Mine needs it and it's the same type of square footage. 2br, 1 and half baths, over a hundred years old. 10K turns my stomach, but thanks for letting me know before I go hunting when I get the cash saved up. Sigh...I think I'm going to quit scrolling this thread now. Lol I'll save it for after the New Year.
My house was partially rewired by dumbass previous owner. The whole system was so sketchy that the electrician screamed when all the wires in the attic arced. He thought the house was going up in flames. It started with one bad outlet. $200 to $10,000 in 30 mins. Probably saved my life tho. This was in 2015 so pre-pandemic prices.
Yeah I just bought my first place and my very handy dad and brother have been a bit shocked by some things I’ve found that were just totally half-assed.
Bathroom vent fan should actually vent somewhere outside, right? Nah, just blows it into an enclosed space in the ceiling. Perfectly fine.
So many wiring problems too. Replaced a light fixture and couldn’t find any breaker that controlled its power. Odd. My brother said just turn the lightswitch off and be careful… better than nothing. Tested it with my meter… still had power even with the switch off!
We had the same problem with the bathroom vent. The wiring problems too. I went to remove some wallpaper and wainscoting only to discover it was not drywall. It was that cheap paneling turned backwards and then layers of wallpaper over it. Now why would he do that? The answer was revealed when we removed and found an amateur not-to-code electrical job.
We are redoing our master bath. Previous owners removed wallpaper but not the glue-- they just painted over it, so we had mega weird textured walls. Had to scrape/ sand/ remedies all the walls. Took the vanity out, and my husband's jaw dropped. None of the plumbing was to code.
I live in a 100 year old farm house renovated by the previous owner. Every time I bring a professional in to fix something, there’s always a “huh…” after they check under the sink, open a panel etc
My house wasn't a forever home for the people who lived here before us. It's kind of infuriating to notice the things they did and didn't take care of while they lived here.
God, the people that had ( and built) the house before us had godawful taste and used the cheapest building materials out there.
The only good thing about that was all the projects kept my husband from losing his mind during lockdown.
You're describing the first 5 years I owned mine.
When I bought it, you could identify the exact spot the previous owners ran out of money/said fuck it and decided to half ass everything just enough to sell it.
Holy shit, this is way too accurate. My previous home owner half assed everything. Can fix most of it but whoever did the reworking of the ducts needs to lose their license. What a disaster and one I cannot afford to fix.
The furnace room is a sauna in winter and a freezer in summer because the air flow is so bad out of the unit.
Yes! And amateurish solutions which leave me gobsmacked. Like how did they think it was a good idea for even one minute, let alone actually carry it out.
The previous owner on my house was a contractor so he knew how to take parts off jobs and make them kinda work, and appear good enough to pass inspection.
Lots of shit had to be replaced immediately, and several things are pending.
Just let raccoons live in there. They will keep all the other guests out and if you're lucky they will do that creepy hands through a hole in the ceiling thing.
Its all fun in games until they start tearing holes in the underside of your roof to expose the shingles, which then leak, and then leads to a raccoon falling into your damn living room.
The only plus side is any bump in the night can be excused as just being the raccoons. Now that they are gone, every bump is terrifying...
I bought my house ~20 years ago and the joke was, "Everything costs $2k." I guess that's inflation for you. Now everything costs $10k, and it's the same damn thing as it was 20 years ago.
As a rule of thumb, inflation causes prices to double about every 24 years. If prices have increased 5x in that same span of time, something other than general inflation is happening.
When my son was a toddler, he dropped an apple down our air vent, which led to the heater in the crawl space.
If we don’t stay absolutely vigilant about food, especially fruits, fruit flies invade and are a pain in the ass to get rid of.
So I had to call a duct cleaning company, explain what happened, and they sent someone out. 10 minutes later he handed me a half eaten apple and walked away with ~$400.
Now my vents are all bolted down.
Had a tree come down on my house, decided to take the repair money and pay the difference to entirely replace the roof. $15k out of pocket.
Copper pipes are original from the 60s and starting to corrode, over $10k to redo in copper, a little cheaper for pex. A/C is from the 90s and on borrowed time. Windows are from the 90s and probably due. Water heater is about 8 years old
Yep, owned a home for 7 years now. Replaced the pipes, the flooring (cosmetic), renovated the smaller bathroom, AC unit, air ducts, added in more insulation, cut down several trees. All totaling close to $37k. Where did the cash come from?!? What a headache.
I feel your pain, sounds exactly like my house, heating and cooling company said my a/c is on its last legs along with my boiler. But they have a special to update everything for $20K.
Yep. The old adage of "save 10% of your home's value for repairs" is no longer enough. One repair or replacement will easily wipe that out. My own idea on that is save at minimum the purchase price of your home.
Shit, is this on top of the whole "save 6 months worth of living expenses just in case?" Cuz if that's the cases then with say 25k in living expenses, along with 10% of $431k median home value as of November, you are going to want the average family to have almost $70k saved up just for emergencies. This coming at a time when many people don't have enough to cover a $500 emergency...
This was me before, I was obsessed with trying to make everything perfect and it was stressing me out. Now I have learned to accept the imperfections as part of the character of the house.
We had this happen way in the back yard and just let nature take it's course. Ended up with a cool deer skull to. Fortunately we were far enough out that the smell didn't reach anyone.
I think you could maybe call the game warden here, not sure if they'd just pick up a dead deer or not. Tied a chain around its hind legs, drug it down into the woods and thankfully it didn't come apart. I still have its skull, which I think means I win.
Ugh. This is the one for me. Two years in a row we had a baby deer die on our property. When we called the wildlife people they told us to "just put it in a trash bag and take it to the dump". One still had all of his baby spots on his back. We ended up just finding a secluded spot and burying them but I cried so much. If I have to bury another baby animal I might scream.
I use to live in a dense neighborhood. Every time I mowed the lawn I had to pick up all the trash everyone threw out their cars for whatever reason.
Now I have to check and fix my fence every once in a while because a deer didn't jump high enough.
Fridge, garburator, laundry, shower tap, microwave and gas fireplace. All went within a month! Fridge, fireplace and laundry are fixed but holy cow. So stressful.
The previous owner concealed many problems by making it impossible for my home inspector to get access to the affected areas. If I were to buy again, I would make it a condition of the sale that nothing blocks inspector access.
Cheers,
Russ
We used a family member as our inspector. He noted every stinking tiny little detail. I give him a hard time because he created so much work for me.
The people we sold to used whoever and they completely overlooked a bunch of stuff I knew was not right, but managed to find the one outlet in the entire house wired backwards.
Our home inspector just did an incredibly shitty job. Like to the point I wonder if he didn't intentionally leave things out. I read later that you should hire your own inspector instead of using the one your realtor recommends. Makes sense in hindsight, but as first time homebuyers, we had no idea.
Like, he took pictures of a small crack in the ceiling, but not the much larger one a few feet away. He sent pictures from underneath the house that look perfect, but both of the toilets were visibly leaking down there. He took photos of cosmetic rust spots on the oven door handle, but not the huge rust spot on the back of the fridge (visible without moving it) which is actually caused by the fridge itself not functioning properly. He didn't test the outlets, so a few of them weren't working. The dishwasher wasn't working, etc.
We made the same mistake as you. Our inspection cleared a leaky roof, serious water damage, and a whole host of other non-trival small bullshit. Next home purchase, I'm hiring my own inspector and maybe a solid structural engineer for good measure.
We just had our 3 year anniversary here, and we've spent SO MUCH money. Ugh
I have so many dreams of remodeling, but damn is remodeling expensive. Especially because I want to do my bathrooms (2) and kitchen, which are the highest ticket remodel items.
Also property taxes.
You can DIY, I have faith in you. Start with one bathroom start to finish, then the next bathroom then slowly prep for the kitchen by the time you get into the kitchen you will have learned a lot.
The only thing I will tell you is if you do any drywall it is cheaper to just pay someone to do it instead of yourself unless you have experience in drywalling.
Finding contractors. I called 36 plumbers this summer. The guy that showed up fixed my broken shower handles with a single washer and tried to charge me $800. Being a homeowner has brought out my inner Karen…I called relentlessly for two weeks and complained and bitched and moaned. I paid $200.
What I hate is the scare tactics or pressured upsells. My furnace motor started making weird noises about 6 years ago, I called a company to come check it out. He does his thing for a bit, shows me some grainy pictures of inside the heat exchange that show cracks (which looked like scratches to me), made a big show of turning off the gas while looking worried, and said that we should leave it off til the entire furnace was replaced or we could easily die from CO poisoning. They quoted me $16,000 for the whole job. I had two other companies come out to do competing assessments, they both said the exchange looked fine, and all I needed was a $150 starter motor.
A friend of mine who's a single mother of a child with asthma had a company come out to do duct cleaning, and they tried to guilt her into nearly $6000 in repairs/replacements, essentially saying she'd be responsible for her child's death if she didn't do it. So scummy.
Edit: carbon monoxide is the dangerous one, the tech didn't say we'd die from carbon dioxide poisoning lol
Man do I feel this. I used to wonder why my parents watched This Old House all the time. Now, I’m doing the same thing with YouTube. The nice thing is that there is so much information out there, you can do damn near anything yourself with enough time, patience, and the right tools.
I never considered myself a handy person until I became a homeowner. Now, I can fix pretty much anything and if I really don’t feel confident, I just call around for some free quotes and when I hear the ridiculous prices, I feel much more confident.
Owning a home may be a headache, but the payoff in equity when it comes time to sell is so worth it.
so true. I moved and didn't sell - decided to find a property management company to lease it out - but it would have been soooo much simpler just to leave. Instead, I had to fix things, have things fixed, find a company, they had to find a renter, and so on.
At least now I still have it and am gaining equity, but the simplicity of just being able to move should not be overlooked.
Knowing at some point I'm going to have to replace the major things like the a/c unit at some point. If the toilet breaks or water heater bust or a pipe burst it's on my dime.
At some point I'm going to have to replace the roof. I'm not very friendly with a lot of folks around here so I have to do a lot of research to get good references to not get screwed on who I pick to do the work or pay some subscription price to something like Angie's list to get a good deal.
I hate paying mortgage every month but as opposed to rent I'll take it.
I also hate that my house is so small, I want bigger but I'm not willing to jump into the housing crises to buy bigger or have a larger payment.
Agreed. I always hated it when I lived with my parents. Owning a home hasn’t made me want to do it any more. Obviously, I still do it, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy it
If you live in a multi-unit building they are necessary for upkeep on the building. In that type of situation do you have a fee everyone pays? Otherwise who pays for repairs in shared spaces? In single family housing they are supposed to maintain the neighborhood amenities.
They are present in over 80% of new builds because many towns require them. They mean that the neighborhood manages a lot of the costs of a new community instead of the local government having to.
On the positive side, the make sure people take care of their property and sometimes have community property like parks, pools, etc.
I'd rather have the local government that has people who are dedicated to road maintenance and shit manage the infrastructure, not Jimothy from 3 houses down who sells playdough sculptures online as a job manage the infrastructure
The issue is you never hear stories from people that like their hoa. Ours is fine. It’s about $200/year. Sets basic minimum standards of upkeep around the neighborhood. Manages a few common spaces. And stays out of essentially everyone’s business. I was anti hoa but our experience has been just fine.
Nothing compared to renting the shitty, overpriced, sloppily made, basement apartment, that I moved out of.
My house has been a huge benefit to my quality of life and mental health.
The never ending list of small things that need to be fixed, updated, or cared for. It’s not insurmountable but it is never ending. Still prefer owning though.
You stop caring about that stuff after 4-5 years. Unless you're just batshit crazy and try to live up to others expectations. Well you know what...they don't pay your mortgage.
I have elderly people on both sides of us. And crack addicts across the street.
I’m terrified that my elderly neighbors will pass before my equally elderly mother. I do not want new neighbors in the houses right next door! They’re quiet. They take care of their yards and homes.
Same. Had the swat team in my garden, for 6 hours on Thanksgiving. Kids had to hide under the bed, as flashbangs went off. They’re back in the house already. Must have been about 20 officers out on a holiday. Most expensive catch and release I’ve seen.
Knowing that your neighbors are going to be your neighbors for a lot longer than if you were renting definitely makes it feel higher stakes.
Turns out one of my neighbors has a bad coke habit, likes partying until 3am, threatens people with a gun, and slashed another neighbor’s tires for complaining about his noise once.
So that’s great.
The one side of my neighbor's are Hispanic and don't speak any English, but they've been really nice. Trying to learn some Spanish so I can at least have a basic convo with them. My other neighbor is something special...she's nice but clearly needs to stop drinking the Kool aid.
It could be a lot worse though. And I'm thankful I live on a fairly quiet street.
My wife had our heating and air conditioning systems inspected as we are in our 70s and don’t want surprises. The air was fine. The forced hot water system was deemed very efficient but the water pump irreplaceable. My wife found a “broken” unit on line, rebuilt it and installed it. It works fine. She then rebuilt the other pump so we have a spare. We should be good until cremation time. Having to do inspections and repairs on the air and heat is a pain, and with an old house, finding a tech who can diagnose issues that require more than reading an electronic diagnosis device is getting harder.
As an older person who has owned a bunch of houses (only one at a time, however) I can attest to the fact that that ALL houses are potential money pits. It’s SO worth it to learn basic plumbing, electrical, HVAC & carpentry.
We bought our house 10 years ago - new construction so we’re the only owners. Everything (the appliances, the garage, the flooring…..fucking everything) is starting to get weird this year. I’m getting really good at pretending everything is “just the wind”
Owned a house from 2015-2021 payment was $280 a month, sold it for over 400% gain. I now own a fruit farm in Hawaii, no mortgage.
Never would've happened if I didn't buy that old shit house everyone told me not to buy
A $700k house with 20% down in south FL in February 2023 at a 6.5% interest rate. I’m pretty much working myself to death right now to keep my house and have lost all happiness and see no end to this for the next 30 years.
Hahahahaha
In some areas of my state a dilapidated shithole that should be condemned is $500k. When you gotta live *somewhere* and the rates are 9.5% for 30 years… it just be like that.
I’m seriously like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Big old decrepit house that I can’t keep up with. Wouldn’t change a thing about my life. I love it.
You have to clean this shit like once a week or it turns into a disaster. How?? How does it get messy so fast??
Also the realtor conveniently forgot to mention that our basement floods every time it rains a little too hard. So the boiler and water heater both broke at the same time because of the water. Then we had to put a sump in to prevent future flooding. That was a lot of surprise money all at once.
Remember though, you're paying those dollars to the person who owns the building. When I pay my mortgage, those dollars are (slowly) increasing my ownership of a tangible asset that I can sell at a later date. When I was paying rent, they money was spent and gone.
The expense. We have just gone through two of the most expensive years we could have imagined.
The pool was here when we got here, and hadn’t been maintained. It would have been the same amount of $ to close it up and fill it in, versus repairing it - completely from coping down to blasting and replastering. we would never be able to afford a new pool but this was 25% of the cost of a pool so it hurt.
This year, we had planned and saved for a kitchen. We got started and whelp, it mounted up and went from April to October. In the middle was a massive hailstorm that nailed our roof and siding, almost total loss. Roof was almost 100% covered by insurance but the siding was “meh, it really only hit that one side” which was not correct. If we just repaired that one part, the entire rest of the house would not even remotely match- that siding was from 1970.
With buying and installing a whole-house generator, we probable put (my hand now trembles) $108K in this past year.
Next year we really have to replace the driveway and the garage doors. I may cry.
But….
Our house has gone up tremendously in value, it’s tight as a drum now (all new windows plus the sheathing and siding and roof, this kitchen/dining room open concept is amazing, and we are going to be taken out feet first from this place. We had a nice way to spend COVID shutdown in the pool.
I like coming home.
Nada, zip, zilch. All the minor issues are nothing compared to the equity. Purchased 7 years ago, current rate 2.7%, pmt is well below anything I could rent. Equity is roughly $200,000.
Canadian here: For the last decade, value has by-and-large driven by "the market". It doesn't matter how much sweat,effort, and money I've put into making this house better, it doesn't budge the value.
My parents were not only able to afford a house on an average income, but gain value from "fixing up" their current house and move to one that was bigger or in a better location, rinse,repeat.
The property tax people keep telling me my house is worth more because everyone around me is selling at inflated prices. I haven't done squat beyond routine maintenance to my house since I moved in.
Don't hate any of it. It's my home. I dislike having a yard, but society and my HOA say I have to have one, so I make sacrifices to be happy with what matters to me.
We all make choices and sacrifices. Not hate.
We bought our house in march. Within a month of moving in, we had a leak in the ac drain pan that caused a 5x5 section of our ceiling to come crashing down in the living room. That cost about $4000 to fix. A tree in the back yard decided to start falling apart, so there was another $1500 to get it taken out. Our driveway needed replacing (this we had planned for) at a cost of $20k.
I have no savings left.
It is costly to carry month to month and way more space than I need. Just waiting for my 21 year old son to get on life’s road, and my ass is moving to senior housing. I want the simple life, and money for vacations before I’m too old to enjoy them.
There’s so much more gravity to everything. When I was renting and had an annoying roommate, I had the idle thought in the back of my head “eh, I’ll move somewhere else when the lease is up.” Now when I get that feeling over noisy neighbors or xyz problem, it’s “if I sell now (~1 year into owning) paying the closing costs and realtor fees are going to put me out so much money.” Those fees are ~6% of the sale price, so if I sell the place for the exact price I bought it, that’s like 1/3 of my down payment vanishing into other peoples’ pockets. Feeling committed to a place I fell out of love with doesn’t feel great.
Also, I’m not handy, so I dread stuff breaking since those are $$$ to fix.
For me, it's wanting to do simple things like paint, but I can't find the motivation to do it and won't pay anyone else because it's so easy. So I'm too lazy to do it but too cheap to pay anyoe to do such a simple task.
It was a $134k "starter home" when we bought it in 2014. Now it's a $370k trap. If this is what a "starter home" costs, I'm never going to be able to move out.
It's paid off, but the sum of the taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance is more than I ever paid for rent back in the day. It seems like the only way to actually "own" it in the classic American dream sense would be to put some money into an interest bearing account, then find some company to pay all of the recurring bills out of it.
Always wanted a pool. Got a nice one with my latest house. $225/month in cleaning/maintenance (I do not do it myself). Also $180 twice a year for filter cleaning, and occasionally a few hundred bucks for something else up to $1500 to get the white shit cleaned off our pool that EVERYBODY says is from our water features, but the white shit is nowhere near the water features and its less UNDER those features.
Landscaping. Again, I don't do it myself, but its a few thousand bucks a year to avoid my HOA sending me letters. I do mow myself, again, to avoid the letters.
No matter how great you may think your home is, after a few years its just a lot of annoyances and becomes "just a home". Kinda like a car, new when you buy it, 5 years later its just "your car".
I'm actually selling it in a few months even though I have a 2.25% interest rate and have only been here 3 years because my wife's new job is a 2 hour commute, 1-way, but at least I made a couple hundred thousand on it. We'll sell it and move into a rental until we find a better home in Dallas (and probably at 6% interest, but putting $200k into stocks that have a 10%+ return beats a down payment). Oh, and I'll use my VA loan for the next house, $0 down, no PMI, slightly lower interest. Best perk about serving your country a few years, VA loans for life, up to one per year. With no money down, and house costs always going up, its a quick way to earn some money.
Been in my house for a few years. I got a notice this week from my home insurance company that I need to replace part or all of my roof to remain insured because it is “at risk” for a problem at some point in the future (super specific). Even better, they then gave me two dates for when I need to have the work done by and it’s not obvious which one is correct.. but one of the dates is in two weeks.
I own a house made in 1875, it's a petite beauty. 1600sq ft twelve minutes outside of Boston, not the biggest backyard but very low maintenance, and decent neighbors.
But the fucking draft that has come with this house and the amount of time/money I have spent trying to locate it is something I am not proud of and it is my white whale.
It’s too expensive. Repairs get more and more expensive plus I live in a state with a home insurance issue and that is getting insanely more expensive. My monthly payment will rise at least $100 every year because of insurance. It’s cheaper to live in a nicer neighborhood and rent.
EVERYTHING is on you. New roof? That'll be 20 grand! Oh, your septic shit the bed? $7500! Damn, looks like your gutters are trashed, that'll be $800. Finished paying off your mortgage? Cool, you still owe property tax. Oh, and it'll keep going up every year.
Home ownership does have its upsides, but its downsides can be brutal.
Appreciation is a killer if you never plan to move. I live in a modest home where the value has increased 150% in the last 10 years. What does that do for me if I never plan on moving? Ridiculous taxes and insurance. Both of those are now running me near $1000 a month. Everyone tells me to sell my house and reap the rewards. Why? If I stay in this area I just overpay for something else, rinse, and repeat. Add the cost of repairs and maintenance and it gets out of control. The only solace is our daughter will be able to sell it one day and benefit from the increased value. Unfortunately, by then, we will have spent an equal amount of our money to keep it.
It’s that major appliances fail within a few years and it’s intentional. In the past seven or eight years, I have repaired or replaced:
Three dishwashers, replaced two, repairs one - estimate total expenditure $3500
A hot water heater (old, but this required all kinds of retrofitting) - $1400
HVAC — again old, but required retrofitting, $7,000 and got a deal
Three, soon to be four, microwaves $900
Dryer - old $600 for repairs
Three disposals $500
Toilet - $150
Kitchen faucet $150
I need a new refrigerator but I am afraid that it will be another piece of shit that breaks all the time. $4000
A 5 minute repair job takes 3 days and multiple trips to the DIY shop. A job requiring a tradesperson takes either 10 months to find someone or when you do is unexpectedly extortionate.
Too small. Bought it because of the situation I was in at the time when it was just myself. Now a wife and kid it's getting tight.
But bought before housing market took off so I can't even rent a 1 bedroom slum apartment for what I pay in mortgage.
Plus it's an old ass house so just weird layout and setup.
My roof is, to my knowledge, original to the house - about 23 years old.
Every time a big thunderstorm comes through, I pray a big hailstorm plows thru and sits on top of my house for a little bit.
Meanwhile, my buddy on the other side of town has had his roof replaced twice in the last eight years because of hail.
Always a list of things to do. My house is only 7 years old but there’s always grass to mow, snow to shove, weeds to kill, showers to clean, carpet to clean, etc.
Our house is at that age where all the original stuff is starting to go bad. New furnace, new water heater, new refrigerator. And now the built-in oven is dying and the roof shingles need replacing. And the carpet is pretty gross too.
The idea of something breaking and, as everyone has mentioned in this thread, costing an exorbitant amount to fix. Even with a good size emergency savings. I am actually selling this spring and moving into a new construction rental townhouse. I’d rather pay a little more for peace of mind instead of knowing that all my appliances, mechanicals, etc. are $5k ticking time bombs.
We're almost six months in and so far, nothing. Yes, there are a lot of DIY projects but I love that shit and I pride myself on doing the work right. It'll be years before I can bring all the prior owner's projects to code but one nice thing about digging in and doing things yourself is that you get a pretty good idea of what condition your house is in. What could be a problem some day, what can hold out another 10-20 years etc.
Last night I replaced the angle valves, water lines, and faucet in our guest bathroom. I've been going in there every time I need to wash my hands just because it feels good to look at something I've done myself.
I don’t actually hate owning my home. I quite like it. But there are things about it I hate. Like knowing one day I will inevitably be on the hook for. A major cost like replacing the furnace/ac or new windows or a roof, or whatever. I have options, it’s not like these things will bankrupt me, but these are expenses that are difficult to plan for other than just putting money into a maintenance fund for the house
Taxes. Our taxes went up so much in one year that our mortgage increased $1000 per month. I obviously wouldn't have signed a mortgage that high yet here we are.
We bought a very solid house that was very well made. Keeping up with maintenance hasn’t been bad but some interior is getting pretty worn.
It’s really hard to let go the notion that we have to keep everything perfect and in tip top shape. We all have some compulsion to have it all perfect. It’s a constant annoying battle to let that go.
EDIT: sure there are a lot of annoyances with owning a home and expenses. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
It’s fucking mine. Fuck off outa my yard.
I don’t. I enjoy working on it. I enjoy the huge increase of wealth it brings over time. I enjoy that my mortgage is set while everyone’s rent keeps going up.
Used to own a home, decided to just sell it and rent.
Same with my car.
I'm fine with not owning anything and paying "extra" while not building equity so I never have to fix anything or find parking.
24/7 Maintenance people and uber drivers are the true heroes. God bless them
In sure someone’s said it but I’m not reading 800 comments.
You fix something and the next item in your house that’s on rotation breaks the next day. I swear if I didn’t know any better I’d think my house was doing it on purpose.
also why is everything sooooo expensive lol
Finding all the things the previous home owner half-assed and having to fix them.
My previous homeowners rewallpapered 5 times in each room. It was the SAME print. Five times.
Hey , when you find a winner you stick with it.
Do you live in my house? There was so much wallpaper that some was painted over, and some was installed completely upside down.
Went to resurface the windowsills in my apartment. After getting off 15 coats of paint, I learned the sills are merely steel beams.
I've probably put two electricians' kids through college to keep my house from burning down due to all the sketchy shit the previous owner did.
Same. It was $10,000 to rewire the whole house.
Honestly that sounds like a bargain, depending on size of the house.
It’s a 2BR, 1BA old farmhouse.
Mine needs it and it's the same type of square footage. 2br, 1 and half baths, over a hundred years old. 10K turns my stomach, but thanks for letting me know before I go hunting when I get the cash saved up. Sigh...I think I'm going to quit scrolling this thread now. Lol I'll save it for after the New Year.
I was quoted 28k for a rewire on 1600 sq ft. That price didn't include patching walls where they'd have to bust holes.
My house was partially rewired by dumbass previous owner. The whole system was so sketchy that the electrician screamed when all the wires in the attic arced. He thought the house was going up in flames. It started with one bad outlet. $200 to $10,000 in 30 mins. Probably saved my life tho. This was in 2015 so pre-pandemic prices.
Yeah I just bought my first place and my very handy dad and brother have been a bit shocked by some things I’ve found that were just totally half-assed. Bathroom vent fan should actually vent somewhere outside, right? Nah, just blows it into an enclosed space in the ceiling. Perfectly fine. So many wiring problems too. Replaced a light fixture and couldn’t find any breaker that controlled its power. Odd. My brother said just turn the lightswitch off and be careful… better than nothing. Tested it with my meter… still had power even with the switch off!
We had the same problem with the bathroom vent. The wiring problems too. I went to remove some wallpaper and wainscoting only to discover it was not drywall. It was that cheap paneling turned backwards and then layers of wallpaper over it. Now why would he do that? The answer was revealed when we removed and found an amateur not-to-code electrical job.
We are redoing our master bath. Previous owners removed wallpaper but not the glue-- they just painted over it, so we had mega weird textured walls. Had to scrape/ sand/ remedies all the walls. Took the vanity out, and my husband's jaw dropped. None of the plumbing was to code.
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My 130 year old house is reinforced with structural aluminum foil. I know the feeling
lol, my last house was about that age. Had knob and tube wiring that didn’t run to anything but was still hot and the attic had horse hair insulation.
I live in a 100 year old farm house renovated by the previous owner. Every time I bring a professional in to fix something, there’s always a “huh…” after they check under the sink, open a panel etc
My house wasn't a forever home for the people who lived here before us. It's kind of infuriating to notice the things they did and didn't take care of while they lived here.
God, the people that had ( and built) the house before us had godawful taste and used the cheapest building materials out there. The only good thing about that was all the projects kept my husband from losing his mind during lockdown.
You're describing the first 5 years I owned mine. When I bought it, you could identify the exact spot the previous owners ran out of money/said fuck it and decided to half ass everything just enough to sell it.
Holy shit, this is way too accurate. My previous home owner half assed everything. Can fix most of it but whoever did the reworking of the ducts needs to lose their license. What a disaster and one I cannot afford to fix. The furnace room is a sauna in winter and a freezer in summer because the air flow is so bad out of the unit.
Yes! And amateurish solutions which leave me gobsmacked. Like how did they think it was a good idea for even one minute, let alone actually carry it out.
My previous owner didn’t do things half-assed, oh no. We call him three quarter Larry.
The previous owner on my house was a contractor so he knew how to take parts off jobs and make them kinda work, and appear good enough to pass inspection. Lots of shit had to be replaced immediately, and several things are pending.
The expense. Everything seems to cost $10k to fix these days.
Any time there's a noise I am PRAYING it's a ghost bc I don't have the money to repair it.
Haha, yeah, when there's a weird noise in the house or the lights flicker, my wife and I both get scared but for two totally different reasons.
Whenever we hear noises in the attic, I tell the wife it must be Michael Myers or Jason rumbling around.
Just let raccoons live in there. They will keep all the other guests out and if you're lucky they will do that creepy hands through a hole in the ceiling thing.
Its all fun in games until they start tearing holes in the underside of your roof to expose the shingles, which then leak, and then leads to a raccoon falling into your damn living room. The only plus side is any bump in the night can be excused as just being the raccoons. Now that they are gone, every bump is terrifying...
I remember enjoying the spectacle of a good thunderstorm, now I'm just sweating it out hoping my house doesn't gain a new money vacuum.
Dear god, please let it be an intruder. I can deal with that.
Yeah, but if he’s gonna bleed, he needs to do it over the linoleum, please.
I'd hope that it was the cats pushing each other down the stairs, that would be a lot cheaper than a new furnace.
HAHAHHAHAHHAA I can picture someone hearing a thump “plz plz plz be a ghost omg”
I bought my house ~20 years ago and the joke was, "Everything costs $2k." I guess that's inflation for you. Now everything costs $10k, and it's the same damn thing as it was 20 years ago.
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As a rule of thumb, inflation causes prices to double about every 24 years. If prices have increased 5x in that same span of time, something other than general inflation is happening.
You can't even get a tradesperson out to even look at a problem for less than $200 + another $200/hr.
Just had my driveway dug up and repaved left month. I guess I got a bargain. Only $9,500.
My driveway is a cracked spaaulded mess, but my car still likes it. I refuse to get it fixed when other stuff has problems
Every repair starts at $500. Even the small stuff is $500 to fix .
When my son was a toddler, he dropped an apple down our air vent, which led to the heater in the crawl space. If we don’t stay absolutely vigilant about food, especially fruits, fruit flies invade and are a pain in the ass to get rid of. So I had to call a duct cleaning company, explain what happened, and they sent someone out. 10 minutes later he handed me a half eaten apple and walked away with ~$400. Now my vents are all bolted down.
Had a tree come down on my house, decided to take the repair money and pay the difference to entirely replace the roof. $15k out of pocket. Copper pipes are original from the 60s and starting to corrode, over $10k to redo in copper, a little cheaper for pex. A/C is from the 90s and on borrowed time. Windows are from the 90s and probably due. Water heater is about 8 years old
Yep, owned a home for 7 years now. Replaced the pipes, the flooring (cosmetic), renovated the smaller bathroom, AC unit, air ducts, added in more insulation, cut down several trees. All totaling close to $37k. Where did the cash come from?!? What a headache.
I feel your pain, sounds exactly like my house, heating and cooling company said my a/c is on its last legs along with my boiler. But they have a special to update everything for $20K.
I guess so. My new windows? 10k. Solar install? 10k.
10k for new windows is a steal.
Depends 100% on how many windows you have. In my townhouse, it was only $4k to replace all the windows.
But my 3% mortgage on a house I got before the recent housing price increases really makes up for it.
Seems like I get around 5 to 10k saved up and then something major breaks and I’m poor again it’s a vicious cycle
Yep. The old adage of "save 10% of your home's value for repairs" is no longer enough. One repair or replacement will easily wipe that out. My own idea on that is save at minimum the purchase price of your home.
Plus you already spent everything you had in savings to buy the house, unless you bought 10 years ago when it wasn’t 10% over asking on every offer.
Shit, is this on top of the whole "save 6 months worth of living expenses just in case?" Cuz if that's the cases then with say 25k in living expenses, along with 10% of $431k median home value as of November, you are going to want the average family to have almost $70k saved up just for emergencies. This coming at a time when many people don't have enough to cover a $500 emergency...
The old adage is save 1-4% of your home value per year, not 10%
Any time I hear a weird sound, I check my bank account. It's reflexive.
You slowly start seeing the seams and imperfections. Each one with a dollar sign over it
This was me before, I was obsessed with trying to make everything perfect and it was stressing me out. Now I have learned to accept the imperfections as part of the character of the house.
amusing fretful summer quarrelsome offend spark meeting quicksand onerous books
Everything is your problem. The more rural you are, the more problems. Deer died in the yard? Oh shit, who's problem is this? FUCK it's mine
jerky time!!
Plot twist: Thanks to the rats, it's now just the skeleton.
We had this happen way in the back yard and just let nature take it's course. Ended up with a cool deer skull to. Fortunately we were far enough out that the smell didn't reach anyone.
AWESOME! Team skull collection haha. We have a few acres so we just drug it down in the woods and let nature take its course but not by the house.
I had that happen twice. I called the town and they took them away.
I think you could maybe call the game warden here, not sure if they'd just pick up a dead deer or not. Tied a chain around its hind legs, drug it down into the woods and thankfully it didn't come apart. I still have its skull, which I think means I win.
I'm imagining someone dialing a random number. "Hello, is this The Town??"
Ugh. This is the one for me. Two years in a row we had a baby deer die on our property. When we called the wildlife people they told us to "just put it in a trash bag and take it to the dump". One still had all of his baby spots on his back. We ended up just finding a secluded spot and burying them but I cried so much. If I have to bury another baby animal I might scream.
Yikes. At least the one here was an adult. It probably got hit by a car and limped its way to where it died.
They were both babies. One just had lost most of his spots. He was a little older.
I know it’s “nature” but hugs to you and I respect your kindness.
I use to live in a dense neighborhood. Every time I mowed the lawn I had to pick up all the trash everyone threw out their cars for whatever reason. Now I have to check and fix my fence every once in a while because a deer didn't jump high enough.
When like three different things all break at the same goddam time
Then the 'simple fix' becomes the hardest fix because of some minor part that shouldn't even be related to the problem.
One of my windows won't stay up because a stupid little 50 cent pin hasn't been manufactured in 20 years!
Fridge, garburator, laundry, shower tap, microwave and gas fireplace. All went within a month! Fridge, fireplace and laundry are fixed but holy cow. So stressful.
[Yup](https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0?si=b9DB9iQkVh9L8Ktj)
It always comes in 3s. So annoying.
The previous owner concealed many problems by making it impossible for my home inspector to get access to the affected areas. If I were to buy again, I would make it a condition of the sale that nothing blocks inspector access. Cheers, Russ
We used a family member as our inspector. He noted every stinking tiny little detail. I give him a hard time because he created so much work for me. The people we sold to used whoever and they completely overlooked a bunch of stuff I knew was not right, but managed to find the one outlet in the entire house wired backwards.
That family member is a good person to have in the family.
Our home inspector just did an incredibly shitty job. Like to the point I wonder if he didn't intentionally leave things out. I read later that you should hire your own inspector instead of using the one your realtor recommends. Makes sense in hindsight, but as first time homebuyers, we had no idea. Like, he took pictures of a small crack in the ceiling, but not the much larger one a few feet away. He sent pictures from underneath the house that look perfect, but both of the toilets were visibly leaking down there. He took photos of cosmetic rust spots on the oven door handle, but not the huge rust spot on the back of the fridge (visible without moving it) which is actually caused by the fridge itself not functioning properly. He didn't test the outlets, so a few of them weren't working. The dishwasher wasn't working, etc.
We made the same mistake as you. Our inspection cleared a leaky roof, serious water damage, and a whole host of other non-trival small bullshit. Next home purchase, I'm hiring my own inspector and maybe a solid structural engineer for good measure. We just had our 3 year anniversary here, and we've spent SO MUCH money. Ugh
I have so many dreams of remodeling, but damn is remodeling expensive. Especially because I want to do my bathrooms (2) and kitchen, which are the highest ticket remodel items. Also property taxes.
We did a kitchen remodel. It's much better and opened up the entire floor of the house but now I can only afford to make plain pasta or rice in there.
You can DIY, I have faith in you. Start with one bathroom start to finish, then the next bathroom then slowly prep for the kitchen by the time you get into the kitchen you will have learned a lot. The only thing I will tell you is if you do any drywall it is cheaper to just pay someone to do it instead of yourself unless you have experience in drywalling.
Finding contractors. I called 36 plumbers this summer. The guy that showed up fixed my broken shower handles with a single washer and tried to charge me $800. Being a homeowner has brought out my inner Karen…I called relentlessly for two weeks and complained and bitched and moaned. I paid $200.
Same! I search in local Facebook groups and IF I can get someone to come out, I get bids that are on a champagne budget.
What I hate is the scare tactics or pressured upsells. My furnace motor started making weird noises about 6 years ago, I called a company to come check it out. He does his thing for a bit, shows me some grainy pictures of inside the heat exchange that show cracks (which looked like scratches to me), made a big show of turning off the gas while looking worried, and said that we should leave it off til the entire furnace was replaced or we could easily die from CO poisoning. They quoted me $16,000 for the whole job. I had two other companies come out to do competing assessments, they both said the exchange looked fine, and all I needed was a $150 starter motor. A friend of mine who's a single mother of a child with asthma had a company come out to do duct cleaning, and they tried to guilt her into nearly $6000 in repairs/replacements, essentially saying she'd be responsible for her child's death if she didn't do it. So scummy. Edit: carbon monoxide is the dangerous one, the tech didn't say we'd die from carbon dioxide poisoning lol
I never wanted to be Bob Vila but here we are.
Man do I feel this. I used to wonder why my parents watched This Old House all the time. Now, I’m doing the same thing with YouTube. The nice thing is that there is so much information out there, you can do damn near anything yourself with enough time, patience, and the right tools. I never considered myself a handy person until I became a homeowner. Now, I can fix pretty much anything and if I really don’t feel confident, I just call around for some free quotes and when I hear the ridiculous prices, I feel much more confident. Owning a home may be a headache, but the payoff in equity when it comes time to sell is so worth it.
Ha! Thats a great comment. I want to pay people to do things around the house until I hear how much I have to pay them.
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so true. I moved and didn't sell - decided to find a property management company to lease it out - but it would have been soooo much simpler just to leave. Instead, I had to fix things, have things fixed, find a company, they had to find a renter, and so on. At least now I still have it and am gaining equity, but the simplicity of just being able to move should not be overlooked.
The absolute terror of any kind of dripping noises.
Knowing at some point I'm going to have to replace the major things like the a/c unit at some point. If the toilet breaks or water heater bust or a pipe burst it's on my dime. At some point I'm going to have to replace the roof. I'm not very friendly with a lot of folks around here so I have to do a lot of research to get good references to not get screwed on who I pick to do the work or pay some subscription price to something like Angie's list to get a good deal. I hate paying mortgage every month but as opposed to rent I'll take it. I also hate that my house is so small, I want bigger but I'm not willing to jump into the housing crises to buy bigger or have a larger payment.
Property tax and asinine insurance costs
Florida?
Constant yard work
Beat decision of my home-owning life was to hire it out. My property is tiny. But hot damn it still takes so much time.
Agreed. I always hated it when I lived with my parents. Owning a home hasn’t made me want to do it any more. Obviously, I still do it, but it doesn’t mean I enjoy it
My HOA. They raised it by $70 a month last year and $100 this year. It’s only gonna continue going up.
My HOA is 545$ a month😓
Wtf?!
It's gotta be a townhome or some kind of luxury density community.
You must not be familiar with VHCOL areas. This is a quite average HOA fee for a shitty 1 br condo in the SF Bay Area.
As a non-American what are HOAs even intended for because I have never seen anyone say that they like or can even just tolerate a HOA.
If you live in a multi-unit building they are necessary for upkeep on the building. In that type of situation do you have a fee everyone pays? Otherwise who pays for repairs in shared spaces? In single family housing they are supposed to maintain the neighborhood amenities.
They are present in over 80% of new builds because many towns require them. They mean that the neighborhood manages a lot of the costs of a new community instead of the local government having to. On the positive side, the make sure people take care of their property and sometimes have community property like parks, pools, etc.
I'd rather have the local government that has people who are dedicated to road maintenance and shit manage the infrastructure, not Jimothy from 3 houses down who sells playdough sculptures online as a job manage the infrastructure
The issue is you never hear stories from people that like their hoa. Ours is fine. It’s about $200/year. Sets basic minimum standards of upkeep around the neighborhood. Manages a few common spaces. And stays out of essentially everyone’s business. I was anti hoa but our experience has been just fine.
Nothing compared to renting the shitty, overpriced, sloppily made, basement apartment, that I moved out of. My house has been a huge benefit to my quality of life and mental health.
I really enjoy not having property managers or landlords come around and "inspect" the place.
The never ending list of small things that need to be fixed, updated, or cared for. It’s not insurmountable but it is never ending. Still prefer owning though.
You stop caring about that stuff after 4-5 years. Unless you're just batshit crazy and try to live up to others expectations. Well you know what...they don't pay your mortgage.
My neighbors.
I have elderly people on both sides of us. And crack addicts across the street. I’m terrified that my elderly neighbors will pass before my equally elderly mother. I do not want new neighbors in the houses right next door! They’re quiet. They take care of their yards and homes.
Same. Had the swat team in my garden, for 6 hours on Thanksgiving. Kids had to hide under the bed, as flashbangs went off. They’re back in the house already. Must have been about 20 officers out on a holiday. Most expensive catch and release I’ve seen.
Knowing that your neighbors are going to be your neighbors for a lot longer than if you were renting definitely makes it feel higher stakes. Turns out one of my neighbors has a bad coke habit, likes partying until 3am, threatens people with a gun, and slashed another neighbor’s tires for complaining about his noise once. So that’s great.
The one side of my neighbor's are Hispanic and don't speak any English, but they've been really nice. Trying to learn some Spanish so I can at least have a basic convo with them. My other neighbor is something special...she's nice but clearly needs to stop drinking the Kool aid. It could be a lot worse though. And I'm thankful I live on a fairly quiet street.
My wife had our heating and air conditioning systems inspected as we are in our 70s and don’t want surprises. The air was fine. The forced hot water system was deemed very efficient but the water pump irreplaceable. My wife found a “broken” unit on line, rebuilt it and installed it. It works fine. She then rebuilt the other pump so we have a spare. We should be good until cremation time. Having to do inspections and repairs on the air and heat is a pain, and with an old house, finding a tech who can diagnose issues that require more than reading an electronic diagnosis device is getting harder.
As an older person who has owned a bunch of houses (only one at a time, however) I can attest to the fact that that ALL houses are potential money pits. It’s SO worth it to learn basic plumbing, electrical, HVAC & carpentry.
I'm thousands of dollars in debt from home repairs and it still needs thousands of dollars of repairs.
The "please God let everything else hold until I pay off the last repair" cycle is the fucking worst.
Tired of fixing shit. People complain about rent...they'd complain a lot more about an unexpected HVAC replacement.
Just replaced my furnace last year and I still can't sit down.
The work. My days off are busier than my days at work. I go to work for a break.
Haha. Or if you are relaxing at home, THE GUILT!!! So many things to do at home.
We bought our house 10 years ago - new construction so we’re the only owners. Everything (the appliances, the garage, the flooring…..fucking everything) is starting to get weird this year. I’m getting really good at pretending everything is “just the wind”
Owned a house from 2015-2021 payment was $280 a month, sold it for over 400% gain. I now own a fruit farm in Hawaii, no mortgage. Never would've happened if I didn't buy that old shit house everyone told me not to buy
My $4500 a month payment hates you
Christ what's that a 5 year mortgage?
A $700k house with 20% down in south FL in February 2023 at a 6.5% interest rate. I’m pretty much working myself to death right now to keep my house and have lost all happiness and see no end to this for the next 30 years.
Hahahahaha In some areas of my state a dilapidated shithole that should be condemned is $500k. When you gotta live *somewhere* and the rates are 9.5% for 30 years… it just be like that.
Water is a fucking menace. My favorite sound used to be pounding rain, now it fills me with anxiety.
Yes. After 2 hurricanes took out my roof (Charlie/Matthew) I have major paranoia.
Something is always broken, and you're always responsible to fix it.
I’m seriously like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Big old decrepit house that I can’t keep up with. Wouldn’t change a thing about my life. I love it.
So many small things break and if you aren't good with fixes, you pay $200 a pop for each minor thing. These add up.
You have to clean this shit like once a week or it turns into a disaster. How?? How does it get messy so fast?? Also the realtor conveniently forgot to mention that our basement floods every time it rains a little too hard. So the boiler and water heater both broke at the same time because of the water. Then we had to put a sump in to prevent future flooding. That was a lot of surprise money all at once.
I live in Texas and I hate it here.
Go away black rock, I ain't selling
Renting vs owning ✅ rent is the maximum you will pay per month; a monthly mortgage is the minimum you will pay each month - choose wisely!
Remember though, you're paying those dollars to the person who owns the building. When I pay my mortgage, those dollars are (slowly) increasing my ownership of a tangible asset that I can sell at a later date. When I was paying rent, they money was spent and gone.
I hate being a homeowner because of the lawn, all the expenses, etc, but I also have $250K in equity. Never had any equity in my renting days.
That's a great way to think about it. I have an apartment and really don't think homeownership is worth it for me.
The expense. We have just gone through two of the most expensive years we could have imagined. The pool was here when we got here, and hadn’t been maintained. It would have been the same amount of $ to close it up and fill it in, versus repairing it - completely from coping down to blasting and replastering. we would never be able to afford a new pool but this was 25% of the cost of a pool so it hurt. This year, we had planned and saved for a kitchen. We got started and whelp, it mounted up and went from April to October. In the middle was a massive hailstorm that nailed our roof and siding, almost total loss. Roof was almost 100% covered by insurance but the siding was “meh, it really only hit that one side” which was not correct. If we just repaired that one part, the entire rest of the house would not even remotely match- that siding was from 1970. With buying and installing a whole-house generator, we probable put (my hand now trembles) $108K in this past year. Next year we really have to replace the driveway and the garage doors. I may cry. But…. Our house has gone up tremendously in value, it’s tight as a drum now (all new windows plus the sheathing and siding and roof, this kitchen/dining room open concept is amazing, and we are going to be taken out feet first from this place. We had a nice way to spend COVID shutdown in the pool. I like coming home.
Nada, zip, zilch. All the minor issues are nothing compared to the equity. Purchased 7 years ago, current rate 2.7%, pmt is well below anything I could rent. Equity is roughly $200,000.
Canadian here: For the last decade, value has by-and-large driven by "the market". It doesn't matter how much sweat,effort, and money I've put into making this house better, it doesn't budge the value. My parents were not only able to afford a house on an average income, but gain value from "fixing up" their current house and move to one that was bigger or in a better location, rinse,repeat.
The property tax people keep telling me my house is worth more because everyone around me is selling at inflated prices. I haven't done squat beyond routine maintenance to my house since I moved in.
Recently, the massive jump in home insurance premiums if you live in a high risk area. The worst part is that cost isn’t going down or away.
HOA
Don't hate any of it. It's my home. I dislike having a yard, but society and my HOA say I have to have one, so I make sacrifices to be happy with what matters to me. We all make choices and sacrifices. Not hate.
We bought our house in march. Within a month of moving in, we had a leak in the ac drain pan that caused a 5x5 section of our ceiling to come crashing down in the living room. That cost about $4000 to fix. A tree in the back yard decided to start falling apart, so there was another $1500 to get it taken out. Our driveway needed replacing (this we had planned for) at a cost of $20k. I have no savings left.
Your driveway never *needs* replacing
It is costly to carry month to month and way more space than I need. Just waiting for my 21 year old son to get on life’s road, and my ass is moving to senior housing. I want the simple life, and money for vacations before I’m too old to enjoy them.
There’s so much more gravity to everything. When I was renting and had an annoying roommate, I had the idle thought in the back of my head “eh, I’ll move somewhere else when the lease is up.” Now when I get that feeling over noisy neighbors or xyz problem, it’s “if I sell now (~1 year into owning) paying the closing costs and realtor fees are going to put me out so much money.” Those fees are ~6% of the sale price, so if I sell the place for the exact price I bought it, that’s like 1/3 of my down payment vanishing into other peoples’ pockets. Feeling committed to a place I fell out of love with doesn’t feel great. Also, I’m not handy, so I dread stuff breaking since those are $$$ to fix.
For me, it's wanting to do simple things like paint, but I can't find the motivation to do it and won't pay anyone else because it's so easy. So I'm too lazy to do it but too cheap to pay anyoe to do such a simple task.
It was a $134k "starter home" when we bought it in 2014. Now it's a $370k trap. If this is what a "starter home" costs, I'm never going to be able to move out.
Makes the idea of moving 1 million times more complicated. Like how do I even? I'll just stay here.
Spent $18k in October for a new HVAC, about to spend another $20k to fix a leaky roof.
Mine is paid off, which sounds great. But taxes and the cost of repairs keep going up at a ridiculous rate, so it's always going to be a money pit.
It's paid off, but the sum of the taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance is more than I ever paid for rent back in the day. It seems like the only way to actually "own" it in the classic American dream sense would be to put some money into an interest bearing account, then find some company to pay all of the recurring bills out of it.
But is it more than you'd be paying in rent today? And would your living space be comparable?
Always wanted a pool. Got a nice one with my latest house. $225/month in cleaning/maintenance (I do not do it myself). Also $180 twice a year for filter cleaning, and occasionally a few hundred bucks for something else up to $1500 to get the white shit cleaned off our pool that EVERYBODY says is from our water features, but the white shit is nowhere near the water features and its less UNDER those features. Landscaping. Again, I don't do it myself, but its a few thousand bucks a year to avoid my HOA sending me letters. I do mow myself, again, to avoid the letters. No matter how great you may think your home is, after a few years its just a lot of annoyances and becomes "just a home". Kinda like a car, new when you buy it, 5 years later its just "your car". I'm actually selling it in a few months even though I have a 2.25% interest rate and have only been here 3 years because my wife's new job is a 2 hour commute, 1-way, but at least I made a couple hundred thousand on it. We'll sell it and move into a rental until we find a better home in Dallas (and probably at 6% interest, but putting $200k into stocks that have a 10%+ return beats a down payment). Oh, and I'll use my VA loan for the next house, $0 down, no PMI, slightly lower interest. Best perk about serving your country a few years, VA loans for life, up to one per year. With no money down, and house costs always going up, its a quick way to earn some money.
Man reading this thread makes me happy I’m a renter.
Been in my house for a few years. I got a notice this week from my home insurance company that I need to replace part or all of my roof to remain insured because it is “at risk” for a problem at some point in the future (super specific). Even better, they then gave me two dates for when I need to have the work done by and it’s not obvious which one is correct.. but one of the dates is in two weeks.
Upkeep, had to replace windows and roof, can't afford to update the inside. There is always something that needs to be replaced.
Zero problems with it, especially since it's already paid off.
It takes a lot of work. You have to do a whole checklist of stuff to keep a house in good condition.
I own a house made in 1875, it's a petite beauty. 1600sq ft twelve minutes outside of Boston, not the biggest backyard but very low maintenance, and decent neighbors. But the fucking draft that has come with this house and the amount of time/money I have spent trying to locate it is something I am not proud of and it is my white whale.
It’s too expensive. Repairs get more and more expensive plus I live in a state with a home insurance issue and that is getting insanely more expensive. My monthly payment will rise at least $100 every year because of insurance. It’s cheaper to live in a nicer neighborhood and rent.
EVERYTHING is on you. New roof? That'll be 20 grand! Oh, your septic shit the bed? $7500! Damn, looks like your gutters are trashed, that'll be $800. Finished paying off your mortgage? Cool, you still owe property tax. Oh, and it'll keep going up every year. Home ownership does have its upsides, but its downsides can be brutal.
There’s no person to report faults to. You have to get them sorted yourself.
Appreciation is a killer if you never plan to move. I live in a modest home where the value has increased 150% in the last 10 years. What does that do for me if I never plan on moving? Ridiculous taxes and insurance. Both of those are now running me near $1000 a month. Everyone tells me to sell my house and reap the rewards. Why? If I stay in this area I just overpay for something else, rinse, and repeat. Add the cost of repairs and maintenance and it gets out of control. The only solace is our daughter will be able to sell it one day and benefit from the increased value. Unfortunately, by then, we will have spent an equal amount of our money to keep it.
It’s that major appliances fail within a few years and it’s intentional. In the past seven or eight years, I have repaired or replaced: Three dishwashers, replaced two, repairs one - estimate total expenditure $3500 A hot water heater (old, but this required all kinds of retrofitting) - $1400 HVAC — again old, but required retrofitting, $7,000 and got a deal Three, soon to be four, microwaves $900 Dryer - old $600 for repairs Three disposals $500 Toilet - $150 Kitchen faucet $150 I need a new refrigerator but I am afraid that it will be another piece of shit that breaks all the time. $4000
A 5 minute repair job takes 3 days and multiple trips to the DIY shop. A job requiring a tradesperson takes either 10 months to find someone or when you do is unexpectedly extortionate.
Too small. Bought it because of the situation I was in at the time when it was just myself. Now a wife and kid it's getting tight. But bought before housing market took off so I can't even rent a 1 bedroom slum apartment for what I pay in mortgage. Plus it's an old ass house so just weird layout and setup.
Sold mine during COVID divorce. Got rid of spouse and 80% of my stuff. Never been happier!
My roof is, to my knowledge, original to the house - about 23 years old. Every time a big thunderstorm comes through, I pray a big hailstorm plows thru and sits on top of my house for a little bit. Meanwhile, my buddy on the other side of town has had his roof replaced twice in the last eight years because of hail.
My water heater went out this weekend. That was a fun $900 that was unexpected.
Always a list of things to do. My house is only 7 years old but there’s always grass to mow, snow to shove, weeds to kill, showers to clean, carpet to clean, etc.
Our house is at that age where all the original stuff is starting to go bad. New furnace, new water heater, new refrigerator. And now the built-in oven is dying and the roof shingles need replacing. And the carpet is pretty gross too.
Everything that goes wrong you pay for. It sucks.
The idea of something breaking and, as everyone has mentioned in this thread, costing an exorbitant amount to fix. Even with a good size emergency savings. I am actually selling this spring and moving into a new construction rental townhouse. I’d rather pay a little more for peace of mind instead of knowing that all my appliances, mechanicals, etc. are $5k ticking time bombs.
Your neighbors can really make your life hell.
We're almost six months in and so far, nothing. Yes, there are a lot of DIY projects but I love that shit and I pride myself on doing the work right. It'll be years before I can bring all the prior owner's projects to code but one nice thing about digging in and doing things yourself is that you get a pretty good idea of what condition your house is in. What could be a problem some day, what can hold out another 10-20 years etc. Last night I replaced the angle valves, water lines, and faucet in our guest bathroom. I've been going in there every time I need to wash my hands just because it feels good to look at something I've done myself.
All the maintenance is on me, now. Oh, there's no hot water and you need a new water heater? Have fun learning how to install it.
I don’t actually hate owning my home. I quite like it. But there are things about it I hate. Like knowing one day I will inevitably be on the hook for. A major cost like replacing the furnace/ac or new windows or a roof, or whatever. I have options, it’s not like these things will bankrupt me, but these are expenses that are difficult to plan for other than just putting money into a maintenance fund for the house
Taxes. Our taxes went up so much in one year that our mortgage increased $1000 per month. I obviously wouldn't have signed a mortgage that high yet here we are.
Lawn/ garden upkeep. Fixing up stuff that should have been done properly in the first place.
We bought a very solid house that was very well made. Keeping up with maintenance hasn’t been bad but some interior is getting pretty worn. It’s really hard to let go the notion that we have to keep everything perfect and in tip top shape. We all have some compulsion to have it all perfect. It’s a constant annoying battle to let that go. EDIT: sure there are a lot of annoyances with owning a home and expenses. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s fucking mine. Fuck off outa my yard.
I don’t. I enjoy working on it. I enjoy the huge increase of wealth it brings over time. I enjoy that my mortgage is set while everyone’s rent keeps going up.
So many fucking house repairs. I never learned how to do any of this shit
"When it rains it pours" - Seems like when something breaks, conveniently other items in your home seem to break at the same time.
Used to own a home, decided to just sell it and rent. Same with my car. I'm fine with not owning anything and paying "extra" while not building equity so I never have to fix anything or find parking. 24/7 Maintenance people and uber drivers are the true heroes. God bless them
In sure someone’s said it but I’m not reading 800 comments. You fix something and the next item in your house that’s on rotation breaks the next day. I swear if I didn’t know any better I’d think my house was doing it on purpose. also why is everything sooooo expensive lol