> I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper.
It really isn't, and I don't know why so many homeowners act like it is.
I bought my house in 2015. It was built in 1983.
The only things I've had to do are a roof replacement, HVAC upgrade, and deal with a broken water main.
Sure, none of those were cheap, but that's 3 events in 11 years, and the first two I expect to not have to do again for at least 15 years, and the water main was a random one-off thing, and it didn't flood the house. It put a lot of water into my crawl space, but it didn't become a problem.
People who swear by renting will use it as evidence to show that owning is more expensive than renting, but I think they just ignore that those costs are factored into the rent, not to mention the fact that once I noticed my roof had a problem, I had people out the NEXT DAY to give quotes on replacing it. When I replaced the HVAC (Old A/C compressor was frequently tripping the breaker and was underpowered), I was able to choose to upgrade rather than dealing with a landlord who would install the cheapest thing they could find.
But ah...I've digressed.
The point was that home ownership isn't nearly the maintenance burden some owners seem to claim it is, and when there is a problem, being the one in charge of getting it solved, rather than having to harass a landlord into solving it, is nice.
The incentives change when you become a homeowner. You reap the benefit of any improvements you do to the property; you also know for sure when you're going to leave it, and you have the freedom to do whatever you want to do to it. Before, when you were renting, any improvements you did were throwaway time and money, benefitting the landlord and future tenants more than yourself.
Many homeowners respond to these incentives by doing more improvements.
This is also why many governments (both local and federal) subsidize homeownership. It incentivizes residents to improve their properties rather than let them rot, which has positive externalities for many of the surrounding properties.
Are you saying that during the 11 years you never had an electrical issue, window/door breaking, a paint job, a clogged pipe, mold growing somewhere, a tree that needed handling, etc... You either have very high quality materials, don't care or were just lucky. Usually something (small/medium) breaks every 2-3 months or so and something (medium/big) breaks every 3-4 years or so. Depends on usage too (1 person is very different than a family of 5 where 3 are kids jumping around).
> electrical issue, window/door breaking, a paint job, a clogged pipe, mold growing somewhere, a tree that needed handling, etc
I did forget about two of those. I did need to get some trees handled a few years ago. Was about $3,000 to get like 5 trees (A couple over 150 feet) removed. And we did get the house repainted, but that wasn't completely necessary, but was a nice to have. Wasn't that expensive, surprisingly.
But have not had electrical issues (Unless you count installing an EV charger), broken door/window (Unless you count my dumb ass trying to walk through a screen door and tearing it up, but that's a $150 replacement from Home Depot I install myself in 5 minutes), no clogged pipes, no mold.
Even my water heater has been fine. No idea when this tankless heater was installed, but it's been 11 years and no leaks or problems.
I did have the garage door tension spring suddenly snap, but I'm fairly sure that was only $300 to get fixed.
Again though, if I was renting the cost of all this work would have been included in rent. Sure, renting makes living costs more stable, but in the long run, I'm not convinced there's a scenario where it comes out cheaper, even if you're investing the difference. Rents in my area have gone up 75-100% in the last 10 years. My mortgage stayed the same.
EDIT: I suppose if you're in an area where rents are significantly cheaper than mortgage payments, it may be cheaper to rent. But in my area, it's very close to 1:1. When I bought my house, it was $340K, minus a $20K down payment. $320K at 4% for 30 years was $1527/month. Plus property tax brought it to about $1,900/month. Meanwhile, the rental estimated value was $1,800/month.
Rent is determined by supply/demand. In the USA, rents are higher (than buy) because rental businesses are dominated by companies who can do the math. In many parts of the world, rental businesses are small/micro by someone/family who want to own property.
So for many people around the world, it's more economical to rent. You are basically being subsidized by the people who are obsessed with the idea of owning a property.
A unit (multi-dwelling property, not necessarily an apartment) might cost 650k here, but only rent for 500$/w. 25kpa is a 4% return on that principle, before expenses (property management, maintenance, rates/taxes etc).
The only context in which it makes sense is if capital gains/land value goes up, which it has historically but that's no guarantee.
Houses make all these numbers even worse - higher upfront expense (land value) and lower rental yield (they rent for more, but tenants prefer a better house/dwelling more than they care about a back yard, so cost goes up more than rent does)
More to the point, some people just want to be constantly changing/improving things and a subset of those folks need to acknowledge that this is a choice not necessity.
Most homes are fixer-uppers. They graduate to that after just a couple decades. I owned 2 homes, both in the 20-30 year range in 2 different cities.. combined (sometimes both) they needed... new roof, new hot water heater, kitchen and bathrooms updates and water mitigation, pest damage and control, leaky pipe fixing, wood deck replacing, furnace and AC replacements, basement flooding issues, foundation issues, probably more I can't remember.
Home ownership sucks and after selling my previous home I'm so glad to be renting. Just never having to deal with another contractor makes me so happy. :)
Apartments are the middle ground. I bought one about 4 years ago and haven’t had to do anything. Any issues like water heaters and such get handled by the building management. Eventually I’ll have to repaint and repair the internals but it’s been good so far.
If professional inspectors cannot tell what makes you think you can? Our first home was inspected by a bank inspector + my wife's father who works in construction and everyone found it OK. We had the second home inspected by 2 separate inspectors and both OK'd the house with only minor issues.
All our friends have equally terrible stories. Maybe you just got lucky or haven't owned a home yet?
Most "professionals" in most professions are mediocre, and even when they have potential their incentives are rarely aligned with yours. Bank inspectors don't care about the same things you do, and construction workers don't necessarily have skills which are directly transferable to inspection, at least not without training and practice.
Saying that out loud, yes, inspection is a skill like any other, and it's a bit simplistic for me to say that "obviously that house is good/bad," at least as an intervention I'm recommending to randos I don't know.
But...if I've just gotten lucky then I should buy some lottery tickets. I'm never wrong when I point out the places a house is going to fail or the places where it's going to succeed. My background is a bit off the beaten path (lots of construction, handyman activities, bank demolitions, out-at-sea yacht repair/captaining/maintenance/emergences, electrical installations, whatever -- at least until I finally settled down into a more stable tech career); maybe that helps, or maybe I have some loose wires upstairs. Whatever the case, I don't think it's hard to avoid a bad house if you take the time and care to properly inspect it (and it might take a lot of time, including some disassembly -- big red flag if you can't peek into the internals, and I wouldn't make a multiple hundred thousand dollar investment if you aren't allowed to check on the details).
Hi - homeowner here who is NOT in an fixer-upper. "every single weekend" is clearly hyperbole however here is regular maintenance for me:
- once a quarter clean the pollen off the A/Cs
- once a week clean the pool (okay I pay someone but still its part of maintenance)
- inevitably something on the pool goes wrong
- once a week clean my grill
- Blow leaves (seasonal) off porch
- pull weeds
- power wash the deck
And then most homeowners, no matter how new your house is, inevitably find an endless amount of "projects" to improve their home experience. Wife wants a table for the grill made, I add automated sprinklers, we put new planters for a garden in our backyard...the list goes on..
I'm confused - so are you working on your house every single weekend, or not?
Because that list clearly says "once a week" for one item and has a ton of stuff on it that looks pretty regular, like if you're not doing it every weekend then it'll mount up to be a real problem that takes you all weekend.
Different homeowner - most of the high frequency stuff there is quick and easy to do regularly with practice and it slots in pretty well with just living.
It's more in order with keeping yourself, your dishes, your clothes clean and exercising.
Slightly physical stuff (eg: hedging - waving a weighted object about from ground level to above head level for 20 to 30 feet say) is desirable to some - cheaper than gym work, keeps the body moving, fits in well between at desk sessions and a good time for thinking while you flex.
I get that, and agree. It's just the whole "every weekend is overblown" and then listing stuff that you need to do every weekend thing that didn't make sense.
All weekend every weekend I'd agree is probably overblown, unless you enjoy it as a hobby. Or as you say, an alternative to the gym.
Yardwork and cleaning can easily take up hours per week. That's why we outsource it. When I was a kid, it felt like all my dad ever did on the weekend was yardwork, fix cars, and drive me to sports practice.
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.
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.
Go ahead and try and mow that after its flopped over. Mower is going to choke with how much grass you are putting into it. You may need to weed wack it down and rake or blow it out before you can mow.
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.
I live in the midwest and there never has been a time where any lawn I owned, nor was owned by anyone that I know, needed mowing 3x a week. You might like to do it to keep a perfectly manicured lawn, but it definitely isn't needed.
How much rainfall you get in the summer months? That is probably why. I do not kid with the 3x a week. If you don't keep up the grass gets too long and chokes the mower.
Apparently robotic lawnmowers work pretty well these days, though it sounds like only one might not keep up if the lawn needs regular mowing that often.
You can never fully automate lawn work because a big time sink is actually stick pickup ahead of the mowing. Also, every property is loaded with edge cases.
This is true! But apparently the whatever percent that can be automated has crossed the line and become "worth it" for some.
It's also worth noting that owners have changed their behavior to favor their robot vacuums, though I have not read any similar examples for robot lawnmowers yet.
And having a grass lawn is actually quite expensive (water) and borderline illegal/immoral (water) in the American Southwest. Having a grass lawn is only mandatory in a few gated communities with out-of-touch HOAs. We’ve gotten used to the xeriscaped look…blends well with the brown stucco/adobe exteriors. When you don’t have much green, it becomes a (cheap) accent color (e.g. shrubs, evergreen trees) rather an expensive-to-maintain background color (e.g. lawns).
That would be fine in late summer but in growing season chances are you aren't noticing the increased mowing frequency. Most of it happens when you are probably working 9-5 after all.
I work from home, I'm well aware of when my neighbors get their lawns mowed, and mine perpetually looks unmowed since I mow on the weekends and they have lawn services that come on weekdays.
It depends. If you own a single block dwelling and have a yard with trees, plants, lawns or a pool there are always things to do.
$500/year for the garden is very conservative, even when you're doing all the labour.
It would be more like $500/month were you to get a gardener in. If you need an arborist (for example cutting back tall trees close to power lines or encroaching on neighbours) it gets expensive very fast.
A pool also costs at least $500/year just in chemicals.
It really isn't, and I don't know why so many homeowners act like it is.
I bought my house in 2015. It was built in 1983.
The only things I've had to do are a roof replacement, HVAC upgrade, and deal with a broken water main.
Sure, none of those were cheap, but that's 3 events in 11 years, and the first two I expect to not have to do again for at least 15 years, and the water main was a random one-off thing, and it didn't flood the house. It put a lot of water into my crawl space, but it didn't become a problem.
People who swear by renting will use it as evidence to show that owning is more expensive than renting, but I think they just ignore that those costs are factored into the rent, not to mention the fact that once I noticed my roof had a problem, I had people out the NEXT DAY to give quotes on replacing it. When I replaced the HVAC (Old A/C compressor was frequently tripping the breaker and was underpowered), I was able to choose to upgrade rather than dealing with a landlord who would install the cheapest thing they could find.
But ah...I've digressed.
The point was that home ownership isn't nearly the maintenance burden some owners seem to claim it is, and when there is a problem, being the one in charge of getting it solved, rather than having to harass a landlord into solving it, is nice.