[joshstrange]

> I bought my home in Auburn, WA for $321k, and sold it a few years later for $333k. After all the costs to buy and sell it, I probably lost more money on it than I would have spent renting an apartment.

Any half-competent realtor will tell you that if you aren't going to stay in a house for 3+ years you will probably lose money on closing costs/fees.

Contrast this with my house, I stayed in it for ~6 years and the house went up ~$100K in value. During that time I put ~$50k into it (AC, Insulation, Pest, replaced some pipes).

But most importantly, it was mine. I did have to manage my own maintenance but I've lived through almost a decade of renting at differently places and the "included" maintenance is dog shit. At one point I had water in my kitchen floor such that as you'd walk water would come up through the seems in the vinyl for well over a month... on the 16th floor. I also had long streches where the elevators weren't working and every year they increased rent $50-$100/mo. Right as I was moving out they wanted to add a $25/mo pet fee and the removed our cable modems and made everyone use wifi-only (limit 10 devices). Yes, some of those could be avoid renting a house not an apartment but I've lived that life as well and it ain't all roses either.

TANSTAAFL. Maybe renting and owning come out about even for most people in most situations, but a lot of the "perks" of renting really sucked IMHO and I greatly preferred being in control of my own destiny, never having to ask permission, not feeling like a second-class citizen, not having the owners stop by or want to show off my unit to a prospective customer.

I have zero desire to go back to renting until it's time for nursing home/assisted living-type place for me.

[pc86]

We've been in our home for about 5 years now, but we bought down the interest rate as far as we could so our break-even point is still a year or so out, not counting appreciation. Our realtor told us over and over again than if there was any doubt we'd be in the house for 5 years we would very likely lose money selling it.

There will always be people who break even after 15 years, just like there will be people who hit the lottery and sell for 5x while the ink on their mortgage application is still wet. But 5-ish years on a standard 20% down no points 30 year mortgage seems like a good rule of thumb outside of VHCOL areas.

[iamalizard]

> the "included" maintenance is dog shit

In my experience it usually is.

> Right as I was moving out they wanted to add a $25/mo pet fee

If my landlord did that, I'd be quite surprised as he obviously knew I have 2 small dogs when I moved in and they haven't done any damage. Is your landlord managing lots of properties, not just your own? It's the type of added fee I'd expect from a faceless company, not a person I've had a relationship with for a while.

> they removed our cable modems and made everyone use wifi-only (limit 10 devices)

That would've driven me mad.

[joshstrange]

The place in question for the pet fee was a corporate place. I’ve paid deposits for having a pet before but never a flat rate added fee to every month.

As for the WiFi, yeah, they told me they could raise it to 20 and didn’t understand that I had multiple devices that I didn’t want on WiFi or literally didn’t have WiFi (a handful of servers). The WiFi was the captive portal BS so it was hell to try and get anything headless connected to it. I was so glad to get out of that apartment.

[iamalizard]

Awful. I consider myself lucky to have never had the need to deal with these kinds of setups. At first I assumed "WiFi" was used to mean "broadband internet", as opposed to cellular, as I've seen Americans call it that, but it actually is just WiFi, nothing wired?

I've never had to deal with "X devices max", either.

What did you try to get around the limitation? What about a laptop that would serve as a proxy or a router or something?

The "X devices max" is so dumb, anyway. Shouldn't it be the total throughput that matters? It's like those electrical advices that say not to daisy chain power strips as it's dangerous, yet I've had 7-8 power strips daisy chained for decades with no issues. Obviously the issue is not to overload a single socket with too much power, but if you have 50 low-powered devices it's OK. Imagine if our electric company had a "X devices max" policy.

[joshstrange]

Yeah, to be clear, there were no wires available (I asked, and then begged). Thankfully I was in the middle of buying my house when they made this change and I just dragged my feet until I moved out and never turned in my old cable modem so that I could continue on as I had before for the last month or so I was there.

The device limit was so stupid and for all I know they raised/removed it after I left. Even at 20 devices, it wouldn't have been enough [0]. Had I stayed I probably would have needed to do a wifi->wifi or wifi->ethernet bridge so I could get around the limit and provide internet to the non-wifi devices. Also, just to provide some more info, this was in 2019 so it wasn't like it was the dawn of WiFi and people didn't have lot of wifi devices.

> The "X devices max" is so dumb, anyway. Shouldn't it be the total throughput that matters?

It should be, but that would require some level of critical thinking and the owners of that apartment building had long-since proven they possessed neither the ability or will to think about anything they did, WiFi or otherwise.

[0] Between my partner and I we had: 2x phones, 2x tablets, 2x laptops, 2x Smart watch, 3x servers (not even wifi-supported), smart home hub, smart scale, Xbox, 2x Apple TV, 3x Echo Dots, 3-4 smart plug wifi devices, and then I had a work laptop and a few work testing devices (phones/tablets) so I blew past the ( raised for me) 20-device limit without even trying. And I'm probably forgetting a few devices.