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Home ownership at a young age is an overrated fetish. A home is just a box to keep you and your family warm and dry. Getting attached to a box is silly. For my
by yafbum 4y ago
Home ownership at a young age is an overrated fetish. A home is just a box to keep you and your family warm and dry. Getting attached to a box is silly.
For my first 15 years out of school, renting was the best. Every year I would run the numbers based on the market prices and downpayment I could afford, and conclude that it was more advantageous for me to continue renting, in terms of total cost of ownership.
Renting in my younger years allowed me to move around, following economic and family tailwinds wherever they took me without being burdened by a piece of property that has insane transaction costs (multiple percentage points).
Now that I'm older and less likely to move around in my life, I'm able to afford to be a homeowner. It's good, but unexpectedly having to shell out thousands of dollars every time the house has a problem (plumbing, AC, windows, etc) takes getting used to.
I feel that this was the right call when I compare with a few relatives who are about my age and bought property earlier. They had to change jobs afterwards due to economic changes, and moved to a different city or country, but they didn't manage to sell their property at the price they wanted. So they're now reluctant landlords, dealing at a distance with problematic tenants, and renting a new place of their own in a new city. That feels like a headache I'm happy not to have.
- readthenotes1 4y agoit's more like homeowership.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoOne of my best friends bought a house the moment he got his first job. His dad fronted the down payment, and he paid the mortgage. His dad's reasoning was simple: he graduated from a good college, and by all accounts, he was going to have a strong career ahead of him. It was almost a certainty that he would make more money in 10 years than he was making currently. The mortgage might be XX% of his income at 22, but at 32, it would be just X% of his income. It took a toll on his finances early on in his career, but by the time he reached 33, he'd paid off the house. Now he's starting a family and he never has to worry about saving for a house or paying off a loan. So depending on your situation, it really does make sense to take on a heavy loan upfront, especially when you have a strong career ahead of you.
- yafbum 4y agoDepends a lot on career and how mobile you want to be. What do you do when your career is promising according to your diploma but there's a stubborn local economic downturn? Or when opportunity for making twice the money in a more interesting job opens up in a city far from where you are? If you're going to stay put no matter what, then sure. But otherwise, homeownership is a burden for job mobility. Being mobile allowed me to find a better job that requires about the same work but pays about 4x what I made in the city where I started. I saved too, and stock rose enough that I don't feel bad about not buying a box of bricks earlier.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoMight be unique to my country, but there are realistically just 3-4 cities that have the kind of high-paying tech jobs my friend was interested in. And most companies have offices in these 3-4 cities. You can easily spend your entire career in the same place.