Anyone else have no desire to own a house/condo/property?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Having been raised in Sub-urbia and now living semi-quasi-rural I have to agree with this thought in a minor point. I have escaped the mentality. Had I never left it, I would be one of them.

Living in a subdivision - mostly the new ones with the McMansions and SuperSized Mortgages and Pottery Barn Interiors and well groomed exterior is extremely creepy. Moreso, are the subdivision laws and bylaws. All the rules that these people impose on each other frightens me. I could never live like that. ( I have a cousin that lives in one of these places and they are completely controlled by the most inane rules. It’s like they are mice or something in some bizarre experiment.)

I understand why the bylaws are imposed ( usually because of one bad apple in the neighborhood) but it is so creepy that I cannot fathom subjecting myself or my children to such rigid mentality. Yeah, occasionally a garbage can will be left out overnight. Yeah, sometimes a car is parked in the driveway overnight. Oh.MyGod. sometimes you can’t mow the law on a weekly basis because there’s been a Death In The Family or Catastrophic Illness. But these people get bent out of shape if they are late…and obsess about What.Will.The Neighbor’s.Think?

I understand the need for a well groomed neighborhood, as I have a neighbor directly to the north of me that hasn’t mowed his 10 acres - except directly around his house - since 1997. Yeah, it bugs me, but it could be worse. In 12 years I’ve seen this guy and his wife a total of three times. At least he keeps to himself and their dog minds his barking. He’s not like the religous zealot down the road with 8 cars on his front lawn - all with tags and liscense - that are in various stages of repair and a placard of the a Bible Quote of the Week that prophesizes doom and guilt on a real estate sized sign.
All in all, I am extremely happy with my home (my husband built it) and the fact we have no major or even minor repairs other than replacing light bulbs.

I also have great neighbors who help us out and we them when it is needed. And we mind our business and invite each other over to parties when we have get togethers.
If I had assholes for neighbors, it would be a different story.

I think it also depends on just how much of a bite out of your month income is your mortgage. If all you are doing is working your ass off to cover the mortgage for the McMansion, that is no way to live. IMHO. YMMV.

22

I hated being in my apartment and sending off $800 a month for my one bedroom unit. We bought our house in '98 and it’s now worth $110,000 more than we paid for it. That kind of makes up for the “hassle” of routine maintenence, in my book. Even if our rent had been locked in at $800 (which it most defintely would not have been) we would have spent $67,200 by now and have absolutely zero equity. Just the thought of moving back into an apartment depresses me.

You can buy maintenence-included apartments and townhouses. They aren’t my cup of tea, but are perfect for people like my parents, who are getting up in years. It’s all about the investment, though.

The idea of neighborhood comitees and rules may seem rigid, but I’m guessing you’ve never had a bona fide nightmare neighbor. I grew up across the street from a house so filthy, nasty, and disgusting that in warm weather you could smell it from across the street. The house it was a twin of (1/2 a twin house, I mean) was unsellable, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. Even the township’s hands were tied. So some common sense community rules sound good to me.

23

It is. Because owning a home is the one major way that personal wealth is created for middle-class people. Do you know anyone who is renting AND putting an azzload of money away for their retirement? I don’t. Most middle-class people can’t afford to pay into a retirement fund in an amount sufficient enough to ensure a decent retirement and pay rent at the same time.

The rents where I live are as much or more than a mortgage payment, and with rent that money just goes down a rathole never to be seen again. Mortgage payments are an investment in the future.

I don’t like yardwork or maintenance any better than anyone else, but I know when I’m old I’ll be able to sell my house if I need to and have something to show for it.

24

That’s where that article I linked comes in.

There are markets right now where housing costs have soared relative to renting.

Let’s say my house has gone from 100K to 300K. I sell, invest the 200K which might pay me $10,000 per year. I’m almost renting for free at that point. That’s a pretty good rental in baltimore. It can almost get you a house. Right now, I have $1000 per month going towards mortgage. THAT would be going into the bank/stock market.

From that article I linked. . .

Keep in mind, these are pretty specific scenarios. But in places where housing costs have far outpaced rentals, it can make sense to put off that home purchase.

25

I don’t feel passionate about NOT owning property, but I also have no burning desire TO own property. I think that by the time I’m in a position to buy a house (I’m unmarried and in law school right now) the market will be pretty unfavorable for a long-term investment. So I’ll be happy to wait to purchase until the market is favorable and I can get a good return on my investment. I’ve talked about this stuff with my boyfriend, and he’s so big on family and kids and nesting that he thinks it’s really important to buy a house, and doesn’t understand why I’d want to wait. It isn’t JUST a place to live! It’s your financial future!

26

One advantage that owning property has is that it is yours and you can do with it what you want. Every rental I’ve lived in with one horrible horrible exception, had white walls. You couldn’t paint them without losing your security deposit. You were stuck with whatver cheap ass light fixtures they chose, usually something from 1980. Now, if I want to paint the kitchen red, I can, if I want to install a new chandelier, I can. If I want to replace the doors, I can.

You have other options other than the city condo or the house in the suburbs. My wife and I bought a rowhouse in a neighborhood that had been through some pretty rough times but which is getting better all the time. The place is very old and hasn’t been maintained as well as it should have been, but you learn how to do things as they need doing.

27

I feel sorry for Californians - that market is just nuts. A friend of mine who lives in the Hollywood area ended up buying a house from someone back during the brief housing bust who was ‘upside down’ - the woman owed more than the market was willing to bear for her house at the time. She had to get special dispensation from the bank to sell.

I have to wonder, too - how many people who can afford the $5,000 a month mortgage are paying the $2,500 rent instead AND investing the rest? Not likely, I think.

28

47, never been a homeowner, probably never will. i.e., you ain’t alone.

If I had an extra few million dollars and found a sprawlingly huge Victorian in good condition near a major city, I might buy it up and gradually fill it with people I liked and thereby form an urban commune. Aside from that, I just don’t have much reason for buying a home.

29

The idea of purchasing a piece of property (house) for thousands upon thousands of dollars, having a debt for the next 20 years or so, and being financially responsible for each and every thing that goes wrong with the house (not to mention property taxes) scares me to no end. For me, it is worth renting just so I don’t have to worry about the heater breaking, or the house needing to be painted, or any of the other billions of things that go wrong and need regular maintence on a house.

Plus, the thought of being physically and financially committed to remaining in one house for a period of time freaks me out. Yes, I know I could sell if I wanted to move, but I’m always hearing about houses being on the market and not selling, or selling below what the owner wants/needs.

I have enough to worry about in life. I don’t need the responsibility of a house on top of that.

It helps that I rent from an owner for an incredible price (that hasn’t been raised in the past 8 years) who is very good about making whatever repairs need to be made.

30

I didn’t, actually. A couple of years ago, I was renting a very nice condo from a very good landlord. Then my very good landlord decided to sell. I’d never pictured owning a property, but I loved my apartment. As a result, even though I went in kicking and screaming, I now own a very nice condo. It still surprises me sometimes.

CJ

31

Not only do I have no desire to own any property but I also do not - and probably never will - have the means to do it, if I sought to buy anything where I live (Ealing, West London).

A studio flat in these parts goes for a minimum £120,000 (US$210,000), for which one would have to be earning about £40,000 (US$70,000) p.a. to cover the mortgage.

I did own a 3-bedroom house when I lived in Newport in South Wales in the early 90’s. It cost me £37,000, I spent £4,000 on necessary repairs and then sold it two years later, after my mother had died and I’d moved away, for £33,000 when the housing market was perhaps at its lowest.

32

You sound excessively risk adverse to me.

I don’t know how someone with your attitude will have any money at all because someone afraid of the financial liabilities of buying a house is about a million miles away from putting their dough in the stock market or any other investment that will benefit them in the long run.

33

MrAru and I have a 2.75 acre [more or less … and the ‘more or less’ is actually on the deed! :eek: ]

We have been here for 15 years now, and have another 10 on the mortgage, so that by the time he retires we will own it outright. The house is miniscule, and has issues because of the asshole that originally built it using a 20 foot x 20 foot cinderblock house. It looed good when we bought it, but over the intervening years we have discovered so much that is just barely code [mostly Bob Vila-isms … looks great, but isnt the best way nor most durable way of doing things…quick fixes to get the place on the market fast] but it does have a very nice 3 storey 20 foot x 30 foot barn that is mostly finished off.

What we can do with the property is do as much as possible to get ‘off the grid’ with regards to our utilities and foods. At various times we have/have had sheep, chickens, turkeys and ducks, and have planted assorted veggies. While he was in the Navy, planting and animals were sort of hit and miss because of his needing to be at sea for odd periods of time. Now he is retired from that and working a regular civilian job, he is getting more into fixing the place up and getting the place changed over to being more selfsupporting. If we can end up affording the PV units and equipment to get more of our electricity from the sun and wind, or get into biogas generation from methane produced from our own biowaste it would be great. WHat we can do is set things up to be comfortable and aid us in saving money towards retirement and when we are no longer able to maintain ourselves we can sell and use the cash to get into assisted living. We couldnt do that if we had to continue paying rent to someone else.

34

I have a mom who owns her own house–actually, it’s a money trap and is literally falling down around her ears. She can’t afford to fix the plumbing that’s leaking from the bathroom into the kitchen, nor can she afford to replace the peeling kitchen floor, or the windows which lead air like their open even when they’re closed. Every summer she spends too much of her time (that she really doesn’t have) mowing the yard, messing with the lawn mower, and all the other yard work that eats away at her time and energy. The house needs to be rewired (electricity) and guess what–she doesn’t have the money to do so. Each year, she’s sweating property taxes. And, no, this isn’t some mansion in the country. It’s an average house that she’s had for years and years. It’s been more of a stressor to her than anything else, other than her cancer. She’s pretty much stuck looking for a job–in a horrible job market–in her area because she’s financially bound to a house that she now owes a second mortage.

It’s not that I’m “risk adverse”–it’s just that I’ve seen another reality than the one with stars in my eyes of home ownership. We don’t all live in a world where we have the luxury of things like owning a home–and yeah, in come cases owning a home is a luxury that not all can afford.

35

My thoughts exactly.
Heh, plus there’s the evil side of me that quite likes the thought of putting down a downpayment on a house and then renting it out to some other [del]chumps[/del] er, people and let THEM pay the mortgage off for you.

I own a couple of houses, but right now I stay in an apartment because it’s closer to work. However, if I find a house close enough to work, I’ll bee all over it.

I miss my yard and my dogs… :frowning:

36

Anyone putting away an “azzload” of money for their retirement? Me. And my husband.

We live in an area where to buy the same space we now rent we’d be looking at a mortgage payment between $600 and $1200 MORE than we now pay for rent.

Both my husband & I contribute heavily to our retirement funds (he about 15% of his income, me just over 20%, AND we have non-retirement savings of just under 50K. How do we do it? We make a decent wage (we’re not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination - we’re solidly middle income for this city) and we don’t have a lot of things we like to spend our money on.

Should we buy? Not right now. We don’t have a 20% downpayment for anything in a neighborhood we’d actually want to live in, so with PMI the mortgage payment would be prohibitively expensive, and possibly force us to reduce our retirement contributions. Looking at building equity in a house as our money to retire on feels too risky, since the real estate market can be volitile.

37

Well, you’ve seen one case, and you’re extrapolating based on that.

If you really polled people here, I think you’d find that most of us have to do some regular upkeep on the house, but the money we’ve put in could be recouped by selling the house as it appreciates and we gain equity.

Of course there’s horror stories out there. Focussing on the negative and making a decision based on them when they’re not the norm is practically the definition of being risk adverse.

If you don’t have money to purchase a house, that’s one thing.

But to have the money and NOT purchase because you’re just worried about losing money on your home purchase defies the odds. It’s like putting your money in a savings account instead of the stock market because you know someone who lost money on pets.com.

38

I compare buying a house vs. renting to buying a car vs. leasing.

Yes, leasing is cheaper. Yes, you can have a new car every 3 years. Yes, if it’s a new car you won’t have to pay to get it fixed when something happens at 50K miles cause you won’t have the car by then.
But that’s such short term vision that you fail to see that in the long run you lose out financially. Get a 4-year loan on a new car, keep it for 8 years, go 4 years without a car payment, sell it for a couple grand when your done. And that’s on a DEPRECIATING purchase!
Take your average 25 year old. Probably expects to live to around 80 or so.
He buys a house with a 30-year mortgage, or if he refinanced when rates were low got into a 20-year. So when the guy hits 45 or 55 years old he pretty much lives rent free for the rest of his life. That’s 25-35 years of free rent.
20 to 30 years from now I doubt you’ll be able to rent a place for less than $1000.
Over those 25-35 years the renter now has to come up with another $300K to $420K. Most of that while he’s retired.

And it’s not like he’s tied to the house for the rest of his life. If his house is worth $250K after it’s paid off, he can always find another $250K house in another city and move right in.

39

Actually this is precisely what happened to many older Americans cities. For example Philadelphia lost 800,000 people from the 50s-90s while the suburbs exploded by at least a million. Detroit proper actually lost over a million people as its suburbs expanded.

I’m single & in the camp with no desire to saddle myself with a house at this pint in life, the one problem with that being that I have a lot of interesting stuff that becomes difficult to move and store. In any event prices of city real estate have quadrupled in recent years as some suburbanites have suddenly decided it’d be cool to move back ( :mad: ), meaning that most of us who grew up in the city can no longer afford to buy a house in desirable areas.

To an extenet that choice has been made for me.

40

Not to give financial advice, especially when not asked for, but I can’t resist…

I had my finance department do a few favors for me (as I’m looking to buy w/in 10 months when my lease is up) and crunch some numbers. Knowing the rate of appreciation over the last couple of years (I went as far back as 1990, so my numbers included 2 recessions, one huge recovery, and one good recovery), rate of inflation and comparative prices, I had them do an off the cuff ROI and even at $1500 more, it still made more sense to buy. Of course, at that far end, one must have a lot of utility and value in that house (which I did: appreciation near 10% consistently for the last 15 years, in 1990 dollars, and very lively turnover in ownership, and not just flippers). This is the hardest part, imo.

IMO, one should only really match the amount of savings in his 401(k) against the max annual contribution of one’s employer. E.g., my employer matches 100% my first 12% up to a certain dollar amount (which I hit earlier than 12% unfortunately, much against my protest to my boss). Again, imo, the money is then better saved through your own liquid plan, or if the employer’s plan is so great, in that plan (though, the liquidity part is tough to beat). The non-retirement savings you have right now can be used as a down payment, and the money not going to retirement (assuming you actually have hit the employer’s max contribution) can replace your liquid cash flow.

In addition, PMI shouldn’t be a problem because one can do double mortgage or other financial arrangements to rid one’s self of that ridiculous PMI. Granted, there is a risk, but I personally believe that one cannot get ahead in life without assuming a little risk. Keeping money in a non-liquid 401(k) can be just as risky as owning a home. The market can take a severe downturn causing massive harm against the principal, and inflation can eat away all the gains. If those things happen, you at least still have your house, and you’re protected against inflation if you took out a long term mortgage – which I haven’t decided to do yet, mainly because I don’t feel like gaming the interest rate.

Also, the arguments about not being tied to one place are also not particularly sound because one is still locked in a mortgage. Mortgage companies/banks (from what I have seen) are more flexible when it comes to people not making the mortgage. Also, I feel that finding a sub-tenet/breaking a lease invites just as much hassle as finding a buyer, which are directly proportional.