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me_irl
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this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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me_irl
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I will play devil’s advocate and note that when you own a home you are responsible for all the costs of the house, not just the mortgage. I’ll see myself out.
And I'll just note that any landlord is going to charge enough in rent to cover all the costs of the house, not just the mortgage, as well as profit for themselves. Otherwise they're not going to be a landlord for long.
Good point, but I think we all know that's not the reason.
Devil's advocate...it's not the $950 monthly mortgage, it may also be the $15,000 down payment?
Ain't that the truth. In the past 2 months my garage door spring, water heater, and dryer unit all decided to take a shit. Drained my savings pretty quick.
Same. It's a good thing I pay hundreds less per month on a mortgage instead of the going rent rate, which enables me to have savings in the first place. Not being forced to move every year and incur the equivalent costs of an appliance or two also helps.
I'll add to this a bit. I know so many people who want to buy a fixer upper to save money. We went that route, and while my mortgage is sort of low, the repair costs are insane. I did all the work myself, and we spent over $100k in 5 years. Houses are expensive to own if you care about them.
Fixer uppers are better the less you give a shit. For example mine i will be sealing the basement and redoing the bathroom. Aside from that i don't give a fuck about the dated walls and floors. I don't care about the kitchen cabinets or the stains on the counter top.
Give less shit, and give more time. Fix the absolutely major things now, and do something smaller every year. Unless you're planning to flip the thing, you have time.
Mine was the look under the siding and find shitloads of water damage. Don't tell the county how many studs I replaced.
Add that to the horrible repairs done prior and I've been working constantly to get it to "not giving a shit" levels of OK. Sucks a bit, but I love our home now. Landscaping isn't done yet though.
There's the $3000 roof, $5000 for the leaks in the basement. If you don't fix the roof or the basement, the house is worth less to them if you default.
The bank really does not give a fuck, it's just a risk to them.
Also the loan they're making you on $950 is tiny. They want a hell of alot more money.
Ain't that the truth. When you "own" a home, you're only one $15k disaster away from being homeless.
Slightly preferable to being rendered out of a home due to your landlord making a $15k investment disaster.
In the years I rented I had two (technically 3) homes get sold by a landlord needing the cash.
I’m glad I live somewhere with enough protections for renters that I would not lose my home if the landlord sold it to a new owner. It’s crazy to me that landlords in other places can just kick people out when they feel like it
Based on your name, it's one of the German-speaking countries. While yes, the law is more in favor of tenants than landlords, here in Austria our landlord's way of kicking us out (because he wants to sell the place) is by not extending our befristet Mietvertrag. So now we have to buy our own because paying mortgage is cheaper than renting ¯\(ツ)/¯
In my case at the time it was just an effect of being poor. At least one scenario I had a legal case, but I couldn't afford the costs to bring it forth and it would cost more in legal fees than the case was worth. I simply didn't have the time or resources, especially since I had to focus on moving and getting security deposits together so as to not be homeless.
The protections are there, they just are not for certain economic classes since there's an exploitable time window to operate within.
Yeah, I think here (Los Angeles) the only reason outside of breaking the lease you can be evicted is if the landlord wants to personally live in the home or it’s getting demolished.
Yeah, my bf & I were made homeless when our previous landlord decided to sell our home, we believe because it had plumbing problems that he didn't want to pay to fix. We thought about making an offer, but he was asking over twice what he paid for it, and there was quite a bit of damage to the parts of the property that we weren't living in: water, fire, termite. It cost us thousands to move out, even with nowhere to move to.
If you own a home then of course you should keep at least this amount in liquid cash. If you don't, u are dumb. And yes, if you can afford a home, you can afford to have a liquid cash reserve of this magnitude.