If you own it you can do all that. If you rent you have to ask permission which you might not get. Plus why spend money on somewhere you don't own?
I live in London, UK in a flat I rent for £950 pcm. This would cost me £379,000 to buy, at the very least as it's a relatively nice area.
I could scrape the deposit and get a £379,000 mortgage but the insurance, maintenance and other costs on top would result in zero disposable income.
Currently I have £1750 left over every month which is nothing but bags of freedom to do whatever I want.
If I was to drop dead on Monday, the last great event wouldn't be getting Magnet in to do my kitchen, painting the living room ceiling and sitting in all weekend eating Tesco Value food. It would be chilling next to Lake Geneva in Lausanne with my other half which is exactly what I'm doing.
Live life now before it's over.
Edit: This is based on the advice of my wife's grandparents who are just about hanging on at the age of 84 and 86 respectively. They had to cancel their cruise this year due to poor health and openly admit that they worked way too hard for a house. They have a nice £1m house in London and a pile of savings but it's worth nothing to them now because their health is gone. It's empty as the children have left and they realised the memories were more important than the bricks.
So, sod buying a house. I'll live an irresponsible yet fulfilling life now.
London is one of those crazy places where a job jump can actually get a salary boost larger than the national average salary in its entirety which is where the short term advantage is if you know how to play the market.
You always pay over the odds to rent initially but due to inflation and relative property prices it becomes good value rather quickly.
It's not irresponsible to spend money on traveling and adventures. You get back much more than nice time there and couple of photos and souvenirs - you are exposed to new environment, people, culture etc. and you'll grow inside in a subtle, yet steady way. On the other hand, usual "buying stuff you don't need to impress people you don't care about" is useless, and won't even bring any long term happiness.
>Plus why spend money on somewhere you don't own?
People have this mentality that renting is throwing out money. It's not - it turns your housing into another explicit cost like food and travel. I like this, I think too many people make the biggest investment decision of their lives (often by orders of magnitude) so lightly. And anyway, when you own, the costs that would go to renting are priced in, like: taxes, upkeep, opportunity costs, and interest payments. There is no free lunch - even the home ownership tax benefits get priced into housing costs.
Where are all these landlords, because the ones I have experience with in Florida, Texas, and Virginia get pissed if you so much as nail a picture to the wall.
Fairfield, IA: all maintenance as well as on-going renovations at $25/hr plus materials.
San Francisco, CA: interior paint, garden, chicken coop, converted garage into bedroom.
Portland, OR: extensive tear out and renovation, removed walls, renovated kitchen, new wiring and lighting, converted attic into bedroom, finished basement and added bedroom -- all on the owner's dime. Also, we built a kiln and a giant skate ramp in the backyard.
So it is possible. Although admittedly, I do have a knack for finding laid back landlords.
On this thread it's visible that people try to promote their own decisions in this topic (and we all have been into it deep down). Let me put mine - I took loan 8 years ago, in a different country, on a small appartment that when looking back, wasn't the best idea (but neither really bad). Mind you, it was in 2007 :) Surprisingly the price didn't drop below the one I paid, but the pressure to bring every month enough cash to make it through was... not nice. THe perspective to have similar setup for next 20 years was a bit sould-crushing though (it was 50m appartment, so nothing to raise your family in).
But, this pressure forced me off my lazy but, I temporarily moved to another country to earn more and pay it off asap, realized that this country is SO much better than previous one (which wasn't my home anyway), so I decided to stay. 5 years forward, probably the best decision of my life (and there were heaps of people saying I should settle where I am instead of move).
Of course selling your house and buying a new one will take a few months, so it does restrict your mobility in that way.
I'm not picking on you, but it's amazing how quickly Americans (not saying you're from the US) forget economic events that happened only a few years back.
There are many places in the US where housing prices haven't come close to the peak in 2007. I knew several folks who lost a ton of money ($100K+) on real estate back then. It seems like all of those concerns have evaporated in the last 8 years.
what makes you think this is the case?
for all the singularity and robot economy talk on here, if give those things have even a small chance of occurring, over 30 years that adds significant risk to real estate values across the United States
that's essentially like the factory in town going out of business across most of the country
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And Milwaukee is not, by a long shot, Detroit— it's still barely below its peak population. Wages have declined, however— an average young person when my parents were young would make the same amount of money as in San Francisco: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/for-grea...
(All of these numbers are nominal dollars— the house has significantly declined in real value.)