Stop trying to convince me to buy a house!

[kiz]

@Anne_Neville

Owning a house costs more than the monthly mortgage payment. There are taxes, utilities (which may cost more as you get a bigger house), highly variable maintenance costs, and upkeep such as mowing the lawn or paying someone else to do it. Plus, you have to worry about the value of the house. That includes stuff like the quality of the schools in the area, even if you don’t have any kids and don’t plan to have any. Renters don’t have those issues (some of them do pay utilities, though).

Exactly. Every time I make this point, I still get hit with the “But you have no mortgage!” refrain. That’s true. But, it’s also true, as I said upthread, that if I did sell this house and buy another, there’s no way I could afford the mortgage (at least in my area) plus everything else . Hell, I’m not even sure I could afford rent unless the apartment was either in a skeevy area or quite a distance from my job.

Even if you don’t have a mortgage, you can be in a situation where you can’t sell your house for enough to buy another house you’d be willing to live in. You can’t just wait until your lease runs out and then move if you find you’re in a lemon of a house. You have to find someone else who will take that house off your hands (or rent it from you) before you can leave. A renter who wants to move doesn’t have to care who will be there after they’re gone.

That’s where my SIL and her family are at now. They’ve had their house on the market since early spring. They’ve lowered the price twice, and still no nibbles. Their reasons for selling are similar to my own, the difference being is that they still have a mortgage on it. I don’t know what will happen to them if they can’t sell. Neither do they.

[artemis]

@Hampshire

Maintenance (you’d be surprised how many things need to be replaced during the time you live there. Over the past 10 years; new furnace $4K, new driveway $4K, new windows $2K, garage door $1K, new carpet $2K, appliances $3K. This fall I’m having my house painted for $2K, if I wanted siding it would run $13K. I really need a new roof also and that’s going to be a few thousand.)

And coming up with the money’s often the EASY part. Finding a trustworthy repairman or contractor who will actually do the necessary repair properly can be headache-inducing (especially if you’re dealing with a significant structural issue).

There’s no question that over the long haul, owning’s financially cheaper than renting. But paying a higher financial cost to avoid other types of stress can be a very reasonable thing to do. “Know thyself” is wise advice. Not everyone has the temperament to be a homeowner.

[Anne_Neville]

@Evil_Economist

In general that’s right, though there are a couple of caveats:

First, You have the choice of a standard deduction or an itemized deduction. If you choose to deduct your mortgage interest you must give up the standard deduction of $11,400 (assuming a married couple). So, the tax benefit would only be 25% of $3,600, and because your interest payments decline over time it would eventually become worthless (big simplifications here re: itemizing that I don’t want to go into).

Second, treating a reduced cost as income is like treating a sale as income: “Honey, I just made $100 by buying these shoes at half off!” Remember, you’re reducing an interest expense.

Third, to the extent that this benefits homeowners, it’s a transfer of money from the generally poorer (renters) to the generally richer (homeowners) and is morally indefensible.

Fourth, there’s the Alternative Minimum Tax. If you have to pay that, no mortgage deduction for you. The income that triggers the AMT isn’t indexed to inflation, so it could be an issue for more and more people in the future.

Tax laws change. Just because the tax laws are favorable for something now, doesn’t mean they always will be. People used to be able to deduct interest on credit card debt, before the tax reforms in 1986.

[Nava]

@spark240

@Evil_Economist

Sounds like you’ve combined all the problems associated with owning with all the problems associated with renting with all the problems associated with shared living space. Basically, you’re talking about a condo where you share a living room. My guess: these don’t take off. Maybe you’ll have a market with certain first-generation asian families.

Yes, such patterns do have some of the problems of owning and renting and sharing in other models, but they also avoid or reduce other problems. There are people who would like to have more space and a yard, and not be alone at home all the time, but don’t have much money or a family. The shared-house model (either owned by a resident group or rented), can provide that. It depends what works for particular people.

The movement on the design side is a response to the way some people are actually already living, in houses that weren’t originally designed with such patterns in mind. So there’s an existing market that isn’t being precisely met. Maybe it’s not a big market, but that’s not the point.

The main reason why I prefer to rent apartments with only the kitchen furnished (without pots and pans in Spain and France, with them in the UK) to fully-furnished is that furnished apartments assume a married couple with kids, so you get a room with a queen size bed and the rest decorated in kiddie patterns. If there is a so-called computer desk, it’s one of those narrow things with the slide-out part that I hate (I like having my forearms on the table and enough space for my stuff around the computer). In furnished apartments I’ve had issues with management for rearranging furniture in order to leave some empty space (it never got serious, but they were totally freaked out at first); there have been places where doing so was strictly forbidden. IKEA and minimalism are very much my friends.

Those designs would be great for professional flatmates, specially the individual bathrooms. Those are priceless (well, not so much, but certainly a great thing); the bathroom, its usage and cleaning is one of the biggest sources of friction in shared housing.

[Cat_Whisperer]

I saw a blurb on the news a little while ago about how spouses are sleeping separately just because they sleep better that way; some new houses are being designed with two master suites, one for each spouse.

[The_Flying_Dutchman]

@Cat_Whisperer

I saw a blurb on the news a little while ago about how spouses are sleeping separately just because they sleep better that way; some new houses are being designed with two master suites, one for each spouse.

That’s me. Except my wife has the master and I have the second bedroom.This is a result of my snoring, but she has developed her room into a bedoir that frankly adds spice to our sexual interludes, and its more like those exciting times when you couldn’t take a roll in the hay for granted.

[Martini_Enfield]

@niblet_head

Well, then, I’m getting a hell of a deal. I pay $750.00 in rent. And for that I get a great place on a great street in a great neighborhood, with a landlord that mows the grass, shovels the snow, and does repair work within 48 hours. I’ve never in all my years renting had a landlord not do something I’ve asked them to do and in a timely fashion, and I’ve rented in Austin, Chicago, and Omaha. I’m no expert, but my sense is I cannot pay a mortgage and insurance and maintain and repair a house for only $750. Plus none of my time put into it.

This has been my view on home ownership for some years now- it’s cheaper to rent (by far), if anything breaks it’s the landlord’s problem, and since we’ll never, ever, EVER manage to pay off a $400,000+ mortgage, the major difference between renting and owning is who the cheques are made out to.