> Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix

Most landlords I've dealt with are an absolute pain to deal with when something breaks. It's often not that easy, maybe in high-cost / luxury rentals. Arguing over what is normal wear-and-tear, while knowing you cannot afford decent legal advice, and you also can't pay for the "unexpected repair" is just as bad.

> And you can’t have just your kitchen nice, now you need to upgrade the flooring

Yes you can. There is no need to have everything perfect...

Edit:

> You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up.

If this was even close to coming even with the added cost on rent, no one would be a landlord. It's obviously a lot less than rental overhead. So people could just set that aside (or get insurance).

> There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up.

I've never understood why people argue that the model of appealing to a landlord to perform house work is psychologically superior to doing that same work yourself. As a tenant, you have an inherently somewhat adversarial relationship with your landlord - they want to minimize costs, and they aren't the ones directly living with the household problem. You are living in their property and are bound to what they replace or repair, and how, and to some degree on what schedule.

Not being able to make my own decisions about what constitutes a household problem and what should be done about it is the single biggest annoyance of renting for me. It's the main reason I would like to live in an owned home; and this intangible facet of living is more important to me than any financial argument about the costs of renting vs owning.

> There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up.

"Rent is the most you'll pay for housing, but mortgage and property taxes is the least amount."

You can pretty much always finance a repair that size and amortize the expense so that it works out ok.

> There’s also a psychological benefit of not having to worry about most problems. Sink broke? Call landlord to fix. Roof leaking? Call landlord to fix. And so on. You never have an unexpected $20k repair show up.

Not my experience, at all. All landlords I've had were lazy assholes who did the bare minimum, but never forgot to increase rent on the 1st of January, every single year.

Paying someone else for no other reason than to have the right to a roof is Middle Ages shit, that future generations will no doubt liken to serfdom.

My experience is that getting a landlord to fix things is a nightmare. They say "oh I'll send someone over" and then when there is a no-show you have no idea what happened and its days of back and forth to get somebody out to fix things.

I don't think I have ever once had a positive "hey this is broken let me call the landlord and they'll fix it quickly" experience.

I have lived/rented in many states and still rent. The overwhelming majority of landlords are cheap af. I had the ceiling collapse in an office due to clogged ac drain only to have it happen again because the land lord was too cheap to hire a professional contractor. The pro had the ac clog fixed in 15 minutes.

The current place has this stupid thing where the dishwasher is attached to a circuit that has ac on it so if you run both it flips. I have to flip the breaker everytime i use the dishwasher.

Once upon a time I had a car, a daily driver. I kept it clean, vacuum/wash/polish with crazy waxes and the works. Stressed out about people riding with dirty shoes, drinks, etc., and when I asked myself why, the usual self-justification was "ah it's for the resale value." Hearing relatives get charged various fees at lease returns just fed that attitude, even though I owned the car outright. One day it was time to replace the car, so I brought it to the dealer as tradein. They scanned the VIN, looked in their computer, and just quoted me a price without ever looking at the car, either cosmetics or mechanicals. That was the day I decided that I own the cars, not the other way around, and this attitude slowly expanded to real estate too ;). So now there is a clover field in our front yard and I ripped out the irrigation too. When we eventually sell this home in 2060 the buyers can take it or leave it

There was quite a funny reddit thread where the OP was afraid to put up shelves because of property value.

Yeah, I agree with this. We have one car and no kids and every time we talk about some remodel. For example, we're talking about remodeling our kitchen and getting rid of our wildly oversized (read "normal American") appliances in exchange for more storage, counter, and floor space but the first thing friends and family talk about is resale value.

Firstly, my home isn't principally an investment vehicle.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure I can find a buyer who can conceive of popping over to the grocery store around the corner a couple times a week rather than pretending like they're living off the grid and have to drive 100 miles to the nearest town to buy their monthly provisions for a family of 13. :)

I was in middle school in 2007

Don’t buy a home in an HOA and avoid living in a place with extreme high risk of property destruction. Neither are requirements of owning a home.

HOA complaints typically are about control not really cost, and the terms are disclosed before purchase so not unpredictable at all, you are allowed to see the full financials and can see the financial health of the organization before committing. Insurance costs are directly correlated to risk, the costs are only as out of control as the risks (which are well known in Florida). E.g. if insurance expects to have to replace a roof every 5 years on average, and to replace a house every 30 years, expect to pay for 1/5th of a roof and 1/30th of a house in your insurance bill, on top of all the other risks.

A HOA on a house never made sense to me. There are no amenities they provide worth what you pay. Condos in are different story. You're using shared resources in a limited space. Condos in a bustling urban core are great. A condo in the middle of the suburbs makes no sense.

Real estate tax is also somewhat unpredictable year to year (except that it rarely goes down), and can be a large part of your monthly payment. We got hit with a 21% increase in taxes this year because the town voted to rebuild the high school and the main road.

Luckily, at least, we don't have an HOA. Well, actually, we technically do, because we have a shared driveway with three houses on it, and legally here shared driveways are required to have an HOA. But all three of us despise HOAs, so it doesn't have any money, rules, meetings, or do anything. It's just on paper only. We have informal meetings to sort it out when the driveway needs maintenance. After just a couple meetings we figured out that meeting first, alcohol second is the correct order.

HOAs can be very tricky, the money comes to maintain some shared amenities. Usually it is not too bad, but in case of condos HOAs maintain much more and sometimes the board makes very questionable decisions and can end up short on cash when big things are required, and that can hike the payments a lot.

As for the insurance, the best advice is just to avoid high-risk areas like flooding zones.

HOAs can be a big variable cost, yes, especially in the case of underfunded condos associations with a lot of delayed maintenance. Insurance can vary a lot, but is usually a much smaller amount than your mortgage payment (though I only have experience with the PNW).

But yeah, for a single family home in a not-too-flood-prone area it'll be very predictable.

As others said, try to avoid HOAs if you can. But if you can't (in my area it's hard to do), our realtor gave us good advice when we were in the process of buying our current home. The HOA bylaws are a legally binding document as to what the association can and can't do, so if you're going to purchase a home in an HOA neighborhood, read the bylaws. That will give you confidence as to whether some of the situations you mention can occur.

I dunno about the USA, but for much of the world the answer is really simple: don't buy in places that have HOAs

American homes are weird that roof costs are something that occurs.

Last house I owned in the U.K. was 60 years old, original roof. Was advised it might need $10k of work if I wanted to out 10kWp of solar on it to the weight of the tiles.

$180 a year into a “roof fund” doesn’t seem extreme to me.

If you don't have cash savings as a homeowner, you can leverage a home equity loan or line of credit to cover those emergency bills. In times of extreme low interest rates, it may even be beneficial to do that vs. paying with cash.

If your household is a typical HN high earner, and you are early in your mortgage's amortization schedule, the tax money you save by deducting interest can fund a $10k emergency repair fund too. Maybe even in less than a year.

Predictable for a year or two, yes. I know how much I'll be paying a decade from now, exempting property tax and insurance fluctuations.