Jennifer Edwards is one of many, many Americans selling their homes and trading them in for a new, more flexible, experiential life as renters.
Today, at 2 PM, I will sell my 2-bedroom Condo in Park Slope Brooklyn. This is not a new experience. I bought and sold real estate in New York City throughout the mid 1990s and 2000s, in order to put myself through graduate school, pay for my son’s private school education, and monetarily supplement my artist / college professor earnings …
I’m primed to channel my creative skills elsewhere as it seems I am perhaps [again] ahead of the trend. Two recent studies indicate that we find happiness not by owning [things] but by doing [things] …
Apply this to the ideas of ownership vs. experience and you have either a recipe for disaster or the tools to take back control of your life where you can. Changing your boss may be hard. Choosing not to take on car payments, credit card debt and mortgages, or at least minimize them, is easier.
Today, I survey my home, a rented apartment in the East Village, and thank my landlord. As I remember 14 years of ownership experiences: properties sprouting leaks, broken sewage pipes, unruly coop boards, building-wide lawsuits, and assessments. All I have to do now is pay my rent and my landlord takes on all of the headaches, the mortgage, and the maintenance of my living space. By this evening, there will be money in the bank and I will be free. I feel better already.
August 13th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
What a sucker.
All the landlords I have known, and all my friends who rent, curse their parasite “landlords” (more properly the agents the owners hide behind) as they never, ever carry out works unless they threaten legal action under the Human Rights Act (i.e. the right to enjoy your home).
Agents deliberately and specifically tell owners that they will not be pestered with requests from tenants – in other words, they fob them off.
And then to top the immense mental stress this put tenants under, landlords can simply kick you out with two months’ notice if you’re lucky.
No landlord I have ever known has ever paid a deposit back in full to either myself or anyone I have known who has rented.
Renting is utterly ludicrous given the lack of security against the whim and profit-seeking of parasite landlords.
August 13th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Renting is money down the drain and all you are doing is paying the landlords mortgage. I’m a landlord and really there are no headaches involved since most of my research into obtaining a ‘qualified’ tenant is done upfront. It’s the greedy landlords that have trouble. I just break even every month but don’t care since the value of my home is going up and the mortgage is being paid. In the long run houses appreciate and you can never ever save enough to match the money you will make on a home. It only makes sense to rent if you are a transient individual. Good luck with whatever you want to do!
Peter.
August 15th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Looking back twenty years from now, rent receipts will provide you with no equity.
August 16th, 2010 at 11:02 am
If the housing crisis taught us anything, owning a home is not as ideal as we think it is. What Florida is pointing out, people have lifestyles that renting may actually be a better option. For example, people may have to move to other parts of the country. Or the money that goes into a mortgage could be used in starting a business. Also home values depend on the market they are in. If you’re in a bad market expect the mortgage to be more than what the house is worth.
August 23rd, 2010 at 3:20 am
The majority of people have been programmed to accept the system of landlords and moneylenders. most of us believe it is a business activity, the truth is landlords are on par with bedbugs, they are parasites, so why do they have so much power, the answer is the majority of politicians and lawyers are landlords and moneylenders, try to find one that does not collect rent, if one could rent out a dog kennel for $800 a week, it would be worth $800.000 as a investment property, the higher the rent the higher the cost of the investment property,
If we were to make it a crime to collect rent and interest — the houses the landlords and moneylenders legally own, but don’t pay for would not vanish. we all could afford to buy a home, it is the landlords and moneylenders who manipulate the market place,,,to ensure their money tree keeps on growing,