If you choose to rent or regret buying a home can you tell me why?

[Kari C in SC]

Not in my experience. I can see being responsible for any damages, but maintenance and repairs? No. We have rented several properties. We have had everything from roof leaks, to broken pipes and flooding, to central ac units, to subflooring repairs by the landlords.

 

Just 2 weeks ago, I noticed that one side of our apartment was cold and the other side too warm. We called maintenance and they were there within a few hours to fix it. And even minor things like changing out the batteries in the thermostat and smoke detectors, have been done for us.

 

I guess there are variable experiences but IME repairs were never done by us. Landlords generally discouraged self repair because of quality control and liability issues.

We have it in our leases that tenants are responsible for minor repairs if under $25. We also do not take care of clogs, bugs or rodents. Nor would we come change batteries or lightbulbs. We do take care of big deals. Broken pipes, hvac problems, appliances, etc.

[TianXiaXueXiao]

Hi All,

  So my Husband and I are thinking about purchasing a home. I have wanted to be homeowner for sooo long but as we get closer to actually doing it, I am having so many thoughts on not doing it.

  We currently rent a little townhouse, but for what we can afford in this area we will most likely only be able to purchase a townhouse and not the single family home I want. Plus, I am afraid of maintenance and future repairs, and our initial financial output to purchase.

  I keep thinking maybe we can be long-term renters and just invest our savings throughout the years and still come out ok, come retirement. Is that a crazy thought?

  Can you offer up advice/insight on this? I have been reading articles online about renting instead of buying but I cant find a plan on how to be financially secure at the end of the road.

 

Thanks in advance  

 

We own and we do not regret buying our house. We waited until we found the perfect fit for us and then we snatched it off the market. Then I lost my job two months later. Now we are on a single income and we like it this way because I don't have to stretch my attention between work and the kids (I worked from home), but my husband's salary alone is not enough to pay all the bills and have savings and retirement. So, we are living paycheck to paycheck with just a marginal buffer of around $500 from one month to the next. We live in an area that has a severely depressed economy (just like everywhere) and inflated housing prices. Our mortgage is $1300 per month (for a modest 3 bed +den) which is about $200-$300 less than we would be paying in rent. Now we are looking to move out of California and sell our house which is heartbreaking to us, but the chance of my husband finding a higher paying job in our area is pretty much non-existent, and there just aren't other jobs like the one I had that will allow me the flexibility that my old job afforded us for me to be at home and continue raising and teaching my own kids. I don't regret buying our house, but I do regret that the non-profit organization I was working for tanked really hard last year! We have gone through all of our savings to make ends meet and we can totally limp along at this pace, but we would be doing so at such a high risk to our future comfort, that it isn't worth it. While it will be very difficult for us to sell this home that we adore and say goodbye to our community, we don't see any other option than to jump ship and move to a state with better cost of living to income ratios where it is more practical to live on one income.

 

Here is what I learned. Do not buy a house unless you really love it and can really afford it on just one salary. Make sure that there will be room for, healthcare, savings, retirement, college funds, mortgage, and taxes, in addition to all other monthly costs on just one salary. It seems like a no-brainer, but I wish we would have been thinking of this when we purchased our home.

[Aelwydd]

We have it in our leases that tenants are responsible for minor repairs if under $25. We also do not take care of clogs, bugs or rodents. Nor would we come change batteries or lightbulbs. We do take care of big deals. Broken pipes, hvac problems, appliances, etc.

That's understandable. When we leased from smaller property management individuals, we took care of small stuff. This property and the one before are owned and maintained by larger companies. They both have regular pesticide service (which can be declined) where air filters and lights are changed out if needed.

 

We live in a nice apartment community with 24/7 maintenance. Honestly, that and the other perks are what decided us.

 

Owning has its upsides but this is the big reason I'm very grateful for such responsive management companies and landlords. We are very good tenants who pay our lease on time, take good care of our home, and are on excellent terms with the management. For us, renting offers much lower stress, especially now as it appears my work may send me on a 4 month temporary assignment in another state. DH and ds would like to accompany me, something I don't think I would feel comfortable with if we had a house to worry about. If that makes sense.

 

Anyway, other people's mileage will vary!

[Alicia64]

Years ago, there was the assumption that homes would appreciate in value over the years, and that the purchase would be financially advantageous. That's not necessarily the case these days, so I don't think you should buy a place that you don't really love, just for the sake of owning a home.

 

If your rent is reasonable and will allow you to keep saving more money, renting may very well be the best choice for you at this time. There is no real rush to buy.

 

This is what I was going to write. Economics have changed substantially in the last decade. It used to be that you'd buy a house and it would go up in value. Off setting the exorbitant home repairs that you have to do on homes.

 

Ex: our rental needed repairs to the front porch. It cost the landlady $800. (She complained that my boys were rough on it. They weren't. It's just what weather does to porches. She's in her 50's and should know.

 

We had a raccoon living under the front porch. He took off on his own -- thank goodness -- but the wildlife co. was charging $400 to trap him and fix the hole he'd created. The landlord was having to pay it.

 

The expenses for what it cost to own a house goes on and on. Not to mention what the Realtor takes when you sell a house. Not to mention all you  have to do to get a house into a "sell-able" state. (Inspections, curb appeal etc. etc.)

 

The guy at the Khan Academy has a talk on why the math is in favor of renting these days.

 

I also like renting because if DH ever really gets fed up with his job we can easily pull up stakes and move. You can't do that if you have to sell a house. The house can end up sitting and sitting and sitting on the market -- unless you're willing to really reduce the price.

 

Alley

[foxbridgeacademy]

We owned a house years ago in Indiana, then DH got laid off (low paying job anyway) so we ended up losing the house and moved to Florida, where DH found a job making almost 2X as much.  Of course it is so $$$$ to live in FL so after a couple of years struggling we moved to Tennessee. Where DH found a job that gave great raises.  He got up to 2 1/2 times his original wage before the plant shut down. He was laid off and went to school for a year.  We moved to NC, similar pay lots of experience.  Now we're back in the Kentucky-Indiana area, he's at nearly 3X his salary, he's a supervisor who will be the manger of his department (when his boss retires) in a few years.  If we decide to stay.....

 

The point is that if we hadn't lost the house all those years ago or if we had bought somewhere along the way we would have felt the need to stay longer, could have had trouble selling and not taken the opportunities that have led us here.  

 

 

[LucyStoner]

I have a question for those that are still sharing. If you are a homeowner, don't you get money back in your tax refund because you own? Does this somewhat equal what you spend on maintenance and repairs? 

 

If you itemize and it exceeds the $6200-$12,400 (for ty 2014) standard deduction that you can take on your taxes regardless, it will reduce your taxable income.  It's not a credit.  It doesn't dollar for dollar reduce your tax liability.  So you may get some benefit for it, if you bought recently enough or in an expensive enough market that your taxes and insurance are larger than what you could take as the standard deduction anyways.   In a LCOL area with cheaper houses, the savings may not be anything whatsoever at all.  And as you pay less interest over the course of the mortgage, the tax savings shrink.  IME people with their livelihoods tied to home sales tend to way overstate the tax benefits. 

[...................]

Bought a townhome for 315, before the bubble, then 3 hurricanes came and we had 10,000 worth of assessments then another 5000 worth because the stupid City that we lived in required every community to rip out non-native trees and re-plant with native trees, that depleted our savings, then my husband was temporarily laid off and the bubble burst and our home fell to 115K and it foreclosed.

 

Unless you can put a huge amount of money down, don't ever buy a house.  Of course, right now the home prices are much lower so it's a better time.

 

AND FYI you should really really really really think twice before buying a condo/townhome.  If you own your own home you can put off certain things.  In a townhome, you are stuck paying for whatever crazy or stupid thing the Board or Committee decides to do, and it often comes at the wrong time. It was an awful, awful experience for us.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble but renting really has its benefits, and if you have a good long term landlord, even moreso.

 

Buying has benefits too.  THe home is yours, and you can do whatever you want to it.  And if you buy low and sell high you could benefit financially.  But not always.  If you really actually do invest your money that you would have put down on the house, you can do just as well or even better, financially.  

[ssavings]

We rent. We're not committed to staying in this area long-term, and DH needs the option to be able to move for his career. It works for us. 

[...................]

PS, before we bought our townhome, we had several opinionated older family members go on and on and on about what a bad idea a townhome was, and that for the money we should just get a house or rent, and we thought they were stodgy old people who just liked having their own way.  We had visions of nice neat community, never worrying about the roof or fences or the landscaping, thinking that the HUGE 250.00 per month association fees would be invested and saved to cover repairs.  They ended up increasing the association fees to 340 per month by the time we left.  (plus the 15,000 worth of assessments for new trees and hurricane damage I mentioned upthread.) Our experience was like the textbook scenario of why my aunt and uncle kept telling us to just rent until we could buy a SFH!  

 

To their credit,they never said I told you so.  They were very loving and kind and felt really bad for us when we lost our home (and our pants financially.)  

 

 

 

 

[Freckles]

If I could go back in time, we would not have bought our home in 2007. We were trying to be smart and lower our monthly expenses. We purchased a home for under 100,000 in a small Texas town. Well, circumstances changed, and we needed to move out of state. Our cheaper home was worth even less in 2009. I've been trying to sell that house for 5 years off and on. We are upside down with no prospects of selling at this point. I hate being a landlord. Our first tenants destroyed my home. I've spent thousands on new flooring, appliances, etc... Just this last month I found out our home had slab leaks. Thank goodness for homeowners insurance. Our deductible to have the house re-plumbed was almost 2000 dollars. In the seven years we've owned this house we've had to put on a new roof, re-wiring, new plumbing, new kitchen flooring, and new appliances. It is such a yoke of burden in my life. Our current tenants pay  rent late every month, and we aren't even breaking even. My point is, if you are planning on staying for a very long time and have the ability to be a handyman or pay for one owning is a good option. Otherwise, from my viewpoint, being a renter is much less stress. Not that it is stress free. We rent a home from my dh family. The stress from that is for another thread.

[sunnyday]

If you itemize and it exceeds the $6200-$12,400 (for ty 2014) standard deduction that you can take on your taxes regardless, it will reduce your taxable income.  It's not a credit.  It doesn't dollar for dollar reduce your tax liability.  So you may get some benefit for it, if you bought recently enough or in an expensive enough market that your taxes and insurance are larger than what you could take as the standard deduction anyways.   In a LCOL area with cheaper houses, the savings may not be anything whatsoever at all.  And as you pay less interest over the course of the mortgage, the tax savings shrink.  IME people with their livelihoods tied to home sales tend to way overstate the tax benefits. 

 

Agreed. We have a pretty big mortgage, albeit with a low rate, and we paid $9000 in interest last year. If we didn't have other deductions, the mortgage interest would be completely meaningless to our tax total. But even if we had $12,400 of charitable donations or whatever other deductions, so the mortgage interest was all completely deductible, that would mean a tax savings of 28% (our marginal rate) of $9000, or a little over $2k. Our expectation is for annual maintenance and repair to cost about 1% the value of the home, on average; average property tax is about 1.4% nationwide -- there's pretty much no way that the interest deduction could offset all of that.

[jrstarfleetacademy]

Personally my husband and I can't wait to sell our home and go back to renting. We purchased our home back in 2007 very quickly because we were put on a time limit by our landlord. The landlord of the apartment complex went into bankruptcy and the bank decided to evict all 1200 residents over a three month period. We wanted to stay in the area for the schools but there were no rentals available within a reasonable distance. We had to put our things in storage and move into a hotel until we could find something. We paid $120,000 for our house and at the time our property taxes were around $2500 per year. Since then, we have decided not to use the schools (too many problems to list) and our property taxes have increased by $1300 per year and the cost of living in our area (gas, groceries...etc) has exploded. Unfortunately income has not increased and we are bleeding. When you are tied down to a house you can't adjust your living conditions to fit finances.

 

My biggest complaint is home maintenance. Ours is an older home (1954) and the previous owners did not take good care of it. In the time we have lived here we have put up quite a bit of money in emergency repairs. The most recent is sewer problems but we have had to repair the structure, roof, tuck point the exterior, boiler, a/c, and drainage and we have only been here about 6.5 years. Lots of $$$$ that we could have used on vacations, school supplies, and a savings account. There also isn't a lot of time to complete projects since we work so much. The whole "pride in home ownership" is lost on us. It has been on the market for 6 months and we just dropped the price. We are not looking to profit, we just want to zero the mortgage loan and there is no way we would ever get back what we put in.

Sorry for the rant, wanted to be sort of "real" here.  :nopity:

Basically, everything we have had to put into the house has equaled less time together as a family due to us working all the time. Owning a home is right for some and not right for others. You know your priorities and can figure out what is best for you. Good luck.

[Kevin'sMom]

We have owned our present home for twelve years. It is in a beautiful area, and it's a nice house, but now we want to move. Selling it will take a long time, I think, and we probably will not get anything near what we paid for it. I really, really wish we had rented instead. I so want to move, and we are tied down by this house, which now seems like an albatross. Owning a home for me, anyway, sucks up lots of time and resources I could have been using for so many other things....travel, for one. And freedom, perhaps the most important of all.