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That "stimulus" check doesn't even pay for half of one month's rent for me!
Funny, I'm normally super social and go to tons of events here in LA. I run into the same forty or fifty people ALL the time at various events and most of our conversations are pretty superficial. But now that we are all trapped at home and I think all live alone, everyone is actually getting to know people BETTER on Facebook (where we CAN discuss politics lol.) And everyone is much deeper and smarter than I ever thought! I thought they were all just party people and they probably thought the same of me. I think we will have a new appreciation for each other when we get to be social again...
How am I greeting the end of the world?... With blue gloved rude jesters and curses whispered through an N95 mask. I'm just now recovering from a serious illnes that kept me in and out of the hospital the past five years. Finally looking foward to getting out and about, and enjoying the world again, and now this virus and the lock down. Life has told me twice already that I should be six feet under. Darn-it, I have half a life yet to live and I'm not going. The "End of the World" be damned.
"With South Africa in lockdown, the lions are taking it very easy"
....yeah rents in Southern California are obscene. The Bay Area is even worse. Here in Portland you'd be lucky to get a "shoe box" studio for 1,200$. and even a small room in shared situation can go for as much as 850$ a month (+ equal share of utilities). What is really sad is in many cities (here included) there is a critical shortage of affordable housing with wait lists for low income units measured in multiple years or closed indefinitely.
...burning out on social media and the news. When the weather is nice (like today) I get out and take a long slow leisurely walk with no particular destination in mind just to get away for a bit and clear the mind. .
Why some calling it lockdown while some calling it stay shelter at home etc. Though I will prefer stay at home etc. it sounds more civilized.
I call it my normal life.
I think you will find thats the case in many places. In the UK rental prices are way above mortgages. Rents are usually above 50% of people incomes, at the moment my rent is nearly 65-70% of my income. There are very few affordable rentable properties these days and as you say long long waiting lists; and the private rental sector can chaarge whatever they like and some conditions some people have to live in are diabolical but theres little that can be done about it.
Well now I will call it my temporary normal life.
I could never go back to renting or living in the city again. Specially not after owning a rural country home. renting is just the worst.. All the restrictions, the ridiculous cost of rent going up every year in spite of having a lease, plus those association fees if you are renting a condo. not to mention the frustrations of waiting for a landlord to show up to fix something gone wrong in your rental. Yes we have rented before. Been there, Done that & I think I rather pitch a tent in the deep dark woods somewhere then ever rent in a city again.
It took us a while scratching, penny pinching and sacrificing by not going on vacations or to the movies , buying new cars or unnecessary things for a long,long time we saved and saved.paid off our student loans first and then other debts, it was very hard. we almost gave up more than a few times because it seemed like something always came up that needed money . my husband and I both worked 2 jobs through college., raised 2 girls at the same time, grief i never thought we make it.
But it paid off , we were able to save enough to pay for 1/2 the down payment for our house which greatly reduced our interest rate .that allowed us to buy a very nice home on a large track of land for much less than people in the bigger cities pay for rent. I won't tell you how much my land and home is worth, But i can tell you my mortgage payment every month was less than $400 a month and that was for a 30 year loan. the best thing is we have a large track of land so lots of privacy & room to do things.. It been almost 20 years since we bought this place in 2001. & we kept working hard paying double on the house payments to reduce the interest rate payment. & now we have the place paid off 18 years early, & its ours free and cleared, no more mortgage payments, Was it all worth the sacrifice to live like a penny pinching old miser for 20 plus years. you betcha ass it was.
Because really for us during this whole pandemic it has never felt like we have been ever under a stay home lock down order or felt inconvenience for that matter., I guess we been to busy continuing to do things we regularly do. home repairs, planting gardens and flowers, painting & remodeling, going fishing and riding the 4 wheeler in the mountains. tending chickens & rendering images with Daz studio . I feel so lucky, life is has been great living in the country away from the crowds.
Today was bread baking day. Do you have any idea how great that makes a house smell.? mmmmmmm
Wow, gotta love L.A. LOL Here i thought my rent in Dallas at $1000 was outrageous.
Renting vs owning and the pluses and minuses of both are different depending on where you live because the overall cost of living varies greatly depending on where you live. For example, a nice up-to-date home in Connecticut with enough land to own a couple horses would run you $500,000 or more. And that's without a barn. That same home in New Hampshire would be less than half that. And you'd probably get a barn with it. Factor in things like homeowners insurance and property taxes, especially in high states like Connecticut, and renting really isn't so bad. (Normal property taxes here could easily run you $5,000 a year or more...and that's on the low end.)
This is also why my husband and I want to move to New Hampshire, lol.
As a sidenote, the average rent here varies greatly depending on what you are renting. We have a lot of multi-family duplex homes and those are ideal for renting as you aren't boxed in like sardines...they would run probably around $1,000 - $1,500 a month for ~1,000 sq. ft. An apartment complex would obviously be cheaper. The overall benefit of renting is that you don't have to pay for homeowner's insurance (renter's insurance is ridiculously cheap), and you don't have to pay property taxes.
Rent in Sunnyvale, CA is 3,000 per month for 500 square foot one bedroom apartment with no air conditioning. The messed up part is that I make too much for a stimulus check, even though I can't even afford a car and a crappy place out here. LOL stimulus check.
...pretty much the same here, except for having to shop on line more than I usually do (mostly just do online ordering from Newegg, here,and Rendo).
...yeah we have our "slumlords" here as well. Where I am living it's pretty nice as it has to conform to certain standards because it is subsidised, however, before I cleared the wait list and was still looking around, some of the places I reviewed were pretty awful (and most were in the outer burbs).
...here in Portland the average for that size fo a 1 BR flat is about 1,500$ - 1,700$ a month depending on where in the city you are and how new or how gentrified the building is. The wages for most jobs here are between 12.00$- and 13.50$ an hour.
My wife in Washington State is telling me that stores there are doing the same thing and refusing to give refunds to people that bought up large supplies in the hopes of making a huge profit.
@Chohole
Nicked that
Regarding renting vs owning. I've owned several homes over the decades. Well, not really owned, just kept throwing money at the banks to let me live there. Kind of like renting.
I've had a three bedroom ranch style in Melbourne, Florida in a small housing development with identical ticky tacky houses
, I've had a historic log cabin on a lake in Winter Park, Florida
(Winter Park, FL is "Hollywood" east. One neighbor drove a purple metal-flake Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, the other neighbor was a well known concert pianist) I've had a three story Victorian brick townhouse in the middle of Washington, DC in the middle of a gang territory
but just a few blocks from The Mall and the Museum of Art.
I've owned a condominium in Reston, VA (a northwest suburb of Washington, DC) with a 2nd story balcony that overlooked a wooded area with deer, fox, badgers, rabbits, etc.
I've also rented in several places over the decades. A beach bungalow directly on the Atlantic on the coast east of Melbourne, FL. Out my backdoor, with surfboard under my arm, over the dune to the wide sand beach.
Also, rented half of a duplex set back from the beach by one road in a housing development of duplexes. I've rented an apartment in a restored grand hotel in Washington, DC where notable people like JFK lived at one time.
And now I rent half of a big old 1920's style home in a tiny town in upstate extreme western, NY State.
My opinion? I would never own a home again. Too many headaches. Too much work. A house requires too many things to buy and store and maintain. A condo has the building and grounds maintenance done for you but you pay through the nose for it and in my building, you didn't get A/C or heat until the entire complex switched over for the season. Good luck with that in today's changing climate norms. And "yes", renting has it's problems too, but I've been lucky and had good if not excellent landlords & neighbors in all the places I've rented. Where I am now, the rent is $400/month and includes heat, electricity, water & garbage. Admittedly, I'm in a tiny town in a backwoods part of NY State, without a car, but even living only on Social Security payment I can balance my budget and even manage to feed a savings account.
Where I am now, if necessary, there is enough space on this lot for a garden and the soil is good. Also, there is practically no threat of flood, earthquake, tidalwave, sinkhole, meteor strike, locust swarm, dust storm, riots, robbery, murder, or other ills of regional or city or suburban life. Yeah, forest fire is technically possible but we get so much rain and snow all year long that the ground & trees don't dry out. And yes, we do get a small tornado once in a while but a couple of uprooted trees and crushed porches or cars is about the extent of the damage. And being in this area where the winters are tough, we're designed to handle blizzards. All in all, for me, on my limited income, a good situation even during this pandemic. I hardly know it's happening except for the media saturation and the limited choice of brands of bread or toilet paper.
If you feeling stressed, need to focus, or can't sleep, try some of the soundtracks at https://brain.fm , they're quite powerful. Here's a code for a free 1 month subscription: brain.fm/invite/WVrMKYw029 (I'm not making any money on this, but as a subscriber you are allowed to give away these codes). BTW, remember to use earphones, otherwise it doesn't work very well (if at all).
BTW, I picked up this quote there, maybe Corona is actually here to help solve our problems, LOL:
Hmm I disagree, I can't take a home equity loan against a rental if I need it a large sum of cash quick.. The money I pay the bank for the house I bought is just paying back what I borrowed, like taking a loan out for a car. If you pay the mortgage off you own the house not the bank . your always going to have to pay someone either rent or a house payment, Only one option give you a chance to get your money back for what you paid into it.
The problem is most people don't put enough money down on a house & or over buy what they can afford, which also the same can be true for rents, both can get you in trouble if you buy more than you can afford. But only one has a option of selling and getting some of your money back from your investment in hard times. Owning your own home also shows the credit agencies you have commitment, & as long as you maintain your regular house payments like you would rent. your credit reflects tha in your credit reportt. the only time rent is reflected in a credit report is when you failed to pay it.
With renting you are at the mercy of your lease, sometimes you get lucky and get a responsible landlord, most times people don't, landlords rent to make money pure and simple. If you don't pay your rent in hard times your out unless you can find some kind assistance to help you pay your rent in hard times. . if you own a home you have legal protection on your investments during hard times even if you have to sell it your getting back most of what you paid in unless you bought more than you can afford.
The the argument on taxes and insurance, both goes hand and hand either with rentals or owning a home, with rentals its included in your rent every month, you don't see it. but its in there. . Owning your home you have a choice, of when, where, how much and who to pay for those same services. saving you money. Owning a home that has built up equity can also give you collateral, so you can buy a second home . & If you do buy more than one home you can rent one out and make money on it as a rental.helping making those payments plus a little extra. .
Yes renting is convenient if you have to move a lot because of your career because you are not tied to one location, Renting can free you up from maintaining the place . But not always rents do. some rentals require the renter to maintain the lawn and basic care like trash and stuff. But only one options give you a freedom to when and how to deal with those issues. where as the other option is written onto a lease, Of course this does depend alot of location. because hgh tax states and high cost of living can make owning a home very difficult. which I am not allowed to go into details on in this forum. to why that is.
But the debate goes on,
Yeah, this is a *huge* factor. I'm lucky in that I work remotely for a large insurance company, so I can literally take my job anywhere in the US as long as I can still work the same hours as the core business (8:00 - 4:30PM EST) and have cable internet. My husband works for the same company too, so we can easily move to New Hampshire, provided we can find a place that has adequate internet. Without that, though...it would be difficult to just pick up and move...as most people don't have the benefit of having their jobs move too. Where we want to live in New Hampshire (near Mt. Washington), if you aren't the owner of a bed & breakfast, then chances are you're working retail or some other form of customer service. Other types of jobs are much more limited and difficult to find than they are in a more urban/congested area. So while it's nice to say "just don't live there...move someplace else"...that's an unreasonable and unattainable goal for the average person.
Good one. That is so funny :) I sent it to my daughter who's dog has a cone of shame on right now to keep from licking some stitches..lol
It's funny, I just got in from work and while I live in a nice area with a park nearby and bike lanes, I rarely see people spending much time outdoors, but today it's like there is a parade or something going on. Strollers, bikes, joggers, all kinds of people out and about. It's like all the automobiles in the world stopped working so eveyone took to the streets, LOL
...it's not just commuting for work, if you don't drive or cannot afford to, living in the city where transit is more accessible is a necessity. Here In Portland we are fortunate to have a good transit system in the inner environs, but when you get out to the burbs it breaks down with infrequent service, short service days, and even no weekend service. In towns and cities with poor transit, one needs be where services are within reasonable walking distance. Where I am I actually have a choice of four different markets within a reasonable walking distance even for one with creaky joints and bones like I have. I usually shop at least at two on a given shopping trip.
...yeah I agree the big downside of renting is that you dump thousands into it each year with nothing to show but a paper or electronic receipt. You rarely can make any modifications, and often have to deal with strict rules imposed by the landlord or rental agency. However, another negative aspect is if you are in an urban high or even low rise building all you have is the floor space of your unit, no porch, no yard, or other outdoor common area. So when "cabin fever" hits you have to find a local park. However there you usually can't simply sit back with a bottle of beer like you are able to in your own back yard or on the front porch as most cities have ordinances about that.
Most complexes that do offer a little more outdoor space tend to be those out in the burbs that are those slapped together two floor "cookie cutter" types often managed by less scrupulous landlords. Here in western Oregon where we have a damp climate, mould is a serious issue, particularly in wood constructions which most of those places are(they also tend to be fire traps).
Renting a home? You are actually better off buying one, even here, as the total monthly costs tend to be lower than renting, and you are building equity. The catch, even a small 1 or 2 Br bungalow in the inner neighbourhoods will set you back about 300,000$ while a "family home" can easily go for upwards of a half million or more.
The up coming thing before the coronavirus hit were air B&B & vacation home rentals by the week, which do pretty well in the right locations. with short term turn around, high volume rents, with a higher premium rent, & no lease agreements , and after the corona virus I can see families using them more then a hotel. we rent B&B'S sometimes when we go to the beach as a family its cheaper than trying to get rooms for 8 people.
...that's fine for a week or so, but not economically viable for a long term rental.