If you have to take a job you don't like to be able to afford the house, be aware that nothing changes once you own the house. Most likely you'll still need the job to afford the running costs of the house.
There's no "I'm free once I'm a home owner" thing.
> There's no "I'm free once I'm a home owner" thing.
I finally signed up to an account to HN to say emphatically that it's the opposite.
Owning a house is a huge responsibility that takes up the vast majority of my time, and it's a millstone around your neck if you ever think about moving somewhere else.
I was happy to sell my house and trade the loss of equity (and the last 10 years has been outrageously exceptional to the usual appreciation of property) for the freedom that living in an apartment gave me. Leaving for a month? Ask your neighbour to water the plants and walk away. 10-20 hours of maintenance and upkeep each week? Now it's 0. Constant accumulation of tools, devices, and products? Not needed.
I seem to be an exception, but I have no need to define who I am by my housing, nor do I need the security of owning my own house. I have also lived on three continents, so I appreciate the ability to pull up stakes and move with very little fuss.
> 10-20 hours of maintenance and upkeep each week?
What in the world? This doesn't even come remotely close to passing the sniff test. Is your idea of homeownership like, constant remodeling or something?
I do zero hours of maintenance/upkeep per week, just like you with your rental.
Is your landlord now doing 10-20 hours of maintenance/upkeep per week for every apartment? Of course the answer is no.
I've seen houses which just grow shrubs over the whole lawn (sidesteps lawn maintenance, I suppose you may have to trim shrubs but its not that bad, really, compared to grass which grows almost overnight).
The other side of keeping up with maintenance - if you don't have time nor want to, hire away. It will eat a significant chunk of change to hire all the professionals your landlord was hiring, the difference being you are hiring yourself versus being dependent on the landlord.
For the DIYer, tools acquisition is definitely a PITA. Hardware stores have a decent selection mostly of what you need, but it would be nice if there were preset of tool maintenance you could order, maybe even save you money over long term buying it all piecemeal.
I'd imagine the real time suck would be for planning/research for it all, if you are used to spending your time coding, playing games, or otherwise amusing yourself, yes for the first couple years you will not have any time for these things as you are acquiring your skillset(s).
But that could be said for going back to school, etc. I think it's pretty valuable to be able to maintain your own dwelling apparatus, personally. It means you'll never be without reasonable shelter, so long as you have some access to raw materials, tools.
I don't check my plumbing or drainage. And a lawn is a difference between a house and an apartment, you're right about that, for me it's about 2 hours a month (which I pay someone else to do) rather than uh, 40-80. However I believed we were discussing ownership vs not ownership, rather than apartment vs house.
Checking your plumbing and drainage? What do you mean? What would you do weekly that involves this?
Lawn maintenance is maybe one or two hours a week at most, and that is mainly because we like to keep it pretty tidy. Then again, we would have needed to do similar maintenance (in the UK) for a rental if we wanted to keep the same standard for the garden.
If I was living by myself or just with my wife I would stick with an apartment. The kids spend so much time in the backyard, and it is hard to find an affordable apartment that has enough space for all of us to live, let alone also WFH that my wife and I are both doing. Plus, how do you build projects without a garage and outside area to work on things?
You didn't do enough research into your house purchase, or you weren't able to afford a well built house.
Houses like anything else have lifetimes, You don't get to be a 200 year old house without having major maintenance done at least a couple times. Buying a poorly maintained, or constructed, old house is a nightmare, if it's bad enough you've discovered why some houses are condemned.
Modern construction often has a longer lifespan and more readily accessible materials, older houses are a mixed bag - some gems that may last hundreds (thousands?) of years, lots of houses that need major repair. Some in the middle too...
Home ownership is as much a comfort as it is a fantasy. There are true perks, eg, you're mostly in control of the regular costs (rent vs mortgage) but it also has downsides, like... basically any hazard and everything location-related.
PS: I feel weirdly kinda honored that you created your account and replied to my comment. Anyway, I'm just being me ;)
Out of curiosity, why are you assuming that not exactly what parent was thinking?
> nothing changes once you own the house
Why? What does this mean and is it actually true? The monthly/yearly cost of owning a house is typically much lower than the mortgage payments. If buying a house in cash, the maintenance usually is low enough to consider lower paying jobs. Needing a high salary might enable remodeling but basic taxes and upkeep are very very different from sale price or the payments to a 30 year loan. In my experience something absolutely changes once you fully own the house.
Recently replaced the roof on my house and the cost was equivalent to a year of mortgage payments. Prior to that, had to replace the AC for about 6 months of mortgage payments. Next big expense is windows, which I expect to fall somewhere between the two.
Totally agree there are some sizeable maintenance costs, I’ve had to do a roof, windows, remodeling, plumbing, all kinds of stuff. It’s still lots less than the purchase price. And I had to pay them on top of the mortgage, it’s not like maintenance waits to start until the mortgage is paid off, right? Paying off the mortgage simply eliminated one money drain for me but didn’t change the other, so my average monthly expenditure went down.
Rentals have exactly the same maintenance requirements as owned property. The fact that you pay for a lease doesn’t magically make the roof last forever.
As a renter, this overhead is baked into your lease. As a homeowner, I can simply tap into home equity to do a major repair at single-digit interest rates over a decade. Something you will never be able to do as a renter.
$15k to replace the sewer plumbing. $9k to replace the sewer line. $9k for a replacement roof....
I mean, yes, if you do things yourself it can be significantly less expensive, but most of the housing stock in the bay area is atrocious - good bones and awful everything else. They were thrown up as quickly as possible in the 50s-70s and so there's always something that needs fixing.
You should watch tiny home remodeling, its a tv channel (I think?) I was shocked that a couple in NYC bought essentially a cottage in a high-rise for 10 million, then did a half million dollar renovation on it...
In the country-side that kind of money gets you a 12 bedroom mansion with a pool and a view...
I do a lot of DIY but there are times when you just want it done and done quickly and professionally. We work for a living and don't really have time to deal with a lot of the DIY incremental aspects that happen until you get very good at any given skill. I just redid one of our bathrooms, but I wasn't going to redo the sewer lines solo let alone mid-week while living in the place.
The problem with HCOL is that even if you own you're burning cash due to the lack of time and very, very high cost of services.
That wasn’t the question, right? I think you’re completely agreeing with me and disagreeing with @xcambar if we’re talking about a 30Y loan and maintenance costs. Maintenance costs and taxes start on year 1 and continue forever. So when you finish paying off the mortgage, the substantial loan payments end and go away while the maintenance costs continue. This will be a big change in your expenditure, speaking from experience.
There is no paradox. Buying a house is more expensive than maintaining it, partly because maintenance is somewhat independent of purchase price.
I think you’re trying to say that an expensive house is more expensive to maintain than a cheap house. That’s true. But the salary required to buy any given house is higher than the salary required to maintain it, for the most part. I’m sure there are counter examples, but on the whole most people who pay off their mortgage experience a pay raise, effectively, which has been my own experience.
In general, I think it's kind of an interesting heuristic to think about every so often: right now, putting aside practicalities like my current job or where I live, what looks like a cool place to work, even if the specific role was just taking out the garbage.
Right now the answer is "tailscale" and "oxide" for me.
You don't have to live in any particular place to work for Fly.io; we're all remote, and we hire all over the world, at the same west coast comp rates everywhere.
Treating it as an "investment" and not a "cost" is not really helpful.
The way I usually treat it is: Can I pay off this mortgage in the event I don't want to sell the property?
Negative equity is a thing, sure, but if you were always happy to pay the price then the thing you're buying is worth the price, right?
Sometimes people think of things as having value only if they're relative to something else. But value is value, and value is the price that you're willing to pay.
If I didn't have the goal of buying a house in the Bay Area, I would totally try to find a job with Tailscale.