[mholm]

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.

I redid/improved the bathroom to exactly what I wanted. I renovated the kitchen. I added paneling to the walls. I added a few outlets to rooms that needed more. I wouldn't do these things in an apartment, because rent could go up any year and exploit me for liking my home. Property value has gone up by 50% in the years since I bought.

[zeroonetwothree]

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

[waffleiron]

> 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).

[saalweachter]

I've dealt with two kinds of landlords.

The good one(s) acted like their job was providing the service of housing. They had a budget and paid themselves a salary, and if there was money left in the repair budget at the end of the year they used it for improvements to the properties.

The bad ones treated it as an investment. My rent money went into their own pocket, and any expenses -- repairs, taxes, mortgage payments -- had to come out of their own pockets, and they did their best to not pay for any of them.

[nerdralph]

My wife and I have a few rental properties that I manage. They are investments, chosen based on return on investment and equity (ROI/ROE). Maintenance costs were factored into those calculations. We take care of repairs not because our job is "providing the service of housing", but because we are honest and would not sign a lease (or any contract) in bad faith. When the lease says the property includes appliances, then we ensure broken appliances are fixed or replaced promptly. If/when we can't make a reasonable ROE on a rental property, we don't cut corners to squeeze a bit more profit out of it, we sell it and invest the money elsewhere.

[zamadatix]

Sounds like two different ways of saying the same thing. Each is planning on certain expected return which will have allocated costs for maintenance accounted for as part of the agreement to provide the housing service (which is what the contract will describe in detail).

[jjice]

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.

[cucumber3732842]

There's an uncanny valley between "I own three properties in a 1mi radius and live in one of the units and will swing by after work" and "the company has fulltime maintenance employees" where maintenance is the worst.

[HDBaseT]

You hit the nail right on the head.

As a renter, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Contacting your landlord to get something resolved is a nightmare. Majority of the the time they will refuse to cover it and refuse to send someone out.

Majority of the time they will also not let someone come fix it, without approval, because you aren't not allowed to make modifications to someones property.

We had a fan which died upstairs in a bedroom. The downstairs had an aircon although it was a living room. We requested the fan get replaced multiple times, 13 months late (two different rent increases later) the fan was still not replaced. A third price increase without the fan being replaced and we moved.

[JuniperMesos]

> 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.

I've never understood why people argue that the model of appealing to a landlord to perform house work is psychologically superior to doing that same work yourself. As a tenant, you have an inherently somewhat adversarial relationship with your landlord - they want to minimize costs, and they aren't the ones directly living with the household problem. You are living in their property and are bound to what they replace or repair, and how, and to some degree on what schedule.

Not being able to make my own decisions about what constitutes a household problem and what should be done about it is the single biggest annoyance of renting for me. It's the main reason I would like to live in an owned home; and this intangible facet of living is more important to me than any financial argument about the costs of renting vs owning.

[c0nsumer]

You illustrate this nicely.

Just something as simple as "that ceiling fan doesn't work so well, and squeaks once in a while when on high" can easily be remedied yourself when owning the house by just going buying and installing a new ceiling fan.

Regardless of how handy one is, with a landlord that's generally not allowed without permission, the landlord often won't install as nice of one as you might like, etc.

This goes for every fixture that's not part of the rental. Major appliances, flooring, even door knobs... Like if you suddenly want an electronic keypad on your deadbolt.

Of course, this flexibility has to be something you care about. Not everyone does, but for those of us that do...

[Mezzie]

If you live somewhere long enough and under a negligent enough landlord, you can just do a lot of those upgrades anyway and either take them with you when you leave or just chalk them up to practice for when you own a place.

I've lived in my current apartment for 9 years and I've never met the guy who owns it now (it was sold). I'm also not getting my deposit back, so that doesn't matter.

It's the big stuff that's annoying. Can't install A/C or an exhaust fan in the bathroom, for example, simply because I can't afford it. I'd totally feel comfortable upgrading the stove/fridge and tossing theirs or putting it in the basement. They're not going to find out until I move out anyway.

[somehnguy]

> They're not going to find out until I move out anyway.

Maybe. Probably, given what you've described. But you're still relying on an assumption and the behavior of someone else. It could be sold again tomorrow to an owner who has a real problem with those sorts of changes and it would be out of your control.

[paulcole]

> I've never understood why people argue that the model of appealing to a landlord to perform house work is psychologically superior to doing that same work yourself.

Because I have less than 0 interest in doing that work myself. If I have to email 5 days in a row to get something fixed, that is a cost I’ll happily pay.

I want to spend 0 of my time on home maintenance of any kind. I’d rather be reading a book, watching tv, shopping online, going out to eat, sitting quietly, etc.

It’s not particularly complicated, we just see the world in different ways.

[throw0101c]

> 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."

[thrance]

> 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.

Not my experience, at all. All landlords I've had were lazy assholes who did the bare minimum, but never forgot to increase rent on the 1st of January, every single year.

Paying someone else for no other reason than to have the right to a roof is Middle Ages shit, that future generations will no doubt liken to serfdom.

[I_dream_of_Geni]

To be fair, there's piles of sh*tty renters too, who abuse the system and ruin the experience for everyone. If you have ever been a landlord, especially in certain market areas, it pays to be that "lazy asshole", otherwise you'll lose your shirt (and more). Ask me how I know....

[tstrimple]

I bought a house shortly before unexpectedly relocating to SoCal. It didn't make any sense to sell, so we rented it out while we were there. The renters never seemed like a problem. Payments kept coming in as expected. They moved out and we took the place back over and found out they had converted one of the bedrooms to an indoor pet bathroom. Literally let their dogs shit and piss all over the floor. I always got annoyed trying to find a rental that would accept pets because our children have always done far more "wear and tear" on the house than our pets have. But after that mess we were left with it makes a lot more sense.

[sokoloff]

Where should housing come from if not by paying someone for it (either by the month [renting] or for an eternity [buying])?

My uncle built his own house; it took him ages (and still hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the materials and land).

[hdgvhicv]

If you treat renting as a longer term hotel it’s fine. If you move to a city and want o know where to live you probably want somewhere short term for a year or two.

It’s when you are looking at long term living that there’s a problem.

[UncleMeat]

My experience is that getting a landlord to fix things is a nightmare. They say "oh I'll send someone over" and then when there is a no-show you have no idea what happened and its days of back and forth to get somebody out to fix things.

I don't think I have ever once had a positive "hey this is broken let me call the landlord and they'll fix it quickly" experience.

[FireBeyond]

> 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.

Hah. Or you get letters from the water utility about a suspected leak, you call the PM the landlord contracts with and (great blame diffusion) they "refuse" to authorize a plumber to come look, in just the right way so you can't take it into your own hands for months, meanwhile you're getting calls, not just letters now, and your water bill is $800/month that you still have to pay, but because the home still has water flowing to it it's not considered a habitability "must remediate" issue. Dealt with that one for months.

Or "appliances as-is". Dishwasher breaks. "As is, remember?" You pull out the broken dishwasher, install your own and then have to fight for your deposit back in small claims because the landlord withheld it because in his eyes "the home came with a dishwasher when you started the lease, it needs a dishwasher at the end of the lease" and somehow "as-is" means, to him, "tenant shall repair and replace".

Or when a shitty (hah) weird hybrid septic system fails (home goes to septic, but then to city sewer) and the owners have to pay $15K to fix it, they start denying and stalling on everything after that point because "we just HAD to pay thousands of dollars FOR YOU".

But sure, "call landlord to fix". "Never have to worry about most problems".

[rustystump]

I have lived/rented in many states and still rent. The overwhelming majority of landlords are cheap af. I had the ceiling collapse in an office due to clogged ac drain only to have it happen again because the land lord was too cheap to hire a professional contractor. The pro had the ac clog fixed in 15 minutes.

The current place has this stupid thing where the dishwasher is attached to a circuit that has ac on it so if you run both it flips. I have to flip the breaker everytime i use the dishwasher.

[tracerbulletx]

You can pretty much always finance a repair that size and amortize the expense so that it works out ok.

[smithza]

This is a personality difference. People who notice their surroundings and seek to improve them. People who are content with the way they are. People who are more type-A, DIY, etc. People who don't know the difference btwn a phillips vs flathead,etc.

[elicash]

> 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.

[foobarian]

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]

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.

[Nemi]

50% is a stretch. 20% maybe, depending on the vehicle.

But here is another consideration. Sales tax. If I buy a car and trade one in, the sale price that I pay taxes on is the price of the vehicle I am buying minus the trade in.

For instance, if I buy a new car for $30,000 and trade in a vehicle and they give me $15k for it, I pay sales tax only on $15k. That saves me about $1k in my area in sales tax. If I could have sold the used car for over $16k, then I would technically be money ahead. But your time is also worth something. For it to be worth it to me, I would need to be able to get at least $17k for the used vehicle to make it worth the effort.

[foobarian]

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]

> 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.

[Der_Einzige]

The amount of people who refuse to do private party sales and who insist on losing money by trading into the dealer is mind boggling.

Americans really get extremely stupid when car related anything comes up.

[malfist]

The sales tax deduction makes up most of the difference between private party and dealer resale. For a lot of people getting that last little bit of equity isn't worth the time, hassle and fraud risk

[mizzao]

Time is money, and it's easier to negotiate with a dealer from whom you're buying a car than to coordinate many meetings with randos on Craigslist.

[throwaway894345]

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]

There was quite a funny reddit thread where the OP was afraid to put up shelves because of property value.

[rwmj]

Everyone has a landlord inside them apparently!

[crabbone]

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.

[throwaway894345]

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.

[intrasight]

> 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."

[rwmj]

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.

[brailsafe]

> 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

[akudha]

“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?

[dghlsakjg]

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]

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.

[yardie]

A HOA on a house never made sense to me. There are no amenities they provide worth what you pay. Condos in are different story. You're using shared resources in a limited space. Condos in a bustling urban core are great. A condo in the middle of the suburbs makes no sense.

[technothrasher]

Real estate tax is also somewhat unpredictable year to year (except that it rarely goes down), and can be a large part of your monthly payment. We got hit with a 21% increase in taxes this year because the town voted to rebuild the high school and the main road.

Luckily, at least, we don't have an HOA. Well, actually, we technically do, because we have a shared driveway with three houses on it, and legally here shared driveways are required to have an HOA. But all three of us despise HOAs, so it doesn't have any money, rules, meetings, or do anything. It's just on paper only. We have informal meetings to sort it out when the driveway needs maintenance. After just a couple meetings we figured out that meeting first, alcohol second is the correct order.

[bigstrat2003]

As others said, try to avoid HOAs if you can. But if you can't (in my area it's hard to do), our realtor gave us good advice when we were in the process of buying our current home. The HOA bylaws are a legally binding document as to what the association can and can't do, so if you're going to purchase a home in an HOA neighborhood, read the bylaws. That will give you confidence as to whether some of the situations you mention can occur.

[bloomca]

HOAs can be very tricky, the money comes to maintain some shared amenities. Usually it is not too bad, but in case of condos HOAs maintain much more and sometimes the board makes very questionable decisions and can end up short on cash when big things are required, and that can hike the payments a lot.

As for the insurance, the best advice is just to avoid high-risk areas like flooding zones.

[strongpigeon]

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]

I dunno about the USA, but for much of the world the answer is really simple: don't buy in places that have HOAs

[tencentshill]

>says local homeowner, 2007

[mholm]

I was in middle school in 2007

[shadowpho]

> 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]

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.

[tomjakubowski]

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.

[mholm]

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.