5 ms·

>Also, the burden of being rooted, and of having to maintain a house, could be such a significant detraction to quality of life that it totally makes up the dif

• ajkjk 10y ago
  Sure, but you shouldn't be surprised to hear that many rental experiences are much more positive than that, or that many people's situations lead them to totally difference conclusions. I've listed a bunch of reasons. You wrote "I never understood how people can not own a house and waste money on renting for decades" above, and my response is "It's easy to understand. Take my perspective as one of the millions of examples."
  • okc 10y ago
    My experience (UK) is that landlords screw people over where they can - they want to make money but actually have a social responsibility for housing conditions. Most people I know live in horrible conditions for a little less rent or increasingly so more precarious and even less stable house shares. Maybe that's an English problem though. The interesting question being posed in these threads is a lifestyle choice: ownership or flexibility, lay your roots down or remain agile. If you have enough money to pick and choose that's great. Otherwise home ownership may be the only route out of a precarious and unstable existence.
• enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>Yea, so I'm renting a house where my agreement states that I am not allowed to fix or improve the flat myself. That's the beauty of renting: if you don't like your current agreement, you can find another place with more preferable terms. Plenty of landlords allow tenants to change/improve the property. Whereas when you buy a house, you are stuck with the same neighbors (and sometimes the same HOA) for a much longer period of time.
  • bane 10y ago
    Why not just rent out your property to somebody else so you no longer have to pay the mortgage on it, then move somewhere else? As an owner you get whatever agreement you wish to make with yourself. However, you are right, it's slightly harder to move from owned property to owned property, so in many jurisdictions, property owners have significantly more rights about neighboring land usage than do renters. For example, I once had a neighbor who was running an illegal business out of their house and causing all kinds of chaos. I presented evidence to the courts that their business was causing real estate market depreciation and was "damaging" the value of my property. The judge ordered them to cease immediately or pay me $50k in assessed depreciation. They shut down their business, put their property up for sale and were gone within a month, they paid my court costs as well. I had on my side, the HOA, local Sheriffs, county zoning inspectors, county ordinances, state ordinances and the agency responsible for handling business registrations. The actual time in court was less than 1 hour. My property value rebounded the full amount and my new neighbors were great. On the other hand, when I was renting, I once had a neighbor with a serious drug addiction problem, who was stabbed once by a homeless man he let into his apartment so they could do heroin together. Even though he presented a clear danger to the entire community, it took 90 days to have a community hearing to evict him from the property. I could have left sooner, but would have had to pay a penalty to break the lease early and by this point local rents had gone up about 10%. So I would end up paying more to live, and be out the penalty of two months rent. I had on my side approximately nobody. When he was finally evicted, he was replaced by another recovering drug addict who occasionally lapsed and we'd find high in the stairwell. This was in a very nice area I might add -- and the county had selected our building as a pilot "integration program" for people coming out of non-violent criminal and drug rehabilitation programs. They had hoped that being around a nice environment might help them out.