There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up.

And while I agree that it’s nice to customize things to your preferences, this has a downside in that it’s easy to get carried away and overspend. Might as well get the nicer finishes when you are remodeling, right? After all you’re paying so much for labor anyway. And you can’t have just your kitchen nice, now you need to upgrade the flooring in the whole house. And soon your small $30k improvement is $150k

> I redid/improved...

We are extending the fence in our backyard.

However, getting rid of the parking means the project will likely detract from the value of the home. But since we don't have a car, let alone two, it makes sense for us to do the project anyway. Despite the warning of our realtor when we purchased the home.

I've noticed a lot of folks are afraid to personalize their homes because of concern about the value when they eventually sell.

> Beyond the financials, the psychological impact of both being able to make greater-than-superficial changes, and having extremely predictable payments for years without worrying about substantial rent increases, is substantial.

As a renter in a place that protects renters from radical increases year over year, I'd argue the only compelling sense of stability would be trading the risk of being evicted for that of losing the house

> I redid/improved the bathroom to exactly what I wanted. I renovated the kitchen. I added panelling to the walls. I added a few outlets to rooms that needed more.

I think this is an interesting differentiation that would either be very compelling for a hobbyist or carpenter, or someone who works on cars, but it's also crazy to me if I frame homeownership this way. I don't think a condo would really provide the surface area for such customization *if* I were a person to be interested in doing it, nor would a townhouse or duplex. It seems that at least in my city, the premium to be able to do something as common as paint the exterior of your home, is like $2.5m CAD, or $1m more than a newish townhome, or $1.5m more than modest condo, or $10000/m more (just on the mortgage) than renting a sufficiently sized place.

That's partly because the kind of place I can rent is dramatically smaller than the minimum size of a place that has a modifiable exterior, and it's one of the most expensive cities. I guess it's sort of a framing that makes clear how dystopian the class divide is; I don't have any interest in painting my house, but if I did, I'll never be able to, and if I could (at the current rates), I'd have to be incredibly unimaginative to allocate that much to the house that could hypothetically be painted.

I guess people who value the concept of a home in that way more than anything else would simply move someone where they can buy one, but I value so many other things more than hacking away on the walls that it's an absolute no-brainer to continue renting where I want to live despite the ambient sense that I have no sense of permanence secured by land

“Extremely predictable payments” - I don’t own a home, so I don’t know about this - I have heard mostly horror stories about HOA. Can they hike maintenance fees arbitrarily? Also, what about insurance? Last I read, at least in FL, insurance cost is out of control, is that still true?

I absolutely don't see these as benefits... Living in the Netherlands, apartments owners typically have to pay "VVE" (service fee for the ongoing upkeep of the building where your apartment is), while house owners typically pay out of their pocket for any repairs they have to do.

This was my first time living in a house as opposed to an apartment. It's been three years of bitter regret, and I'm very eager to sell the damn thing and leave the nightmare behind. In the last three years, I had to re-paint the roof, replace the garden fence and a bunch of related stuff in the garden, replace the water boiler. I had to climb on the roof of the house to rake the leaves at least twice a year (not expensive, just scary). I had to repaint areas of the house because the previous owner did a crappy job painting them.

But, most importantly, it's a piece of junk. It's a typical front brick wall with the rest of the house made of wood covered in dry wall. Its foundation is going to skew and sink because... that's the general condition of everything in the Netherlands: the ground water is too close to the surface, so the foundation is too shallow. I can't hang anything heavy on the wall because the wall can't support it. Every wall is crooked and bent and so is the ceiling, so, for example, it's not possible to put a curtain railing on the ceiling...

Everything is made of perishable materials which will last five to ten years tops, and then everything needs to be torn down and redone. Looking at how my neighbors are spending their lives on the hamster wheel of infinite repairs... I want absolutely none of this. Some people enjoy sinking their time and finances into this black hole, but I'd rather just buy hard drugs for the same price all the way until I die. It's just an arduous and unrewarding toil.

> and having extremely predictable payments for years

I’d argue rental is more predictable. Housing has a huge amount of upkeep — $10k ac, $5k water heater, $20k roof…

I agree with this, but there's also the psychological impact of being able to easily move when you get a new job or when your state government allows agriculture/industry to poison your water or whatever the case may be. You may also buy a property only to find out you have a certifiably insane neighbor and you can't easily move out because said neighbor has created a dispute that requires disclosure to prospective buyers and you are under water (as is the case for a friend of mine). While this is admittedly a niche case, there are millions of such things that can happen where you are suddenly under water (including a mortgage crisis) and flexibility becomes an advantage. I don't think there's a clear psychological winner between renting and buying.