Current Events > Home ownership is expensive as hell.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Today alone, I had to pay $50 for USPS to change my mailbox lock, $140 to get someone to fix my dryer vent so I can use my dryer, and $130+ for window screen materials, which I have to build myself.

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it is, but so is renting. at least with ownership you're investing in something you own instead of giving money to someone else.

edit: wait, you have a mailbox lock? i've never heard of such a thing on a home. apartments yeah but not a house.

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Giant_Aspirin posted...

it is, but so is renting. at least with ownership you're investing in something you own instead of giving money to someone else.

True. But if I was broke after the down payment and closing costs, I would be fucked.

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You cant go anywhere rn, learn to repair things yourself

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What are property taxes like compared to rent?

One little pipe burst $3500
but wait they have to tear down the dry wall, so you have to have a dry wall guy come in and fix that $700
but wait the pipe flooded half the room, so they had to tear up the carpet to dry everything out so mold doesn't form, so you have to pay the carpet guy $500
fun fun, at least the insurance covered the pipe

TheGoldenEel posted...

You cant go anywhere rn, learn to repair things yourself

You want me to try to get my dryer vent up to fire safety codes?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

It's just a hole in the wood with no metal insert.

bknight posted...

One little pipe burst $3500
but wait they have to tear down the dry wall, so you have to have a dry wall guy come in and fix that $700
but wait the pipe flooded half the room, so they had to tear up the carpet to dry everything out so mold doesn't form, so you have to pay the carpet guy $500
fun fun, at least the insurance covered the pipe

Truth.

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Just wait til your basement floods. I was fortunate enough to catch it before the drywall and baseboards wicked up much water and I did the tear out and replacement myself. $2500 for a sump pump and install and $1500 for new carpeting and underlay (the part I did myself)

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"Mailbox lock"? >_> I don't have one of those.

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I've owned a house for 7 years off 900$ a month. Get on my level. It's all about being a minimalist that doesn't care what people think about you financially lol. Granted, house insurance and summer taxes kick my ass and sometimes I need a lil help before I can pay it. But still pretty impressive, Id say. It helps that I don't have any expensive vices. My necessary vice is covered by insurance.

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Who buys a home without not knowing there will eventually be maintenance cost? Things eventually break down.

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Payzmaykr posted...

What are property taxes like compared to rent?

Every place is different, in my county the effective property tax rate is a little bit below 1% of the property value and I pay around $350 a month (well, it's like two payments a year).

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Pepys Monster posted...

True. But if I was broke after the down payment and closing costs, I would be fucked.

This is why you calculate your finances before buying.

Houses cost more than just mortgage and taxes. Mortgage and taxes is the least you'll pay each month. Costs can always go up due to various issues
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Lost_All_Senses posted...

I've owned a house for 7 years off 900$ a month. Get on my level. It's all about being a minimalist that doesn't care what people think about you financially lol. Granted, house insurance and summer taxes kick my ass and sometimes I need a lil help before I can pay it. But still pretty impressive, Id say. It helps that I don't have any expensive vices. My necessary vice is covered by insurance.

Where do you live? My mortgage is $1580 for a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo.

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Ew condos. Do you have to pay a condo fee every month?

And that mortgage includes HOI and applicable taxes right?

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Hexenherz posted...

Ew condos. Do you have to pay a condo fee every month?

And that mortgage includes HOI and applicable taxes right?

Yes, everything included, except utilities. The HOA fee is $300 a month.

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Pepys Monster posted...

Where do you live? My mortgage is $1580 for a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo.

Mid-Michigan. My dad got it in an auction for 10k, including back taxes. I got the roof fixed through a program that helps disabled people. My brag kind of falls apart when you make me explain it. But hey, ever since all that, I been on my own. It's been 7 years since then. Anyone who impulse buys or picks up expensive vices would of lost it by now. Pretty much what most my cousins have done, with way more money.

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Having to pay for repairs on your own sucks, but it's still better than relying on a shitty landlord.

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Because General Contracting charges obscene hourly rates, the unspoken dirty secret of homeownership is that you have to learn a lot of skills. If you had asked me in college if I would ever learn how to fix drywall I probably would have laughed, but the first time a towel rack got ripped out of the wall and I was staring at a hole that I knew would cost hundreds of dollars to have somebody fix or $40 in supplies and an hour of my time... it became an easy choice.

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Yeah thankfully we've had our house for a year and a half and the only maintenance I've had to perform was a fuse for the old AC unit that was 13 years old. A couple months later we just replaced the unit because it was super inefficient. Our house was built in 05' so I'd like to hope maintenance will be minimal for a long time.

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Lost_All_Senses posted...

Mid-Michigan. My dad got it in an auction for 10k, including back taxes. I got the roof fixed through a program that helps disabled people. My brag kind of falls apart when you make me explain it. But hey, ever since all that, I been on my own. It's been 7 years since then. Anyone who impulse buys or picks up expensive vices would of lost it by now. Pretty much what most my cousins have done, with way more money.

Lol at acting like your $10k house in the middle of no where that allows you somehow live off $900/month is even close to a fair representation of home ownership. That is an extreme exception of the norm.

Owning a home can be great and is a good way to help build wealth but IMO you should absolutely live below your means so you aren't house broke or living paycheck to paycheck.

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Having a condo isnt even home ownership

worst of both worlds tbh

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Do you guys runs to a repair man instantly tho? Another plus is that I hang out with much more manly men than me, so I usually just get a second opinion from them, then they either help, or I fix it myself. Like the belt on my furnace, when the whole thing started shaking and sounded like someone breaking into my house.

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whitelytning posted...

Lol at acting like your $10k house in the middle of no where that allows you somehow live off $900/month is even close to a fair representation of home ownership. That is an extreme exception of the norm.

Owning a home can be great and is a good way to help build wealth but IMO you should absolutely live below your means so you aren't house broke or living paycheck to paycheck.

I never said it was the norm. If you read my tone right, it's clear that I realize Im an exception. But it's my personal experience and that's what I have to talk about. TC seemed to understand and ask the right question. Im just not gonna write out my whole deal in the 1st post for no one to care.

And my advice is still sound (and pretty obvious), that not having expensive vices makes all the difference. Smoking cigarettes for example is like a whole nother monthly bill added to everything else. Drinking can be even more than that, depending on how much. If you go into owning a house with all that weighing you down, you're much more likely to collapse in on yourself

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learn to do most stuff your self and dont wait to act on certain things. if you think something is getting wore down, take care of it, dont wait for it to fail just because you dont want to spend the money. too many elements of a house that can cause a chain reaction of bad shit if it doesnt get taken care of in time.

Lost_All_Senses posted...

Do you guys runs to a repair man instantly tho? Another plus is that I hang out with much more manly men than me, so I usually just get a second opinion from them, then they either help, or I fix it myself. Like the belt on my furnace, when the whole thing started shaking and sounded like someone breaking into my house.

It depends on the issue. Any type of electric problem I won't touch. I don't mind doing cosmetic things on my own. I had to tear down my shed by myself because the other option was to have someone do the same thing for $500.

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Do you live in the house from the money pit?

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ClunkerSlim posted...

I had to teach myself everything by watching YouTube and This Old House. But the information is out there for people motivated enough to do it.

Yup, which actually arguably makes owning a house leas expensive. You have the information, so people can con you as easily.

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Last week I paid $4,000 to replace leaky shower glass and fix the water damage it did to the floor underneath.

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I do almost all my house work myself. I worked for a GC in college over the summers though doing framing and drywall so I am comfortable knowing what I can and can't do my self and knowing it's not the end of the world if I mess something up.

People with little to no experience can do a lot on their homes though. A lot of basic stuff is pretty easy and YouTube is good.

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Its becuase of this is why I was considering getting a condo for my first home. Wish tiny houses were mainstream and available for the low middle class.

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I believe townhouses are a step between apts and houses for this kinda stuff.

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Prismsblade posted...

Its becuase of this is why I was considering getting a condo for my first home. Wish tiny houses were mainstream and available for the low middle class.

Really do your research into it.

In this area, condos are just as expensive as single family homes, but they're a third as big, and you pay HOA fees that are like 5 times the monthly average.

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Hexenherz posted...

Really do your research into it.

In this area, condos are just as expensive as single family homes, but they're a third as big, and you pay HOA fees that are like 5 times the monthly average.

True but it's more their small size and low maintenance is why they interest me. I'm a single individual with no plans for saddling down nor do I own or want much in material possessions so the smaller the better. Even if that means paying just as much.

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My advice to prospective new home owners is your first house should be new construction by a reputable builder.

Own for roughly 10 years, do little to no maintenance or upkeep, then sell. That is what I did and overall I paid a total of 2000 dollars for various sprucing and maintenance (roof clean/demoss, siding wash, furnace maintenance, etc) when it was time to sell. And then I used that capital to purchase another home which I sold off in 3 years, made profit again and rolled that into a million dollar home. I've been renoing it for 2 years now, was supposed to sell it this summer for roughly 550k profit... but that changed, I might have to sit on it for a year or two. Oh well.

Don't buy an older home as your first as it will always cost more.

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My mortgage and condo fees end up being almost $500 cheaper a month than what I was paying last year to rent and park my car in a garage, so it's not the end of the world for me when a once every 5 years $2k+ repair pops up

It's listed as a condo but really it's a townhome. 2 stories, double the size of my last apartment

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Ya, it's really location dependent. There are some areas where it makes complete sense to buy. Then there are some areas where it's really more of a lifestyle choice which you pick
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Payzmaykr posted...

What are property taxes like compared to rent?

I pay $1k/year for property taxes on my house, compared to $425/mo for the last apartment I rented.

Plus the house has a full acre, a garage, five more closets, two more bedrooms, a dining room, an office and a living room.

It's kind of a no brainer from that perspective but there are a lot more considerations too, like maintenance and breakage. If we hadn't had our home warranty, we'd have had to replace our HVAC last year for thousands of dollars.

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Typically your property tax is 1% of the houses assessed value or purchasing price here in Ontario, Canada.

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bknight posted...

One little pipe burst $3500
but wait they have to tear down the dry wall, so you have to have a dry wall guy come in and fix that $700
but wait the pipe flooded half the room, so they had to tear up the carpet to dry everything out so mold doesn't form, so you have to pay the carpet guy $500
fun fun, at least the insurance covered the pipe

Wait so you just had to pay $1200 + whatever your insurance deductible was for all of that? Doesn't sound too terrible then.

Also further proof that carpet fucking sucks.

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Property tax varies WILDLY by state. You can have a 4 bedroom house on an acre of land in Florida and pay like $1K a year, where a 2 bedroom house in NJ on a quarter acre will have $12K a year in property tax.

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There's things that you should learn how to do as a home owner. Just like buying a car, you should learn how to change a tire, change your oil etc. When you have a PC you should learn how to handle viruses etc.

It's the same thing with homeownership. The thing is, the things required to know is a lot more drastic, but they are really easy to do. Floors rotting? Learn how to cut the floor out to the beams, level and buy new wood to replace. Drywall needs to be fixed? There are other options, but drywall is easy af to do too. A pipe busted? Learn how to turn of the water and go underneath the house to replace it. You get the point.

If you're willing to learn how to do things yourself it's really not that hard. The thing that I love about homeowner ship is that I can do unconventional things and not have to ask anybody for it. Like I have a concrete sink in my bathroom that I built because why not?

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Slaya4 posted...

There's things that you should learn how to do as a home owner. Just like buying a car, you should learn how to change a tire, change your oil etc. When you have a PC you should learn how to handle viruses etc.

It's the same thing with homeownership. The thing is, the things required to know is a lot more drastic, but they are really easy to do. Floors rotting? Learn how to cut the floor out to the beams, level and buy new wood to replace. Drywall needs to be fixed? There are other options, but drywall is easy af to do too. A pipe busted? Learn how to turn of the water and go underneath the house to replace it. You get the point.

If you're willing to learn how to do things yourself it's really not that hard. The thing that I love about homeowner ship is that I can do unconventional things and not have to ask anybody for it. Like I have a concrete sink in my bathroom that I built because why not?

Agree. Plus doing it yourself is a nice feeling. Worse thing is you can't fix it then call an expert for help and watch the person on how they fix it so you can maybe do it yourself. I was able to fix my washer and dryer myself after looking up a video on Youtube. The dryer when I took off the cover had almost $15-20 worth of loose change in there from the previous homeowner so I made money from it lol.

Some electrical stuff is easy too such as adding in new lights. Just turn off the power to that area of the house and it's a matter of connecting black/white wires.

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