The Absolute Insanity of Not Buying a Home When You’re Young
The Absolute Insanity of Not Buying a Home When You’re Young
If you’re young—under 40 or so—and have been heeding the personal finance advice spewing forth from some of the most popular columnists and bloggers over the last few years about how owning a home doesn’t make financial sense anymore, I’m afraid you’ve been duped. Buying a house—especially when you’...
While buying a house is not a luxury everyone can afford, buying one instead of renting provides several key benefits that pay off in the long term.
What does everyone else think about buying when compared to renting?
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I don't buy it. Imagine writing an article about how a 250k house will cost you a million dollars by the time you die and shilling that as a good thing. Insane!
Value goes up, taxes go up. Value goes down, you're upside down on "your investment". It's a lose lose. A house isn't an asset! It's not an investment! An investment in what? Who's doing the work to raise the value? You are! So it's an investment in yourself? It's an asset that you have to continue to pour capital into to keep it's value? That's not an asset, that's a liability!
I've got a friend that lives in a medium sized city in a large metro area. He pays the total value of his house every 10 years in taxes. That's every 10 years, he's re-paying off his house. Every year they raise the taxes by the maximum legal amount, every year he disputes it, every year he is denied.
Water leaks. Mowing a yard. A new roof. Another pain in the ass every weekend.
The idea that you're not tied to a house after buying it is ridiculous. As if it's a liquid asset you can just slap on Facebook marketplace and sell in a weekend.
HOAs. You must select one of the approved paint colors. You can't cut down that tree. You can't plant that tree. You can't park on the street in front of your house. You can't work on your car in your driveway.
What if you don't want to buy a house as an investment? What if you want to you know, just own a place to live? Too bad. You'd better have a line of credit for emergency expenses on the house, you'd better have home equity, you'd better have a valuation higher than your liability in perpetuity or youret fucked. You can't just have a home anymore, you have to manage an asset, or a liability.
So that 200k savings you get by the time you croak according to the author's math, is it worth the hassle? The neighbors telling you what to do, the municipality fleecing you for every dime they can get, the constant maintenance because a house is a liability, not an asset, that will crumble if you don't pour money and time into it, the commute, the traffic, is it worth it?
I would never, ever buy a house in a residential area, ever. The whole market is a god damn mess. Now, buying land somewhere rural and slapping up an A frame...
I'm basically with you on all of that, except it still sounds better than renting.
Also, I don't have kids, but I see a lot of folks buying houses in suburbs "for the schools". In affluent towns where the math you're describing is the worst, renting often isn't even an option. Also a lot of those parents will sell and move the second their kids graduate high school. All of that is way cheaper than private school, especially for multiple kids.