Guest Post – Why You Should Consider Buying a House

Today we have a guest post from Abandoned Cubicle.  It’s a great name, and a great blog.  He goes through all sorts of things, home ownership, bike commuting, general life annoyances.  His writing is funny and irreverent.  Go check him out… and in the meantime, enjoy: 

 

Why should you consider buying a house? If you’re a skeptic of the title, by the end of this post I’ll have you thoroughly convinced. You’ll see. The trials and tribulations of home ownership await. Take your front row seat to the sh*t-show of owning your own four walls, courtesy of this author’s wack adventures.

Owning a house can be a very rewarding experience. You can paint the walls whatever color and whenever you wish. You can install shag carpeting and hang thousands of pretty lights at Christmastime, without permission. Wallpaper your thing? How about mirrors on the ceiling, or mirrors covering the fireplace surround? Anything goes!

The intangibles are worth noting too. You never have to worry about a landlord kicking you and your family to the curb, or selling the house from under you. No worrying about rent increases either, just property tax extortion.

 

The Break-in

I was pretty excited when I bought our current house back in 2004. Here I was, a single guy just looking for a decent little place to call my own. The city neighborhood with its tall trees and sidewalks beckoned. No row houses, just a collection of early and mid 20th century single family homes. Still, it felt like Sesame Street to me.

Then Bert and Ernie decided to break into my house six months after I’d moved in. I blame Bert, but I know Ernie is the devil behind their little deeds. At any rate, I got a call at work from the police and at first I said, “This is a joke, right?” To which the officer responded dryly, “No sir. This is no joke.”

Dammit.

So home I went. And there, I discovered the door had been kicked in, and some of my schtuff had been swiped. The damage? One 50 pound personal laptop with all my digital files and photo archives (even the swimsuit collection). Those puppet bastards were cruel enough to make off with my mini-stereo that lit up blue when the CD spun.

 

 

That was everything of value I had that could be stolen in broad daylight. Remember, this was back in the day when televisions were monsters. Big, fat two-hundred pound boxes of cathode ray entertainment. So at least it wasn’t a total loss and I could watch TV that evening.

Though I might’ve played video games instead, since Bert opted not to swipe my X-Box 1st generation gaming console. God know why. That thing ROCKED! My only solace was that as a bachelor, I literally didn’t have much of value to steal. I’m not an idiot who leaves cash and fancy jewelry lying around. The fancy watch was on my wrist during the time of the break-in.

Home ownership? So far so good.

 

The Great Flood of 2007

Fast forward a couple of years to the summer of 2007. On the evening of National Night Out, chilling with the neighbors in our fine neighborhood (they had caught Bert soon after my break-in, but Ernie remains at-large), the skies opened up. It rained in sheets for a good couple of hours. We went home after the neighborhood wet tee-shirt contest to discover our finished basement had half flooded. Oy.

When you’ve got a sixty year old house, the foundation walls often form cracks. It’s normal. It’s not the end of the world, but you’ll have to deal with water intrusion from time to time. Or in our case, the occasional deluge.

That dandy storm wound up a string of events that I covered in gory detail in the post, The Hidden Costs of Owning a House. After failed attempts to keep future rain water away from the foundation, we ended up putting in drain tile. The drain tile freed-up radon to flow into our house, so we had to then add a radon mitigation system.

Shall I continue? Okay let’s.

The radon mitigation system created negative air so our fireplace smoked us out every time we tried to use it. Nevermind the fact that our hot water heater was releasing CO back into the basement thanks to the new backdraft we’d created. Jesus.

A new gas burning fireplace insert solved the fireplace issue. But the CO backflow from the water heater remained. Eventually, around 2013, we tamed that problem for good by installing double-walled B-vent exhaust ducting, and we had the house side-wall insulated. Voila! We’re done!

Nope. We’d simply managed to turn our house into a wine cellar. Cool, but damp, and loaded with stale air. Great for a tinyish 1500 square foot house with twin newborns. The windows would drip from the condensation. One option was to keep the windows cracked open all the time, which totally shot the energy savings’ premise of side wall insulation straight to hell. Or, we could invest in a Heat Recovery Ventilation system (HRV), to finally and fully vent that damn water heater right, and give us some breathable air.

 

 

All that shiz, from replacing carpeting, to putting in drain tile, to the new fireplace insert, radon system, sidewall insulation, and HRV? I shudder to think, but it cost us north of $12,000. We could’ve remodeled our pink bathroom for that much money.

Home ownership? Sign me up, Dog!

A Weekend of Comedy

This episode would make a fine entry into one of the HGTV series, like Tragic Tales of Home Ownership: But at Least it’s not YOUR Home, Season 1. These weekends of misery start out with the best of intentions and wind up sucking you into the void of despair. Let’s begin our journey…

Do you own an Ikea bathroom sink? If so, my condolences. Piece of crap! Somehow this German-engineered contraption wound-up on the market and sucker consumers like yours truly get to deal with the proprietary drain system. A drain system that works best when the only thing going down the drain is 100% water.

 

Look at that thing. It runs practically zero slope for a good 12 inches. Think “stuff” could collect over time in there, creating a never-ending cycle of clogs? Indeed. So my project was to replace this drain system from hell with a normal, straight-down drain. Something like this:

 

Long story short, it took about twelve trips to the local hardware store, and a bit of re-education on how compression PVC fittings work, until I got it right. This project ran the course of three days with intermittent periods of focus, and the rest of the time chasing kids. Oh, and fixing other plumbing problems.

That’s right. The gods showed no mercy. As soon as I had taken apart the Ikea sink drain, I discovered the KITCHEN sink drain was leaking. WTF! Why NOW?!? GOTTDAMMIT!!!

That’s right. What timing. I had to get down under the disposal to see what the heck was going on. At least in this instance, the fix was clear and straightforward: The garbage disposal flange that keeps it snug to the sink had come completely loose. The ring was basically just sitting there.

Simple fix. But I had to completely remove the garbage disposal unit to re-seat it, and tighten the nuts. Chalk one up for Cubert. But the Ikea drain project, put on temporary hold, had us down one bathroom sink.

Nearing the completion of the Ikea drain swap a few days and an education in overflow prevention later, the ordeal was over. A new drain that drained beautifully. The kids could waste all the toothpaste their hearts desired (when we weren’t there to supervise anyhow).

Funny thing though, when I put away my spare plumbing parts, I noticed a puddle under our furnace. GOTTDAMMIT!!!

So yeah. The condensate drain tube for the central air had gotten clogged. Apparently, you’re supposed to dump bleach down that line every year to keep it clear of ooey-gooey mold slop that can clog up the line, sending water BACK into your furnace. Shit man. Kill me now.

No biggie I thought. I’ll just blow out the impediment. Nope. Okay, I’ll replace the dang thing! Check. Got the new braided drain tube after errand run #13. But when I pulled on the newly installed line to straighten it out, I managed to snap off the PVC drain assembly it connects to. GOTTDAMMIT!!!

Deep breathes. Center yourself, Grasshoppa… Errand run #14 to fetch PVC cement and new PVC connections. Finally, I’m done. Or so I think… I head outside to inspect the central air compressor, and I notice the insulation tubing on the coil is practically falling off from deterioration. That costs you some major coin, letting all that cold air escape into your BACKYARD. What the heck. Another trip to Menard’s for some closed-cell foam tubing. Dammit.

 

Conclusion: Is Home Ownership Worth the Hassle?

You’d think after reading that list of trials that we’d had enough. Time to sell this quaint mid-40’s rambler and move on up to a 2018 rental condo in the sky. Nah. We’re good.

Assuming the money situation is decent (no massive debt and avoiding silly spending), here’s what I think separates content homeowners from the you-should-be renters:

1. The market factor. My blogging friends the Waffles did a really nice job explaining how your local housing market can leave you with few options to own. And bonus, there’s some really useful math behind this you can apply to your own locale and money situation.
2. The DIY factor. If you don’t enjoy learning about how a house functions as a system, and you don’t like to get your hands dirty, home ownership is NOT for you. Easy, right?

Now, not everyone is capable of all of the DIY tasks that may come up. But most of us able-bodied peeps can do this stuff. YouTube is a game changer, and as a landlord, I’ve been saved from repairman bills many times when an appliance broke down.

Owning a house is satisfying, despite the trials and tribulations. We love it. Most times.

Break-ins suck. And those couple of cascading maintenance problems described above were four-letter word heavy. Dammit.

We can have pets if we want. We can remodel if we want. And if we’re so daring again in the future, we can rent out our place on Airbnb. A home is an investment. It’s an asset. And it’s definitely a core part of your net worth.

Think about the one material possession people get the most emotional about in their lifetime. After tragic tornadoes, fires, or hurricanes wipe out a dwelling, we witness the tears. Don’t ever doubt the value of your home. There’s a lot more to it than what the MLS list prices reveal.

Now what’s that hissing sound coming from the AC??