It's Cheaper to Live on a Boat Than Rent an Apartment in These U.S. Cities | Hacker News Reader

It's Cheaper to Live on a Boat Than Rent an Apartment in These U.S. Cities

travelandleisure.com

88 pointsharambae65 comments

As a former boat owner I can say there is nothing cheap about living on a boat. Whatever you save on rent the marina will be sure to extract. Want to live on a mooring? Everyone better have the same schedule because you dinghy out together and you dinghy back together. Insurance? you aren't covered for named storms unless you go very far north or very far south.

Maintenance? Imagine having to move out your house for a few days to weeks while work work is done.

BTW, I really enjoyed living aboard our boat right in the center of downtown and right on the river. But our kid was getting bigger and the novelty of not having the space to be a kid was wearing them down.

Empirically, it is cheaper to live aboard a boat but you give up a lot of quality of life conveniences to make it happen. You could save a lot more money by renting a small <500ft^2 apartment. Effectively that is what your doing anyway.

> Maintenance? Imagine having to move out your house for a few days to weeks while work work is done.

Can easily happen in a regular house. Let me find that tshirt…

Yeah, but a regular house doesn't sink into the ocean if you leave the front door open

But if you rent you're not handling that. Something that many people don't account for when they lambast landlords for collecting rent "for free".

Tenant vs. owning is orthogonal though. You can say the same about boats.

Almost zero liveaboards are rentals.

This is happening outside of the US as well and the hassle is the real deal-breaker. Even during some regular storms you'll probably want to drop by a hotel, it's cramped and always people around outside.

Though where I'm at rents for a small apartment are 15x the most expensive broadside dock (which a coworker lives in), right outside our center city office. In that ideal situation id consider it too.

+1 to this.

My wife, toddler and I were liveaboards on a 34' Hunter sailboat for 2.5 years in the Berkeley Marina. It was a blast for that season. I would recommend it if you like sailing, boats, minimalist living, and maintenance/tinkering. I would not recommend it if your main goal is to save money. In retrospect we probably did save money, but not that much, and definitely not an amount that would justify the amount of time I put into the boat (though I found boat work very satisfying).

Indeed, to use a bad pun, the ''sunk'' costs of maintenance and fees are horrendous.

Another issue is that some folks just cannot get over the ambient riparian or ocean odours.

This is exactly the reason why people started living on houseboats in the canals of Amsterdam. It was a lot cheaper than the ever rising house prices. However, at some point the city council smelled a new opportunity and introduced fees that house boats had to pay for the right of anchoring somewhere. Later came 'roerende ruimte belasting', a tax similar as for house owners, garbage taxes etc. And now houseboats cost as much as normal houses or even more.

I guess in these US cities the end result will eventually be the same.

> garbage taxes

if houseboats are serviced by municipal garbage collection or sewers shouldn't they have to pay for it?

> houseboats cost as much as normal houses or even more

I don't live in Amsterdam, but if a couple taxes raised the cost of houseboats to be the same as houses, then your story sounds like some freeloaders were forced to pay for services that they previously got huge subsidies for.

that's a large assumption, instead of assuming that the boats were already paying taxes as they already existed in the waters before, and the government saw an opportunity to get more tax money from people who couldn't argue otherwise.

There is however a problem. More and more marinas are enforcing a no live aboard rule. (~>95%) so it is very hard to find a place to legally live on your boat. Extra fees for that, when possible. Those rulings also lead to the marinas that allow it, to be in sketchier areas, industrial even, so as in a big city, you have neighborhood issues. The communities are pretty interesting though. A lot of do it yourselfers. Which should be noted for anyone dreaming of this life style. There is, a lot of maintenance. (Salt and sun, being your direct threats.)

Exactly this. When you have a marina with one boat lived in who is discreet, nobody cares.

When it becomes well known and now you have houseboats that look like trailer park rejects, the marinas start cracking down.

I read the challenges of some HNer to make his boat toilet work properly and whatever childish "dream" I had of living in a boat dissolved immediately...

LOL, this is so true. I have spent so many days sweatily folded into a dark corner of the bilge fixing the VacuFlush toilet system on Grandpa's boat. The pros want 5k even to look at it, and I don't blame them. IME it is the least worst of the marine toilet systems, but still a maintenance hog. Land toilets mostly just work. Marine toilets mostly just don't.

* Though I should mention I actually like the VacuFlush, it is the least worst system IME. The VacuFlush works like an airplane toilet, with the big WOOSH, it will flush anything. Negative pressure keeps bad smells contained. The downside is finding a vacuum leak can be quite a challenge.

The boat is the cheap part as that price is fixed. The slip is a monthly that generally has to be renewed each year. Around here the slips are ~$700/month which is about $8k a year for a tiny boat. Yes, that is cheap compared to an apartment but that does not include the hassle of travel between the boat to car to work or life which adds yet another level of time-cost. This also means you're living the SINK/DINK life without a pet because docking a boat does not make it easy to have family life unless the ship is large enough for multiple rooms.

Living in a van is cheaper but there is always a cost and trade off.

I'll add to that "Good luck getting a slip or mooring." Not a boater, but I have friends who are; there's a waiting list. The longest have been waiting for 5 years.

Yep, the savings don't take into account the limited number of available slips. And nobody is going to live aboard on a mooring. Dinghy rides are fun when you're headed to a new place. As part of a daily commute, they're annoying, and that's before you account for bad weather.

I've heard the waiting list isn't so much a waiting list but a dreaming list. The waiting list is for people who dream of being a live aboard. You can call and they will put your name on a list. In our case we steamed into the marina on a modern catamaran, basically looking like we're dripping with money. The dock master wants to be able to vet you and a new, modern boat is far fewer problems than an older boat.

Where I live the marinas have a problem with derelict boats. The owners buy them for cheap and then abandon them and go no-contact once the repairs get too high. So now the marina is stuck with $20k+ disposal. Financially, boats don't make sense so if you approach the marina as a live aboard trying to save money (LOL!) they will see right through it and imagine the headache you're going to be.

It’s cheaper to live in a van than an apartment in every city just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

The fact that they have NYC as number 1 on that list says to me that they didn't really go beyond the numbers.

The best place to live aboard a boat in NYC is probably... New Jersey. The few remaining marinas in NYC where you can get away with it are pretty far flung. Sheepshead Bay and maybe City Island.

Seattle seems like a much better pick, because there are quite a few houseboats still on Lake Union, which is a nice area to be.

Makes me think of the Travis McGee books by

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._MacDonald

about a guy who lives in a houseboat (got blown up in one of those books)

I still have some checked out from the library I should read.

The McGee series are fun reads, timewarp back to 60s/70s gumshoe work.

The money could be then invested into a testarossa and a pet alligator

Does the aligator have lazers?

As nice as the Testarossa is, I would probably go for the 365 GTS/4 instead.

At two different companies I've worked at I have had a coworker who lived on a boat. These were both before 2007. Those two experiences both seem to harmonize with a lot of the less glamorous things people in this thread are talking about. Aside from all the boat maintenance on a boat you have to own, which isn't cheap or easy, one of my coworkers told me about his problem of harbors not allowing residents. In one case, he would stay with his girlfriend half the week in order to not violate their rule of not allowing habitation more than 50% of the nights.

I guess on the plus side, internet service on boats has gotten a lot better in the last 15 years.

Why is this news? When I watched "Miami Vice" recently, the premise was that the protagonist was sort of a shabby, underpaid civil servant and so he couldn't even afford to live on land. This was the 1980s version of Miami before all of the capital really started flooding in from Latin America.

They’re comparing slips to apartments? The headline is a complete fabrication as the boat itself is not included in the cost.

The cost of the boat is inconsequential, can be as low as free.

Someone who is doing this to save money isn't buying a superyacht. You can get very old boats in very bad shape that are not seaworthy but float well enough to live in for just about free (sometimes literally free).

In every marina I've had a boat there are a percentage of liveaboards. Many of those boats aren't going anywhere under their own power but they haven't left the slip in over a decade so it doesn't matter.

OK, but even assuming you can get a boat for a very low price, they're still comparing average apartment rent to the cost of living in a small floating trash can. Yes, it may be less expensive to live in a floating wreck than an average apartment. It would also likely be miserable.

A cost per square foot comparison would at least be somewhat more appropriate, and I would bet the cost would be higher for the boat.

The author is clearly trying to create a story about a topic that people are already up in arms about, and they're stretching the truth to get there. It gets clicks and it gets shared.

Also note that in New York and Seattle (two of the top 5), winter in a boat is going to be brutal. Heating is a PITA. Probably why they're so cheap.

In Austin, there’s several lakes separated by dams. I think you’d be living on lake Travis as closest option (not many marinas/houseboats on lake Austin or town lake) but that’s not a great location for commuting into town. I could see it working better logistically in NYC or Seattle

I've been staying about a boat for the last four months. In that time it's been sometimes cold, sometimes wet, but never so different to living ashore that I couldn't see myself enjoying living aboard at a permanent marina berth (as opposed to, say, camping, which would get real old after a few months). The difference between living aboard a well-equipped boat and living ashore mainly comes down to space. Three of us lived very well in a space which, assessed from a landlubber's perspective, is an inhumane housing situation.

What I've come to realise is that if the design of the space is good, living in a small space such as a boat is perfectly reasonable for a long time, and that our desire to live in spacious accommodations ashore is often misplaced. I'd gladly live in a boat-sized (10-20m by 4-6m) unit ashore- still perfectly liveable, you trade off mobility for fixed power and water, no bilge or fouling or slapping halyards.

Undoubtedly, a unit of this type (studio apartment, effectively) would still be more expensive than living on a boat. The property market is in shambles.

Obviously this is an opportunity for 'investors' to snap up boat slips and jack the rents.

That's increasingly the case. You have major developers like Suntex and IGY snapping up family owned marinas. Then kick out longterm slipholders. And then rebrand it as luxury.

Is the trend for living in Vans a bit like living on a Boat with Wheels?

Conceptually, practically and ideologically?

That makes me feel a bit pessimistic about space travel. If we didn't even manage to colonize our own oceans, despite it making some economic sense, given ludicrous prices charged for houses/apartments/dwellings at land, how can we realistically hope to settle other worlds?

This is also good because you can, you know, take your home, and move to a decent place.

The boat slip proposal is mostly equivalent to renting merely land, not any building.

Exactly. These cost comparisons are way off.

For those new to the boating world, a slip is just a space to park your boat on a dock. You would then need to, k'know, have a boat to live on.

To be fair, boats can be inexpensive to buy. But they have running costs, essential maintenance costs, and a low cost slip likely only accommodates a very small boat and evicts you if you try to live there

More importantly depending where your boat is, you might have to deal with extreme heat, cold, wind, flooding etc, your water and waste disposal isn't plumbed, you might be generating your own electricity etc etc. The flip side is that you get the fun of going boating, but it's a lifestyle, not a cheap flat.

Sent from my narrowboat. (Shameless plug: for sale!)

You could put up a post-frame build or tow in a trailer for 1-2 months' rent of an apartment in those cities, the building isn't the expensive part - the scarcity of the location is.

I'd be overjoyed to rent 450 sqft of land with a 5 minute walk to downtown NYC or Seattle. Especially if it came with water, 30/50A electricity, Internet access, restrooms, showers, and laundry. Day-use dockage, grills, picnic tables, and a view of the water are not as essential but are a big bonus!

It's really not that expensive to float a boat in a slip, especially if you're not burning enormous quantities of fuel to transit the coastline. You're not going to get a brand-new yacht for the price of a mobile home, but it's not $2,000 per month, and you're likely to get a significant fraction of your investment back when you sell it.

> I'd be overjoyed to rent 450 sqft of land with a 5 minute walk to downtown NYC or Seattle. Especially if it came with water, 30/50A electricity, Internet access, restrooms, showers, and laundry. Day-use dockage, grills, picnic tables, and a view of the water are not as essential but are a big bonus!

I feel like you described an RV park.

RV parks are great - we spend a couple weeks and 5-8 weekends a year at our state parks - but they're never located in downtown NYC or Seattle.

They're located in rural areas, where owning 450 square feet of land costs on the order of $50 ($5000 per 43560 sqft acre).

Why do those prices seem freakishly expensive? Like that is just some pier space and it cost over thousand a month?

Yeah dockage can be expensive

https://one15brooklynmarina.com/reserve-a-slip/

Supply and demand, and waterfront land in urban areas and maintenance isn't cheap either

because rent-as-income has overtaken productive business

Can I save on property tax if I float a houseboat on a pond I dig?

There's a chapel in Poland (in Ojców) that's built on top of a stream, because the Car forbade Polish people from building new churches on land.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaplica_%E2%80%9ENa_Wodzie%E2%...

You pay property tax on boats.

Thanks for pointing that out. I had no idea and had to look it up. My US state doesn't seem to charge personal property tax (it charges income tax), but it might be a different story for houseboats.

In the harbor I currently use (renting a slip) I must pay property tax on the patch of seafloor land that is below my boat!

Note I don't even own that "land", I'm just a renter of the slip. But I get a separate property tax bill from the county every year. It's pretty silly.

Thinly veiled advertisement? On my HN?

Yes, but then you live in a boat, lol.

* assuming you already have a boat.

People are missing the point here. This isn't interesting because you should live on a boat, it's interesting because it demonstrates how distorted the market is.

How does it demonstrate market distortion?

Not sure it's a sign of a distorted market that an apartment costs more than something which is essentially a parking space, operated by an entity trying to sell you plenty of value-added services on top.

Does it? Living on a boat means you aren't using my local infrastructure. That infrastructure costs money to build and maintain. This will of course raise the price of things close by to said infrastructure.

If you're living aboard a boat at a marina, chances are you're using fresh water, trash, and sewage at the marina; often electricity.If you leave the boat, you'll be using the roads. If you use fuel, the fuel was likely trucked to the marina on public roads.

What local infrastructure aren't you using living in one place that happens to be on the water that you would use if the place was on land.

Ahh, that makes sense. I'm just a land locked midwesterner. I confused living on a boat with like living out on the water, not docked.

Why would you believe that living in a vehicle should cost more than living in a capital structure in an undistorted market?

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