[Sohcahtoa82]

> 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.

[nostrademons]

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.

[DamonHD]

> you also know for sure when you're going to leave it

Well, about that...

There is a thing called a Compulsory Purchase Order in the UK, with equivalent in the US for example.

Guess which freehold home owner with two thumbs can expect a CPO sometime in the next 10 years?

[bsammon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_purchase_order

The USA (and other countries?) equivalent appears to be "Eminent Domain": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

[csomar]

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).

[Sohcahtoa82]

> 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.

[csomar]

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.

See this: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/gmaps.jsp?indexTo...

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.

[Panzer04]

Yep, this.

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)

[colechristensen]

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.