Buying A House: C or D?

We bought in summer 2019 at 3.625 and refinanced in December at 2.75. It reduces our monthly payment by 10% for the next 30 years and we cover the costs of refinancing in like 12 months. If you’re currently paying anything approaching 4% and you don’t have specific plans to move soon it’s probably still worth doing.

Our letter of offer is at 2.5% fixed for 5 years which hopefully they honour come drawdown

the first place i bought was 6%. that shit seems hilarious now.

My first (and current) house had a 12.25% mortgage, which is even more ridiculous, but it's the best leap I ever made. A better leap would have been selling and getting something nicer in 1993, when I considered it, but was too chicken to do.

We looked into refinancing, and then we couldn't cover the costs of refinancing, so we just said fuck it. But rates were pretty low when we bought, too, and I don't really see us leaving this dump.

have you considered letting a friend park their RV or truck in your yard and pay you like $100/month?

I have to say that seven months in, on one hand, I love home ownership, but on the other hand, I can't fathom why anyone would want to own more than one house.

I mean unless you have the kind of fuck you money that you can just pay a property manager to take care of literally everything.

A property manager takes what 10% of rent? Even with that expense it’s easy to set things up such that renting is extremely profitable because our housing markets are messed up. No fuck you money required, beyond the fuck you of being able to afford a second downpayment, especially if you bought the house in the past.

because if the second house is a rental, as caek implied, you could conceivably not have to work but instead live off your passive landlord income

there are different arrangements re property management -- you could pay a company, which takes either a % of rent, or a flat fee, or, depending on the property, you could have a person who manages your property in exchange for free/discounted rent

yeah either way a using property manager does not involve any more fuck you money than being a landlord in the first place.

I guess it depends how much capital you have in that second house and what rents are like in your area.

It looks like Zillow is estimating rent for houses in my area at about 22% over the monthly payment (mortgage, escrow, property tax). Which would give you a lot of leeway if you were renting an apartment or condo in an expensive area for a few thousand and had low maintenance overheard, but it’s just a few hundred bucks here.

i want to be a renter again tbqh, but it's financial insanity if not to own if you have the option :(

Obviously the bulk of uncompensated domestic labor is done by women but there’s a whole economic and ideological apparatus devoted to convincing men that their inefficient and uncompensated household labor is fun and identity affirming https://t.co/lGYDkW2sIk

— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) April 4, 2021

I think women who own homes are expected to have that competence be part of their identity now as well, I also experience a cold wave of dread when I think about my experiences with the people my contractor sent out to remodel my bathroom that I had to spend hours with one-on-one in my own house, and what that would have been like as a woman

I have definitely wondered before if there would be a viable way to offer people inexpensive property management-like services for their own homes. We got really lucky and found these awesome guys through friends who are like handyman++ and know tons about houses and construction, so they can pretty much always either do what we need cheap or advise us on it. Like an on-call service that could (1) send a handyman when you need it for simple stuff, (2) advise you on all home repair and renovation decisions and (3) help you find contractors for more serious stuff. I guess there could be some messed up incentives and you'd probably need some kind of way to avoid contractors being selected via kickbacks.

I'm the point person for my condo complex dealing with our property management company, and it's a constant issue... there's a powerful incentive for relationships to form between the property managers and service providers that aren't in the best interest of the homeowners. A lot of the investor owners have zero patience with that reality, instead choosing to blame me for being naive about something like how much it should cost to replace the roof on a 3-story building. As if I'm going to have any fucking idea about that! And most of the time they're bluffing and have no idea themselves either.

I have definitely wondered before if there would be a viable way to offer people inexpensive property management-like services for their own homes.

A home warranty company is sort of this, on the repair side. Definitely makes homeownership less D for me. I don't think they would go find me a contractor if I wanted to I dunno redo the kitchen or something.

Seems like word of mouth is the only way that can be done successfully.

I don't understand that tweet above, who is making a joke, or if there is a joke? Or is he making fun of M Yglesias like many people seem to do.

there is not a joke. owning a house is a terrible job. yglesias is bad. both are true.

i don't feel any of the gendered pressure to enjoy the "male" aspects of it the zeitlin tweet refers to.

but i do hate every aspect of it.

he appears to think wiping his own ass is "doing the job of ass manager"

Idk I do as little as possible for myself that I can afford to pay for, why should I fix shit

if you don't want to do it but want it done, hire somebody and pretend they're your "property manager". don't take mitch hedberg's words too seriously.

i'm sure he is talking about spackling the holes left by his framed reservoir dogs poster and not foundation repair anyway

I wouldn’t mind learning more home repair and maintenance if my primary job was like 20 hrs/wk. impossible to keep up with my current life. Any manly fantasy I had quickly got dispelled when I realized it’s not just a matter of knowing how to do stuff but having the time and attention to do it constantly.

I am feeling this. There's a lot of things that I know how to do and enjoy doing. I like painting, drywall, carpentry, gardening, yardwork - but can't set aside the time to do them well.

For me the major timesucks seem to be preparation and cleanup. And the major hassle is having normal life go on while the job is being done.

We've spent weeks that are completely janked up by having to live out of boxes and temporary arrangements while much of the house is undergoing repairs and remodeling.

The painting (or whatever) isn't all that hard, it's a week and a half of plaster dust everywhere and constant "where the fuck is the corkscrew" / "oh, it's in box 17 on the porch, the one labeled 'miscellaneous kitchen shiznit.'"

...or wanting to paint just one thing or do just a bit of yardwork but needing a half-hour of getting ready and another half-hour to clean up and shower afterwards. If there weren't six mammals trying to live here, do work and school and relax, it would be way easier.

Most regular home maintenance/small fixes/updates like painting/finding skilled tradesmen just fall into laundry, washing windows, mopping for me. It's the same.

spoken like a true property manager

i was born with a fistful of caulk.

I tried to mount a knife magnet several months ago but found that I’d probably need a drill to actually do so and I still haven’t bought a drill, so the holes I augured with the drywall anchor and screwdriver are just sitting there

And we rent!

I’d pay our landlord to come do it but covid

Or if anyone has a drill and wants to lend it to me let me know when is a good time for me to come get it and what bus stop to use

Lads stop harshing my buzzsaw

I am knowledgeable enough to be able to diagnose many problems, but lack the confidence to actually fix them, leading to frustration for paying someone else to do something I should be able to do myself.

I just look up everything online and do it (if it's not likely to set the house on fire).

Id be v concerned about hitting cables/pipes but after that sher fuckit have a crack

xp yes avoid that if at all possible ime

Bad knees also an impediment to many plumbing fixes.

Homeowner things for me are a matrix of things I love/tolerate/despise, am great/decent/horrible at, and am confident/likely/not even close to doing well. All this is then factored against time and expense.

I got over a lot of my intense DIY pride/neurosis after a plumber pointed out how stubborn and masochistic it is to spend hours learning to half-assedly do something, with great potential for catastrophe, that I have no actual desire to do and would only do once or twice in my life vs. hiring someone who’s done the thing successfully hundreds of times.

otm

yup

Yeah, that's exactly the realization I came to when I managed to fix our old dryer. I was fairly proud of what I had done, but (1) it took me several hours and multiple trips to Home Depot, and I almost cried when I thought I wasn't going to be able to get an old rusted bolt off that was in an awkward place where I couldn't get any torque, (2) I spent 30 minutes anxiously watching it run afterwards, terrified that I had done something that would set the house on fire, (3) I was never 100% sure I correctly put the belt back on and (4) it died a month later anyway, necessitating a new dryer.

I do find it interesting to take things apart, see how they work, etc., but not enough to expend the time and/or risk fucking things up.

Lawyers know it's a bad idea to be your own lawyer, so hardly seems like a better idea to be your own plumber.

sounds like you learned something about yourself

Like an on-call service that could (1) send a handyman when you need it for simple stuff, (2) advise you on all home repair and renovation decisions and (3) help you find contractors for more serious stuff.

lol this is like the org i work for but it's for non-traditional housing/spaces -- we also do financial consulting re loans and stuff

i hear this song when i was like eight and the wisdom it contains occurs to me at least once a month.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40CV0ZuEweM

I am lucky/unlucky enough to have a partner who spent a great portion of his life as a property manager and contractor. We laid a new kitchen floor a few weeks ago, it took all day but looks excellent.

The unfortunate aspect is that there are many, many projects where he refuses to hire someone when we could save a lot of time and energy by doing so.

I am feeling some tension now between DIY vs. hiring someone, not because I'm territorial about it (or, frankly, good at it). Rather, because I had a budget in mind for painting / fixing / decorating / landscaping and we've completely blown past it, with loads of things still to do.

In the meantime we're underwhelmed by the choices in our price range - if a house in my area is affordable it's generally because there's something wrong with it. A little bit outdated, weird, small, shabby... kinda like my house. Not sure we want this much upheaval for a marginal improvement or no improvement in our lives.

xp - this reminds me of the week where we did dishes in the bathroom because my partner was insistent on improving his plumbing skills by repairing/replacing the pipes below the kitchen sink.