I say this all the time as some who has bought/sold two houses and is currently a renter.
It IS really nice having the “forced savings” of buying a house, and knowing that if you pay off enough and SHTF you can always sell for a chunk of change, but holy shit, people VASTLY underestimate the maintenance costs.
Most people think: “Haha, I would rather have a $10K roof replacement every 20 years” or “I could handle a $1K water heater NBD”, but its not that. At all.
We had a pipe bust underneath our house that home insurance wouldn’t cover because it didn’t directly affect the house itself, and that was an unexpected $30K hit and digging under our home in multiple locations. People like to tout the foundation/roof being good, but I’m telling everyone, dont sleep on the hydrostatic leak tests. And if I ever buy a house again, that is something I’ll get done like every other year, because our pipe burst after we had owned the home for over 10 years.
Right now though, I am HAPPY knowing that the only “emergency” I’d have to cover would be vehicle issues, and my savings are going to largely stay my savings.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 days ago
People always say this as if renting isn’t the exact same way but without the benefit of equity.
FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
I’ve left a ton of comments in this thread that essentially boil down to this. You’re exactly right. Owning a property comes with some operational costs, renting it out adds some operational costs too, but the whole point of being a landlord is that rent exceeds the sum of the operational costs, then there is some surplus that goes toward covering the capital expense of buying the property in the first place; once the capital is paid off, that surplus is pure profit that goes to the landlord for providing absolutely 0 value to the world.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
That’s not what Lemmy wants to hear. These people want 6 figure salaries , ‘work’ from home 3 days a week and endless weed.
If you own a condo, and that condo roof caves in, everyone gets a $20,000 bill. If you own a rental property and are not giving away rooms for free, you are stealing. The $8000-9000 municiple taxes, utilities, upkeep, are all supposed to be paid by the landlord at a net loss.
Clueless. A new roof is $25,000, a water heater is $2000+, and the list goes on and on, and " The renters pay for everything through rent." is bullshit from some kids who have lived with their parents their whole lives and are upset when they can’t smoke weed on the couch all day.
What these losers want is to live with no responsibility and point fingers to anyone who does. I got out of renting for this reason, and I never made money to make it worthwhile, so I can see why so many are leaving housing empty rather that fighting self-entitled assholes who don’t even clean where they live.
FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Can you link to the comment where anyone said this? On my own, all I’ve said is that if you do rent out a property and generate a profit, that profit is appropriated surplus value.