If you treat your house like a rental that you rent to yourself, you can avoid a bunch of headaches - mainly because you’ve given yourself “permission” to spend on it.

> Not easy I'm sure,

Can confirm it’s not easy. If you want to describe a method of finding one, I’m all ears.

> He's under the building doing plumbing or electric one day.

I believe I've encountered that guys electrical work, and it ain't sage :)

(I.e. there are a few of those "fix it all" guys, but they're not always code compliant. They do get stuff done, though)

Yardwork and cleaning can easily take up hours per week. That's why we outsource it. When I was a kid, it felt like all my dad ever did on the weekend was yardwork, fix cars, and drive me to sports practice.

> I don't think home ownership is an "every single weekend" thing unless you bought a fixer-upper.

It really isn't, and I don't know why so many homeowners act like it is.

I bought my house in 2015. It was built in 1983.

The only things I've had to do are a roof replacement, HVAC upgrade, and deal with a broken water main.

Sure, none of those were cheap, but that's 3 events in 11 years, and the first two I expect to not have to do again for at least 15 years, and the water main was a random one-off thing, and it didn't flood the house. It put a lot of water into my crawl space, but it didn't become a problem.

People who swear by renting will use it as evidence to show that owning is more expensive than renting, but I think they just ignore that those costs are factored into the rent, not to mention the fact that once I noticed my roof had a problem, I had people out the NEXT DAY to give quotes on replacing it. When I replaced the HVAC (Old A/C compressor was frequently tripping the breaker and was underpowered), I was able to choose to upgrade rather than dealing with a landlord who would install the cheapest thing they could find.

But ah...I've digressed.

The point was that home ownership isn't nearly the maintenance burden some owners seem to claim it is, and when there is a problem, being the one in charge of getting it solved, rather than having to harass a landlord into solving it, is nice.

Hi - homeowner here who is NOT in an fixer-upper. "every single weekend" is clearly hyperbole however here is regular maintenance for me:

- once a quarter clean the pollen off the A/Cs

- once a week clean the pool (okay I pay someone but still its part of maintenance)

- inevitably something on the pool goes wrong

- once a week clean my grill

- Blow leaves (seasonal) off porch

- pull weeds

- power wash the deck

And then most homeowners, no matter how new your house is, inevitably find an endless amount of "projects" to improve their home experience. Wife wants a table for the grill made, I add automated sprinklers, we put new planters for a garden in our backyard...the list goes on..

Most homes are fixer-uppers. They graduate to that after just a couple decades. I owned 2 homes, both in the 20-30 year range in 2 different cities.. combined (sometimes both) they needed... new roof, new hot water heater, kitchen and bathrooms updates and water mitigation, pest damage and control, leaky pipe fixing, wood deck replacing, furnace and AC replacements, basement flooding issues, foundation issues, probably more I can't remember.

Home ownership sucks and after selling my previous home I'm so glad to be renting. Just never having to deal with another contractor makes me so happy. :)

Depends where you live. In the midwest you might legitimately need to mow 3x a week and you might have a huge lot. If you say screw it and let it go to knee high weeds, city might show up and cut your grass and fine you for it.

I'm a heavy DIY person who does almost everything myself and I'm also confused about the comment above.

The only periods where housework took up every single weekend were during renovations, which can take extra time on an old house like mine.

Simply maintaining a house shouldn't take up every single weekend unless you have a humongous old house on an extremely large property.

Not op, for for me: I have a 4" hole in my cedar siding that I have to craft a custom replacement board for due to a woodpecker. I have a leak in _two_ bathroom shower fixtures that drip into the basement. The first, I started fixing and realized the copper pipe needs to be re-routed. The second, I just turned off the water; I'll get to it later. I have two retaining walls with water routing issues. I need to figure out a mega-gutter or I need to otherwise route a lot of water coming off my roof. I have a broken window that needs replacement. I had to board it up for now because I can't get ANYONE to come out in the middle of Montana. I will be learning how to replace a window in log siding sometime this summer. My water heaters are on the fritz and might be to blame for tripling my propane usage this winter. I need to fix those. My pool pump needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed it. My chainsaw needed servicing, so I tore that apart and fixed that. My riding lawnmower hit a rock and broke the spindle so I had to tear that apart and replace that. I still need to get out and clean my gutters. And do trimming in the yard. Oh, and I had a couple of pine trees come down over winter, so when my saw is back up and running, I'll go cut up some of those. And an apple tree died; need to cut that up and plant a new tree. And I have some boat maintenance to do, my oil gauge stopped responding this season so I'll tear that apart maybe this weekend. I have an outbuilding that seems to be leaning. I need to hook up a plumb-bob and make some measurements and monitor. More yard work. More maintenance. I'd like to job most of it out and just do the fun stuff if I could actually get anyone to come out.

Not gp, but I bought a fixer-upper and it was at least weekends for the first two years, then slowed down quite a bit after that. Now it comes in fits and starts similar to you.

Houses are very different. I grew up in a guest house (so: three floors, a cellar, 14 flats/rooms) that has various layers from various ages. The foundations are hundreds of years old, most of the rest 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s.

If you're living in a new house you may have peace for a few decades, but at the cost of everything piling up the longer you wait. Exchanging corroded drain pipes someone thought was a good idea to bury in concrete is especially fun. At some time door hinges break, window mechanisms break. Water pipes clog, electrical is outdated (e.g. landlines are out, ethernet or fiber is in). The intercom breaks, wasp nests are under every second roof tile, there is a water intrusion in the cellar, a storm knocks down the fence, the washing machine breaks, the garage door motor dies, the asphalt on the runway cracks and needs a tar pour, the attic needs to be insulated, a portion of the roof needs to be retiled, the wooden parts of the facade need to be repainted, a drainage needs to be dig to avoid water piling up into a garage, a doorway has to be added to a repurposed storage space.

And mind, I was the son of the house, this is only some of the stuff I worked on before I moved out with 18.

There was constantly something to be done. What and how much is mostly a function of (1) the age and build quality of the house and (2) your own standards when it comes to maintenance.

Moving every 2-5 years sounds like one of the rings of Hell from Dante.

Wow, moving every 2-5 years? I suppose it works with no kids, or spouse ..

At least with me (married filing jointly), when Trump raised the standard deduction so high, the mortgage interest deduction doesn't come into play. It hasn't seemed to change my total tax liability, it just made my tax return easier to do. I haven't had to itemize for years now.

True, but you still have to cough up. The benefit of renting is that it's an SEP (Someone Else's Problem).

I’ve rented in a rental, rented in a condo, owned in a condo and owned a sfh.

Condos are in a lot of ways worse for ownership. You have communal costs you can’t control, risk of irresponsible neighbors (leaks), and limitations on who/what/when/how of repair or renovation you want to do within your own unit. All of which introduces coordination overhead, cost and time.

I had this, but as you say, it's risky. I do like renting condos, though -- not my problem either way.

Yard work, gutter cleaning, power washing exterior, cleaning windows, bi-annual HVAC service, exterior paint (especially if the house has any wood) and trim upkeep.

And as the house ages, you get things like repainting interior rooms, more frequent plumbing issues, major HVAC repairs, roof replacement, repaving driveway, electrical upgrades, remodeling, etc.

We downsized to a townhome to avoid some of that (half the walls are shared, so no exterior upkeep for those; smaller yard; fewer rooms).

There is an ever-expanding list of maintenance tasks depending on the age of the house and its systems, all with different periodicities. A roof will typically not need to be replaced very often (let's say once every 20 years), but cleaning gutters at least annually is a must because overflowing gutters can lead to foundation issues, rot, etc. Depending on the size of the yard and what vegetation it has, yardwork can be at least a couple of hours a week in the warmer months. Making sure drains are clear is good practice to avoid catastrophic failure. And there's always random things like a fence board that needs to get replaced, chipped door that could use repainting, trim that needs replacing, etc. Newer houses will have (hopefully) fewer of these menial tasks, but as houses age things inevitably need attention due to the fact that it has to weather the elements and daily use all the time.

How much an individual homeowner cares about the minor cosmetic things vary, but skipping out on regularly checking the major stuff can lead to incredibly expensive problems like flooded basements, structural issues, major leaks, etc.

The IRS allows you to depreciate rental real estate on set terms and ages, and they’re not really giving you much of anything. Houses have a complete and complex list of maintenance items.

If they didn’t, living in a rental that the landlord doesn’t spend anything on maintaining would be fine.

Basically everything. People think of homes as static but they are a big machine that is aging.

Nothing is getting better with time, only worse.

Every home will become old and aging...