Reading this thread has made really want to be a homeowner.
Seriously. Why?
We’ve lived in two separate houses owned by the same landlords for ~7 years now. The landlords refuse to fix anything, no matter how bad it is.
Lemme tell you a story…
We moved into a house in 2013. The front porch had some rotted-out boards but the landlord promised to fix them. They never did and I ended up replacing about $200 worth of 2x6’s because it had gotten to the point that it was unsafe.
The front porch light fixture quit working. They promised to look at it. They never did. I ended up replacing it with a similar model. $70 at Lowe’s.
The big one though… Summer of 2015 we noticed little quarter-sized pools of water on our floor in the hallway (faux hardwood). This was right outside the bathroom so we figured some bathroom supply line was leaking. Knowing that the landlords wouldn’t do anything about it I crawled under the house looking for any obvious leaks and didn’t see anything—everything was dry.
We of course let the landlords know right away: I texted them that day, and wrote out a letter explaining the issue that went with the next rent check. Meanwhile we sopped up the little pools of water that showed up every few days. Landlords acknowledged my text but never came by the house.
Eventually the floor started to get soft. Another text. The landlord came by and took pictures. She asked us to stop using the tub in that bathroom as her theory was the drain was leaking. We did so but it didn’t solve the problem. By this time the linoleum in the bathroom was cracking and the floor had several inches of play in it. The landlord came by again and declared the problem was apparently not the drain so we could start using the bathtub again. She hemmed and hawed when I asked her what they were going to do about the source of the water and the damage it had already caused.
At some point we figured out that the problem was a blocked drain pipe from the heat pump. Whenever we ran it to cool the house, the water showed up. Another text. Landlord ordered us not to use the heat pump on “cool.” So we went out and bought $500 worth of window AC units. By this time the floor was ruined. We were literally stepping over holes in the floor.
One day a pipe under the house burst. The landlords were on vacation so had no choice but to call in a plumber. I had to go out to the street and shut off the water. The plumber arrived and declared that he was under orders to just stop the leak, not repair it. Turns out the leak was the hot water supply to the master bath and the laundry room. His “fix” not only meant we couldn’t use the shower in our bathroom, but he also—and I still can’t figure this one out—somehow capped the cold water to the laundry room as well. So we had to run a hose in from outside just to run the washing machine. We had to shower in the kid’s bathroom, the one with the unstable, hole-filled floor.
When the landlords returned they declared the house uninhabitable (ya think?!?) and offered us a house across the street for the same rent. We took it cuz we didn’t have much choice.
The new house is smaller and there’s only one bathroom and it’s surrounded by noisy asshole neighbors. There’s a crack running down the entire house as if one side of the foundation is sinking. The front porch is rotting away—it looks like it’s been rotting for some time and was just painted over. Three windows are missing blinds. The landlord promised to get them but never has. Both doors lack weather stripping and one can see daylight from around 3 edges.
And the landlords bitch if the grass is too long for their liking, or an Amazon box has been sitting on the porch too long (never longer than a day, obviously, but that’s too much for them), or the bbq grill is insufficiently covered, or that wasp nest on the back of the house I never noticed hasn’t been sprayed yet (they drive by twice a week or so to “check on things”) or or or…
Yeah, yeah I know… we should move. We should sue. But our rent is about 40% of what the market rate for this house would be—literally less than half what it should be. I’m still in school and don’t work full-time. Right now we can’t afford to move, despite all 4 of us hating this house. And anything that needs to get done I either have to pay for it or it doesn’t get done. Right now the faucet in the bathtub leaks. I know a text or phone call would be fruitless, and I actually measured the amount of water that’s dripping in a day and calculated that it’s cheaper to pay the extra dollar or so per month than to call a plumber myself. Besides if the landlords found out I had done so they would likely be pissed.
The previous house we rented we had to pay for a new hot water heater and the furnace to be repaired.
If I owned a home 1) presumably I would be living somewhere that I actually wanted to live rather than a place I was forced to move to, 2), a mortgage would cost about ½ - 2/3 of what the rent for a comparable house would be, and 3) I could fix all these problems myself and actually contribute to the betterment of my own property rather than spending time and money to fix something the landlords will benefit from.
So yeah. Home ownership can be a pain. But what I’m reading in this thread is stories from people who take some pride in their homes and are willing—as much as it may hurt the pocketbook and fracture their sanity—to do what it takes to live in safe, comfortable living conditions.
Fuck landlords with a rusty chainsaw. I’d take home ownership over renting any day.
