use that.

City of South Pasadena to thread!

Not revived for five years now after everything? And some of us were despondent even then!

Still happily renting. Still in the same place, actually!

NED YOU ARE JUST LUCKY AND WEIRD OK

This I grant.

Fuck buying a house. Like I'm going to live the remaining 30-odd years of my life in poverty just to gain an asset that I can't sell because I have to live in it.

do any nyc ilxors own? i thought gabbneb might own an apartment on the ues or something but upthread he says he rents. i am enough of a yuppie to have a minor fantasy about buying a brownstone.

Suprised I never posted on this thread before. I want to own, I really want to own. Why? Not for the asset or the investment. For the security of a roof over my head that I wont be pitched out of when I'm an OAP. It scares the shit out of me to think about (me and Jim had a discussion about this once), that renting when you're older may boil down to living in council estates eating canned beans. For me, it feels that way. Melbourne has gone insane with home costs - they now say even buying in cheap fringe outer estates is beyond the "standard" cost threshold (approx $200k for land, so I guess $300k all up?). In the suburb I live in, a 1brm apaartment would go for $300k-$400k. A small, tiny 2brm house? Could be up to a million. It is insane and depressing.

do any nyc ilxors own? i thought gabbneb might own an apartment on the ues or something but upthread he says he rents. i am enough of a yuppie to have a minor fantasy about buying a brownstone.

― max, Monday, March 28, 2011 11:13 PM (8 minutes ago)

i can think of 3 but neither of them post very much anymore.

burt_stanton

ive trolled the listings and there are some 1 and 2 bdrs in my neighborhood that are... "surprisingly affordable," if i could save up the down payment. "surprisingly affordable" in the sense that the same price would buy me a whole house anywhere else in the country.

rereading this thread. wow, i was smart once upon a time.

i have this to add: major debt is no way to live. the 30-year mortgage is no way to live, especially since these days no one knows what life will be like six months from now. adjustable-rate mortgages are a scam. your return on investment as a renter is that your obligation is never more than one year out (sometimes it's one month out). you can bail at the end of your lease and still have decent credit.

if you're determined to buy at some point, save up and get as close as you can to buying the property outright. and treat it as an actual HOME and not an investment. the resale value shouldn't matter. if you wanna gamble, take that shit to vegas.

WORD

i've gotten a bit suze orman in my old age (of 34).

I wonder what bright real estate agent perpetuated the myth that the smartest thing to do with your money is to buy a house

the FHA?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350432677038184.html

max, dmr owns. Can't think who else.

Can anyone talk about this crash that's supposedly going to happen in 2007? I've heard it from several good sources.
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, September 21, 2005 4:18 PM (5 years ago)

hahahahaha

Renter for life. We could probably afford in Chicago, but it wouldn't be in the areas where I want to live most, and the place would probably be smaller than our current one. I'd rather rent.

Own my own place, but mortgages suck.

agreed, im hating owning right now.

three weeks into trying to buy a place, looks like we are going to rent again, since I can't get preapproved for enough to allow me to purchase anything that isn't a crack house.

Revive!

I really like renting but I am thinking about buying again. Talk me out of it.

it makes it harder to pick up and light out for the territory when everything goes to shit.

That's good.

Keep going

When you rent, whatever goes wrong with your house is somebody else's problem. When you own, everything is your problem. And there will be problems.

Yep.

Now someone come and say they love owning. Does anyone normal actually say that?

when you own you can paint the walls any color you want

The only reasons I love owning are that we bought in 1987, we bought the right house in the right location, and we paid off the mortgage in 2002. Otherwise, the renting vs. owning equation has too many variables to say one is inherently better than the other. The answer is hidden in a multitude of details.

When you own, everything is your problem. And there will be problems.

And if it's a condo, it's your problem and also your obligation to try and perform the task of herding cats that is getting your association on the same page about addressing problems.

I'd consider owning a house, but no way will I ever be buying a condo if and when I ever get out of this place.

The only thing that is keeping me from owning is the massive amount of money it would cost to live where I want.

renting is fucking bullshit but then again so is a mortgage, best to squat on BLM land and bunker down

It absolutely all depends on where you live and where you may want to live.

For us, owning still seems to be the best option. But that's because we live in one of the cheapest markets with hardly any ups and downs as experienced elsewhere.

Then there's the factor that our state is apparently the only state in the union where the landlord is not required to give you a fit place to live. To quote from a legal assistance group based here, "This means the floor can be rotten, the roof can leak, and the plumbing does not work." Landlords also do have to "make any repairs to the home or common areas." So there's that.

And finally, if you miss a payment or two, it's a lot easier for a landlord to evict you than it is for a bank to foreclose on you. Hell, even if the bank forecloses on you, you might still be able to live within the house for another six months.

Landlords also do not have to ...

Good lord, that is dreadful!

do you live in the 19th century

Social housing rules. Cheap rents, I got a £1700 boiler upgrade last year that was totally paid for by "hard working Britain". Even when I have been earning half decent money I have never been tempted to rent or buy because I have always been completely comfortable with living in a council house in various shit areas. No fretting over interest rates and if the area is too shit the mutual exchange system is a viable escape option. Sure you do have to be prepared for combat every time you walk outside, but it isn't that bad!