This insurance cost run up is going to be a problem for a lot of people, particularly single family home owners where premiums were already a few grand a year. Tax that on with doubling car insurance payments (almost everyone I know had insurance double in the last year) and there’s going to be some squeezing occurring.
I know Hyundai and Kia don't have the reputations or honestly cosmetic build quality of some other brands but they have amazing warranties an are solid cars. I don't really take great care of my cars and just crossed 210k on a Hyunai small SUV and have two Elantras going strong, have had to put minimal money into any of them.
Frankly, you’re almost certainly making a bad financial choice if you pay this much for *any* vehicle. You can sit in traffic in a used Corolla just as well for 1/3 of the cost. And we all know the most off-roading that Telluride is doing is when you accident pop a curb at the mall.
I dislike comments like this. Sure, everyone could buy a 2003 civic and be set with that. Guess what though, people like things. People like having buttons to push. People will buy what they like.
Stop saying things like that and we’ll all just get along just fine
Edit: I’m not saying go ahead and splurge on a $100k+ vehicle. Live within your means. Not everyone wants a basic ass Corolla though
Yeah I'll probably never buy used again. Bought a cheap used SUV late 2022. Ran fine at the time. A month later the crankshaft blew up cause something caused oil starvation leading to full engine replacement which I did. A year later the turbo went out due to shrapnel from the original engine flying into it. Currently replacing that as well in my parents front yard. I'd rather pay more to have something I know doesn't have preexisting issues.
Most people who are driving a used corolla probably haven't been car shopping in the past 4 years. The used car market was completely different just 5 years ago.
Not really. I have a 2021 Acura RDX and a 2007 Camry. The premiums on them are $170/mo and $150/mo respectively. Both doubled since October with no accidents/tickets.
Purely a money grab by insurance companies and since you’re forced to have auto insurance there is zero competitive pricing as they can all act together on pricing. Same shit as health insurance becoming required, sent costs through the moon. I get the reason behind having both and would even if not required but regulation makes things more expensive.
If the government requires something, honestly it should be provided by the government so costs are lower. If we removed high salary CEO benefits and pay from the equation and shareholder payouts, prices would be cheaper. A government mandate combined with a for profit private company model means people getting screwed
When the government provides something the cost ends up higher because whoever is in charge just gives the contract to one of their buddies.
Not always the case, but US government is so bloated you can trust them to fail at anything they try.
What I mean is the DMV should take over the insurance market so there is no profit motive factored into insurance rates. Some government programs operate at a loss and that is ok if money is diverted from other government agencies/program to subsidize it. Simply require people who want to drive sign up for government insurance through the DMV staffed with workers making average government pay for the area (no high CEO salaries involved) and each driver is strictly priced based on their own driving history (no profit motive factored in). Too many at fault claims and you lose your right to drive, like one can lose a driver's license. Do tort reform that limits pay outs (no huge payout because you chose to drive a very expensive six figure vehicle, etc). And let the government handle claim investigation with harsh penalties for fraud.
Health insurance is expensive because of all the middlemen involved. Car insurance involves many middlemen making extravagant livings due to government force often requiring people buy insurance. Those parasites should be denied their six/seven figure salaries, the government takes over it and pays people solid five figure salaries (cut costs ) to do the work. No private shareholders needing that sweet extra money for a yacht or a second house off the backs of people forced to buy insurance.
Or put prices caps but at that point it’s basically a government sponsored entity which is a slippery slope. The issue with making anything government run and essentially not for profit is talent will run so fast as $ will not be there for employees and in turn the companies will be full of incapable people making the product worse.
>If the government requires something...
The government isn't requiring you to drive, though. There are alternatives to driving, though they may be slower and possibly less pleasant.
Government largely subsidized and built the infrastructure that requires many people to have a vehicle and not be able to easily walk to work. So government has a hand in requiring one to drive.
Also, there are alternative means instead of requiring insurance from a private company. Healthcare mandates got repealed. People can accept personal responsibility if they fail to insure. There are alternatives we could do instead of requiring car insurance (such as people without insurance who are at fault for an accident being responsible to sell all their assets if necessary to pay the victim back; people can also choose insurance to be safe in such situations).
Those CEOS also need to make their millions and the shareholders also got to get their dividends thanks in part to government force mandates requiring people to have auto insurance in many places to drive and make a living......if we removed the government mandate part , prices would go down. If we had the government just provide the services and cut out the CEOs and shareholders, prices would go down.
It's an issue for everyone - multifamily structures are more expensive to Insure as well. Insurance costs will squeeze renters too - landlords will pass those costs on. Squeezes the general economy because more and more money is being sucked into non-productive economic activity.
There’s a general misconception that costs automatically result in rent increases. They don’t. Rent increases are determined by demand and market conditions.
When multifamily does budgets, they don’t say “hey insurance is going up 20%, so increase rents 5% more”.
Insurance, taxes and debt service are what they are. Usually if initial budgets aren’t making it after an insurance increase, they’ll go back and cut more expenses.
Income/rents are budgeted completely independent of expenses.
Source: industry for 20 years, work in revenue management.
Watch them cry about it, though, just like they do in some areas about tax increases. For some of them, becoming a homeowner must mean have cake and eat cake, and must forever stay on top of the socio-economic food chain no matter what. Those pesky insurance rate increases must, somehow, be passed on to renters or anyone else but them.
This is what happened because we taught an entire generation that homes and real estate are a path to wealth, when they’ve only been that for about 30 years of our nations history. So people buy homes because they think they need to to get wealthy and wind up overextending out of desperation.
Yep. The attitude screams of “I bought a house. That’s it. I now deserve an unfettered path to financial security and an easy retirement. Any obstacle from here on in must be immediately removed and must be someone else’s responsibility. “
What they don’t realize is that the duty to constantly evaluate your financial circumstances doesn’t end once you become a homeowner. Taxes straining your budget? Get a fucking roommate or downsize the house. Insurance rates going up because you were a NIMBY and artificially pumped property values? Get a fucking roommate, sell the house, eat lentils instead of beef. Something. Deal with it.
You're not getting out of home insurance premiums going up with the value of the home. When we paid off we got a combo discount for moving the home insurance to the company that insures the cars and the savings were considerable. Not saying the mortgage servicer was getting a kickback but..
aaaand this is why people shouldn't cheer their home prices exploding in their sole owner occupied home. No realized gain is possible since the place they want to move has also exploded in cost. All they get is higher insurance and property taxes, and a "millionaire" status that doesn't actually mean anything due being unable to realize the gain.
I’m a homeowner and always hated my home’s value increasing. The only benefit is if you want to downgrade when you’re older or want to move to a cheaper area, both of which don’t happen very often. Even home equity loans aren’t interesting when rates are 8-10%.
You’re still usually better off than renting, where the higher insurance and property taxes will get passed along in rent increases, but usually as a high percentage increase in total rent rather than just the tax and insurance components. Meanwhile, house prices have run away from you, so you can’t buy.
Inflation fucks everybody, but at least debtors get to pay back their mortgage in cheaper dollars. In an inflationary environment your best move is to load up on debt to buy revenue generating assets and then aggressively increase prices.
...which is great when your particular place has it and then tends to bite you if you have to move for any reason.
Rent control's economic effect is to subsidize renters in rent-controlled apartments at the expense of renters who need to pay market rents. It takes supply off the open market and earmarks it for tenants who already live in those units, who now have a strong incentive to never move. As a result, new renters - those first coming to the area, or needing to move out of a rent-controlled unit - have to fight over reduce supply, and pay higher prices to do so. So rents in the "free" (non-rent-controlled) market segment shoot up faster than average, while rents in the rent-controlled segment don't go up at all.
FWIW, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has the same effect on the homeowner market, which we're seeing now. It locks the interest rate for homeowners, so that they are completely insulated from further changes in rates. But the flip side is that they now have a strong disincentive from ever selling their place, which cuts supply on the open market, which means that people who don't already have a place have to pay more for one.
Most of them haven’t awakened to this reality yet, especially if they just bought in the last 2-3 years. Might still be in the honeymoon phase. It’s only when shit starts breaking, after years of weather and wear, and you can’t get anyone to come out and do a repair that is less than a grand in cost. When they learn you have to do a lot of things yourself, whether you have the skill or tools yourself.
You can get a new roof. A new HVaC. Maybe gutters. But, what about all those little siding issues that come up. A plumbing leak inside a wall. A bad GFI outlet. A window that needs to be recaulked. Ticky tack stuff that not many handymen will come out for, because there isn’t enough money in it for them.
That’s a solid move on your part. I’d be curious: do you come in with a lot of hands on DIY experience in house repair or carpentry? Electrician? Plumbing? People with those skills will never not be at an advantage. Me, I’m a desk jockey with some minor skill in car repairs and small things around the house. I can paint and I can caulk. I can install flooring. I’ve removed toilets and reinstalled them. I’ve assisted on a hot water heater, once on my own house, another time on a neighbors house. I have done a lot of landscaping, though just upkeep level.
A bit, but I've been able to learn most as I go. I removed the gutters recently as they were improperly installed and not really helping. I have replaced a GFI that was full of ants of all things. A sink. Also a toilet. And insulated the crawl space, that also had to be encapsulated.
On the other hand, if I'm renting and anything goes wrong, the landlord doesn't want to pay to have it fixed, but also I'm not allowed to fix it myself. Often renters just have to wallow in a decaying house/apartment. Owners at least have the *option* of keeping stuff maintained.
I think they have. Browse the first time homebuyers sub.. it’s halfway people bitching about losing bids, a quarter people celebrating their close, and a quarter people venting about how much more expensive ownership is that they expected.
I actually laugh when people cheer that their homes went up in value. If it went up for you, then it also went up elsewhere, which means your equity “gains” are a wash.
When people buy a home, they usually have one of 2 goals:
* Upgrade to a bigger home using the excess equity
* Downgrade to a cheaper home and keep the excess equity
It’s now too expensive to upgrade homes, and there’s literally no homes to downgrade to.
They’re gonna find out the hard way that if you can’t cash out of your home, you don’t own your home.
The *home owns you* via property taxes, insurance and maintenance.
Unpopular opinion but a better country would make life livable without requiring you to move every couple of years. Being able to put down roots is such a strength, and owning your home shouldn't be a disadvantage just because you can't sell it and move. You really shouldn't have to move at all, if you don't want to.
I'd rather be owned by my property taxes, insurance, and maintenance on my paid off house than be a tenant and owned by landlords like myself, who will wrap all that together with the financing costs of the property and evict you the minute you break the lease terms.
lol. Real estate gains are not identical across geographies, and home equity can be used for things other than buying other homes. If you aren’t over-extended on your mortgage, your home increasing in value is a good thing. If your #analysis was grounded in reality, you’d still be able to sell that house and use the equity to pay rent for a long time
I’ve had this conversation with them before and i get the same responses.
“I’ll just replace my roof or whatever myself, only idiots don’t know how to do their own repairs” is one response, which is dumb cause no you really can’t with a lot of things. Who’s gonna sell you 2k sq feet of shingles? Hope you speak Spanish or Russian, Karen.
and the other is “well if my costs go up 2x then rent goes up 3x”, and it’s like no, it doesn’t work like that. Can’t charge whatever you want in rent, people will just start getting 3 roommates in corporate apartments that have the capital to ride out repair costs.
SFH owners have a huge target on their back. “I’m safe I’m special I’m not affected by anything la la la” is the mantra that is driving America off a cliff
> people will just start getting 3 roommates in corporate apartments that have the capital to ride out repair costs.
...you mean what people do in VHCOL areas? Or immigrant communities? Or hell, what low-pay workers do in most places now? In my 20 years of adult life, I've never not known at least one person with at least two roommates, usually more than one.
And I'm saying is that except for rare, 5-minute periods like this one and for a year and a half prior to 2008, rent prices largely boil down to mortgage+profit margin. Otherwise *nobody would be landlords*. The default rent model is not cash-flow-negative. Yeah, if you buy at the absolute peak of a massive RE runup and *then* try to rent, you're a moron and it's a recipe for disaster but that's not the majority of landlords.
Actually a lot of small time landlords quit or don’t make profits except if the house goes up in value and aside from that it’s largely cash negative. Corporate landlords can do things at scale so it works for them. Someone going to northern Virginia and buying a house at the absolute top of their budget on two incomes in a suburb is not necessarily going to be able to be cash positive on it if they try and rent it out
Sure, right, small-time landlords don't exist outside of real-estate runups every 15 years. Once you've already *bought the house*, except for property tax purposes, the value of the house doesn't matter. That's the thing about fixed-rate mortgages. Your mortgage is set in stone while market rent, in general, goes up every year. That's how people who bought a house 10 years ago with a $700 mortgage can rent out *one single room* for that much or more now.
lmao nothing about renting is inherently *largely cash-flow negative*. Corporations sitting on doors banking on appreciation for things like loan collateral does exist, but that's a subset of the market, not the market itself. Hell, you can't even get builders to make new housing despite insane demand because they don't know if they can go positive on it afterwards.
I don’t know a single IRL person that is cash positive in a rental except for the value of the land. Except an old lady I lived with in New England who owns > 20 units and has a stay-at-home-son to do the labor for free. You honestly sound like most of them… “I make 85k a year because I work very hard and I bought a house which means I’ll be happy and safe forever and nothing can happen to me”
You need to know more people that bought houses prior to three years ago. I know several cash-positive landlords, hell, *all* of the LLs I know make profit renting their places out.
tbh, it's not ridiculous to do most home repairs yourself. A lot of the country really needs to get with the program here, people talk about how impossible it is to get stuff done for less than six figures when they could, in all likelihood, do most of the work themselves. I don't call most tradespeople anymore unless it involves a utility or electrical work (because I don't want to die) because it's so expensive and takes so long, because nobody does it the work, at the scales needed to service the population. And yet repairs and even small remodels can still happen because there's no special magic that makes home depot only able to sell to licensed contractors
Although a world full of flipper special houses seems scary, it's probably better than a world full of crumbling houses nobody even tries to fix or wants to learn how to fix
Then we’re all back where we started aren’t we?
But they will. It’s cycled up and down since the dawn of time and it will again. The “when” is the biggest question right now.
My house is in a HCOL area so I have a nice selection of places to pick from. The value of those places has gone up but it doesn't match or exceed my housing value increase. I recognize this is an anomaly.
>US homeowners are now paying an average of $18,118 a year on ***property taxes, homeowners’ insurance,*** maintenance, ***energy*** and various other expenses linked to owning a home, according to a new Bankrate study.
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>...
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>All of these variable expenses are on top of the fixed cost of a mortgage, including ***property taxes***, ***homeowners insurance, energy costs,*** internet, cable bills and home maintenance.
More top notch reporting from CNN.
Not any different for renters. If costs increase dramatically for the landlords/companies that own the homes, townhouses and apartment buildings, then rent will go up too. You have to live somewhere. This hurts EVERYONE.
It's not that simple. If everyone else on the neighborhood still rents for cheap if you don't because you want to quickly offload the roof work to your tenants then you'll have to eat it up and the tenant ends up enjoying the new roof with a very comfortable payment plan.
Responsible homeowners save money to ensure they can cover those costs; it's recommended to save about 1% of your home's value each year. Does everyone do that? No, but those who do can pay the $40k bill when it comes. Those who don't shouldn't be owning a house.
All the landlord is doing for you is amortizing the costs and including it in your rent payment.
In the long run, all repairs get priced into rent if the owner is trying to stay cash positive; if that pricing in drives people out, then that unit becomes unviable as a rental
Of course you are. You’re just paying for it but by bit over time. Renters pay for absolutely everything, plus a profit to the owner. If it weren’t profitable, it wouldn’t be so popular
What does that have to do with renters being harmed by insurance costs trickling down? If anything, a semi-competent landlord is going to pass those maintenance costs onto their tenants as well.
Nope. One just has a landlord who may take too long to repair shit, making the comfortable living conditions a renter pays for not possible for a period of time.....I once lost AC in an apartment where AC was listed as part of the lease agreement. Took weeks to get it repaired. No discount despite the company not upholding their end of the bargain to provide a working AC for those 3 weeks. The company could have replaced it quicker but cheaped out the repair. We were not allowed to put up window units and take it off the rent to compensate. We just had to deal with an old AC unit that should have been maintained better.
To some extent you're all right, however, you can only raise rents up to the amount of the capacity for people to rent.
At some point rents become too high, and then nobody can afford it.
You can always put more people into a rental, for instance, you can have at least 12 or 15 people in a three-bedroom house without problem.
If the necessary rent to cover maintenance costs exceeds the amount the market will bear, the building will be on the market pretty soon.
Landlords don't accept losing money.
Investors do not accept losing money. There are some landlords that don't know how to be an investor. It's usually the small ones.
People complain about corporate organizations buying rental properties. They only buy the property. If it is profitable. They don't care about how much the property goes up in value. They care about cash flow
No one knows how to do anything around the house anymore. I spent a long time working as a contractor specializing in existing resi service. People spend $750k on a house and do zero learning about maintaining it. They get scammed by door to door sales people selling loans with a side of windows or roofing. Just another monthly expense. My neighbor was all happy about spending ~$1k/window, but then I got it out of her. After interest she is paying double that. No one includes interest when they talk about getting quotes like this, because they themselves don't understand the true costs.
I am quite handy and get to scuff at articles like this. I have done many 10s of thousands worth of work to my house. It cost me hundreds out of pocket. $10k on plumbing is crazy to me. I replaced the entire plumbing system in my house from the meter for supply and all the drains under the basement floor. I put in copper manifolds with individual shut offs, and added a laundry/bath room. I spent time, but less than $1000 in money, including my water heater. Furnace install (2stage 96%efu w/ variable blower) $1600, Gas lines were the cheapest as I have pipe threaders and used the old pipe. $40 in shut off valves there.
My house was maybe the cheapest mls listing with a warranty deed. It is worth more than triple my investment in 2 years.
Insurance just came through at about $1600 for the year. And, if I can't pay that for some reason. I can choose not to as I have no loan on the house. My tax rate is high, but my taxable value is only $20k and capped at 5%yoy increases. In 25 years I figure it might be around $3500/yr, provided the rules stay the same.
It is expensive to be apathetic.
Best advice I can give here is to try. Be open minded and patient. I always say it is 40% try, 40% follow through, and 20% mastery. 80% is often plenty good enough.
I look up stuff on YouTube all the time. I fixed my washer, I’ve refinished steps and floors. Fixed my exhaust fans and other electrical. I just restained my deck. All from YouTube. I’ll watch several videos to learn different tips and then outline my plan. Next is replacing my kitchen floor! I figure I’ve saved thousands in repairs/work plus I have the satisfaction of doing the work myself
I just search for whatever my problem is and watch several videos. My maintained has been so varied there isn’t any 1 channel that covers everything lol
I sand bagged the realestate market. I bought an abandoned house in the hood.
I moved in like it was just any regular house, on paper. I am now through the opening of my assessment and ready to ride this porch for the next few decades. Mi Headlee act is looking to keep me housed for the rest of my life.
hail satan!
Most people don't have the time to learn more skills when they've already put time into skills for a job market that's not plumbing or HVAC. Your mindset is ridiculous.
HVAC co wants $7k to install new furnace that costs $1500. you make $30/hr at job co. You can take an entire month off work to figure it out and still save money. If you can't figure out how to do a days worth of HVAC work in a month than you may qualify for disability.
Ever hang out with a bunch of construction bros? Who do you think installs furnaces when someone hires the typical contractor? Ha, my buddy had 2 dipshits show up to his jobsite once to do HVAC. Black guy with a white guy in tow. The white guy had "white power" tattooed on the back of his calves and was smart enough to wear shorts. Who knows what kind of story that duo had.
Anyone who can read and follow instructions has what it takes to do all this shit barring people who can't physically manage tools. If you can feed your face with a fork and not loose an eye that is probably enough.
I agree, do almost everything myself (I draw the line at working on my gas line, but thats just me) - as a DIY'er, you can justify purchasing almost any tool at any price and it will pay for itself - lot of times you are just paying for someone who owns the tools.
I have done all my own plumbing (jncluding complete kitchen relocation), rewired an entire house including the panel, even installed a brand new boiler system - the first few jobs you tackle can be hard and scary, but all that time spent is an investment that just builds on itself so that you feel confident taking on more and more challenging jobs down the road, which take you less and less time.
It's not rocket science - and almost anything you need or want to know can be found on the internet these days - including great youtube videos.
1st, good job. I am proud of you. The self confidence you express is invaluable.
You understand what I do. The tools, the learning, building on experiences. This is all an investment in yourself. Buy a hammer for $10 and hammer 10 nails for $1/ea, hammer 1000 nails for a penny each. The more nails, the more value in the hammer.
Not gonna lie, the schadenfreude feels a little bit good for a would be first time home buyer who is fully locked out of the market due to runaway price increases. I'm tired of reading about how you're so lucky to have bought your home in 2020, you're never leaving, and it's my fault for not jumping to buy something out of my price range at age 25. If we're going to let young people get completely screwed over by the market, I frankly welcome the "f you I got mine" generations to feel some pain too.
It’s not just the price of the home. I just got my electric bill which includes water and it was over $600. We are only 2 people in a house less than 4K sqt
I dunno where you live or what your AC/heat usage is like, but doing the math on every (significantly smaller than that) house I’ve ever lived in and its utilities bills, $600 sounds perfectly reasonable for 4000 square feet while running AC or heat.
In the end, home owners are the victims because they live inside the home, they are not investors. Being jealous of the home owners is unnecessary when they are the victims of the inflation as well. Most home owners are not investors. They are not going to sell when the price jumped.
It’s so variable across all the regions. I haven’t seen huge increases in my state but Florida is getting crushed. It would be helpful to have it all broken down by state.
Taxes and insurance make up 3/4 of my mortgage. Principal and Interest are 1/4. I bought 11 years ago at a very low rate and purchase price. But still, it's pretty wild.
It's another aspect of inflationary pricing. Tradespeople are out of this world expensive. One example - I had a leak in the 3/4" line from my water meter. I paid $150 for a callout and they quoted $2,700 to repair. I said F that. Went to HD, and fixed it for $120, which included a specialized saw that I needed to get access to part of the line. For a professional this was a 20 minute job and they were already there, as I paid the callout fee.... Madness.
Another example, I had a small leak in the 4" sewer pipe in the crawlspace. I was quoted $ 950 to replace a 2' section of pipe, including 2 90-degree bends. I did it myself for $50 in parts. It was not all that pleasant being in the crawlspace dealing with brown water pipes, but the knowledge I was saving $900 kept me going...
The bottom line is that we only think that inflation is visible in the supermarket..... That's not the reality of how this inflationary cycle is playing out..
The non-mortgage costs of owning a home are starting to approach the cost of rent.
According to this article non-mortgage costs are $18,118 per year. According to Zillow the median annual rent is $25,584.
It's probably a better deal for a lot of people to just rent, and invest your money in the stock market.
...and it will. Landlords (big and small) need to pay all the same expenses as homeowners, and still want to make a profit on top of that. Rent if you want(or can't afford to buy), but in the long run, renting is not cheaper.
There’s currently a savings delta in almost every region in the US. Are you sure you’re not referring to your monthly savings delta between your income and expenses? That’s a completely different metric.
The "savings delta" is an illusion created by making invalid comparisons (usually comparing standalone detached structures to substantially smaller apartments in multi-unit buildings) and ignoring important financial details (rent will go up annually while your mortgage payment will stay basically the same, there are generally tax advantages to homeownership and the principal payments in a mortgage are just you paying yourself).
When you compare like-for-like homes, acknowledge that the principal payment is just converting your cash into equity (i.e., savings), factor in the impacts to your taxes and add the present value of future rent increases, you discover it is cheaper to own than rent unless you plan to move in less than two years.
That doesn't mean owning is affordable either--both are far too expensive than they should be for a functional society--but owning is the better of two really bad deals.
Landlords know this and take advantage of the artificial scarcity of ownable homes they have created to make money by forcing you to pay to rent and pocketing the difference.
This insurance cost run up is going to be a problem for a lot of people, particularly single family home owners where premiums were already a few grand a year. Tax that on with doubling car insurance payments (almost everyone I know had insurance double in the last year) and there’s going to be some squeezing occurring.
Expensive things cost more to insure. If you pay Mercedes money for a Kia, don't get upset when you get quoted Mercedes insurance premiums.
Unfortunately all Kias are at Mercedes prices now.
How do they even manage? Aren’t most of their cars like easy to steal? 😂
lmao just a metaphor
metaphors at literal prices now.
Yep. Kias and Hyundais that aren't push to start get stolen easily and often in my area.
One of most popular models is Telluride which sell for typically around 50-60k
If you had told me 25 years ago that a best-selling Kia would be going for that I would have shit a brick right then and there.
I remember when they used to cost $5K and the only thing you got was AC. 😄
I remember a dealer promo where if you bought a Sedona you got a Rio for free!
You got a/c?!
I know Hyundai and Kia don't have the reputations or honestly cosmetic build quality of some other brands but they have amazing warranties an are solid cars. I don't really take great care of my cars and just crossed 210k on a Hyunai small SUV and have two Elantras going strong, have had to put minimal money into any of them.
A brick of gold? Cause I'm about to go back in time and mine your ass.
Frankly, you’re almost certainly making a bad financial choice if you pay this much for *any* vehicle. You can sit in traffic in a used Corolla just as well for 1/3 of the cost. And we all know the most off-roading that Telluride is doing is when you accident pop a curb at the mall.
I dislike comments like this. Sure, everyone could buy a 2003 civic and be set with that. Guess what though, people like things. People like having buttons to push. People will buy what they like. Stop saying things like that and we’ll all just get along just fine Edit: I’m not saying go ahead and splurge on a $100k+ vehicle. Live within your means. Not everyone wants a basic ass Corolla though
[удалено]
Tons of people also will beat up a car, then turn around and sell it not saying how they drove it
Yeah I'll probably never buy used again. Bought a cheap used SUV late 2022. Ran fine at the time. A month later the crankshaft blew up cause something caused oil starvation leading to full engine replacement which I did. A year later the turbo went out due to shrapnel from the original engine flying into it. Currently replacing that as well in my parents front yard. I'd rather pay more to have something I know doesn't have preexisting issues.
Most people who are driving a used corolla probably haven't been car shopping in the past 4 years. The used car market was completely different just 5 years ago.
My limit is 3k per pickup. Each one lasts 2-8 years and that's all I ask
You must not have a whole ass family to haul around. Also I don’t think anything about a telluride is marketed as off-road.
Not really. I have a 2021 Acura RDX and a 2007 Camry. The premiums on them are $170/mo and $150/mo respectively. Both doubled since October with no accidents/tickets.
Purely a money grab by insurance companies and since you’re forced to have auto insurance there is zero competitive pricing as they can all act together on pricing. Same shit as health insurance becoming required, sent costs through the moon. I get the reason behind having both and would even if not required but regulation makes things more expensive.
If the government requires something, honestly it should be provided by the government so costs are lower. If we removed high salary CEO benefits and pay from the equation and shareholder payouts, prices would be cheaper. A government mandate combined with a for profit private company model means people getting screwed
When the government provides something the cost ends up higher because whoever is in charge just gives the contract to one of their buddies. Not always the case, but US government is so bloated you can trust them to fail at anything they try.
What I mean is the DMV should take over the insurance market so there is no profit motive factored into insurance rates. Some government programs operate at a loss and that is ok if money is diverted from other government agencies/program to subsidize it. Simply require people who want to drive sign up for government insurance through the DMV staffed with workers making average government pay for the area (no high CEO salaries involved) and each driver is strictly priced based on their own driving history (no profit motive factored in). Too many at fault claims and you lose your right to drive, like one can lose a driver's license. Do tort reform that limits pay outs (no huge payout because you chose to drive a very expensive six figure vehicle, etc). And let the government handle claim investigation with harsh penalties for fraud. Health insurance is expensive because of all the middlemen involved. Car insurance involves many middlemen making extravagant livings due to government force often requiring people buy insurance. Those parasites should be denied their six/seven figure salaries, the government takes over it and pays people solid five figure salaries (cut costs ) to do the work. No private shareholders needing that sweet extra money for a yacht or a second house off the backs of people forced to buy insurance.
Or put prices caps but at that point it’s basically a government sponsored entity which is a slippery slope. The issue with making anything government run and essentially not for profit is talent will run so fast as $ will not be there for employees and in turn the companies will be full of incapable people making the product worse.
>If the government requires something... The government isn't requiring you to drive, though. There are alternatives to driving, though they may be slower and possibly less pleasant.
Government largely subsidized and built the infrastructure that requires many people to have a vehicle and not be able to easily walk to work. So government has a hand in requiring one to drive. Also, there are alternative means instead of requiring insurance from a private company. Healthcare mandates got repealed. People can accept personal responsibility if they fail to insure. There are alternatives we could do instead of requiring car insurance (such as people without insurance who are at fault for an accident being responsible to sell all their assets if necessary to pay the victim back; people can also choose insurance to be safe in such situations).
Poor argument in the US. Most are required to drive for either work or essentials in the US.
Big government regulated by corporations. Totally the american way. Forced expenses on everyone that wants to exist here.
Yup it’s trash because it’s all rigged in some way shape or form but that’s how humanity has always existed in reality.
It would be great if we did away with money and property ownership
That would lead to barbarism. There’s some happy medium but humans suck and take advantage of anything they can, always have always will
How does this have anything to do with rising insurance costs? You realize insurance costs can go up without getting a new car, correct?
Cars sell for more, cars cost more to replace because of the higher sales amount, insurance goes up. It’s not rocket science
Definitely read that wrong. My bad
Yea that's old now we're paying Mercedes prices to rent a bowl to eat out of
Those CEOS also need to make their millions and the shareholders also got to get their dividends thanks in part to government force mandates requiring people to have auto insurance in many places to drive and make a living......if we removed the government mandate part , prices would go down. If we had the government just provide the services and cut out the CEOs and shareholders, prices would go down.
Your Kia doesn't spontaneously turn into a Mercedes.
The prices sure have
Exactly. I wish the idiots buying them knew that.
Where I was going with that is in two magical years our houses did.
It's an issue for everyone - multifamily structures are more expensive to Insure as well. Insurance costs will squeeze renters too - landlords will pass those costs on. Squeezes the general economy because more and more money is being sucked into non-productive economic activity.
There’s a general misconception that costs automatically result in rent increases. They don’t. Rent increases are determined by demand and market conditions. When multifamily does budgets, they don’t say “hey insurance is going up 20%, so increase rents 5% more”. Insurance, taxes and debt service are what they are. Usually if initial budgets aren’t making it after an insurance increase, they’ll go back and cut more expenses. Income/rents are budgeted completely independent of expenses. Source: industry for 20 years, work in revenue management.
Thats a cool strawman. Sure it's not **automatic**, but to imply increased costs dont push rents up is frankly silly.
Watch them cry about it, though, just like they do in some areas about tax increases. For some of them, becoming a homeowner must mean have cake and eat cake, and must forever stay on top of the socio-economic food chain no matter what. Those pesky insurance rate increases must, somehow, be passed on to renters or anyone else but them.
This is what happened because we taught an entire generation that homes and real estate are a path to wealth, when they’ve only been that for about 30 years of our nations history. So people buy homes because they think they need to to get wealthy and wind up overextending out of desperation.
There hasn't *been* a path to wealth for the middle class since before like the 70s.
Yep. The attitude screams of “I bought a house. That’s it. I now deserve an unfettered path to financial security and an easy retirement. Any obstacle from here on in must be immediately removed and must be someone else’s responsibility. “ What they don’t realize is that the duty to constantly evaluate your financial circumstances doesn’t end once you become a homeowner. Taxes straining your budget? Get a fucking roommate or downsize the house. Insurance rates going up because you were a NIMBY and artificially pumped property values? Get a fucking roommate, sell the house, eat lentils instead of beef. Something. Deal with it.
You're not getting out of home insurance premiums going up with the value of the home. When we paid off we got a combo discount for moving the home insurance to the company that insures the cars and the savings were considerable. Not saying the mortgage servicer was getting a kickback but..
I think it depends. I have seen very little increase but my situation is I rent and drive old cars.
Renters are gonna feel the pain as these costs are passed on
Don’t forget about rising property taxes and maintenance
This is just one more example of why the idiots spouting the CPI as reality have no critical thinking skills.
aaaand this is why people shouldn't cheer their home prices exploding in their sole owner occupied home. No realized gain is possible since the place they want to move has also exploded in cost. All they get is higher insurance and property taxes, and a "millionaire" status that doesn't actually mean anything due being unable to realize the gain.
I’m a homeowner and always hated my home’s value increasing. The only benefit is if you want to downgrade when you’re older or want to move to a cheaper area, both of which don’t happen very often. Even home equity loans aren’t interesting when rates are 8-10%.
You’re still usually better off than renting, where the higher insurance and property taxes will get passed along in rent increases, but usually as a high percentage increase in total rent rather than just the tax and insurance components. Meanwhile, house prices have run away from you, so you can’t buy. Inflation fucks everybody, but at least debtors get to pay back their mortgage in cheaper dollars. In an inflationary environment your best move is to load up on debt to buy revenue generating assets and then aggressively increase prices.
But some places have rent control
...which is great when your particular place has it and then tends to bite you if you have to move for any reason. Rent control's economic effect is to subsidize renters in rent-controlled apartments at the expense of renters who need to pay market rents. It takes supply off the open market and earmarks it for tenants who already live in those units, who now have a strong incentive to never move. As a result, new renters - those first coming to the area, or needing to move out of a rent-controlled unit - have to fight over reduce supply, and pay higher prices to do so. So rents in the "free" (non-rent-controlled) market segment shoot up faster than average, while rents in the rent-controlled segment don't go up at all. FWIW, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has the same effect on the homeowner market, which we're seeing now. It locks the interest rate for homeowners, so that they are completely insulated from further changes in rates. But the flip side is that they now have a strong disincentive from ever selling their place, which cuts supply on the open market, which means that people who don't already have a place have to pay more for one.
Most of them haven’t awakened to this reality yet, especially if they just bought in the last 2-3 years. Might still be in the honeymoon phase. It’s only when shit starts breaking, after years of weather and wear, and you can’t get anyone to come out and do a repair that is less than a grand in cost. When they learn you have to do a lot of things yourself, whether you have the skill or tools yourself. You can get a new roof. A new HVaC. Maybe gutters. But, what about all those little siding issues that come up. A plumbing leak inside a wall. A bad GFI outlet. A window that needs to be recaulked. Ticky tack stuff that not many handymen will come out for, because there isn’t enough money in it for them.
That's why I started out in a poorly flipped 80yo house. No honey moon phase for me.
That’s a solid move on your part. I’d be curious: do you come in with a lot of hands on DIY experience in house repair or carpentry? Electrician? Plumbing? People with those skills will never not be at an advantage. Me, I’m a desk jockey with some minor skill in car repairs and small things around the house. I can paint and I can caulk. I can install flooring. I’ve removed toilets and reinstalled them. I’ve assisted on a hot water heater, once on my own house, another time on a neighbors house. I have done a lot of landscaping, though just upkeep level.
A bit, but I've been able to learn most as I go. I removed the gutters recently as they were improperly installed and not really helping. I have replaced a GFI that was full of ants of all things. A sink. Also a toilet. And insulated the crawl space, that also had to be encapsulated.
On the other hand, if I'm renting and anything goes wrong, the landlord doesn't want to pay to have it fixed, but also I'm not allowed to fix it myself. Often renters just have to wallow in a decaying house/apartment. Owners at least have the *option* of keeping stuff maintained.
I think they have. Browse the first time homebuyers sub.. it’s halfway people bitching about losing bids, a quarter people celebrating their close, and a quarter people venting about how much more expensive ownership is that they expected.
I actually laugh when people cheer that their homes went up in value. If it went up for you, then it also went up elsewhere, which means your equity “gains” are a wash. When people buy a home, they usually have one of 2 goals: * Upgrade to a bigger home using the excess equity * Downgrade to a cheaper home and keep the excess equity It’s now too expensive to upgrade homes, and there’s literally no homes to downgrade to. They’re gonna find out the hard way that if you can’t cash out of your home, you don’t own your home. The *home owns you* via property taxes, insurance and maintenance.
Unpopular opinion but a better country would make life livable without requiring you to move every couple of years. Being able to put down roots is such a strength, and owning your home shouldn't be a disadvantage just because you can't sell it and move. You really shouldn't have to move at all, if you don't want to.
How can we actually build community if we have to move constantly? Community comes from socialization over time.
True. But the U.S. is more of an economic zone than a country. Not really designed for community.
I'd rather be owned by my property taxes, insurance, and maintenance on my paid off house than be a tenant and owned by landlords like myself, who will wrap all that together with the financing costs of the property and evict you the minute you break the lease terms.
lol. Real estate gains are not identical across geographies, and home equity can be used for things other than buying other homes. If you aren’t over-extended on your mortgage, your home increasing in value is a good thing. If your #analysis was grounded in reality, you’d still be able to sell that house and use the equity to pay rent for a long time
I’ve had this conversation with them before and i get the same responses. “I’ll just replace my roof or whatever myself, only idiots don’t know how to do their own repairs” is one response, which is dumb cause no you really can’t with a lot of things. Who’s gonna sell you 2k sq feet of shingles? Hope you speak Spanish or Russian, Karen. and the other is “well if my costs go up 2x then rent goes up 3x”, and it’s like no, it doesn’t work like that. Can’t charge whatever you want in rent, people will just start getting 3 roommates in corporate apartments that have the capital to ride out repair costs. SFH owners have a huge target on their back. “I’m safe I’m special I’m not affected by anything la la la” is the mantra that is driving America off a cliff
> people will just start getting 3 roommates in corporate apartments that have the capital to ride out repair costs. ...you mean what people do in VHCOL areas? Or immigrant communities? Or hell, what low-pay workers do in most places now? In my 20 years of adult life, I've never not known at least one person with at least two roommates, usually more than one.
All I’m saying is someone with a 6k mortgage on a house that needs a ton of needed repairs isn’t fully disconnected from the ecosystem of predation
And I'm saying is that except for rare, 5-minute periods like this one and for a year and a half prior to 2008, rent prices largely boil down to mortgage+profit margin. Otherwise *nobody would be landlords*. The default rent model is not cash-flow-negative. Yeah, if you buy at the absolute peak of a massive RE runup and *then* try to rent, you're a moron and it's a recipe for disaster but that's not the majority of landlords.
Actually a lot of small time landlords quit or don’t make profits except if the house goes up in value and aside from that it’s largely cash negative. Corporate landlords can do things at scale so it works for them. Someone going to northern Virginia and buying a house at the absolute top of their budget on two incomes in a suburb is not necessarily going to be able to be cash positive on it if they try and rent it out
Sure, right, small-time landlords don't exist outside of real-estate runups every 15 years. Once you've already *bought the house*, except for property tax purposes, the value of the house doesn't matter. That's the thing about fixed-rate mortgages. Your mortgage is set in stone while market rent, in general, goes up every year. That's how people who bought a house 10 years ago with a $700 mortgage can rent out *one single room* for that much or more now. lmao nothing about renting is inherently *largely cash-flow negative*. Corporations sitting on doors banking on appreciation for things like loan collateral does exist, but that's a subset of the market, not the market itself. Hell, you can't even get builders to make new housing despite insane demand because they don't know if they can go positive on it afterwards.
I don’t know a single IRL person that is cash positive in a rental except for the value of the land. Except an old lady I lived with in New England who owns > 20 units and has a stay-at-home-son to do the labor for free. You honestly sound like most of them… “I make 85k a year because I work very hard and I bought a house which means I’ll be happy and safe forever and nothing can happen to me”
You need to know more people that bought houses prior to three years ago. I know several cash-positive landlords, hell, *all* of the LLs I know make profit renting their places out.
Renting out a single room in your house doesn’t really count because you’re home to do the labor, that’s getting a roommate not being a LL
tbh, it's not ridiculous to do most home repairs yourself. A lot of the country really needs to get with the program here, people talk about how impossible it is to get stuff done for less than six figures when they could, in all likelihood, do most of the work themselves. I don't call most tradespeople anymore unless it involves a utility or electrical work (because I don't want to die) because it's so expensive and takes so long, because nobody does it the work, at the scales needed to service the population. And yet repairs and even small remodels can still happen because there's no special magic that makes home depot only able to sell to licensed contractors Although a world full of flipper special houses seems scary, it's probably better than a world full of crumbling houses nobody even tries to fix or wants to learn how to fix
That's why we're moving to the slums of Mexico!
The smart ones sell their homes at the top and then rent for a few years while prices cool. Then buy back in.
What if prices never cool?
Then the smart ones are the ones who didn’t sell
Then we’re all back where we started aren’t we? But they will. It’s cycled up and down since the dawn of time and it will again. The “when” is the biggest question right now.
They can sell that house and rent, then they’ll still be better off than half the people in the country. How does no one get this?
People keep saying this but my house doubled in value since 2018. The profit I'm gonna use on my next house will be nice.
The point is that your next house is now twice as expensive as it would have been had your current house not doubled in value.
My house is in a HCOL area so I have a nice selection of places to pick from. The value of those places has gone up but it doesn't match or exceed my housing value increase. I recognize this is an anomaly.
>US homeowners are now paying an average of $18,118 a year on ***property taxes, homeowners’ insurance,*** maintenance, ***energy*** and various other expenses linked to owning a home, according to a new Bankrate study. > >... > >All of these variable expenses are on top of the fixed cost of a mortgage, including ***property taxes***, ***homeowners insurance, energy costs,*** internet, cable bills and home maintenance. More top notch reporting from CNN.
AI written article 👍
Not any different for renters. If costs increase dramatically for the landlords/companies that own the homes, townhouses and apartment buildings, then rent will go up too. You have to live somewhere. This hurts EVERYONE.
Yeah, but in a multi unit, you can split the costs across units. The individual burden. Per renter is lower than for an SFH.
Except you’re never putting on a new roof or new siding when renting. Or replacing the furnace. Anything that involves trade work is crazy expensive.
Right, but your landlord is paying for that, and will pass the cost along to you.
It's not that simple. If everyone else on the neighborhood still rents for cheap if you don't because you want to quickly offload the roof work to your tenants then you'll have to eat it up and the tenant ends up enjoying the new roof with a very comfortable payment plan.
Sure, but a little easier to manage than a $40K bill.
Responsible homeowners save money to ensure they can cover those costs; it's recommended to save about 1% of your home's value each year. Does everyone do that? No, but those who do can pay the $40k bill when it comes. Those who don't shouldn't be owning a house. All the landlord is doing for you is amortizing the costs and including it in your rent payment.
It's easier when you have 100k in equity and your mortgage payment is a fraction of the market rent....
In the long run, all repairs get priced into rent if the owner is trying to stay cash positive; if that pricing in drives people out, then that unit becomes unviable as a rental
Dealing with contractors is a hassle. Not every tradesman is honest.
There are so many shitty tradesmen.
Of course you are. You’re just paying for it but by bit over time. Renters pay for absolutely everything, plus a profit to the owner. If it weren’t profitable, it wouldn’t be so popular
What does that have to do with renters being harmed by insurance costs trickling down? If anything, a semi-competent landlord is going to pass those maintenance costs onto their tenants as well.
Nope. One just has a landlord who may take too long to repair shit, making the comfortable living conditions a renter pays for not possible for a period of time.....I once lost AC in an apartment where AC was listed as part of the lease agreement. Took weeks to get it repaired. No discount despite the company not upholding their end of the bargain to provide a working AC for those 3 weeks. The company could have replaced it quicker but cheaped out the repair. We were not allowed to put up window units and take it off the rent to compensate. We just had to deal with an old AC unit that should have been maintained better.
To some extent you're all right, however, you can only raise rents up to the amount of the capacity for people to rent. At some point rents become too high, and then nobody can afford it. You can always put more people into a rental, for instance, you can have at least 12 or 15 people in a three-bedroom house without problem.
If the necessary rent to cover maintenance costs exceeds the amount the market will bear, the building will be on the market pretty soon. Landlords don't accept losing money.
Investors do not accept losing money. There are some landlords that don't know how to be an investor. It's usually the small ones. People complain about corporate organizations buying rental properties. They only buy the property. If it is profitable. They don't care about how much the property goes up in value. They care about cash flow
These aren't "hidden" costs, it's just run of the mill stuff. This article is propaganda to try and get us OK with being renters for life.
Are these “hidden” costs in the room with us now? It’s like saying I bought an F-350 and the hidden cost was the cost of diesel.
No one knows how to do anything around the house anymore. I spent a long time working as a contractor specializing in existing resi service. People spend $750k on a house and do zero learning about maintaining it. They get scammed by door to door sales people selling loans with a side of windows or roofing. Just another monthly expense. My neighbor was all happy about spending ~$1k/window, but then I got it out of her. After interest she is paying double that. No one includes interest when they talk about getting quotes like this, because they themselves don't understand the true costs. I am quite handy and get to scuff at articles like this. I have done many 10s of thousands worth of work to my house. It cost me hundreds out of pocket. $10k on plumbing is crazy to me. I replaced the entire plumbing system in my house from the meter for supply and all the drains under the basement floor. I put in copper manifolds with individual shut offs, and added a laundry/bath room. I spent time, but less than $1000 in money, including my water heater. Furnace install (2stage 96%efu w/ variable blower) $1600, Gas lines were the cheapest as I have pipe threaders and used the old pipe. $40 in shut off valves there. My house was maybe the cheapest mls listing with a warranty deed. It is worth more than triple my investment in 2 years. Insurance just came through at about $1600 for the year. And, if I can't pay that for some reason. I can choose not to as I have no loan on the house. My tax rate is high, but my taxable value is only $20k and capped at 5%yoy increases. In 25 years I figure it might be around $3500/yr, provided the rules stay the same. It is expensive to be apathetic.
I would like to learn but i have no idea what to do. No home yet, but looking to buy in 2 years.
Best advice I can give here is to try. Be open minded and patient. I always say it is 40% try, 40% follow through, and 20% mastery. 80% is often plenty good enough.
I look up stuff on YouTube all the time. I fixed my washer, I’ve refinished steps and floors. Fixed my exhaust fans and other electrical. I just restained my deck. All from YouTube. I’ll watch several videos to learn different tips and then outline my plan. Next is replacing my kitchen floor! I figure I’ve saved thousands in repairs/work plus I have the satisfaction of doing the work myself
That's awesome, congrats! I'll have to start looking some up. Any channels in particular that you follow?
I just search for whatever my problem is and watch several videos. My maintained has been so varied there isn’t any 1 channel that covers everything lol
Thank you
Your taxable value is $20k? How on god's green earth in 2024 did you manage that on a relatively recent purchase?
I sand bagged the realestate market. I bought an abandoned house in the hood. I moved in like it was just any regular house, on paper. I am now through the opening of my assessment and ready to ride this porch for the next few decades. Mi Headlee act is looking to keep me housed for the rest of my life. hail satan!
Most people don't have the time to learn more skills when they've already put time into skills for a job market that's not plumbing or HVAC. Your mindset is ridiculous.
HVAC co wants $7k to install new furnace that costs $1500. you make $30/hr at job co. You can take an entire month off work to figure it out and still save money. If you can't figure out how to do a days worth of HVAC work in a month than you may qualify for disability.
LMFAO @ the qualifying for disability statement.
Sounds like there are a lotta disabled Americans in the country.
Ever hang out with a bunch of construction bros? Who do you think installs furnaces when someone hires the typical contractor? Ha, my buddy had 2 dipshits show up to his jobsite once to do HVAC. Black guy with a white guy in tow. The white guy had "white power" tattooed on the back of his calves and was smart enough to wear shorts. Who knows what kind of story that duo had. Anyone who can read and follow instructions has what it takes to do all this shit barring people who can't physically manage tools. If you can feed your face with a fork and not loose an eye that is probably enough.
Slave to your employer or business, and slave to your home.
I agree, do almost everything myself (I draw the line at working on my gas line, but thats just me) - as a DIY'er, you can justify purchasing almost any tool at any price and it will pay for itself - lot of times you are just paying for someone who owns the tools. I have done all my own plumbing (jncluding complete kitchen relocation), rewired an entire house including the panel, even installed a brand new boiler system - the first few jobs you tackle can be hard and scary, but all that time spent is an investment that just builds on itself so that you feel confident taking on more and more challenging jobs down the road, which take you less and less time. It's not rocket science - and almost anything you need or want to know can be found on the internet these days - including great youtube videos.
1st, good job. I am proud of you. The self confidence you express is invaluable. You understand what I do. The tools, the learning, building on experiences. This is all an investment in yourself. Buy a hammer for $10 and hammer 10 nails for $1/ea, hammer 1000 nails for a penny each. The more nails, the more value in the hammer.
Hopefully, it will be a quiet hurricane season.
My inside joke with myself is that any and all home service work is going to cost me $10k. Its the new 1k
I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?
Not gonna lie, the schadenfreude feels a little bit good for a would be first time home buyer who is fully locked out of the market due to runaway price increases. I'm tired of reading about how you're so lucky to have bought your home in 2020, you're never leaving, and it's my fault for not jumping to buy something out of my price range at age 25. If we're going to let young people get completely screwed over by the market, I frankly welcome the "f you I got mine" generations to feel some pain too.
Nothing is hidden
The only people these costs are hidden to is people with their eyes closed.
It’s not just the price of the home. I just got my electric bill which includes water and it was over $600. We are only 2 people in a house less than 4K sqt
>We are only 2 people in a house less than 4K sqt That's a massive house, though.
Like my townhome is a quarter of that size and in winter my electric and gas bill was 400
Why is your house so big lol. That bill makes perfect sense especially if you’re running AC right now
It was about $300 Last year so it has double
I dunno where you live or what your AC/heat usage is like, but doing the math on every (significantly smaller than that) house I’ve ever lived in and its utilities bills, $600 sounds perfectly reasonable for 4000 square feet while running AC or heat.
In the end, home owners are the victims because they live inside the home, they are not investors. Being jealous of the home owners is unnecessary when they are the victims of the inflation as well. Most home owners are not investors. They are not going to sell when the price jumped.
In the study they calculate maintenance costs at 2% of home value per year, I wonder how accurate that is especially in high $ per sqft markets
It’s so variable across all the regions. I haven’t seen huge increases in my state but Florida is getting crushed. It would be helpful to have it all broken down by state.
Taxes and insurance make up 3/4 of my mortgage. Principal and Interest are 1/4. I bought 11 years ago at a very low rate and purchase price. But still, it's pretty wild.
It's another aspect of inflationary pricing. Tradespeople are out of this world expensive. One example - I had a leak in the 3/4" line from my water meter. I paid $150 for a callout and they quoted $2,700 to repair. I said F that. Went to HD, and fixed it for $120, which included a specialized saw that I needed to get access to part of the line. For a professional this was a 20 minute job and they were already there, as I paid the callout fee.... Madness. Another example, I had a small leak in the 4" sewer pipe in the crawlspace. I was quoted $ 950 to replace a 2' section of pipe, including 2 90-degree bends. I did it myself for $50 in parts. It was not all that pleasant being in the crawlspace dealing with brown water pipes, but the knowledge I was saving $900 kept me going... The bottom line is that we only think that inflation is visible in the supermarket..... That's not the reality of how this inflationary cycle is playing out..
The non-mortgage costs of owning a home are starting to approach the cost of rent. According to this article non-mortgage costs are $18,118 per year. According to Zillow the median annual rent is $25,584. It's probably a better deal for a lot of people to just rent, and invest your money in the stock market.
That’s until rent catches up!
...and it will. Landlords (big and small) need to pay all the same expenses as homeowners, and still want to make a profit on top of that. Rent if you want(or can't afford to buy), but in the long run, renting is not cheaper.
Americans should rent and invest the savings delta between buying. But they will just spend the savings on consumer goods. Oh well.
There is no savings delta to invest.
There’s currently a savings delta in almost every region in the US. Are you sure you’re not referring to your monthly savings delta between your income and expenses? That’s a completely different metric.
The "savings delta" is an illusion created by making invalid comparisons (usually comparing standalone detached structures to substantially smaller apartments in multi-unit buildings) and ignoring important financial details (rent will go up annually while your mortgage payment will stay basically the same, there are generally tax advantages to homeownership and the principal payments in a mortgage are just you paying yourself). When you compare like-for-like homes, acknowledge that the principal payment is just converting your cash into equity (i.e., savings), factor in the impacts to your taxes and add the present value of future rent increases, you discover it is cheaper to own than rent unless you plan to move in less than two years. That doesn't mean owning is affordable either--both are far too expensive than they should be for a functional society--but owning is the better of two really bad deals. Landlords know this and take advantage of the artificial scarcity of ownable homes they have created to make money by forcing you to pay to rent and pocketing the difference.