Come again now?
Not necessarily. I can’t even begin to estimate how much my “hobby” has paid in, oh, the last five years. Between savings on doing home repairs, large and small (and ditto for many car repairs), and the valuation of property improvement and salability for much of the other work… I’m a pretty well-paid “hobbyist.”
As far as the renting of housing with Millennials, I think we need to wait another 10 years to see if this trend continues. I think a lot of it has to do with being young and not having great jobs. As the economy picks up and starts giving their careers a boost and they are able to start families, most are going to want to buy houses in the suburbs and buy the cars that go with that lifestyle. Like every generation before them. In the 70s one could have made the prediction that in the future everyone would live in communes based on what the young people were doing at that very moment in their lives.
I used to live near UC Davis, which was famous for its wanna-b-Berkeley culture of bicycles and greenthink. To be a Davis student was to be much like this current image of “millennials,” but going way, way back.
Know what Davis is now? A town of 50+ post-yuppies in $600K-2M houses, carefully guarding greenbelts and town changes to preserve their property values. A vast number are UCD students who never left.
In other words, I concur, but it’s to my regret. Maybe one of these generations or eras that learns “the American Dream” is a counterproductive shuck will actually carry that understanding into adulthood and the future. Instead of reaching the day when they realize that living out of a backpack has suddenly make them cash-flush enough for a down payment on Da Dream.
Of course not. If you are planning to move with 3 - 5 years, if you think the housing market in your area is overheated, if you need so little room that any house in a decent area is going to be too large, then renting makes perfect sense. It also makes sense if you are moving into an area and what to understand it before you buy.
I was reacting to what I saw as renting absolutism. We are paying about 1/3 of what we would to rent an equivalent house, if we could find one. We’ve made a bundle on the house so far, since we were lucky enough to buy near the bottom. And I have plenty of time to do other stuff besides house things, and I do more around it than I have to. Things don’t fall apart all the time. And lots of things that do I can fix in less time than it would take to call the landlord and get permission.
When I rented I had good landlords, so I don’t even have horror stories, but I still much prefer owning.
How the hell is your mortgage one third of the rental cost?
As I just wrote, if you move all the time renting is fine. It’s not like I’ve never rented. (Though my rent always went up some, I’m not sure where you people are finding landlords who are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.)
But not all homeownership involves 24/7 repairs. Thanks to the drought I don’t even have to mow anymore. And I could spend five years getting the soil of my garden into decent shape.
BTW, I agree about fixer-uppers. I know people who thought they were going to breeze through a project, and spent years without one bathroom and one bedroom. I prefer houses in reasonably good shape. And I hire people to do anything big.
I really can’t make this add up very well.
Nobody has to DIY much to be a homeowner. Of course, it’s a hell of a lot more expensive if you have to pay for every little repair and improvement, but there are certainly metric buttloads of homeowners who can’t screw a light switch plate back on.
Renting, great, fine… but how many landlords will fix every little thing, on demand or even on need, and not only refuse to make improvements but bar the tenant from doing so? So okay, you just move to the next box.
And in my experience, people don’t choose between either fun or necessary DIYing and saving the world… they live in SEP-land so they can indulge their own personal interests to their own ends.
Because we have a lot of equity, and the value of the house has gone up 3x over the last 17 years. Like I said we bought at the bottom. Our principal amount is only 20% of what Zillow says the house is worth (which is a bit overblown but not by much given the comps.) Plus, thanks to Prop 13 our property tax has gone up only very moderately, so we are paying a lot less than our new neighbor (and a lot more than the guy next to him who has been here forever.) We also refinanced without taking money out.
Our housing costs, including taxes, are much less than 10% of our gross income. That’s the benefit of stability.
I saw something in the Times that during the bubble housing prices were rising much, much faster than rental prices. That was an excellent time to rent. After they fell, which was a good time to buy. Today they are pretty much in lockstep - the article was about how the housing market has stabilized in a reasonable place.
I was always impressed at how good my father was in fixing stuff. After 30 years I’ve gotten pretty good. I’m not about to take out a wall or anything, but I can do just about anything to a toilet. I also have build up a collection of all the tools and scrap lumber I’ll ever need. When my wife’s clothes pole ripped out from the wall of her closet, I was able to fix it without even going to the hardware store once.
I suppose a real klutz who doesn’t know which side of a screwdriver to use should rent.
I don’t know why people always assume the landlord has to raise rents to make a profit. If they bought the rental property for dirt cheap or they inherited the property, they can pretty much charge whatever they want and still make a profit.
And if you live in an area where no one wants to live except for you, then your rent isn’t likely to sky-rocket anytime soon
Homeowners see sky-rocking costs too. Taxes go up, as do insurance rates. Mortgage payments go up if you’ve got that kind of mortgage. And if your roof craps the bed, your “rent” will go up when you pay for the replacement. Inflation affects everyone.
By nature or nuture - and there are strong cases for both - I am blessed with a large helping of mechanical competence. It’s second nature for me to look past problems in potential houses I know I can fix in an hour, but I understand how something like a rotted door sill could scare “call a guy” types away. And how people can grow up without ever having to learn the basics of minor repairs and fixes.
They usually learn other skills, like how to make a ton of money, live with leaky faucet or… give great favors. 
And if he leaves out milk and cookies, the elves will come fix all his leaky sinks.
Seriously, you are postulating a landlord who would not raise rents to whatever the market will bear, for no other reason than that the market will bear it - he makes more money, positions his complex in line with “better” ones and doesn’t become a cheap/crap-tenant dump. But mostly, makes more money.
Keeping a rent stable for a long-time, quality tenant is one thing. “Not raising rents to make a profit” is another, and well into fantasy.
I was responding to enipla’s sentiment that “being in control of one’s home” is a benefit of homeowning. It is, if that’s what you’re into–which he obviously is. If you’d rather be in control of other things, then it’s NOT a benefit. A lot of people don’t give a flying fuck about this “hobby”.
Homeowners such as yourself seem to talk a whole lot about doing repairs and maintenance. Without meaning to, you are perpetuating the image that homeowning is a lot of work. If you want to convince 20-somethings that you don’t have to be handy to own a house, maybe stop talking about DIYing so much.
FWIW, I’ve never had a landlord who was slow to repairing or replacing something. I think this is because I have been fortunate enough to only live in places where repairs are needed on a regular basis. If repairs aren’t much of a concern for your typical homeowner, the same can be said for your typical renter.
I am friends with a lot of landlords. They aren’t giving long-time tenants a break on rent increases just out of the goodness of their hearts. They feel it’s a smart business decision. There are expenses associated with finding new tenants. Not to mention the risk of having a unit sit open without a tenant. Most of my landlord friends will raise the rent for new tenants, or on tenants who make trouble or don’t take good care of the property. Cultivating the loyalty of a responsible tenant is usually worth more than the discount given on rent, in the eyes of the landlord.
And, as mentioned before, many landlords have inherited properties, or paid off the mortgages. One landlord I know didn’t raise the rent on a particularly good tenant for 10 years, because the tenant could be trusted to take on a lot of maintenance chores for the landlord, and there was no mortgage on the property (so most of the rent was pure profit).
This is a lot more typical from a mom-and-pop landlord with a few units, particularly if they are houses, duplexes, or small buildings.
I’m often irked I have to hire so much home repair work out to people. I wish I was handier. On the other hand, I’m aware that I make way more money per hour developing software than hiring a handyman costs per hour.
Not wanting to or being able to do home repairs doesn’t prohibit home ownership any more than not being a mechanic stops you from owning a car.
How would you feel if you interviewed for a job and they made an offer 40% below the going salary for your area? They said they checked and you can technically afford to live on that salary, so they don’t know why potential employees always assume they will raise their offer enough to match the market rate. Most people would say, “fuck off, I want as much money as similar employees are able to demand”
I’m “postulating” that “raising rents for profit” is not a natural law. “What the market will bear” is. And so is “Whatever I feel like chargin’ ya, 'cuz I can’t be arsed to care about anything else except whether I have income coming in.”
My mother is losing tons of money every month because she can’t find a tenant who will pay her the rent she needs to garner her a profit. I don’t think my mother is the only landlord in this situation, especially in economically depressed locations. Rents are sky-rocketing in every major city in the country right now, but not everywhere. And a lazy landlord who doesn’t feel like making improvements on their craptacular property can charge below-market rent and STILL make a profit. My city is full of properties like this. If I wanted to share living space with roaches and rats, I could save a lot of money.
But money isn’t everything.
No, the analogy would be an employer who offers you, the prospective job applicant, a salary 40% above the going rate. Would you question his economic wisdom or would you say “HELL YES!”
Your analogy is so crazy that I think you must have misunderstood everything I posted.
Wow, this is really clueless. Landlords and employees both want to make as much money as possible. We don’t raise rents to make any profit, we raise rents as much as we’re able to because we want to maximize profits.
I own several properties I inherited. I don’t give complete strangers a below market rent just because it’s technically still profitable to me. I charge as much as the market will bear, including raising rents when appropriate. Any reasonable person would.
I don’t “depend” on the web for entertainment. It is one of my options. I have a Roku stick. It looks like a thumb drive and plugs into one of the HDMI ports on my TV. With it I can access my Amazon Prime movies and the movies I’ve purchased and keep in the Amazon Cloud. I can rent movies through Redbox or Netflix. I can watch shows and movies on the free channels (I’ve been watching Season 4 of News Radio lately on Crackle). PBS has a channel. I can watch You Tube. My brother spends a lot of time traveling for business. He has a roku he keeps in his suitcase so he can watch his movies and series at the hotel.