Comments on: Why You May Not WANT to Own

By: A Frugal Home Owner Sacrifices IKEA – A Weekend Review | BankNerd.ca

A Frugal Home Owner Sacrifices IKEA – A Weekend Review | BankNerd.ca — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:52:47 +0000

[...] Of course, it can swing the other way too. What happens when you make supposedly good financial decisions because “you should”. Owning a home is supposed to be one of the pinnacles of personal finance, but what if you’re not cut out to be a home owner? I love reading Gail’s blog because it’s one cup of personal finance with two cups of common sense, dashed with indignation and outrage. This week she wrote Why You May NOT Want to Own. [...]

By: Buying VS Renting - Home Life & Relationships Forum

Buying VS Renting - Home Life & Relationships Forum — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:36:25 +0000

[...] for the costs of home ownership. This is an excellent blog that discusses the subject really well: http://gailvazoxlade.com/blog/archives/674 Hope that [...]

By: dlm

dlm — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:28:44 +0000

Psychological reasons are even more important than money. We always rented but at early retirement felt pressured by media hype of increasing rents and never being able to afford to buy. Worst mistake of our lives. When you buy, you are absolutely stuck for at least a year until you can sell and hope to break even. The costs to sell are easily $20,000. You have at least the same problems — noisy neighbours etc: but when renting you know you could leave at any time. And the quality of purchased housing is no higher than rental and there are new problems in a condo: politics! negative! We are not suited to buy and are renters at heart. The quality of purchasing housing is no better than rental and even with a home inspection, the largest financial decision of your life is based on a few minutes and there will be problems! Let the landlord handle the job of ownership as a business; I want to be avoid that hassle. (This is based on more than one condo and more than one house.)

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:02:53 +0000

Thanks for confirming what I’ve known all along: home ownership is NOT for me. Luckily I never bought into that line of thinking. It doesn’t make sense based on what I want. I don’t know where I want to settle down (or even if I want to do so at all), I’m not at all handy, and I like to live in city centers – hence insane property prices.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:14:02 +0000

Hannah
Have you heard of the “no dig garden” permaculture do a search its very popular here in australia its the way to garden with no dirt heaps cheaper than buying dirt and as it says there is no digging.
Just put in some kind of a border and then layers of newspaper, kitchen waste, animal manure, compost, straw you can do it gradually as you get it or do it all in an afternoon.
I have gardened this way for years its great with the drought we have here at the moment as there is hardly any watering.
Smothers the weeds so no weeding its the way to go for me.
Hope this helps

By: Wanda

Wanda — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:22:08 +0000

I am torn… I love co-owning a house (with the bank ) but OH MY the work involved is endless and costly. I would urge anyone buying a house to take Gail’s word literally – set aside 3%-5% of the market price for repairs. Figure that into your budget before you buy. If you don’t, you will get behind like I am now. Also, make sure that you have a building inspector and pay close attention to the costs that may be involved with any renovation recommended. I bought my current house because it was in the neighbourhood I wanted but I have had to replace the furnace (when I moved in due to the oil tank and the age of the furnace) and reseal the basement so while the initial price looked good, it actually cost me about $12,000 more.

Any house I have purchased has always been based on emotion, ie the first one because my husband (ex) needed to be REALLY close to his family, the second I bought three days after my mother died (in my home town but I didn’t live there and rented it out) and finally, my current house was when my first grandchild was announced and I wanted them to be able to run and play throughout the entire house without bothering anyone else. Haphazard, yes; good business sense, no; success on current house, still evolving!

By: Geoff

Geoff — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:59:44 +0000

Shannon – Toronto house prices are down a half % compared to May 2008. I also know far more people who are trying to buy a house than are trying to sell one (at least a 5:1 ratio). Now this may be because people who would otherwise sell are putting it off or whatever, but that’s the situation here in the big smoke anyway. It’s hard to say. I prefer to time my life and not try to time the market. We bought because we were living in my 3rd floor walkup one-room (not bedroom, one big room) condo and my wife was 9 months pregnant.

By: Shannon

Shannon — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:51:44 +0000

Great post Gail…it gives a lot of food for thought. I’ve been scouring all these ‘expert’ opinions on the real estate market…from doomsdayers to optimists. My question is: do you or others think the real estate market will ever recover to what 2007 prices were like?

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:41:26 +0000

Ann,
Don’t be too envious. We completely and absolutely lucked out on the house. We went away the long weekend of February 2001, came back to the in-laws (we were living with them) and they told us they found us a house. Their old insurance salesman knew someone who wanted to sell everything lock stock and barrel because he had no kids, was a widow and was moving into a lodge. At the time we had been married 6 months, I was 3 months pregnant and living with the in-laws.
We have struggled, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel now. After the mortgage, braces are paid off at the beginning of September and then on to the next thing. My goal is to be debt free by the time I’m 50, if not sooner (I’m 47)

By: Hannah - P.S.

Hannah - P.S. — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:31:40 +0000

One more thing I thought of to consider is this:
Taxes are still cheap in a lot of rural areas, but this can change dramatically, if you’re in an area where a lot of people are starting to move out from the city. They tend to push prices upwards, so your property taxes can increase, especially if enough of them come out, and if they start getting on council and vote for things like road widening.

By: Hannah

Hannah — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:27:31 +0000

We’re doing well as owners, only because we were very conservative. My husband has a job in a small town, and we bought a lot in the village next door, only 10k’s away. We bought an old trailer. We’ve had the wiring inspected, which was a concern of mine with trailers. Another concern is their notorious problems with leaky roofs, so I inspected the ceilings inside the cupboards and closets, which still had the origional paint.

All’s been ok these last years with the trailer, and both it and the lot are paid for, which is great. But any one thinking of doing this should check at the municipal office to see if their zoning allows single-wides, or if there is an age restriction on the proposed trailer. The moving, permits for and building porches, digging for gas and water hook-ups, could cost as much as 15 – 20 thousand dollars – IF you don’t need to put in your own telephone pole.

One thing that I didn’t know, was how expensive it is to landscape. We live in an area known as “Canada’s little desert,” and my lot is all sand on gravel. Beware if you’re buying an unlandscaped lot on poor soil, especially if you want to garden. Topsoil is nonexistant in this area. I came from Vancouver, and if anybody had told me 15 years ago that one day I’d be spending oodles of money on dirt, I’d have said they were crazy. I’ve bought ties for garden edges, spent countless days on landscaping the hillsides which wouldn’t support anything but weeds, and each hole I dug for fruit trees or grapes took a couple of days to dig, because of the boulders that are under the sand and gravel – can’t even get a shovel in the ground; have to use crowbars!

Everything I’m growing is edible, which will offset the costs eventually, and inbetween gardens I’m making rockways, so we won’t need a lawnmower. We could be on water meters one day, and I hope to have the soil ammended by then so we won’t have to worry too much about that. Weeding is a constant thing here. Just wanted to warn any body who’s looking at a weedy lot and seeing an oasis, put a shovel in the ground, and if it’s all heavy clay or rocky as a hillside in Greece, you’ll want to think about this. The landscapers out here charge as much as an electrician, and DIY is backbreaking work!

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 28 May 2009 10:46:01 +0000

We moved from our starter home to a larger home about 2 years ago. Our mortgage increased by about $200, but we doubled our living space, which may be a pain to clean, but we’ve now got a veggie garden AND flower beds and we were able to put in a pool last year (on LOC, but it’s 1/2 paid down now..I was reading Gail at the time, but the kids and husband won the battle that time). Yes, there’s more house to clean, and God knows it’s bigger than what I grew up with when I was a kid of 5 in a 3 bedroom house with my grandfather living with us (and 1 bathroom…3 older stinky brothers…blech).
Now, that said, we are definitely using our house as an investment and will sell when the kids are ready to move out. But we have sooo many brand new couples living around us in the same size of home, no landscaping, sometimes not even curtains on the windows (they’ve all been in their homes for 2 years too!). I don’t get why people would ‘move up’ or make their first purchase such a big home when they can’t even afford to beautify it…or COVER the bloody windows! I’m sorry, but if I was still exposing myself to the neighbours every night for 2 years, I’d put the ol’ 4 Sale sign out! Might as well take your money and move into something you can afford to purchase AND maintain.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:40:06 +0000

You know what, Gail? I was pressured from my family to buy, and part of me has so sincerely missed renting, it’s not even funny. Part of the other reason I wanted out was because I ended up renting a townhouse that was between two warring neighbours, but that was ONE instance. I know that where I want to live would cost me more than I can afford to buy in, but there are always townhouses for rent there.

My financial life crumbled when I took up owning, whereas it was supposed to be saving me money, right? And I don’t know if I care to have that kind of equity in a house that, while I love it, isn’t my “dream home” by far, or in an area I’m sure I’m not going to end my days in.

Yet, all my life, I’ve been told owning is the only one true way…Thank you for giving me something else to think about!

By: Ann

Ann — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:52:55 +0000

Stories like Kathryn’s always make me a little envious because my down payment was more than the cost of her house. And then I had to add another $30k on top to furnish my home…and yet my walls are still bare.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:58:18 +0000

To Dave above; sounds like you live in High Park/Bloor West – I’m in exactly the same location/situation.