alt Hacker NewsThere’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
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> 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.
"Rent is the most you'll pay for housing, but mortgage and property taxes is the least amount."
> 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.
I've never understood why people argue that the model of appealing to a landlord to perform house work is psychologically superior to doing that same work yourself. As a tenant, you have an inherently somewhat adversarial relationship with your landlord - they want to minimize costs, and they aren't the ones directly living with the household problem. You are living in their property and are bound to what they replace or repair, and how, and to some degree on what schedule.
Not being able to make my own decisions about what constitutes a household problem and what should be done about it is the single biggest annoyance of renting for me. It's the main reason I would like to live in an owned home; and this intangible facet of living is more important to me than any financial argument about the costs of renting vs owning.
You can pretty much always finance a repair that size and amortize the expense so that it works out ok.
I have lived/rented in many states and still rent. The overwhelming majority of landlords are cheap af. I had the ceiling collapse in an office due to clogged ac drain only to have it happen again because the land lord was too cheap to hire a professional contractor. The pro had the ac clog fixed in 15 minutes.
The current place has this stupid thing where the dishwasher is attached to a circuit that has ac on it so if you run both it flips. I have to flip the breaker everytime i use the dishwasher.
> 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.
Not my experience, at all. All landlords I've had were lazy assholes who did the bare minimum, but never forgot to increase rent on the 1st of January, every single year.
Paying someone else for no other reason than to have the right to a roof is Middle Ages shit, that future generations will no doubt liken to serfdom.
> Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix
Most landlords I've dealt with are an absolute pain to deal with when something breaks. It's often not that easy, maybe in high-cost / luxury rentals. Arguing over what is normal wear-and-tear, while knowing you cannot afford decent legal advice, and you also can't pay for the "unexpected repair" is just as bad.
> And you can’t have just your kitchen nice, now you need to upgrade the flooring
Yes you can. There is no need to have everything perfect...
Edit:
> You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up.
If this was even close to coming even with the added cost on rent, no one would be a landlord. It's obviously a lot less than rental overhead. So people could just set that aside (or get insurance).