Then there’s all the expenses you didn’t know about before you bought the house. If you don’t have at least some DIY skills, you get to pay people a lot of money to fix things for you.
…BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled. In exchange, you get nothing. Congratulations.
Hey, I just did these things! Water heater i was ripped off, which cost me $2600, and the roof i actually thought was a good deal at 17k. Not fun but the roof made me happy. The water heater actually destroyed my basement by leaking out…
I’m guilty of ignoring my water heaters. Had my backup start to leak and it cost $1500 to replace. So I immediately bought a new anode rod for my primary tank. Drained/flushed it and replaced the old rod which was completely gone. It was an easy task but you will need a cheap impact wrench, 1 1/16" socket and chain link anode rod to make it easy.
It’s something you need to do every couple of years. But I never do it.
And so now you’ve learned that you need to regularly flush the water heater and change out the anode rod every few years, right? I just bought my first house. Hot water wasn’t working right. Heating element was dead. Why? There was so much scale that the lower element was covered in it. Replaced the element, flushed as much out as I could reasonably remove, and then flushed again six months later while replacing the anode rod. This keeps the corrosion at bay.
I have no idea what that is, but I dont think I wanna know. I did want tankless on demand, but the service guy convinced me it’s not worth it, and I regret my decision. Said I won’t save much because the power draw is much higher than a water heater, so even though the heater is always keeping it warm, the on demand still takes more. I think I may have needed additional wiring for the electric and believe that’s really the reason he swayed me away.
Sounds like it is not common where you are, consider yourself lucky. Where I live, all new houses are built with predatory rental water heaters. $50-100/month forever. You end up paying the purchase price many times over. Electric tankless heaters use an insane amount of electricity when they operate. Overall they are more efficient, but the wiring needed to supply it will greatly increase the price, often requiring a panel upgrade and possibly an upgrade in service to the house.
What happens if or when it breaks? Since it’s rented, is that at the very least not on you? I would imagine any or all work on it shouldn’t cost you anything since you’re paying monthly for it? Not that I want that, but do you get anything for this rental fee?
Rental water heaters are some weird Canadian scam.
My ~70 year old water heater failed 5 years ago. I drove to the nearest hardware store, paid $700 for a new one, and installed it myself.
Comparing efficiency between electric and gas is complete nonsense. You need to compare operating cost. In my market, with very high electric prices, it’s $60/yr for gas tank, and $1,100/yr for electric tankless.
Also, the 500 is just the mortgage payment. It doesn’t include the insurance and property taxes and, at least in the USA, private-mortgage-insurance (pmi) if the down payment isn’t at least 20%.
The monthly obligation can easily be more than that 1000. The savings is in locking the first half in at a set amount.
Rent is the most you will pay every month. The mortgage is the least you will pay every month.
I’m loving them being here as full grown adults and enjoy my time with them and with our particular house they are seeing that lesson play out in real time. Some big expenses and I am the DIY dude. I don’t fuck with (big) electric or gas though, that shit can really backfire.
Rent vs mortgage - gotta put a caveat on that one.
Renting = landlord gets all the money but has to maintain the property.
Mortgage - bank gets all the money and you get a partial refund if you sell. You pay for the upkeep. A mortgage is not really an “investment”, you usually lose money on the deal if you live there. It’s cheap rent from the bank.
It basic math to see which one is better long term. Usually the mortgage wins because of of the partial return. However if you can’t do the upkeep yourself, renting is often a better financial decision.
There have been times when renting was the smarter financial decision. Like the housing bubble in 2003-2007. You could rent places for 1/2 what it would cost to buy them per month.
Yeah, that’s the thing. The market went upside down. Maybe 1993? Before that renting made sense even from a financial perspective in many areas. But now when housing is double or treble inflation? Nope. Sink money into real property at your first opportunity.
We have fucked up the entire “developed” world so much that if you start poor you stay poor and housing is a large part of that equation.
That decision is true today, but realistically your rent will grow much faster than your mortgage (plus escrow) payment, and your mortgage payment goes away.
Then there’s all the expenses you didn’t know about before you bought the house.
The cost of owning is significantly less than renting over the life of the unit. Repairs happen, but most of the time they aren’t time critical, so you can budget out the repairs over months.
Unless the house was old when you bought it, you aren’t going out of pocket on any big purchases inside the first years of ownership.
…BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled
Idk where you live, but most states limit the rate at which an acessor can raise your housing price. In Texas, the cap is 10%. So your property taxes can rise, but the won’t double overnight.
You can also contest the increase. Harris has been fairly receptive to a simple “my neighbor’s house sold for X so my house should be worth about X, not X+20%”
The cost of owning vs renting can be very different depending on where you live and work and the amenities you want access to. Renting somewhere centrally located with good access to high quality transit and other amenities would likely be cheaper than owning. Unless we can start normalizing owning apartments again. You could own for cheaper on the outskirts of downtown, but you’ll likely be sacraficing access to some amenities by doing so.
Renting somewhere centrally located with good access to high quality transit and other amenities would likely be cheaper than owning.
I’d need to see an example. I’ve never heard of a place that was cheaper to rent than own after five years. The break point on rentals tend to be short term stays, and mostly because of the cost of real estate transactions themselves.
For public housing it can be cheaper. But that’s never going to be a centrally located high-rise.
Then there’s all the expenses you didn’t know about before you bought the house. If you don’t have at least some DIY skills, you get to pay people a lot of money to fix things for you.
…BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled. In exchange, you get nothing. Congratulations.
Yup. Oops, you need a new roof and a water heater, that will be $34,000.
Hey, I just did these things! Water heater i was ripped off, which cost me $2600, and the roof i actually thought was a good deal at 17k. Not fun but the roof made me happy. The water heater actually destroyed my basement by leaking out…
I’m guilty of ignoring my water heaters. Had my backup start to leak and it cost $1500 to replace. So I immediately bought a new anode rod for my primary tank. Drained/flushed it and replaced the old rod which was completely gone. It was an easy task but you will need a cheap impact wrench, 1 1/16" socket and chain link anode rod to make it easy.
It’s something you need to do every couple of years. But I never do it.
And so now you’ve learned that you need to regularly flush the water heater and change out the anode rod every few years, right? I just bought my first house. Hot water wasn’t working right. Heating element was dead. Why? There was so much scale that the lower element was covered in it. Replaced the element, flushed as much out as I could reasonably remove, and then flushed again six months later while replacing the anode rod. This keeps the corrosion at bay.
As long as you didn’t get a rental water heater, you did not get fucked.
I have no idea what that is, but I dont think I wanna know. I did want tankless on demand, but the service guy convinced me it’s not worth it, and I regret my decision. Said I won’t save much because the power draw is much higher than a water heater, so even though the heater is always keeping it warm, the on demand still takes more. I think I may have needed additional wiring for the electric and believe that’s really the reason he swayed me away.
Sounds like it is not common where you are, consider yourself lucky. Where I live, all new houses are built with predatory rental water heaters. $50-100/month forever. You end up paying the purchase price many times over. Electric tankless heaters use an insane amount of electricity when they operate. Overall they are more efficient, but the wiring needed to supply it will greatly increase the price, often requiring a panel upgrade and possibly an upgrade in service to the house.
What happens if or when it breaks? Since it’s rented, is that at the very least not on you? I would imagine any or all work on it shouldn’t cost you anything since you’re paying monthly for it? Not that I want that, but do you get anything for this rental fee?
Yes, if it fails, they will either repair or replace it at least.
so it’s betting that the water company will get harder water
Rental water heaters are some weird Canadian scam.
My ~70 year old water heater failed 5 years ago. I drove to the nearest hardware store, paid $700 for a new one, and installed it myself.
Comparing efficiency between electric and gas is complete nonsense. You need to compare operating cost. In my market, with very high electric prices, it’s $60/yr for gas tank, and $1,100/yr for electric tankless.
Ooof.
Also, the 500 is just the mortgage payment. It doesn’t include the insurance and property taxes and, at least in the USA, private-mortgage-insurance (pmi) if the down payment isn’t at least 20%.
The monthly obligation can easily be more than that 1000. The savings is in locking the first half in at a set amount.
I tell my soon-to-leave-the-nest kids:
Rent is the most you will pay every month. The mortgage is the least you will pay every month.
I’m loving them being here as full grown adults and enjoy my time with them and with our particular house they are seeing that lesson play out in real time. Some big expenses and I am the DIY dude. I don’t fuck with (big) electric or gas though, that shit can really backfire.
Rent vs mortgage - gotta put a caveat on that one.
Renting = landlord gets all the money but has to maintain the property.
Mortgage - bank gets all the money and you get a partial refund if you sell. You pay for the upkeep. A mortgage is not really an “investment”, you usually lose money on the deal if you live there. It’s cheap rent from the bank.
It basic math to see which one is better long term. Usually the mortgage wins because of of the partial return. However if you can’t do the upkeep yourself, renting is often a better financial decision.
There have been times when renting was the smarter financial decision. Like the housing bubble in 2003-2007. You could rent places for 1/2 what it would cost to buy them per month.
I think people should listen to this user.
The other side of that is that my mortgage, even with rising property taxes and my house appreciating wildly in value, tracks less than renting.
If I could rent a place for the price of my mortgage with the cost rising at the level my mortgage does … I’d rent all day long
Yeah, that’s the thing. The market went upside down. Maybe 1993? Before that renting made sense even from a financial perspective in many areas. But now when housing is double or treble inflation? Nope. Sink money into real property at your first opportunity.
We have fucked up the entire “developed” world so much that if you start poor you stay poor and housing is a large part of that equation.
In my lifetime interest rates on mortgages went from high teens to the 3.whatever I have.
Home values skyrocketed and now the expectation seems to be this must continue.
Honestly I’m happier to pass my house on to my kid than turn a profit on it.
Now if HE buys a house and inherits mine … I hope he turns a fat profit on it lmao
Right? My parents were ecstatic to get 11% on the home I grew up in. Now my mom’s retirement condo? three dot whatever like you said.
That decision is true today, but realistically your rent will grow much faster than your mortgage (plus escrow) payment, and your mortgage payment goes away.
As long as interest is lower than stock market return your mortgage should never go away
Sure, but when you refi to invest, it’s not really “paying for somewhere to live” any more
Well OK. Will not help anyone paycheck to paycheck. If the person can get out of that trap, then into the market they go
The cost of owning is significantly less than renting over the life of the unit. Repairs happen, but most of the time they aren’t time critical, so you can budget out the repairs over months.
Unless the house was old when you bought it, you aren’t going out of pocket on any big purchases inside the first years of ownership.
Idk where you live, but most states limit the rate at which an acessor can raise your housing price. In Texas, the cap is 10%. So your property taxes can rise, but the won’t double overnight.
You can also contest the increase. Harris has been fairly receptive to a simple “my neighbor’s house sold for X so my house should be worth about X, not X+20%”
The cost of owning vs renting can be very different depending on where you live and work and the amenities you want access to. Renting somewhere centrally located with good access to high quality transit and other amenities would likely be cheaper than owning. Unless we can start normalizing owning apartments again. You could own for cheaper on the outskirts of downtown, but you’ll likely be sacraficing access to some amenities by doing so.
I’d need to see an example. I’ve never heard of a place that was cheaper to rent than own after five years. The break point on rentals tend to be short term stays, and mostly because of the cost of real estate transactions themselves.
For public housing it can be cheaper. But that’s never going to be a centrally located high-rise.