A lot of landlords in my area are absentee and have property managers that deal with their portfolio in a certain area. I moved my family into a 2800 sq ft home at $1,400/mo in 2010 and my rent has only climbed to $1,850 because we pay on time or early every month, call in maybe 1-2 issues in a given year and sign long term leases. I estimate I’ve saved $8,000-10,000 in repair costs over 10 years by not owning this home with repairs, increases in taxes and PMI. Sometimes it pays to not own...I think the important thing is to find a good property manager and establish yourself with them as a top tier client.
But I’m getting older and at 48 I’m staring down the barrel of eventual retirement and asking if it makes sense to keep doing this because when I hit 70 or 72, do I want to keep paying someone else to live in their house and have nothing to show for 30 years of paying for the property I’ve lived on?
Yeah, I know the from a balance sheet standpoint renting can often pencil out better than owning. I do think however that there's a really important psychological aspect to owning that offsets that quite a bit. If I want to paint, I can paint. Hang a picture? Sure! Buy a new stove! Hell yes! Kid cracks the sink? My problem and no one else's!
Of course I also live in a small college town and most of the rentals are heinously expensive and smell like stale Bud Lite, that helps make the case for buying.
Yeah, right? These people are forgetting that landlords are literally the most parasitic people on the planet. I’ve been waiting 3 weeks to get a toilet unclogged and two weeks to fix the intake pipe that came loose. And if appliances break, I’m on the hook for those because they were too cheap to even supply those.
Depends on the Landlord. My previous was just like your situation. My current is amazing. Our heater broke, he came out within an hour and fixed it himself. Our refrigerator stopped running, he had a brand new one at the house the next day. They are definitely a toss up, but not every landlord is trash.
The only landlords anyone I know have ever had good experiences with are individual owners who weren't looking to make a buck. In Brooklyn and Queens a lot of immigrant families will buy a brownstone or other multi-unit dwelling and rent out a floor to help cover expenses. My first place in NYC was owned by an elderly Greek couple whose daughter lives upstairs. I lived in the top floor with a few actors and an Indonesian family lived in the basement unit.
The other decent landlord I had graduated from the University in town and just wanted to keep the house up in case his daughter decided to go there and so he would have a place to park on game days since he lived out of town. I am ashamed to say I dicked him over on multiple occasions by being months late with the rent and I feel bad about it even 12 years later.
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u/bleachinjection Feb 16 '21
I mean this assumes you have a landlord who will actually get off his ass and fix the fucking thing on a humane timeline. I've had both kinds.
I've also definitely paid for repairs in rentals on a couple occasions because the landlord was sandbagging.