9 ms·

Do You Need to Own a House? Many Older Americans Decide They Don't

10 points by lxm 1y ago

jqpabc123 1y ago
For retirees, this should be a simple choice between: Paying taxes and insurance on your current McMansion Downsizing to pay less taxes and insurance Renting For someone who owns their home, I can't imagine that renting is the most cost effective option. The only way renting might be better/cheaper is if you're stuck with a sizeable mortgage that won't be paid off any time soon. But even in this case, moving to something more affordable would still likely beat renting. You'll still have to move in either case.
- commandlinefan 1y ago
  I also hope to pay off the house and be able to leave it to my kids at some point.
  - jqpabc123 1y ago
    In other words, you're building equity. Renting builds equity for someone else. And they have every incentive to take all they can get.
- supertrope 1y ago
  Downsizing paradoxically does not save as much money as you’d expect from the square footage difference. Because of the scarcity of cheap houses and alternatives like apartments, townhomes, duplexes and condos, the new home can be just as expensive. Mortgage rates going up and the high transaction costs in real estate eat up the cash difference.
chrsw 1y ago
For a while I thought owning a home wasn’t a great idea. Take on massive debt and sink massive amounts of time and money into home projects? No thanks. But the trick I missed was we just don’t build housing in this country. Especially not affordable housing. As long as this continues, and I don’t see any credible signs of abatement, owning a home is a good idea.
- antisthenes 1y ago
  The trick in this country is that affordable housing is just housing that was built 50-80 years ago. It's affordable because it has accumulated a lot of infrastructure debt, for example things like: insulation, roof, plumbing, electric. etc. etc.
  - bearl 1y ago
    The trick is, or was, demographics. The boomers outvoted other groups, because they have larger numbers. Why build housing that diminishes the boomers (ie voters) property values? Also, why limit demand for the hoarded housing by enforcing immigration laws, not undercutting local labor with exploitative practices like h1b abuse, or by creating reasonable legislation like other nations have that protects real estate from foreign speculation oand domestic market manipulation by monopolistic and predatory corporations like blackrock and blackstone? Because the boomers had the numbers and the real estate, and democracy is mostly about winning elections.
    - antisthenes 1y ago
      You're giving them too much credit. There isn't a boomer conspiracy that they are all in on. There isn't a secret Whatsapp chat for boomers to conspire to cheat the next generations out of housing. It's just bad local policies, because small towns hate density and don't understand second order effects. 99.9% of boomers don't make conscious policy decisions either.
Proofread0592 1y ago
Renting only makes sense on a fixed income if you can ensure your rent does not increase. If in 15 years your rent is double what it once was, you will probably not be able to afford it.
- SirFatty 1y ago
  You're forgetting about property tax, another consideration on a fixed income. And of course it can increase.
  - exe34 1y ago
    and that will also be reflected in your rent.
  - antisthenes 1y ago
    Every single cost mentioned in the article is passed to the renter in one way or another. Also, property tax is pretty much the most unavoidable tax there is, and the most beneficial. It funds schools, parks, roads, police, garbage collection and much of the local infrastructure and essential services where I live. I like having all those services, so I will gladly pay the tax, including any increases.
    - lesuorac 1y ago
      > Every single cost mentioned in the article is passed to the renter in one way or another. That's not how markets work. You can only charge in rent what the market will bear and if it's between renting a place out for a net loss of say -1500 or not renting it out and paying 3000 in expenses anyways some landlord is going to pick -1500 over -3000. In general, being a landlord is a losing proposition. The whole reason renting is better than owning is because real estate appreciates less than the stock market. That's still the case if you buy the place and rent it out! You might make money but you're losing out on the opportunity cost of NVDA growth. Now landlords could all gather together and decide that renting 150 units for 3000 generates more profit than renting 200 units for 2000 and yeah you'll end up with empty units. But its because the opportunity cost of the empty unit is in the landlord favor.
ljsocal 1y ago
There are some good rent vs own calculators out there. One thing that each person has to weigh is how much they value their time. Owning a home requires a certain amount of time that renters don’t commit. Not counting the considerable time in seeking out and buying a home or the preparation and process of selling a home, there’s an enormous amount time spent on maintenance, repair, renovation, etc. I’ve owned and rented and, for me, renting is a far superior lifestyle.
- exe34 1y ago
  you can pay somebody else to do all that. that's no different from renting. what's different is that when you pay off a mortgage, you're buying yourself a house. when you pay off your landlord's mortgage, you're buying him a house.
  - chrsw 1y ago
    Hiring contractors to work on your house is also high cost, in money and stress. You commonly end up paying someone a lot of money who then turns around and gets underpaid subcontractors, of dubious employment eligibility status, to do the actual work. If you’re going through the trouble of owning a home, it makes sense to do as much work yourself as you can.
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      Your rent will go up 5% a year, every year, compounding to infinity. That pays for a lot of contractor time. Even if you have to take a line of credit against your house above your current loan amount, your equity is based on it's current value, and that's still a static price in the end. That rent increases every single year, percentage based so it compounds, is asinine and literally only serves to make some holding company's line go up infinitely. As long as the US has 30 year fixed rate loans, it will never be better to rent.
      - angmarsbane 1y ago
        I mean it just compounds until you die. At some point you decide that you're comfortable with whatever financial number you're going to end life with and instead of taking steps to further maximize it you just enjoy your life, and for some people that means renting an apartment on the beach.
physicsguy 1y ago
One reason to own a house in many countries is that there are often large tax and inheritance benefits to doing so. E.g. old age pension benefits related to capital excluding your primary residence.
foxyv 1y ago
Owning a home wouldn't make much sense if we were building tons of affordable housing. However, with the constant artificial shortage created by cities, the rents and prices continue to rise ad infinitum. This means, as a homeowner, I have a huge advantage over my friends who are renting and paying twice as much for a single bedroom apartment, even including maintenance costs. This will only get worse over time.
- goyagoji 1y ago
  Hundred year events are now 10 year events. I'd much rather use a diverse portfolio to move outside of the scope of a disaster and chances are good that I will actually pay less than I should for the insurance component of rent because people are irrational. For raising rents it is similar, a city is usually getting too expensive all around for someone who doesn't need to live there.
  - robocat 1y ago
    Disasters are just another cost (risk). You can mostly mitigate the risk by avoiding known disaster areas and buying insurance. Renting has its own risks and costs. Overindexing on one risk or cost is not sensible. We had an earthquake (unknown faultline so completely unpredicted) in my city Christchurch. Owning your own home had costs and insurance response here wasn't ideal. Not owning your own home would have been more costly over a decade or two. Just after a one-off disaster is a great time to buy. Christchurch realty has really bounced back.
  - foxyv 1y ago
    My house represents less than 10% of my portfolio cost basis. It is now 25% of my total portfolio just because it has exploded in value over the past 5 years. Edit: In addition I get to live in it!
  - supertrope 1y ago
    There are some retirees whose financial plan assumes that their house (the majority of their net worth) does not decrease in market value and that insurance will pay for hurricane damage. The recent condo market slump is the canary in the coal mine.
rwmj 1y ago
Is renting stable in the United States? In the UK it's very precarious. The landlord can throw you out after a year with a couple of months' notice[1], so you might have to move every year. You don't want to be kicked out of your house and have to move when you're in your 70s or 80s. Plus the usual stuff like you cannot make any modifications, even paint a wall. [1] This might change to 4 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renters'_Rights_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renters'_Rights_Bill
- Ccecil 1y ago
  Not at all stable from my experience. Plus, it is in no way tied to what the "average renter makes". In my state there are very few laws about rent increases. It can basically happen within 1 month of lease renewal IIRC. Which does not allow (most people) time to move and typically the surrounding rents have increased higher than the proposed increase so it often does not save money. It really depends on the landlord or property management company involved though. Some do 5-10% increases every time they can because "that's the way it is"....some don't. If I would have bought a house 6 years ago I would be spending ~$500/mo less than I am for the house I currently rent.
- justinrubek 1y ago
  A couple of months' notice? That's an eternity compared to what we have here. Where I live in the US, tenants have very few rights. You can get one month notice. And you can't change anything at all. Even getting them to wire the electrical up to code is a crapshoot.
  - birn559 1y ago
    In Germany, it's practically impossible to cancel the contract with an elderly person that has lived in the apartment for many years (as long as the person keeps paying the rent that is). The person of course needs to be willing to exercise their rights.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
emorning3 1y ago
I'm an atheist, but if there's a God then I am grateful to her for granting me the wisdom to pay off my house before retiring instead of investing that money in some horseshit. Its a shelter from storms, both physically and metaphorically.
antisthenes 1y ago
WSJ is shilling for companies like Blackrock and other private equity that wants to rent you housing at a markup compared to the ownership costs. Of course they'll be pushing a narrative in which you shouldn't own your own home, the main source of financial security and peace of mind for when you are no longer able or willing to work a grueling 9-5 schedule. Believe it or not, ownership costs aren't scary and, in most cases (unless you get fleeced by contractors) are very predictable and still cheaper than rent (especially in light of recent rent increases). Personally, I wouldn't just treat this article with a grain of salt, I would disregard it entirely.
- ecshafer 1y ago
  Home ownership costs are pretty low if you understand that everything is amortized. You buy a new roof every ~25 years, then you think of it as putting $50 a month into savings so you buy that roof when it comes up. Furnace in 20 years, hot water heater in 10. But instead people seem to want to wait until things blow up then treat it as a sudden large expense.
  - antisthenes 1y ago
    > But instead people seem to want to wait until things blow up then treat it as a sudden large expense. It's fine to wait if you actually are saving money and putting it in the stock market. But USA in general has a savings problem, so of course it blows up on people.
  - CrimsonCape 1y ago
    I'm trying to understand your point of view. Where is the extra money coming from to amortize the costs of major repair items? I think you are correct. It's just that nobody actually considers the amortization costs when calculating what they can afford. The example of a 30 year roof replacement is great because it nicely aligns with a 30 year mortgage. So in reality, the cost of homeownership should be the monthly cost of servicing the mortgage payments PLUS the amortized cost of roof replacement. Your real estate agent has no reason to tell you that a 200k house is actually 240k. Because by the time you "own" the house, it is due for a 40k roof replacement. With the amortized cost maybe you can't actually afford the house. - Mortgage monthly payment - Amortized: -- cost of roof replacement -- cost of at least 2 refrigerators, more likely 4 refrigerators -- cost of at least 1 new air conditioning system + at least 100% of the cost of a new system over the lifespan of repairs of the current system -- Cost of at least 1 new garage door system -- Cost of at least 4-5 toilet replacements by a plumber over 30 years -- Cost of at least 1 whole home repainting, more likely 2 occurrences -- Cost of wear and tear; hard to quantify but Likely very significant. This is not even considering the amortized costs of personal time. The time spent servicing chores like grasscutting, pruning, weed pulling, touchup painting, repairs caused by wear and tear.
ecshafer 1y ago
In their example case of someone with a 5 bedroom house, its obvious: sell it and move to a 1 or 2 bedroom condo. Renting isn't going to be optimal if her rent doubles every 10 years and she lives to 100. The other option that boomer generation doesn't seem to be using as much is multi-generational homes. Give the house to your kid, you play grandma/grandpa and give them child care. The kid gets a cheap house and cheap childcare. You build multi-generational equity.
klipklop 1y ago
I don’t buy what this article is selling. For the average person in the US you are not “free” from having to work until you have a 100% paid off home. Older Americans are not leaving their paid off 3/2bed in the burbs in exchange for a condo that has rent costs go up 10% every year. Every single older person I know with a paid off house won’t move because it will be dramatically more expensive than what they pay now for way less housing.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
lesuorac 1y ago
How are we on buy vs rent for like the third time this month? There are a million calculators out there and I've linked 4 in a previous post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794529). The math just works out in favor of renting because real estate doesn't appreciate as fast as other stuff. There are of course no-monetary reasons to own a house. As well as if you plug in an interest rate of say 2% it starts to look like owning is better than renting. But we're not in that environment for the next year or so.
danluvscock 1y ago
[dead]
angmarsbane 1y ago
I do buy it. There are a significant number of well-off retirees in my apartment complex. From the ones I've talked with, they love it. There's more to life than money, and many of them found their single family homes isolating and the stuff in them burdensome. There's a lot of mental energy that goes into taking care of a home, organizing all of the upkeep etc. They don't have to deal with any of that in an apartment. They don't have to vet repair companies or gardners or compare quotes. Living in our apartment complex they get to talk with a mix of people which keeps life interesting and alleviates loneliness, they get to walk to amenities like pools/gyms that their single family homes did not have, also they're closer to a major airport which makes those bucket list trips less burdensome AND they're closer to top hospitals for treatments. It's more expensive yes, but they're getting a value out of it that is worth the cost to them.

10 points by lxm 1y ago

For retirees, this should be a simple choice between: Paying taxes and insurance on your current McMansion Downsizing to pay less taxes and insurance Renting For someone who owns their home, I can't imagine that renting is the most cost effective option. The only way renting might be better/cheaper is if you're stuck with a sizeable mortgage that won't be paid off any time soon. But even in this case, moving to something more affordable would still likely beat renting. You'll still have to move in either case.

commandlinefan 1y ago
I also hope to pay off the house and be able to leave it to my kids at some point.
- jqpabc123 1y ago
  In other words, you're building equity. Renting builds equity for someone else. And they have every incentive to take all they can get.
supertrope 1y ago
Downsizing paradoxically does not save as much money as you’d expect from the square footage difference. Because of the scarcity of cheap houses and alternatives like apartments, townhomes, duplexes and condos, the new home can be just as expensive. Mortgage rates going up and the high transaction costs in real estate eat up the cash difference.

chrsw 1y ago

For a while I thought owning a home wasn’t a great idea. Take on massive debt and sink massive amounts of time and money into home projects? No thanks. But the trick I missed was we just don’t build housing in this country. Especially not affordable housing. As long as this continues, and I don’t see any credible signs of abatement, owning a home is a good idea.

antisthenes 1y ago
The trick in this country is that affordable housing is just housing that was built 50-80 years ago. It's affordable because it has accumulated a lot of infrastructure debt, for example things like: insulation, roof, plumbing, electric. etc. etc.
- bearl 1y ago
  The trick is, or was, demographics. The boomers outvoted other groups, because they have larger numbers. Why build housing that diminishes the boomers (ie voters) property values? Also, why limit demand for the hoarded housing by enforcing immigration laws, not undercutting local labor with exploitative practices like h1b abuse, or by creating reasonable legislation like other nations have that protects real estate from foreign speculation oand domestic market manipulation by monopolistic and predatory corporations like blackrock and blackstone? Because the boomers had the numbers and the real estate, and democracy is mostly about winning elections.
  - antisthenes 1y ago
    You're giving them too much credit. There isn't a boomer conspiracy that they are all in on. There isn't a secret Whatsapp chat for boomers to conspire to cheat the next generations out of housing. It's just bad local policies, because small towns hate density and don't understand second order effects. 99.9% of boomers don't make conscious policy decisions either.

Proofread0592 1y ago

Renting only makes sense on a fixed income if you can ensure your rent does not increase. If in 15 years your rent is double what it once was, you will probably not be able to afford it.

SirFatty 1y ago
You're forgetting about property tax, another consideration on a fixed income. And of course it can increase.
- exe34 1y ago
  and that will also be reflected in your rent.
- antisthenes 1y ago
  Every single cost mentioned in the article is passed to the renter in one way or another. Also, property tax is pretty much the most unavoidable tax there is, and the most beneficial. It funds schools, parks, roads, police, garbage collection and much of the local infrastructure and essential services where I live. I like having all those services, so I will gladly pay the tax, including any increases.
  - lesuorac 1y ago
    > Every single cost mentioned in the article is passed to the renter in one way or another. That's not how markets work. You can only charge in rent what the market will bear and if it's between renting a place out for a net loss of say -1500 or not renting it out and paying 3000 in expenses anyways some landlord is going to pick -1500 over -3000. In general, being a landlord is a losing proposition. The whole reason renting is better than owning is because real estate appreciates less than the stock market. That's still the case if you buy the place and rent it out! You might make money but you're losing out on the opportunity cost of NVDA growth. Now landlords could all gather together and decide that renting 150 units for 3000 generates more profit than renting 200 units for 2000 and yeah you'll end up with empty units. But its because the opportunity cost of the empty unit is in the landlord favor.

ljsocal 1y ago

There are some good rent vs own calculators out there. One thing that each person has to weigh is how much they value their time. Owning a home requires a certain amount of time that renters don’t commit. Not counting the considerable time in seeking out and buying a home or the preparation and process of selling a home, there’s an enormous amount time spent on maintenance, repair, renovation, etc. I’ve owned and rented and, for me, renting is a far superior lifestyle.

exe34 1y ago
you can pay somebody else to do all that. that's no different from renting. what's different is that when you pay off a mortgage, you're buying yourself a house. when you pay off your landlord's mortgage, you're buying him a house.
- chrsw 1y ago
  Hiring contractors to work on your house is also high cost, in money and stress. You commonly end up paying someone a lot of money who then turns around and gets underpaid subcontractors, of dubious employment eligibility status, to do the actual work. If you’re going through the trouble of owning a home, it makes sense to do as much work yourself as you can.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    Your rent will go up 5% a year, every year, compounding to infinity. That pays for a lot of contractor time. Even if you have to take a line of credit against your house above your current loan amount, your equity is based on it's current value, and that's still a static price in the end. That rent increases every single year, percentage based so it compounds, is asinine and literally only serves to make some holding company's line go up infinitely. As long as the US has 30 year fixed rate loans, it will never be better to rent.
    - angmarsbane 1y ago
      I mean it just compounds until you die. At some point you decide that you're comfortable with whatever financial number you're going to end life with and instead of taking steps to further maximize it you just enjoy your life, and for some people that means renting an apartment on the beach.

physicsguy 1y ago

One reason to own a house in many countries is that there are often large tax and inheritance benefits to doing so. E.g. old age pension benefits related to capital excluding your primary residence.

foxyv 1y ago

Owning a home wouldn't make much sense if we were building tons of affordable housing. However, with the constant artificial shortage created by cities, the rents and prices continue to rise ad infinitum. This means, as a homeowner, I have a huge advantage over my friends who are renting and paying twice as much for a single bedroom apartment, even including maintenance costs. This will only get worse over time.

goyagoji 1y ago
Hundred year events are now 10 year events. I'd much rather use a diverse portfolio to move outside of the scope of a disaster and chances are good that I will actually pay less than I should for the insurance component of rent because people are irrational. For raising rents it is similar, a city is usually getting too expensive all around for someone who doesn't need to live there.
- robocat 1y ago
  Disasters are just another cost (risk). You can mostly mitigate the risk by avoiding known disaster areas and buying insurance. Renting has its own risks and costs. Overindexing on one risk or cost is not sensible. We had an earthquake (unknown faultline so completely unpredicted) in my city Christchurch. Owning your own home had costs and insurance response here wasn't ideal. Not owning your own home would have been more costly over a decade or two. Just after a one-off disaster is a great time to buy. Christchurch realty has really bounced back.
- foxyv 1y ago
  My house represents less than 10% of my portfolio cost basis. It is now 25% of my total portfolio just because it has exploded in value over the past 5 years. Edit: In addition I get to live in it!
- supertrope 1y ago
  There are some retirees whose financial plan assumes that their house (the majority of their net worth) does not decrease in market value and that insurance will pay for hurricane damage. The recent condo market slump is the canary in the coal mine.

rwmj 1y ago

Is renting stable in the United States? In the UK it's very precarious. The landlord can throw you out after a year with a couple of months' notice[1], so you might have to move every year. You don't want to be kicked out of your house and have to move when you're in your 70s or 80s. Plus the usual stuff like you cannot make any modifications, even paint a wall. [1] This might change to 4 months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renters'_Rights_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renters'_Rights_Bill

Ccecil 1y ago
Not at all stable from my experience. Plus, it is in no way tied to what the "average renter makes". In my state there are very few laws about rent increases. It can basically happen within 1 month of lease renewal IIRC. Which does not allow (most people) time to move and typically the surrounding rents have increased higher than the proposed increase so it often does not save money. It really depends on the landlord or property management company involved though. Some do 5-10% increases every time they can because "that's the way it is"....some don't. If I would have bought a house 6 years ago I would be spending ~$500/mo less than I am for the house I currently rent.
justinrubek 1y ago
A couple of months' notice? That's an eternity compared to what we have here. Where I live in the US, tenants have very few rights. You can get one month notice. And you can't change anything at all. Even getting them to wire the electrical up to code is a crapshoot.
- birn559 1y ago
  In Germany, it's practically impossible to cancel the contract with an elderly person that has lived in the apartment for many years (as long as the person keeps paying the rent that is). The person of course needs to be willing to exercise their rights.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

emorning3 1y ago

I'm an atheist, but if there's a God then I am grateful to her for granting me the wisdom to pay off my house before retiring instead of investing that money in some horseshit. Its a shelter from storms, both physically and metaphorically.

antisthenes 1y ago

WSJ is shilling for companies like Blackrock and other private equity that wants to rent you housing at a markup compared to the ownership costs. Of course they'll be pushing a narrative in which you shouldn't own your own home, the main source of financial security and peace of mind for when you are no longer able or willing to work a grueling 9-5 schedule. Believe it or not, ownership costs aren't scary and, in most cases (unless you get fleeced by contractors) are very predictable and still cheaper than rent (especially in light of recent rent increases). Personally, I wouldn't just treat this article with a grain of salt, I would disregard it entirely.

ecshafer 1y ago
Home ownership costs are pretty low if you understand that everything is amortized. You buy a new roof every ~25 years, then you think of it as putting $50 a month into savings so you buy that roof when it comes up. Furnace in 20 years, hot water heater in 10. But instead people seem to want to wait until things blow up then treat it as a sudden large expense.
- antisthenes 1y ago
  > But instead people seem to want to wait until things blow up then treat it as a sudden large expense. It's fine to wait if you actually are saving money and putting it in the stock market. But USA in general has a savings problem, so of course it blows up on people.
- CrimsonCape 1y ago
  I'm trying to understand your point of view. Where is the extra money coming from to amortize the costs of major repair items? I think you are correct. It's just that nobody actually considers the amortization costs when calculating what they can afford. The example of a 30 year roof replacement is great because it nicely aligns with a 30 year mortgage. So in reality, the cost of homeownership should be the monthly cost of servicing the mortgage payments PLUS the amortized cost of roof replacement. Your real estate agent has no reason to tell you that a 200k house is actually 240k. Because by the time you "own" the house, it is due for a 40k roof replacement. With the amortized cost maybe you can't actually afford the house. - Mortgage monthly payment - Amortized: -- cost of roof replacement -- cost of at least 2 refrigerators, more likely 4 refrigerators -- cost of at least 1 new air conditioning system + at least 100% of the cost of a new system over the lifespan of repairs of the current system -- Cost of at least 1 new garage door system -- Cost of at least 4-5 toilet replacements by a plumber over 30 years -- Cost of at least 1 whole home repainting, more likely 2 occurrences -- Cost of wear and tear; hard to quantify but Likely very significant. This is not even considering the amortized costs of personal time. The time spent servicing chores like grasscutting, pruning, weed pulling, touchup painting, repairs caused by wear and tear.

ecshafer 1y ago

In their example case of someone with a 5 bedroom house, its obvious: sell it and move to a 1 or 2 bedroom condo. Renting isn't going to be optimal if her rent doubles every 10 years and she lives to 100. The other option that boomer generation doesn't seem to be using as much is multi-generational homes. Give the house to your kid, you play grandma/grandpa and give them child care. The kid gets a cheap house and cheap childcare. You build multi-generational equity.

klipklop 1y ago

I don’t buy what this article is selling. For the average person in the US you are not “free” from having to work until you have a 100% paid off home. Older Americans are not leaving their paid off 3/2bed in the burbs in exchange for a condo that has rent costs go up 10% every year. Every single older person I know with a paid off house won’t move because it will be dramatically more expensive than what they pay now for way less housing.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

lesuorac 1y ago

How are we on buy vs rent for like the third time this month? There are a million calculators out there and I've linked 4 in a previous post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794529). The math just works out in favor of renting because real estate doesn't appreciate as fast as other stuff. There are of course no-monetary reasons to own a house. As well as if you plug in an interest rate of say 2% it starts to look like owning is better than renting. But we're not in that environment for the next year or so.

danluvscock 1y ago

[dead]

angmarsbane 1y ago

I do buy it. There are a significant number of well-off retirees in my apartment complex. From the ones I've talked with, they love it. There's more to life than money, and many of them found their single family homes isolating and the stuff in them burdensome. There's a lot of mental energy that goes into taking care of a home, organizing all of the upkeep etc. They don't have to deal with any of that in an apartment. They don't have to vet repair companies or gardners or compare quotes. Living in our apartment complex they get to talk with a mix of people which keeps life interesting and alleviates loneliness, they get to walk to amenities like pools/gyms that their single family homes did not have, also they're closer to a major airport which makes those bucket list trips less burdensome AND they're closer to top hospitals for treatments. It's more expensive yes, but they're getting a value out of it that is worth the cost to them.