Being priced completely out of the market is another way to say that, given the housing market in the UK.
A lack of guaranteed long-term disposable income explains most of the others; diamonds, annual gym membership contracts.
- Home-ownership is a giant pain and often a poor financial choice
- The diamond industry is corrupt, filled with human misery, and has artificially inflated prices
- Why pay for a gym when I can go hiking, walking, do yoga, and all the other exercises I like on my own for free?
Yeah, this probably doesn't get discussed enough. I've had my house for a little under a year, and it's required a new roof, a gas stove for a finished basement that turned out to be severely under-heated, problems with electrical wiring, and a few little odds and ends that weren't up to code, which I had to fix to get home owners insurance.
I'm saving a bundle when you only consider the difference between my old rent and my new mortgage, but home ownership comes with many incidental one-off costs.
Live in a cold region in a home built before natural gas was piped to your region? Heating suddenly fails in February? That $95 dollar proprietary, mechanical zone-controller from Honeywell is going to cost you $120 after markup and another $600 in labor. That heating tech also saw some "green death" on that copper, so you're going to have to call a plumber.
I'm fine with that but I went through vetting three heating techs before I found one that one which knew his industry well enough to answer my fairly baseline questions.[0] Eventually the guy I settled with explained the mechanical properties of both zone-control unit designs, and why one brand is more popular in the region[2]. He then mentioned what he observed as the more reliable Taco lines "always go with the gold series controllers, the green ones are poorly constructed especially if not installed properly".
All in all, I probably spent ~20 hours on top of the labor. In my NYC co-op, all of that would have been dealt with and paid with the co-op fees (which are more than reasonable). On the flipside, I'm perfectly fine with the home maintenance issues-- but it's ultimately the vetting process for a well informed[3] tradesman that takes the bulk of the time[4].
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[0] Generally, I get on some forum with trade masters[1] I found the answers to after about half an hour of researching on a master plumber forum [1] (i.e., "so how often do these units fail? How does the Tacos compare to the Honeywells?").
[1] For EE, the EEVblog is usually second to none. Need a copy of the firmware for a 1984 HP sig-an? Some dude will have it. Other trades have similar sites- Hvac-talk in this case, absolutely high quality discourse. The great thing is that most of the time these guys will have in their vBulletin signatures their qualifications like "Master Certified ..., 1984 ". Similarly, practicalmachinist is great for certain things. Contractor-talk IIRC was very helpful as well.
[2] It turns out Honeywell is out of Rhode Island so there was some local brand loyality developed out of buying local + the sales reps hit western MA pretty hard.
[3] I.e., this 55 year old chap informed me that you apparently want to have the unit head pointing up and positioned vertically and mounted in-line with horizontal (not vertical) piping. This mistake is fairly common apparently and can lead to significant issues down the line. So while I paid more for his labor, his industrial knowledge was effective "preventative maintenance".
[4] If you don't want to/don't have the time to perform due diligence, having a friend who is informed enough to vet the quality of work with you is worth it. A buddy of mine is a contractor who knows all of the corner that are often cut, the indicators of quality workmanship, etc.
Sorry, every time people talk about how "hard" home ownership is all I hear is "being well-off is super hard, trust me you don't want money it only causes more problems. Let me shoulder your burden by skimming money off your paycheck so you don't have to deal with pesky things like wealth."
Housing costs a fortune for anything move in ready in any city/town that is desirable and I'm looking in the Southeast which would have been traditionally pretty cheap.