I have friends, and friends of friends, and family and…wait! Just about everybody I know has this dilemma. Do I rent or own? Well I’ll keep this simple. Rent. It’s cheaper.
Back when the housing market was booming and everyone was snagging sweet deals, I saw a few of my college buddies decide that they wanted to start their dream of home ownership. Their wives were having babies and their dogs wanted a place to run around. Could you blame them? I mean a low variable interest rate sounded perfect. First off, I should’ve warned them then that they should NOT do a variable rate. But, being a first time home owner, they didn’t know. Burn number one.
Then as time went on and the market crashed, they realized how difficult it was to maintain a low rate. Now, they were scrambling to find a fixed rate. But the fixed rates were so high that they almost had no option that was withing their boundaries. Burn number two.
Next, the fixing game came up. Fix this, fix that. Home Depot for this, Lowe’s for that. Money kept piling up for all the repairs and additions they hoped for. However, with the mortgage payments adding up and their ability to maintain a low rate making it harder now then ever to keep up, they were forced to put their house into second and third mortgages. Why? Well they decided to roll all their credit card debt (piled up from all the repairs to the house) onto the mortgage. Burn number three.
A month ago I got to meet-up with two of my college buddies over dinner. The dinner included their spouses and 3.5 kids each. The biggest conversation topic was how they all wished they had rented all these years later. The house was nice because it was tangible and a sense of accomplishment still kept them positive. However, they all said “we lost money.” Money that they don’t know if they’ll ever recoup. “I might be stuck in Parma, Ohio for the next 25 years and I don’t even have enough bedrooms for all the kids.” It’s a scary thought and it’s a shame too. A working family man who supports his family the best he can, can’t even be happy while he’s vacationing (the one time a year he does) in the beautiful Myrtle Beach. The other friend said that he’s considering buying another home and try to rent the current condo he resides in. But again, now he has to become a landlord and he just doesn’t have time for this.
In conclusion, I’m not trying to say that I was right and they were wrong, but it sure is nice to be able to call the office when our window blind doesn’t work, or know that we can move on to another city if we want to without having any reservations. To start a family in an apartment is not a bad thing to me. I do hope to have a house for my children so they’re able to play in their own yard when they’re growing up. But I want to make sure that I do it the smart way and the right way. I will not be so gung ho that I put myself in the same predicament that my friends had put themselves into.
So tell Clancey the dog that he’ll have to wait to run around in his own backyard. I’m sure the dog park will be just fine for him.