The "joys" of home ownership (getting tired of things breaking)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Taxes and insurance can be calculated before you ever look at a house, let alone sign papers. Automatically assuming it’ll double your monthly payment is foolish. I mean, it might—I’m almost certain it wouldn’t, but it might—but that’s still something you can figure out very easily. A phone call to your insurance company and visit to your county tax assessor’s website is all it takes.

As far as maintenance goes, the rule of thumb I’ve heard is to set aside 2% of your home’s value each year for maintenance costs. So, for a $200K home, you’d set aside $4K per year, or about $333 per month. That’s not chump change, but setting aside that money still wouldn’t double most monthly mortgage payments. Using my own house as an example if we were owners we would be setting aside ~$195 per month. That’s about 30% of mortgage and taxes combined.

HOA fees, or as you noted flood insurance (which again, you’ll know before you ever sigh papers whether you’ll need or not) can change these calculations.

62

As much as I hate the relentless march of entropy that causes everything to break on a regular basis, I would not want to give up home ownership.

NJ rent would be much more than my mortgage to have a similar home.
I can play bass guitar whenever I darned well please, my wife can pound away at her baby grand whenever she wishes.
My mortgage payments result in equity.

Besides…

Look at the beautiful swimming pool…NOT

The guys are bringing in the dirt in a dump trailer that holds about as much dirt as a full sized pickup. They can’t use a standard dump truck because the overhead wires block the path.
Some day this will be a beautiful back yard.

Oh yes, the joys of home ownership!

63

Oh god, where to start?

The flooding in the basement when our sump pumps get overwhelmed or die. I never would have bought the house if I knew about that.

The leaking of our pipes like every other year. Their was a class action lawsuit against that piping but it was before my time. Again, never would have bought it. It got to the point where I haven’t bothered patching the holes in the wall getting at the leaks. I need to replace all of it but that’s gonna cost 9 grand, and… oof.

And recently, our backyard is flooding when there is a decent amount of rain. Not sure why that’s happening but we probably need to do all sorts of drainage.

Basically, water is a major problem in all aspects.

64

Assuming you have a dry well for the sump pump, get and install a battery backup pump. If the dry well is simply filling too fast for the sump pump to handle, if code allows you can run a separate dedicated drain pipe from the backup pump.

You can also get sump pumps that require no electricity at all and instead use household cold water pressure and the venturi effect to pump the water. A handy backup for the backup. Obviously these won’t work in the event of a power failure in a house with a well. If it was me I’d be tempted to switch and use the venturi pump as the primary backup with the battery powered pump as the 2nd backup.

Installing all of the above would be exponentially cheaper than repairing the damage from a flooded basement, especially a finished basement.

65

PEX is your friend. It’s cheap ($0.25 / foot) and if you make the connections good and tight it’s basically indestructible. My parents redid all the supply lines in their house ~12 years ago with PEX and have never had an issue. They did their whole house (1100 square foot ranch with two bathrooms, laundry room, two [separate] sinks in the kitchen, and 5 or 6 outside hose bibs) for a couple hundred bucks. The pipe is flexible and can be threaded to where it needs to go, no angle fittings and or soldering multiple lengths together. It won’t crack and burst if frozen.

If you already have the walls open, it’s something to think about.

Outdoor drainage is a bigger headache, but with pre-made French Drain pipe available installing one is a lot less of a headache and hassle than it once was.

66

I managed to put enough down on my house (20% IIRC), so I pay my own insurance and property taxes. If you pay less down, the bank creates an escrow account to handle it. So yes, for most people that will be calculated and rolled into the mortgage. The problem would be if someone was looking at a house price and calculating their mortgage just from the house price to determine their payments.

Note though that while mortgage payments will not change (unless you re-fi them lower), property taxes and insurance will rise. I’ve been in my house for 19 years now, and I know I’m paying more now for those two combined (for the year) than I’m paying on the mortgage (for the year)

67

Thanks. I think that’s what the plumbers use when they replace the sections that break. I would love to be handy enough to have the confidence to do this job myself but no way. Plus I’m not even sure that’s legal where I live.

68

Yeah… Home Depot should have me on their Christmas card list give how much I’ve spent there.

69

My washer and dryer are 1975 Maytags. They are still alive and well but I know I’ll have to replace them sooner rather than later. The problem is that they were shoehorned into a 1954 galley kitchen. And they are small compared to today’s models. I’ve only got a few inches leeway for replacements and that just may not be possible. It may come down to removing a cabinet and putting in a stacked setup. Plus I’ll have to have the kitchen rewired at that time. I have an adapter on the plug for the washer and the fuses (those little round ceramic ones) for the dryer are in a box outside (it was fun figuring that out some years ago when the dryer stopped working).

70

I’m not in as bad a shape as you are, but when I replaced the water heater, we had to move the w&d all the way to the right so the dryer door could open (I had put them shoved to the left to make that extra space usable - now it’s just a trap for things to fall off, and for kitties to explore) If the dryer or the water heater get larger, there won’t be room.

Both still work in general, but the dryer’s humidity sensor doesn’t work, and now the washer’s “stop the spin cycle when the door is open” function doesn’t work.

71

Well, that didn’t take long. The garage door opener is now on the fritz.
mmm

72

All our previous houses were in SCal, so that explains my “buy vs rent” confusion, and my skewed version of property taxes and HOA fees.

Our present home is out in the middle of nowhere in NE AZ. Completely off-grid, undeveloped lot, on a dirt road that is 2-1/2 miles from the paved highway.

We have our own well, we put in solar and septic, and to cut to the chase, we bought a mobile home. Used.

See, you’re laughing already.

It was built in 2000, and because it was a repo, we got it in 2005 for half of what the original buyers paid. We joke around that our home was one, where, when folks looked at it, the salesman would say, “Now let me show you what you could have for a little more money.” In other words, our home was the BOTTOM of the line!

We’re making plans to replace the floors throughout. There are a couple of soft spots that are no doubt harbingers of doom. We’re going ahead, at the same time, to upgrade the master bath, and get one of those “step-in” tubs. Mr VOW has Parkinson’s, and he will eventually need that. And I may as well get a snazzy vanity with double sinks, right?

We’re used to replacing stuff. After being robbed twice in six months, we got all the doors and windows replaced with the security, energy-efficient stuff. And we got an alarm system. We were only blacklisted by the insurance company for six months.

Can you imagine walking into your home, twice within six months, and the first words out of your mouth are, “Where in the Hell is my TV?”
~VOW

73

On the other hand, there is the satisfaction of getting improvements finished. My AC will be having an easier time now that the insulation guys put in 14 inches of blown cellulose yesterday. Also, the stuff I’m doing myself is satisfying to finish. In the half bath, I removed the wallpaper, installed crown molding, and painted the walls and ceiling and it looks good. Especially after fixing the ceiling. Now I’m scraping off the shitty textured paint that was put in the main bath so I can do the same there. I already have the paint and the crown molding should only be around $50 so it’s a not really a financial drain. And the practice will let me install crown molding in other rooms quicker and better.

74

The former pool is completely filled in now. Just waiting for the landscaping crew to come and make it look less like a moonscape and give it a good dose of grass seed.

After all that digging, they didn’t find Jimmy Hoffa.

75

What KNOTHEAD ever got the idea to put wallpaper in a BATHROOM? I’ve seen this many places, and I almost experience a nuclear detonation when I see it! Even in a half-bath, it’s WET.

I bet the knothead is related to the birdbrain that invented beige carpeting. Beige, tan, ecru, whatever you want to call it…I curse the inventor straight to the deepest crevasse of Hell, to burn in the hottest fires for all Eternity.

And then some.

That beige crap is always placed in living rooms, dining areas, high traffic entryways and hallways. It becomes stained and filthy immediately, and you can never, ever get it clean!

I need to go take my blood pressure pills…
~VOW

76

Our house (which we bought about 2 years ago) was built in 1956. There have not been many upgrades/improvements in that time period.

We noticed a problem with the bathroom faucet and knobs leaking. Called in the plumber, who took a look at the whole thing, and pointed out that these were the original equipment, and for various reasons could not be repaired, and would need to be replaced. However, they (the plumbers) do not do tile work, so we needed to find someone to do the tile work (both removing the tile and re-tiling) around the fixtures being replaced.

Eventually, after hosting the family for the holidays, the fixtures crapped out completely, and we lost the use of the shower. By that time, we had decided on a contractor to do some minor upgrades in the bathroom. Those minor upgrades turned into a complete renovation (including removal of the all PINK tile/sink/tub/toilet). I’m very happy with my new bathroom, but something that we thought was going to be a smallish repair of existing hardware turned into a new bathroom.

I love owning a home.

77

I had a friend who was renting a house that had wall to wall carpet, in a loud floral design, in the bathroom!

Clearly the original homeowner didn’t have boys.

78

For professional landlords, at any rate, I expect rent always has to cover the cost of owning and repairing the building, plus whatever profit the landlord makes: otherwise, why would anybody be in that business? So rent payments, barring special circumstances, would generally be higher than mortgage payments; they need to cover not only the ownership costs but the repair costs and management/profit costs.

The reason people with less money are more likely to wind up renting isn’t because of the monthly costs; it’s because of the need to come up with a significant downpayment and closing costs. Which they can’t come up with in part because they have to keep paying the rent . . .

Common enough to have acquired a name. Mushroom factor.

Or they did, and that’s why the loud floral design – :eek:

79

And, as of this afternoon, I have a leaking water pipe in the basement.

I know none of you care, but I feel compelled to report it.
mmm

80

Not necessarily.

I won’t go into it, but it has to do with taxes.
~VOW