patrick.net

There are downsides to renting, such as being told to move at the end of your lease, or having your rent raised

and how about these additional issues? 1) You always pay rent timely...yet Landlord-Realtor does not pay the mortgage payments while TBTF banks hassle you weekly for YOU to pay the mortgage. Its legal...while the landlord keeps the rent money and eventually sells short KEEPING your deposit and threatening to report you as a dead beat to credit bureaus...on phoney issues. BTW this last deadbeat landlord-Realtard bought the place back via a relative "buyer" on three separate multi unit properties keeping the rent money and ripping of the bank for over 1.4 Million. He is the "good guy" because he is a "Real Slime" AND the Director of the local Realtard association? Sounds like the new National NAR Director from he O.C.?

2) Most properties Landlord- Realtard owns have building DEFECTS, but the city housing director, who works for him part time...looks the other way.

2) you want to rent.... this same Realtard controls 90% of the rentals via a large "Property Mismanagement company" which controls rentals for miles around.

Some of the savviest people in the world are renters. For example, the majority of people in New York City and Switzerland are renters.

I strongly suspect most of these would rather buy, but cannot afford to, given Manhattan real estate prices.

Most landlords are happy to let you redecorate the rental to your taste, as long as you are improving the property. The median ownership length for a house is only six years anyway, which is the same as the median rental tenancy length.

This is a surprising stat to me, and not my experience as a tenant or landlord (which is that tenants are much more transient on average than owners - indeed, this makes sense, since tenants tend to be younger, some are renting specifically because they know they will have to or want to move soon, just like a change of scenery every year or two, etc). Do you know where this comes from?

Well as a landlord I just had a tenant leave after 20 years. I "inherited" her when I bought the duplex in 2002. Frankly she could have bought the place and had the other side of the duplex pay for more than half of the mortgage and paid less as an owner than as a tenant. Whatever.

I'll simply agree that I let stable tenants who pay rent on time make adjustments to the place to suit themselves. That bit me once with having to repaint a horrible choice of interior colors (gold & black with purple trim). On the other hand most of my tenants stay for 4+ years, reducing the vacancy and turnover expenses. I'm a "lazy" landlord and prefer consistent, reliable rent checks versus aggressive management and rent increases until tenants move.

I do get frustrated with "loan officers" (idiots) who object because most of my tenants are "off-lease". No dubmas, they're still on the original lease but rolled over to month-to-month after their first year. "But they could leave anytime!" he says, and I show them 4 years of tenant history with on-time payments. In this age of strategic defaults and foreclosures due to job losses and medical bankruptcies it boggles me how some idiots can insist on a worthless "lease". I recommend tenants who actually PAY reliably regardless of whether they're locked into a lease for some remaining time. Actually had one loan officer INSIST I put all my tenants on a new lease.

The idiocy of the mortgage industry may never be overcome. So long as that's the case I can see why some of my tenants are content to remain renters with a landlord/management company that remain amenable to common sense and can directly accommodate decision-maker to decision-maker negotiations. Too bad we can't go back to the S&L days when banks KEPT their mortgage paper and you could talk to someone who had a brain who could negotiate in good faith on the bank's behalf. The commoditization of the financial industry is not a good thing.

My rental is only $425/month, includes heating and cooling. It's just a little one bedroom apt. but it also functions as my office. Not a bad little place at all. I like to travel and go visit with friends, so why sit home all day anyway? To me, housing is just a place to sleep and work online.

My rent cost is 5 grand per year. Meanwhile I have earned over $15,000 in investment income over the last 10 months.

That is why I love renting. Dirt cheap, fully flexible, and the opportunity cost of home ownership is too high for me! Property taxes in my area are ridiculous anyway and negate the benefits of avoiding rent.

I am sure there are benefits to ownership too but right now I am happy to be a renter. And I am definitely not "throwing money away".....

Skinny, what city or town are you living in?