Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And what have you done? I feel like most peoples biggest expense outside of kids is their house. How much have you spent on your house and what have you done to it? Did you do it all at once or over time? How much did you buy your house for and what is it worth now?

Until you pay it off, only necessary repairs. Do whatever you want afterwards.

Why "until you pay it off"? If you choose to stay in a "cheaper home" rather than moving, why not spend some to "make that home what you need/want" while still paying down the mortgage? Much better to keep a $800K home at 2.4% mortgage and renovate/fix things up than sell that and spend $1.3M+. Much much better to stay put

We bought in 2017 for $360k and have spent about $50k -- new boiler, waterproofing, new roof, and putting up some walls in the basement to add a room.

Anonymous wrote:And what have you done? I feel like most peoples biggest expense outside of kids is their house. How much have you spent on your house and what have you done to it? Did you do it all at once or over time? How much did you buy your house for and what is it worth now?

Until you pay it off, only necessary repairs. Do whatever you want afterwards.

Anonymous wrote:I'm a renter and all these comments make me incredibly scared to ever buy a house.

I posted that we have spent $300k in the past 10 years. It’s important to understand that is a weird quirk of the interest rate environment and escalating prices, not a requirement to maintain the house. We have made major changes to make our house work for us to keep our $2500/mo mortgage. Moving to a house that already had the features we added would easily have tripled our mortgage. Even with all that money spent we are still better off.

Anonymous wrote:You people are all lazy. Growing up my parents had us do all the home repairs or we did not eat.

My time is a lot more expensive than hiring out the work.

Still in our starter home, that we bought as a fixer-upper (625K sale + 250K gut reno). 15 year mortgage, now paid off. Property is conservatively worth 1M now, which is about 4% of our net worth, accumulated in the stock market in the past two decades.

Purchased for $250k in 2013
Put about $250k into it over the years
Zillow says worth about $550k

Woo hoo!

Anonymous wrote:I'm a renter and all these comments make me incredibly scared to ever buy a house.

Don't be scared. Just be realistic. When buying a house, you should assume you will spend 1-4% of the homes value yearly (or at least be saving for that--it might be lower one year and need a new roof the next year). So you spend $600K on a home, you should be saving $6-24K per year for maintenance, depending upon the age and shape of the house. I'd recommend you cannot afford the house unless you can actually save 3-4% yearly towards maintenance. Otherwise you will be shocked when things break. Then realize that you have to calculate property taxes as well and those never stay stable, they always go up. Also, home insurance is ridiculous now, thanks to all the natural disasters around the country. so a $600K house might cost you $2K+ to insure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You people are all lazy. Growing up my parents had us do all the home repairs or we did not eat.

You did framing, drywall, tile work, stone work, plumbing and electrical on major projects as a kid?

NP: I actually did. I have helped re-roof a home (Both over existing shingles and with removing the existing ones). My parents did everything except servicing the HVAC system (propane boiler system--way too complex). Otherwise, dad did all the plumbing and electrical. I've helped drywall and frame a room. Never did tile or stone work---we were poor, it was vinyl typically that I've helped to lay.

I have also helped drain and replace a septic system as well (lovely lovely lovely---NOT). So yeah, I happily pay the experts for anything and everything around the house. Happy to support the economy and not have to do all that stuff ever again.

I'm a renter and all these comments make me incredibly scared to ever buy a house.

Anonymous wrote:You people are all lazy. Growing up my parents had us do all the home repairs or we did not eat.

You replaced a roof and re-piped the house?

We bought for around $500k in 1998. We did a big renovation about 15 years ago that cost $500k. We also did a big hardscape/landscape project that was probably $50k years ago, would be closer to $100k now. Lots of smaller projects along the way, plus of course routine maintenance. It's worth around $1.6m now so not the greatest return but we did the renovation for us to enjoy, not just for resale. Probably will sell in the next couple of years.

Anonymous wrote:You people are all lazy. Growing up my parents had us do all the home repairs or we did not eat.

You did framing, drywall, tile work, stone work, plumbing and electrical on major projects as a kid?

Bought in 2019 for $850k. Spent about $8k since then on maintenance (chimney, hvac, porch repainting etc) and a further $15k installing solar.

Now worth about $1.3m

Anonymous wrote:You people are all lazy. Growing up my parents had us do all the home repairs or we did not eat.

Not lazy, just make enough to no longer need to do that. I call it keeping the economy going strong
Sure, I can google and YouTube it and figure out how to do plumbing and electrical repairs, but why