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This is nice. I definitely played around with some calculators like this when I was deciding to buy a house a few years ago. Off the top of my head, some thin

This is nice. I definitely played around with some calculators like this when I was deciding to buy a house a few years ago. Off the top of my head, some things I'd add to make this more useful to a wide audience: - I don't know what I pay in state income and sales taxes. But I do know my income and my state's tax rate; income tax could be derived from that. I'm not sure how you'd estimate sales tax, though - you'd have to know how much of my spending is taxable. - I've heard a rule of thumb that home maintenance costs are 1% of the home's value per year; maybe default to that, especially since a first-time home owner doesn't really know what those costs are. However, older houses will require more maintenance and that cost probably scales with square footage, not cost. - you're assuming a 30-year mortgage - I'd put in the ability to change mortgage length. (Also, maybe a link to somewhere where I can find out what mortgage rates are.)

hirsin 5y ago
Maintenance cost likely scales with both size and cost. Size, for obvious reasons, and cost because the labor/materials cost of a repair is likely correlated with housing prices in the area. You then have to account for the portion of cost that's already correlated with size... +1 to mortgage length. We heavily pivoted our decision to buy on getting a 7 year ARM because my friend and I knew we wouldn't grow old together there (wanting to do things like get married and have our own families). A time bomb on the mortgage was a feature, for us, and a cost savings.
- rory 5y ago
  In my experience as a small-time landlord, maintenance does scale somewhat with cost, but not linearly. A lot of big costs on the materials side (like say, a furnace) are more or less fixed. At least, repairs don't cost 4x as much in a 800k house as they do in a 200k house of the same size.
BeetleB 5y ago
> I've heard a rule of thumb that home maintenance costs are 1% of the home's value per year It's a very poor rule of thumb. Contrary to the other comment, these costs don't increase linearly with value of the house. Sure, if I live in an expensive area, it may go up 30%, but not much more. Looking at how much my house has appreciated, I can assure you I pay not much more in maintenance than when I bought it. The 1% rule came about when the median house price was under $200K.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Furthermore, if you live in an early 1800s farmhouse like I do (which was very much a fixer-upper when I moved in and still sort of is), that's a very different situation from a modern in-city condo or even a new development.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  There's a very interesting subset of people on Reddit's Personal Finance forum who seem to think that buying was the right move (kinda, see below) for them, but that renters "don't know how good they have it". Watch any one of the threads on "should I buy/can I afford/pros/cons", and you'll see a vocal subset who seem hellbent on convincing people that owning a house is nothing more than opening your wallet/checkbook/credit card every other weekend for the "next four digit maintenance issue".
  - madcaptenor 5y ago
    I can sympathize with that. Buying a house was the right move for me but my wallet screams sometimes. (I feel the same way about having kids.)

hirsin 5y ago

Maintenance cost likely scales with both size and cost. Size, for obvious reasons, and cost because the labor/materials cost of a repair is likely correlated with housing prices in the area. You then have to account for the portion of cost that's already correlated with size... +1 to mortgage length. We heavily pivoted our decision to buy on getting a 7 year ARM because my friend and I knew we wouldn't grow old together there (wanting to do things like get married and have our own families). A time bomb on the mortgage was a feature, for us, and a cost savings.

rory 5y ago
In my experience as a small-time landlord, maintenance does scale somewhat with cost, but not linearly. A lot of big costs on the materials side (like say, a furnace) are more or less fixed. At least, repairs don't cost 4x as much in a 800k house as they do in a 200k house of the same size.

BeetleB 5y ago

> I've heard a rule of thumb that home maintenance costs are 1% of the home's value per year It's a very poor rule of thumb. Contrary to the other comment, these costs don't increase linearly with value of the house. Sure, if I live in an expensive area, it may go up 30%, but not much more. Looking at how much my house has appreciated, I can assure you I pay not much more in maintenance than when I bought it. The 1% rule came about when the median house price was under $200K.

ghaff 5y ago
Furthermore, if you live in an early 1800s farmhouse like I do (which was very much a fixer-upper when I moved in and still sort of is), that's a very different situation from a modern in-city condo or even a new development.
FireBeyond 5y ago
There's a very interesting subset of people on Reddit's Personal Finance forum who seem to think that buying was the right move (kinda, see below) for them, but that renters "don't know how good they have it". Watch any one of the threads on "should I buy/can I afford/pros/cons", and you'll see a vocal subset who seem hellbent on convincing people that owning a house is nothing more than opening your wallet/checkbook/credit card every other weekend for the "next four digit maintenance issue".
- madcaptenor 5y ago
  I can sympathize with that. Buying a house was the right move for me but my wallet screams sometimes. (I feel the same way about having kids.)