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.
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Ooof.
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.
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
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 can’t believe someone watermarked their worthless reply to a post that said the same thing more subtly and smartly.
Covid was the wake up call I needed to realize that while I understand the nuance many others need the point made for them to understand the point of the scenario. We understand Eleanor. Some understand Callum.
I’d wager a lot more than some need a Callum to explain what they should think about anything, given the state of things.
And while we’re ranting about this, can we throw PMI and whomever came up with it on the bonfire where they belong?
Your telling me that I need to pay for you to have insurance in case I default while your also charging me interest who’s very purpose is to offset risk? Why am I paying to offset your risk FUCKING TWICE AND HOW IS THIS FUCKING LEGAL.
Shit infuriates me. I want all the bankers to get William Wallace on live TV, recorded and played back once a year during a mandatory viewing window so that we never, ever, forget.
Its legal because value comes from ownership, not from doing things.
And if that sounds insane; you’re a fucking commie.
Also if you were to default they would take your house and get the insurance money
Interest is not intended to offset risk?
Interest provides a return on capital.
If you have $1 youre not using you might let someone else use it if they incentivise you by giving you an interest in their need.
If you give $1 to 100 different people you might increase the rate for some of them to offset your additional risk, but thats not the purpose of Interest.
Part of interest calculation is risk. That’s why higher credit score leads to lower interest, it’s less of a risk to the lender.
PMI is double dipping. They can pick one, either a flat across the board interest rate for all borrowers or PMI.
Didn’t mean to imply it was entirely about risk.
The financial illiteracy of lemmy users always amazes me.
PMI is not double dipping.
It keeps the risk reasonable so that interest rates can remain reasonable.
With no PMI there’s extra risk that would need to be priced in to interest.
No one likes PMI, but it’s not evil.
Ok, your loan has been determined to be higher risk therefore you have to pay more. Why did we need to invent a second payment called PMI instead of just charging a higher rate to higher risk borrowers? Why do interest rates need to remain “reasonable” ?
That’s a good question actually.
In Australia, some 60 years ago, banks wouldn’t lend over 80% of the purchase price for a property.
The federal government created a government department to provide lenders mortgage insurance. It wasn’t a free government service, but a good example of the federal government stepping in to do something private enterprise wasn’t able to.
Since then of course that department has been privatised, like everything else, so private institutions provide that service now.
There do remain some differences between LMI and just simply extra interest. Notably LMI is a once off payment, and it can be included in the loan.
More recently, the Australian Federal Government has rolled out a scheme to pretty much abolish LMI. They’re just going to guarantee the loans for free.
They don’t actually need regular payments for 10-30 years. They need you deposit that down payment cash ASAP so they can lease it to billionaires and crypto exchanges.
Idiocy.
The bank doesn’t get the down payment. The person selling the house does.
You pay that person the down payment, and the bank pays them the rest.
Honestly there’s loads of great reasons to hate banks but lots keep it real and avoid making up nonsense.
Banks typically ask for you to have cash in hand (deposited), or equivalent leverage, to qualify for loans in the first place.
The bank I used actively tried to get me to go with less down payment, and subsequently take out a larger loan.
But yes it is the height of idiocy to say, ‘down payment deposit’ when ‘qualifying assets’ is a more accurate term for the transactions function.
They need you deposit that down payment cash ASAP so they can lease it to billionaires and crypto exchanges.
No, this is patently false and borne of a misunderstanding. Idiocy.
When providing a mortgage, how does a bank get money to lease to billionaires and crypto exchanges?
Banks do leverage mortgage debt. Essentially the same process, in turn.
But how do they lease your deposit to billionaires and crypto exchanges?
Where y’all finding houses for 500/month with a 25k downpayment?
Seems cheap af. If you only did a 25k downpayment the mortgage would certainly be more expensive than rent where I’m at.
There will be shitholes in bum fuck nowhere but in this area rent will not be 1k lol
My house was cheap in a shit area (like knuckle draggers shouting at hotels shit) and that cost me £800 a month 20 years ago.
And that was with a massive deposit. Still, paid that shit off now.
I bought a 2 bedroom single family home in South Carolina last year for $86k with only $11k down, 7 minute drive from the city center of the capital city (Columbia). Mortgage is $480/mo. Cheap houses absolutely still exist if you’re willing to live in areas where “nobody wants to live”
Would have been standard fare in Sweden until recently, but that’s obviously an outlier
Going to be wild when people just give up on society and just start eating the ruling and ownership class. I tried warning these assholes if they didn’t give something. Then they would doom their existence. And now you have more people radicalizing everyday because they are being put on the streets.
I went from an apartment that cost ~$1250/mo. To a mortgage that costs ~$4300/mo. Just got the “privilege” of owning a home (and paying for all repairs myself).
I can only afford this because of the people I’m sharing that cost with. We’re all on the deed, and we all have a stake, and claim to, the house. Four of us.
My payment didn’t really change.
The only way we could get to the point of a down payment is that one of the four of us has been saving for something like this since they were in highschool. Because of their effort, we had enough for a down payment.
And I’m lucky to be in this position.
What a fucking crock of shit.
Despite all of this, I’m hoping the market takes a dive so the rest of you can do the same at a much more affordable rate. I’ve already spent the money and I’ll be spending years paying it off. I didn’t buy a house up objectively save money, I bought a house for stability. I never want to move ever again. There are good reasons for that which I won’t get into. I promise that I will have ZERO issues if you all get a better deal than I did. I hope you do, and I hope the housing market, specifically the rental/flipping/“income property” markets crash, hard.
In the same way, I’ve paid off my school debt, I’m in favor of school debt forgiveness. I also enjoy pretty good health, I’m in favor of universal healthcare. I’ve never caused, not been the victim of a fire, I’m in favor of fire departments.
I could go on.
Good luck everyone.
In the same way, I’ve paid off my school debt, I’m in favor of school debt forgiveness. I also enjoy pretty good health, I’m in favor of universal healthcare. I’ve never caused, not been the victim of a fire, I’m in favor of fire departments.
That’s commie talk son. We pull the ladder up behind us in America.
I’m glad I don’t live in America then.
aren’t you lucky
Damn $4300 a month. I thought my $2600 was steep.
Right before we moved my rent had gone up to $2500 so it was a push. Now when we first started living there the rent was $1400 and the landlord had even refied so his mortgage was cheaper at the end. When we were moving out and he drove up in a brand new Rivian that I’m pretty sure I basically paid for…
To be fair, it’s a pretty large home. I’m living with my SO, my brother and his wife and there’s a couple of offspring that needed space too. Our house has ~5 ish bedrooms. Considering the number of people who live here, it can feel small. If it was just me and my SO, this would be humungous.
But that also means that we have four fully grown adults helping with the mortgage. So my share of the mortgage is around $1100 ish, per month, and we split most of the household bills, so I usually throw in about $400 more to help with that. I personally pay about $1500/mo.
My SO does the same, and we’ve encouraged my brother and his wife to also do the same. If everyone pays $1500 towards the house every month, we have more than enough to cover all the bills (electric/gas/water), as well as shared things like the Internet. Also that’s enough to cover the house insurance.
Yeah that actually sounds a little better than me. I’m the main bread winner and I’m responsible for almost all of it. It can be a little stressful at times
Yeah, I went from $1200 rent to a $1300 mortgage but the city added $50k more value to the assesment so between taxes and insurance it’s going up to $1700/mo next year so that’s fun. I don’t know how many more years of that I could afford cuz $2600 just isn’t doable for me :/
The first time I applied for a loan, I didn’t have a credit card yet. And they were like:
How can we know you’re responsible with money?
Because I haven’t needed credit in the past and I’m still alive, idk? Having enough liquidity to not need credit would seem to suggest I’m good with money.
But maybe your parents are paying for everything
Ok? How does using a credit card change that?
They are NOT looking to see if you are responsible with money. They are looking to see if they can make money off of you, so they want you to be a heavy credit user. Before I bought my house I made sure to take out two credit cards and just buy random shit on them for a few months because that boosts my credit score drastically which then made it easy to get the loan. Banks HATE people with limited debt because it means you are not a loyal customer that they could make money off of. Yes, it makes no sense but that’s just how the economy works. Even if you don’t have any reason to buy things on credit, you still should. Even if you are very financially responsible, you should always have “stupid debt,” by that I mean debt for the sake of debt, because banks love that shit and it’ll help you out if you ever actually do need a loan for something.
Because people that quickly pay off their principal and avoid accruing interest don’t make the Credit Card companies as much money. They prefer people that are bad with money, sort of like how police departments don’t accept applicants that do too well on the tests.
That’s the impression I get too
But it’s plausibly deniable enough because you can still get decent credit score if you pay off your credit before you pay interest. It’s a numbers game for them, I expect, but still.
good news, theyre counting rent and utilities payment as a way to build credit now! link
Well shoot. Why wasn’t this the case from the start? I’ve only ever had troubles with payments a few times in the 10 years I’ve been renting. Good thing none of that counts for anything and the clock is just now starting.
That’s just for the “paid on time” section of your report. It helps a bit with your score, but it doesn’t change how banks determine your debt to income ratio.
To be the devil’s advocate here. Rental payments vs mortgage payments is not an accurate comparison of the true financial burdens.
With many rentals some if not all utilities are included in the price of rent, whereas homeowners must pay the full cost of utilities. There is also the additional cost of home insurance and property taxes. Most rentals have the majority of their maintaince covered whereas the homeowner is responsible for lawn cutting, gutter cleanings etc. The cost of repairs and maintaince is not negligible. While renting if the heat quits or an appliance breaks, the landlord is supposed to cover the cost but owning means you must take that full cost.
In the posted example, having double the mortage payment in rent payment is probably adequate to cover the additonal costs but the comparison of renting vs owning is not black and white. Several financial managers have even studied that depending on your needs and income, you can actually be getting ahead financially by renting if you don’t actually need the full benefits of owning and are able to maintain a store of wealth through other investments. This is especially true if you are in a rent controlled unit.
It seems like you are assuming an apartment rental and not a home rental. In my experience home rentals work very differently. Utilities are not included and you do end up paying quite a bit to maintain the home.
The corrosive corollary to ever-rising real estate valuations is that there is no incentive to keep buildings like condos nice or neighborhoods clean, someone will buy at the inflated price anyway since they all are inflated.
So basically I feel in Canada we live in a system that pulls valuation out of thin air, produces nothing, incentivizes no one, yet allows everything.
I hate to break it to you, but mortgage payments are not cheaper then rent anymore. Obviously depends on your mortgage and money down and all that, but if you expect to pay half as much for mortgage payments as you did for rent, you’re going to have a very bad time.
Surely, this depends a lot on what market you’re in. If you’re in a very expensive area and need to take a big loan with a high fixed rate, I can see that being the case but renting the equivalent place would probably be extremely expensive too.
renting the equivalent place would probably be extremely expensive too.
Right, like I said, mortgage is not cheaper, certainly not half as cheap. The market I’m in is a metropolis, it contains every range of the market, it just depends how much gun violence you prefer.
This isn’t true in my experience at all. Either rent is cheap where you are or you’re looking at expensive houses or not for a 30 year period. The rate currently is around 6-9%. It would only be more expensive if the house is. No other hidden fees
Parents and brother went in on a house together so he could live near work. Rents out the main floor for $3750 a month (3 bedroom) and that covers the mortgage so he can afford to pay the utilities and lives in the basement.
Well in my very recent experience it is extremely, painfully, unavoidably true. That’s why I said it. We just bought a house, 150k less than we qualified for, and our monthly payment is 33% higher than we were paying in rent. Rent is far from cheap, there’s just no such thing as an inexpensive house unless you want one in a terrible neighborhood or an hour drive outside the city. In the first case, not only is it a bad idea just to live in these neighborhoods, the chances of making money on the resale are next to nil. The burbs option of course offers more for your money, but that comes with more maintenance, yardwork, housework, gas money, transit stress, etc. We worked with very knowledgeable, trustworthy realtor and mortgage brokers and there’s simply no math in the current market that gets mortgage payments lower than the rent we were paying without buying a literal, active crack house.
And to claim there’s no extra fees involved with buying and owning a home compared to renting is either utter delusion or repugnant gaslighting.
My issue wasn’t getting pre-approved, it was being able to actually afford the mortgage amount I was pre-approved for. A lot of these companies don’t give a damn if you can actually afford the mortgages they offer, because they know you’ll either figure it out or go homeless trying.
We probably live in different countries, but where I live it’s more like you can’t get pre-approved for anything unless you either have a large amount of money saved up, or your salary is high enough that it’s far beyond what you would reasonably need to get paid to afford the mortgage.
Yeah that was my experience as well. Mortgage companies were happy to pre approve me up to like 75% of my monthly income. Not even close to enough to buy even cheap food.
The deposit is not to prove you can make the repayments.
Housing markets do, occasionally, go backwards in value.
If you have a loan for a house which is more than the value of the house you would have an incentive to just stop paying.
Thats why the bank needs a buffer, in the form of a deposit. Its not really nefarious.
If the loan is fixed at an amount or matched to inflation, you’d still have to pay or lose the house.
That’s still a pretty bullshit excuse, because it’s not like all that money you’ve already spent on paying the house will magically come back to you, you’d still be homeless if you lose the house, and the bank would still have a house available for the market, even if it’s at a lower value than before.
I’m not sure if you’ve really understood the dynamic.
Suppose you buy for $700k, pay off $50k, but then the market collapses and the property is only worth $600k.
You’ll be $50k better off if you just stop paying and let the bank foreclose.
You’ll be $50k better off if you just stop paying and let the bank foreclose.
And do what? Live under a bridge? You would still have to buy a new house. Are you going to find similar house at $600k easily? Are interest rates still low despite market collapse? Will banks lend you money if just foreclosed?
Don’t be daft.
I’m not providing advice regarding what someone ought to do when they find themselves in negative equity.
I’m explaining the requirement for buyers to start with a reasonable amount of equity.
Once an owner falls into negative equity, they have an incentive to default on the loan. Yes there will be consequences, but the fact remains they will he weighing those consequences against the financial incentive to default.
The “better off” in my comment is an impartial objective calculation.
But what you’re saying is simply not true. Where I live you have to provide 20% of equity to get a mortgage but you can’t default when the prices go down. No bank offers mortgage covered in 100% by the house. If you owe the bank $600k you owe then $600k, that’s it. If you default and you’re house now only costs $500k you still owe them $100k.
So the 20% requirement has nothing to do with negative equity protections. It’s to limit the banks exposure in case you’re unable to pay.
Sorry chief, you’re just not picking up what I’m laying down.
Of course you still owe the money, you’re just much less likely to pay.
I don’t know how this works in US but where I live when you owe bank money they will simply garnish your wages and benefits. No one is defaulting on their mortgage to save money. That’s just not a thing. I personally know people who were paying their mortgages for many many years even though their house was worth way less then the mortgage. You just suck it up and hope the price will eventually go up. If it doesn’t it’s still better then living on the street.
It’s a little nefarious
nefari-ish, if you will.
you need to pay us interest because we’re taking the risk. Also you need to give us a down payment to offset our risk.
Correct.
Less down payment means more risk and therefore more interest.
Its pretty simple really.
But if you don’t pay, they get the house. There is no risk of loss, only risk of not maximizing profit.
Foreclosing is a very expensive process.
If you borrow 100% of the purchase price and the bank has to foreclose they would incur a loss.
Oh no, their own process that they made for being given a house is so expensive, I feel so bad for them!
Why are you defending them so hard? You just have to look at their quarterly financials. They’re making out like gangbusters.
People don’t want to twerk anymore!
We have back problems now, Lauren.
At this point, yeah I would twerk on OnlyFans just to get a mortgage…
