Owning a house

[Sheep]

Owning a house is the dream of many people - you can have a place to call your own for good, not have as many issues with neighbors in close proximity like in apartment buildings, and pay towards a mortgage rather than rent. Not to mention being the boss when it comes to pets and not worry about a rental's landlord telling you no pets allowed!

Do you own a home? If not, would you like to own one eventually, and where? How big (how many bedrooms/bathrooms etc) would your ideal home be like? Or are you content continuing to rent?

 

[Bahamut]

I would like to own one in the future and I want to save for my future house as soon as possible. I plan to have a small family in future, so I would like to have a small house for 3 people. I would like my future house to be in the city or the town.

 

[pkmin3033]

You're kidding, right? I'm a millennial in the UK. Thanks to the Conservative government and my parent's and grandparent's generations I have about as much chance of owning a house as I do of winning the lottery...in fact, it would take a lottery win for me to get a mortgage.

I don't even WANT a house honestly, I'd settle for an apartment. It doesn't even have to be a big one. Just a space of my own that I actually own and am not paying into with absolutely no benefit whatsoever, which is what renting would offer me. But with the current cost of living crisis and the outrageous price of rent - which is equal to if not greater than mortgage repayments, depending on the properties - I can't even afford to move out right now. I doubt I'll be able to afford to until I get my inheritance from my parents, if things carry on the way they have been...

 

[Fairy]

Yep. Owned a house - small ranch home, two bed, one bath, finished basement, etc. Lived there a bit, played landlord for many, many years, and sold it. I hated everything about it (especially the landlord part) and real estate makes me gag internally.

Just… too many terrible experiences. Legit rather live in a car again.

 

[Nah]

I don't have much interest in getting a house myself, though if I did go for one it'd be a small one. I don't need a shitload of space, the apartment I currently live in is just the right size.

But owning a house is also something that's been increasingly out of reach for millennials and zoomers. Cost of living has gotten completely absurd in much of the world while wages continue to fail to even remotely keep up. My parents just sold their house (closing was a little over a week ago), and initially they put it on the market for $625,000. They bought it for about $330,000 20 years ago, and it was brand new. They ended up lowering the price to $595,000, then the buyers negotiated it to $570,000. It's not a bad house, but not one worth over half a million USD. And my mother was quite shocked when this one house about a mile up the road sold quickly and before theirs, she was all like "but it's like a hundred years old!". Yeah, but it was listed for like $310,000, not exactly crazy that it sold given the price all the others in town are/were going for.

There was this one article I was reading the other day that was like "we need to build more affordable housing in order to deal with this problem". But the thing is, there are some places/people that shoot down any attempt to have affordable housing built, I don't think some people understand what actually affordable housing would be, and then on top of that, over the past several years the rich and corporations have been buying houses in large numbers well above asking price. So even if you build more housing, most of it's just going to get swallowed up by the 1% instead of going to those of us who need it.

And it's not like renting is any better these days either

 

[ReKoil]

I live in a separate building on my parents farm. So no, I do not live in a house I own.
I've been saving up when I can in order to buy a place of my own some day. Gonna take a while though with my wage xD

 

[Ivysaur]

A single detached home is horribly unsustainable. I'm looking forward to owning an apartment in a city with good public transport in the future. For the time being, I live in one with my mum, as it really makes no sense economically to have two people living separately instead of sharing.

 

[Orion☆]

Eh... hard pass on this one. My city has a lot of beautiful houses, sure, but it's not even the cost that scares me - it's the constant robberies that take place in houses here. There isn't a single day in which the newspaper doesn't report a crime of some kind being committed in a house, especially in the neighborhoods closest to the center of the city. My mom also had a pretty scary experience at her childhood home when someone just up and broke into an empty space in her yard with who knows what intentions, so that made me wary too.

I'd feel way safer living in an apartment block, especially if the time comes when I should live alone. It's generally cheaper, there's neighbors around (even if they can be pretty bothersome at times), and sometimes you get a better view of the city than living in a house. :D

 

[Corrin]

You never actually own the house, though. You have to pay to keep it and the banks can seize it from you at any time. Even when your mortgage is paid, you still have to pay for the land it's on.

That being said, I'm too unwell to upkeep a house but there is a lot of freedom that comes with it that you don't get with renting.

 

[TwilightBlade]

I bought a house in July 2021. I started looking at houses in March 2021 and was outbid by many crazy people, but I ended up finding a solid house that belonged to a nice owner. She would rather sell her house to someone wanting to start a family than sell to some company that would flip it / rent it out. I got very lucky because now the houses in my neighborhood are an extra $50,000 easily for the same size. My house is just a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom floor plan. It's about 1900 square feet, so it's great for kiddos someday (or lots of closet space and a movie theater gaming room idk).

Having a home is tough. There's the maintenance both inside and outside. There are things I never thought about while I was living in an apartment, such as pest control, landscaping, appliances, etc. The house came with a horrible washer/dryer so I bought a new set for like $1,600 USD. I painted the entire house to a light gray as it used to be barf beige. It's twice the size of my first apartment so cleaning, vacuuming, and mopping have become a chore. I bought a Roomba to help. I try to do small chores each day to not get overwhelmed.

It's my cozy space and I love it. Sure, it'll take 25 to 30 years to pay off, but at least I don't have to deal with noisy neighbors opposite my walls and neighbors above me stomping around. Apartment life had its drawbacks, too.

 

[Palamon]

Is that even possible in this economy?

Tbh. I still live with my parents, and probably will for a long time & they can't afford a house, either. Tbh, I don't think I'd ever want a house. Too expensive.