3 ms·
> Most importantly, owning your home in full means that you're not paying landlord each month and it can also be passed down to your children. You can own an a
by avar 3y ago
> Most importantly, owning your home in full means that you're not paying landlord each month and it can also be passed down to your children.
You can own an apartment in full and not pay a landlord. You can even own the land the apartment is standing on[1].
I don't know if that exists in the US, but legally that's how it's managed in some of Europe (The Netherlands at least).
What you will have to pay indefinitely is a membership fee for a housing association, which owns the common parts of the building (stairwell etc.).
That's still going to be way less than the costs of maintaining a yard, driveway etc.
1. The other owners of apartments in the same vertical stratum can also "own" it. It's a legal mechanism that essentially comes down to forms of property tax.
- em500 3y agoIn apartments/condos, the owner association doesn't own just the common parts but the entire building and sometimes the land underneath (sometimes the land is leased). You buy shares in the association, which comes with exclusive right of use of a designated subunit of the building. But the legal entity that owns the building (including your subunit) is the association rather than yourself. In the end, all property ownership rights are legal fictions and abstractions, even for American SFH where you pay yearly property tax to keep using the house/land that you "own".
- willis936 3y agoWhether or not ownership is fiction does not make owning and not owning equal. There is a real personal security advantage to ownership and a real perverse incentive to renting.
- kgwgk 3y agoNote that in some places most people will consider that an “apartment” cannot be owned by definition. Otherwise it wouldn’t be an “apartment” - they would use a different name for it.