I don't care about owning a house

[soos_mite_ah]

Owning a house isn't really one of my goals. Personally, I just really like the idea of living in a small apartment and using my space efficiently instead of having a bunch of extra space I don't really use. I also don't want to live in a suburb. Maybe I might want to live in a larger apartment if I have a family but as far as a house goes, I just don't see it fitting into my life until I'm old and I'm living my life in the country side. 

I get that homeownership is an investment and renting doesn't give you anything in the long run. Like logically it makes sense to want to own a home. But it doesn't resonate with me like at all. It makes sense but it doesn't seem as fulfilling to me as other people make it out to be. 

Am I just crazy, too young, and naive for thinking this?

[Raptorsin7]

@soos_mite_ah I've lived in an apartment in a not-so busy downtown and I got sick of it after a while. Having people cramped together like, and having lots of homeless around etc really gets old after a while.

But i prefer solitude over the hustle and bustle of a city. I'd like a suburb house near the water somewhere with not so many neighbors 

[kinesin]

@soos_mite_ah Wanting to own a home generally becomes more relevant to people once they start planning a family, choosing a place for their children to grow up etc.  People don't want to start a life somewhere only to have to move out 4 years later when the landlord randomly decides to sell the property and then have to pull their child out of school and separate them from any local friends they might have made.  Owning a house provides stability and allows you to make real longterm plans, which becomes a much more important thing once you have others relying on you.

[DocWatts]

Renting a House is in many ways the best of both worlds: avoids the downsides of being crammed in to an apartment complex, as well as the downsides of actually owning a House: namely maintenance costs like having to fork out $10k to replace an aging leaky roof for instance, or the possiblity of being underwater on a mortgage if your Life circumstances change.

Edited June 23, 2021 by DocWatts

[soos_mite_ah]

@kinesin That makes sense. I guess maybe the reason why I don't resonate with that because I'm simply not in the place in my life where I want to settle down in one place and have a family yet. Idk, maybe in 10-15 years I might be interested but for now, that isn't in the vision of where I want  my life to go. 

[RendHeaven]

@soos_mite_ah Ok seriously you gotta stop being my twin ?

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Owning a house isn't really one of my goals. Personally, I just really like the idea of living in a small apartment and using my space efficiently instead of having a bunch of extra space I don't really use. I also don't want to live in a suburb. Maybe I might want to live in a larger apartment if I have a family but as far as a house goes, I just don't see it fitting into my life until I'm old and I'm living my life in the country side. 

I get that homeownership is an investment and renting doesn't give you anything in the long run. Like logically it makes sense to want to own a home. But it doesn't resonate with me like at all. It makes sense but it doesn't seem as fulfilling to me as other people make it out to be. 

Yes, yes, and yes.

Material ownership + structural inflexibility in general just doesn't do it for me.

A house is so obviously not something to want (for someone like me).

4 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Am I just crazy, too young, and naive for thinking this?

No.

[Applegarden8]

6 hours ago, soos_mite_ah said:

Am I just crazy, too young, and naive for thinking this?

Do you live in a house currently?

The main advantages of a house is a pretty reasonable guarantee that you will sleep at night and that you can do whatever you want or need to, any time. And for a productive person with a large vision this is very important.

If you live in apt. You may need to bend towards your neighbours or when you have a conflict with them for whatever reason, it may turn really nasty as it did for me, just because I wanted to play guitar, without an amplifier, day time, around 4 hours a week. Still some older people and people with kids really managed to sleep deprive me intentionally. Another thing is that you will have privacy. Suppose you want to have sex with your bf, in your orgasm, you would probably prefer to make some noise or watch something loud or even to act on a project all night, becasue you feel inspired. +going outdors outside your house is very nice. So there you go, I think these are good reasons from personal experience. Ohh here's another. Suppose you start coaching, teaching people or making periodic work related calls, or invite people to your appartment for those things. Guess what, same problem, it may come for a price, because somebody didn't like the probably acceptable noise you are making. So it might be some other people that may not be logical and are angry and are just looking to project their hatred for life and they may stalk, listen to what you do behind the wall, bang for random reasons, they will find how. Please consider these factors and if those haven't happened to you, congrats.

[Willie]

Owning and maintaining a home/property is a separate part-time job you take on and pay out the ass for. No thank you.

[soos_mite_ah]

@Applegarden8 Yes, I'm currently living in a house.

I think that has more to do with having thin walls than it does living in an apartment. I've lived in places that had reasonably thick walls which gave me a sense of privacy but I've also lived in a place where the walls are so thin that you literally have to whisper or else the neighbors will hear you. That was pretty annoying and part of me was always paranoid about what the neighbors could/couldn't hear. One time I woke up early in the morning and I heard someone making the bed and folding the sheets. Like the amount of stuff I could hear was creepy.

Basically an apartment with walls that aren't too thin is the goal. 

2 hours ago, RendHeaven said:

Material ownership + structural inflexibility in general just doesn't do it for me.

Yeah the idea of getting tied down, living in a suburb where you have to have a car, and settling for one place just doesn't appeal to me at the moment. Again, maybe things will change for me in a decade or so. 

[Eternity]

Owning a home or any kind of real estate is the fastest way to up your personal income.  Yes, you have to figure about 10% of value yearly for maintenance.  But our house cost us $43,000, doubled in value the next year, and now it's worth nearly a million in my area of the country.  You can't make that kind of interest on any other type of investment.  The only issue I have with it now is that I'm no longer into gaining material wealth, so none of that really matters to me anymore.

[RendHeaven]

2 hours ago, Eternity said:

The only issue I have with it now is that I'm no longer into gaining material wealth, so none of that really matters to me anymore.

lol

[tsuki]

As with all matters in life, owning a house and owning an apartament have various pros and cons. The preference of one over the other depends on the kind of person you are.

Generally speaking, having a house comes with maintenance responsibilities, in exchange for some benefits. For example, you have to take care of the plumbing, electricity, garbage disposal, walls, isolation, roof maintenance, gardening, mold in the basement, heating in the winter, road access, etc. They usually come with added time cost because they are in remote locations, so school, work, groceries, etc. take longer to perform. They are usually also more costly to maintain.

The flip side is that you have more personal space - both within the walls of the house, as well as less issues with neighbors. You can put your house wherever you want, so access to nature is better, etc. Some people value these things a lot so it's a matter of personal preference and weighing costs vs benefits individually.

I'd say that houses are for more self-reliant people that actually want to spend time on maintaining them. I am not one of them.

[Michael569]

@soos_mite_ah I'm with you. I wouldn't mind living in a house but renting one is perfectly sufficient, at least at this stage of my life. In my home country in Eastern Europe that is unheard of and owning a house along with owning a car and having a family is a part of personal status as we are very blue society. 

But there are benefits of having your own house somewhere in the countryside which is that once your mortgage is paid you're done and no more rents or payments. You can always sell the house if you decide to move 

The way I see it it really depends on what you value the most. If security, family and material sufficiency are of great importance then owning your own house will be crucial where for those who value freedom, travel and not being tied more, renting makes more sense. 

[LastThursday]

The one thing that rubs me up the wrong way about owning a house is being in (large) debt to a bank. Once you're mortgaged, you are effectively enslaved to paying off the mortgage, plus interest. That translates into having to have a steady income to cover it (wage slavery). If your income is patchy (because you run your own startup business say), then you will have the constant worry of defaulting on your mortage and repossesion of the property. However, for most this is all moot - you still need money to pay for rent. The ideal (for me) would be to build my own home and own it outright - no rent/mortgage - no wage slavery. But in the UK no chance, I'd need to be a millionaire.

 

[Zigzag Idiot]

I agree with @LastThursday . I think that the meaning of the word mortgage translates into something like deathgrip. But for those with a do-it yourself mentality building your own home is a good idea. Maybe subcontract parts of the construction that in areas which you see it to be a benifit. I had a small nest egg and owned the ten acres I built on when I started it but it  took me two years working on it every chance I got . Being creative in shopping for building materials can also be a big help

I got finally borrowing $10,000 to get it finished when I was close to completion. Having so little borrowed money allowed me to forego having a homeowners policy which in the last 25 years has saved me roughly $20,000 if not more over the years. It takes a hell of an effort and a do-it-yourself frame of mind. But if anyway possible the rewards for going this way can be great. My house has been paid for now for many years. It’s one reason I’ve been able to go into semiretirement at 50 years old. Never getting married or having children and living a minimalist lifestyle also made this possible. So you can see this way is not for everyone but for those with the ability to do so the rewards are great. It takes a hell of an effort and I should also add that I can guaruntee that it will cost more then what you figured. Something to definitely to keep in mind.  I was in my late 20’s when I took this project on.
If you have to borrow the majority of the money, I would say it’s not worth it but if you have a small nest egg and a bit a ground that’s paid for and also paying for a lot of it as you go along. It can put you ahead in life. It takes one hell of an effort though. 
As a side note, I’ve seen the stress of building house has been the cause of quite a few divorces.

[mandyjw]

I think life is all about choosing what feels best to you, I don't think there is a wrong or right. It's all about tapping into inspiration and making things work for you and your situation rather than worrying about what you should feel like doing.

I bought an old inexpensive house and got married right before my 21st birthday and that seemed pretty crazy and naïve. It was really difficult living in a construction zone for years. It took seven years for the projects to become lighter and more manageable rather than life altering. Now we have a nice big space and haven't had a mortgage for years. It was a somewhat extreme example of frontloading the burden of housing costs. 

I love the freedom to have pets and garden and decorate how I like. I love learning about homes and carpentry. I even love mowing the lawn. But if I lived alone and didn't care about these things, it would be a huge amount of maintenance to deal with. 

[Nahm]

200k house, monthly mortgage, insurance & taxes, approx. 1,200, rents (depending on area) for around 2,000 a month… net of approx 800 a month, 10k a year while the renter is essentially paying off the mortgage.  2 houses, 1,600 a month / 20k a year. 10 houses, 8k a month, 96k a year… after mortgages are paid off, approx 16k a month, 192k per year. From this perspective it seems odd people want to rent (imo), but as this thread shows and as I’ve learned, people have very different desires depending on where they’re at in life. 

A new roof at 10k might eat the profit of a year, so a new roof & furnace, or a buffer fund incase, is pretty much needed going in, but a roof lasts around 30 years, which is 29 years of not paying for a roof (and or furnace, etc), or 290k income. 

For no maintenance, property management companies cost approx 10%.

 

[sholomar]

In my area there's simply no supply, so to try buying a house, which is more space, upkeep, etc,  than I need, would mean doubling or more my monthly living costs. In the US companies like Blackrock are now using what is in my opinion bad fiscal mismanagement by central banks by suppressing interest rates and giving out low interest loans and massive QE to buy up residential real estate. The more they buy, and rent out, the more capital they start to accumulate, and the more they can buy and the big just become bigger and bigger. I would have allowed all these bubbles to deflate themselves even if it meant temporary discomfort for much of the population. I'd also bar large LLCs and corporations from buying up mass amounts of single family residential real estate.

My total monthly costs for rent are around $750/month for a 2 bedroom apartment with garage. To buy any house right now those costs would double or more, because nothing is coming up for sale and it's all quite expensive for South Dakota standards. I'd rather not be a wage slave just to live so I pass on that. The danger is the reckless fiscal policy continues and inflates away people's wage... 3% yearly raises with 8-10% inflation rates. A lot of them are participating in the meme stock bubble or already own houses and profiting off all these paper gains though so not everyone is complaining. If they happen to be on the winning side of the trade...

https://www.yardeni.com/pub/peacockfedecbassets.pdf

Edited June 26, 2021 by sholomar

[Consept]

Looking at it from a investment perspective, it can make a lot of sense to buy over renting. If you're going to rent a place anyway, most likely the mortgage will be around the same as a month (although depends on length of term, deposit etc). If you're paying rent your paying someone else's mortgage if you buy the place your buying your paying your own mortgage. So essentially you'll get the money back and maybe profit if the equity rises to cover the interest on the mortgage. If you no longer want to live there or want to travel, be more flexible, you can just rent it out to cover the mortgage so someone else pays for it. 

I don't buy into blind drive just to pen a home because what happens is people lock themselves into crap deals just to say their a homeowner, so obviously you have to do the sums etc. 

Also if you can get fairly cheap rent somewhere and you have extra money to invest that might be a better option, for example some vanguard funds have increased by over 100% in the last 5 years, so if you got rent for 500 and lived there 5 years and invested the other 500 every month into a fund you would potentially have put away over 60kin 5 years. 

Anyway there's no right or wrong answer but I just think it makes sense to maximise the money you're going to spend anyway 

 

 

[Blackhawk]

Too much practical hassle to own a house.

It's more comfortable to own a apartment instead. (Although I don't own my apartment entirely, yet.)

The downside about apartment for me is when neighbors are making noise, and that I can't make noise. I would really love to play music loud with badass speakers Before I thought about buying a house only because of that reason.

Edited June 27, 2021 by Blackhawk