Hacker News Reader

Being in a unique position of renting out properties that I own while simultaneously renting, it seems like some of this is taken a little out of proportion.

My net experience is that the burden of dealing with said landlord to get something fixed or maintained is roughly similar to fixing it yourself with equal pros and cons on both sides.

Consider a $150 repair for your AC going out in 95F weather, 70% humidity. Landlord can and is allowed to take 2 weeks to fix that. (even with the best of intentions, he might still take 2 weeks) Whereas you can easily call and have it fixed within 5 hours if you owned it. Also, many repair companies will refuse repair if you are a renter unless they receive authorization. Also, consider that you want to upgrade to a smart thermostat, because your mercury-laden thermostat is from the 1980s.

Also worth noting that a home warranty program helps a lot with these things both for my landlord and for myself as a landlord.

Also, seems like some of the conversation implicitly revolves around “renting an apartment” vs “buying a house”. I own 2 apartments and rent a house. I don’t have to maintain the yard for the apartments I own. I do have to maintain the yard for the house that I rent.

> Consider a $150 repair for your AC

These are precisely the examples I was cursing after I bought my house. They were the ones existing homeowners always talked about.

A $150 repair for the AC is nothing. The prospective homeowner needs to think about things like:

"Your roof is shot." The lowest bid is $15,000. Check is due before they leave your property.

"Your trees are dying." Cost of cutting them out and replacing them is $2000. When you give us the check, we'll start the job.

"Your water heater needs to be replaced." And what you learn is that it's a special type of gas water heater that costs $2500 and up. Payment is due before they leave your house.

On any of these, you call the landlord (or don't even need to in the case of the dying trees) and you don't think about it again.

Having experience with most of these types of issues, I think there might be a bit of a scarecrow here.

In particular, the remedy to each repair is presented as “replacement”. It is my experience with most landlords that they will not “replace” anything unless they 100% absolutely must. When a roof needs to be replaced that has tenants in it, a landlord will patch the roof to avoid replacement for as many years as they can (a roof replacement is a well known item that is inspected prior to purchase) - Like the landlord, the homeowner can elect to patch the roof. A landlord will repair a water heater or AC by any means necessary, not replace it.

As a tenant, you have no say in the repair process. The likely scenario is that the landlord will patch the roof 3 times during your lease and take weeks for each repair. Leaving you to deal with weeks of water running down your walls as you wait for the landlord. (this is known from rental experience)

As a homeowner, you might elect to patch the roof. You could pay in full for replacement. You could pay in monthly installments. You could also choose to install a Tesla solar roof instead. But I don’t think your options as a homeowner will be limited to “check is due in 2 weeks”.

> "Your roof is shot." The lowest bid is $15,000. Check is due before they leave your property.

When you buy the house, you should have had an idea on how much it costs, and saved for it. $15K over 30 years is nothing.

Also, of course this depends on where you live and how big your roof is, but for my house, $15K is overpriced. I recently got bids and while the numbers varied quite a bit, $11K was more typical. Of course, there are people who quote as high as $25K - learn to shop around.

And none of them wanted all the money up front.

> And what you learn is that it's a special type of gas water heater that costs $2500 and up.

I think $2500 is a fairly standard price.

One definitely needs to research these costs before buying! Especially for:

Roof

Garage doors

Water heater

Furnace

Central AC

Any pending yard work (like dying trees)

Any kind of code related work you may need to do (asbestos, old electric wiring, etc).

Move the decimal one place to the right if you're DIYing.

Most people are going to DIY 1/3 to 3/4 the stuff on that list depending on whether or not their checking account is fat enough to easily write the check in the first place.

Edit: move the decimal left.

> Move the decimal one place to the right if you're DIYing.

I’m not sure of this is a mistake or commentary on the cost of not doing it right the first time.

Meant to say left.

In my experience you can screw things up several times over before you come close to the cost of paying someone else.

Would not recommend if it's plumbing related. That's one of those things where a screw up could cost a lot more than calling a plumber in the first case.

Not to mention going days without water because no plumber is available.

Not an experience I want to repeat.

> Also worth noting that a home warranty program helps a lot with these things both for my landlord and for myself as a landlord.

Not the home warranty programs I've had, which seem to be focused on getting revenue via call-out fees and not doing a whole lot else. Even when the last one replaced an air handler because of a bad fan (seemed like they could have replaced the fan, but I dunno), and gave me a check to replace an oven with a bad control board (no replacement parts), the fact that everything took months to go through made the experience negative for me, even if it was a positive fiscally.

Oh yes. My HVAC system died before the recent PNW heatwave. Three days plus of 110F+. A week or so of ~100F either side, a week or so of ~90F either side.

Despite me being able to find a HVAC repair company able to come out the next day, warranty company said they would not reimburse anything because they were able to find a company in their network... that could come and see me in just under four WEEKS.

"Oh, I understand it's an emergency and that's very hot. This is our policy."

I canceled that call-out. And then had to remind them that that meant they should also refund the call-out fee.

>Whereas you can easily call and have it fixed within 5 hours if you owned it.

The caveat with these sorts of fixes is these service companies will sometimes upcharge a big fee for "emergency work" to have it fixed within 5 hours rather than in two weeks. I literally had water shooting out of my ceiling and the property manager admitted as much to me when I asked why the owner left me without water for days.

True, but at least you get to answer that question, instead of your landlord.

Honestly dealing with some of the contracts I've dealt with, it's not much better

Huge +1 to this. Don't get me wrong, I've been in my house for 10 years, and I probably won't go back to renting, but I think most people wildly underestimate these things.

In the first couple of years I remember getting so irritated by all the time it took to take care of the house and yard. Nowadays, I've gotten used to it, and I view it as a welcome distraction from work, but that definitely wasn't true in the beginning. Even paying someone to do all these things is a large hassle. You have to be at the house to meet contractors, get competing bids, worry about the contractors doing stuff wrong, etc.

I also think people wildly underestimate maintenance costs. I bought a 50 year old house, 10 years ago. I don't think I've had a single year where I didn't have to spend 10K on maintenance. I always wonder how most people handle these expenses - and then I realize that most people just don't take care of their houses.

> In the first couple of years I remember getting so irritated by all the time it took to take care of the house and yard.

It's always been a problem for me. My work keeps me so busy (that's how I can afford the house) and much of the limited free time I have goes to my son's activities. The only thing that allows me to get it done is that my son is old enough to help me.

> I don't think I've had a single year where I didn't have to spend 10K on maintenance.

I kept hearing $150-200 a month for maintenance before I bought my house. That was just a bit on the low side. I had one year where I paid 20K for maintenance on a house less than 20 years old. There's always something, and if you postpone your maintenance (when it's even possible) you're going to have to find a way to catch up in the future.

Maintenance and upkeep costs are so noisy. Free CL push mower and $100 weed whacker is being compared to professional landscape service. Quotes from professionals are all over the place. I've never spent more than ~$500 at a time maintaining my house but there's nothing I wouldn't DIY.

> If you rent, you call the landlord and have them replace those things.

You also have to negotiate everything with landlord: color of paint, removing walls, replacing stuff you don't like because of the design alone.

Home ownership gives you almost infinite options to fit the place 100% to your needs.

So I agree that there are things hard to express with money. One can reverse the question: buying could set you back $xx.xxx, is it a fair price to be able to do anything with the property?

> negotiate everything with landlord ... Home ownership gives you almost infinite options

that's the point of ownership. If renting gives you _almost_ as much rights as ownership, who would own!?

> Even if you hire someone, that can be a massive hassle, you have to worry about being ripped off

This is a huge problem with home ownership, at the very least where I've owned homes (California and Michigan). The quality of contractors varies dramatically, and many will happily rip you off or at the very least just do a bad job. If you can't get a good recommendation from someone you trust, you really roll the dice hiring someone. IMO, if you're going to own, you should be willing to do a lot of work yourself. At least then you know exactly what's happening to your house.

> Do you enjoy having to maintain a home and property?

Better question is, how much would you pay (or want to be paid) to maintain a property.

If it was my house, I'd do it for free.

If it was your house, I wouldn't do it for any price.

but also the reverse applies. If you want to make alterations or improvements to your house, better not rent

Yes, exactly. Or maybe you want a guarantee of being able to stay in one place for a long period of time, say to send your children to a particular school, or be close to neighbors or family.

The part about neighbors or family might be true, depending on whether they're going to stay put, but the part about the school is one of the biggest risks to buying a house. School boundaries get changed all the time. This is something I'm dealing with right now, and it could shave tens of thousands off the value of my house if it turns out wrong.

This is true, but it really only applies to someone with a pile of money laying around. It's nice to have the option to remodel your kitchen. The percentage of new homeowners that can afford to do it is likely small.