What is happening to home ownership!
Luckily I bought my house 20 years ago before prices doubled to what they are now. It’s a duplex that was once owned by a neighborhood wide coop. I bought as a partner with the other tenant downstairs. As partners we’ve had our ups and downs, but we’re still partners and get along well enough. We’re both older, her now elderly and me not far behind, and neither one of us will probably not live long enough to pay off the mortgage. Oh well, can’t take it with you, eh! When I was young, all I heard about home ownership were the pitfalls, ”What if the furnace goes out! What if the roof needs to be replaced!” All discouraging words. I never made much money driving taxi but I’ve had both the boiler, not furnace which is much cheaper than a boiler, and the roof replaced and I’m still better off than renting. We had to refinance the house to do the roof because it’s a common expense, we each have our own separate heat source, but that was only because my partner doesn’t save her money so when something has to be done, she has no money to deal with it, however, she does have borrowing savvy. Interest rates fell very low at the time and we got more of a rebate than a loan. My share of that rebate went straight into savings! I call it my house fund, or rainy day fund.
Anyway, back in my parents time, a typical mortgage was about 10 years and most people would pay their house off before that 10 years was up because they could. What is that 10 years now? 30, 40, going on 50? I would still encourage home ownership because wherever you live your are still going to have to pay for the shelter over your head. Even if you have to have a partner on a house, it is so much better than renting. The coop never prevented tenants from painting their walls other colors besides the standard “renter’s white walls” or doing work on the house they wanted to make themselves more comfortable and happy. There were some people who criticized the coop as communism. Silly labels people make up when they don’t really understand something. If we could only just take what is good from any system of government and utilize it for our own good then I don’t find anything wrong with it, so label it as you like, communism, socialism, whatever. Ask yourself this where is capitalism taking us not so privileged commoners? Somehow this feels like we’re going back in time. I’m not anti capitalistic, but we’ve been so dumbed down over the generations, like frogs in the boiling water. Also back in my parents time, credit cards were not common as they are today. You had to be rich to have a credit card, but people were able to put the desired item on lay away. They didn’t get it until they paid for it in full, they also didn’t pay interest. Now even a used car is going out of reach. I drive Uber and Lyft these days and I hear a lot of my riders complain about not being able to find a used car or able to afford one. Back in my parents time, people didn’t take out loans to buy a used car.
Awhile ago, I had two riders in my car, a father and his son. Obviously they owned their own business. The father was advising his son on hiring employees. He told him this: “Brains are easy to come by, you want to hire the guy who is married, has a family to support, a mortgage and a car payment”. Upon hearing that, “Trap! Trap! Trap!” is what jumped into my mind. Owning Nothing is also a trap. That might be good for people who are in a position not to care, either the young who are always on the go, or the older ones who have the money to live on cruise ships or in assisted living homes. While people criticized me for being sucked into the coop and accused me of communism, they live in homes that are not their own though they are paying a mortgage, such as town home communities that won’t allow them to paint their home whatever color they like or even put an antennae on their roof and Home Owners Association fee on top of their mortgage! I recently heard reported that one HOA wouldn’t allow a homeowner to install solar panels on their roof! Members vote on what you can and can’t do and you can count on the fact that there will always be one to throw the monkey wrench into your plans. Maybe they don’t care or maybe they just refuse to believe they’re not really happy. I wouldn’t be. The coop also allowed tenants to have pets and didn’t charge more for rent though did ask a little bit for a damage deposit. Since the commercial real estate has tanked due to online shopping and now investors have moved into residential real estate, rents have more than doubled in a very short time. Unfortunately, private landlords also take advantage of this new bonanza of charging more rent for their properties, so every renter now suffers. Management companies manage the properties and care nothing for the tenants just as the investors care nothing about them, just do your job and pay your bills! Working long hours and the chipping away of benefits are another thing. We’ve been sucked into that too starting with good overtime pay so that we can afford to buy the latest fashion and trinket that comes across out television screens, or to pay towards a loan or credit card. As these landlords have shown us, we’re all greedy to a degree, some more than others but we’re still greedy. If we can get more, of course we go for it, it would be stupid not to, right?
This is now a bad time to purchase a home, high interest rates and we might be in for a long wait before the price of housing comes back to affordability, but I would still encourage anyone to take advantage of any opportunity to own your own! That rubbish about own nothing is just that, you’ll only be under the thumb and vulnerable to poverty and “wage slavery” all the more. I see huge apartments and town home complexes going up far into the country incorporating farm land into suburbs. The town homes all look pretty much alike, a sterilized standard as to what you plant in the front yard, (no vegetable gardens) etc. they all comply. The apartment complexes are humongous, well over a hundred apartments in one building! Tiny apartments that cost more than a mortgage payment and the renter walks away with nothing at the end. When you own a house, you walk away with generally more than what you paid for it, you’re not leaving with empty pockets unless you just give up and quit or let the bank foreclose on you. You screw up your credibility when you do that. You’re not just dumping it on bank or somebody who you think is rich, what do they care, they just sell it to the next guy and keep all your equity, they’re making money while at the same time you’ve betrayed a trust. What say you borrow as little as $5.00 from a billionaire and don’t bother to pay it back, why would that same billionaire trust you to borrow more? It’s not about the money, it’s about trust. That billionaire could care less about the $5.00, no dent in that wallet, but it’s going to affect you a whole lot more.
Road Trip Minnesota 