We have rented apts. and also bought a house back in 2004. Our biggest problem with living in an apartment was the upstairs neighbor/neighbors, of which we don't have any now. "Noisy, noisy, noisy" is all we can say. We politely talked to one tenant who (somewhat) politely told us, "you don't like it, move!" Where we live now, and have lived since January 2009, is called a "bungaloo" type apartment. Basically, it's a one-story and attached to the one end of the building. Nobody lives above us. We love it. There are only four of these "bungaloo's" in the complex and a Waiting List to get each one. We live straight across a small parking lot from the Rental Office. Funny, when we moved from an apartment to a house, while living in Colorado, we thought we'd lost the "noise" problem..........absolutely wrong! Next door neighbors had two dogs that loved to bark at night. Actually, the husband worked Security at night for the school district and his wife was suppose to put the dogs in the garage when nighttime fell. Obviously she didn't do that. We had a polite talk with him and he assured us that the dogs would be put in the garage at night. They were after that talk. Wife would love to buy another house, but that just isn't going to happen. We found out that to get a VA Home Loan (thru a bank), the bank requires a person to be on a job for at least 5 years, of which when my wife leaves her job to move, won't happen. And, on top of that, we don't want to use up all of our Savings for an "inspection before buying", down-payment and possible closing costs. It's nice to own a house, that is, one that is totally paid for.........no more mortgage payments. But, then again, that would mean that a person would've had to either live or rent-out that house for some 30 years. Some of my high school class mates did just that (bought/lived in) their house for that many years and now actually own it. There are good and bad points about both renting and having a house. Unfortunately, money is a major part of living in a "mortgage" or even "owned" home, unlike renting. BTW, we do, and it is required here, to have insurance on our apartment.
OMG $450 ??? per month ??? ...wow, wow,...you couldn't get a garden shed for that here.... Does your landlord rent out holiday rentals per chance?...I\d love to come out and pay for a little cottage like that for a vacation
Rental insurance even if mandatory is a lot cheaper than the kind of insurance you have to have on a home you are buying. Our home is not an apartment complex either. It is a unit of 4 Acadiana Cottages, two in the front and two in the back. Evidently the fire walls between them are very thick and soundproof for we seldom hear any noise from any of our neighbors unless they are outside doing something.
I agree with you @Cody Fousnaugh ...I once lived in an aprtment for a very shiort time in naval married quarters..OMG!! the noise I could hear everything...and I mean everything...I would never choose to live in an apartment again unless it was sound proofed.. I have friends who live in a second floor apartment in my road...and even though they have concrete floors, and thick carpeting, they always walk around with slippers on because the downstairs neighbours complain...and they only put their washing machine on once a week because of the complaining from the neighbour about the noise... and in the evening they have to wear headphones to listen to the tv, so as not to upset the neighbour.....OH...no !!I couldn't live like that. I feel absolutely sorry for those who have no choice!!
No, he doesn't Holly and I'm kind of glad of that since we might have some problems with "tourists" if he did that. You could always rent of those cottages we were going to get for Christmas though in the Holiday section of the Forum and I'm sure the Owners would offer you a good deal on them too.
I always wanted an Acadiana Cottage and our prayers were answers with this one for sure. I can still remember when I saw the ad in the paper and told the Landlord I would meet him there. When I saw the outside with the porch I didn't even have to see the inside...I knew it was going to be our home. And when I did see the inside I asked the Landlord if I could make him a check for a year's rent. He asked me if I wanted to show my husband first and I told him no that this was home and I was sure of that for both of us.
@Holly Saunders - the organisation I told you about are trying to get 'leaseholds' stopped Our company sold our leasehold without telling us ! I found out They make big bucks by doing this And, talking of sound and noise - we thought as this was a new build at the time, that we would have good sound proofing - far from it. So, if you go down that road, you need to check with other residents that it 'is good' !
Like I said to you @Patsy Faye I would never buy a leasehold property ..once bitten twice shy...we were glad to get rid of the one and only leasehold we bought years ago very quickly..that was a new build as well... but other than that your advice is a good one..
When we were raising our family, we too preferred to rent. That allowed us to move to wherever the prices fit whatever our income might be at the time. My hubby was the most reliable and standup person I ever met, but the man just couldn't count. If I told him he had $10 to eat for three days, (just an example), he would spend $9.99 on the first meal, and then wonder about the rest. I too had a problem with the idea of purchasing a home for all the reason that all of you mentioned. With my medical bills, the many unforeseen cost of raising 5 children, and the uncertainty of employment, I wasn't about to let us get wound up in the long term obligations entailed in a mortgage. So until I was running a company that I felt gave us some financial security, we stuck with rentals. When we decided it was time to own a home Michael had visions of grandeur. Poor fella, his face was priceless when I showed him an old log cabin on 2/3rds of an acre, built way back in the 1870's. On top of that it hadn't been lived in, except for the critters, for well over 20 years. But I talked the owner into financing the place at 4.25 APR, and the notes were only $350 a month. We paid our home off in 9 years by doubling and sometimes tripling the monthly payments. Now I set aside $500 a month to pay for the insurance and taxes, and with my grandson, Bobert, living with me my maintenance costs are few.
Our home is a hundred and seventeen years old, one of the first homes on the second street built in Millinocket, and we own it. No mortgage. It cost only $14,500 in 2000, but people have bought perfectly functional homes in Millinocket for under a thousand, even recently. I know one woman who paid $600 for a two-story home with a full basement. It needed some work, but nothing that would prevent someone from living in it. Ours was a 3-unit apartment building when we bought it, and we've never been sure of its history. I have an old postcard that shows only our house and the larger one across the street from us, plus another couple of houses that were under construction, on our part of the street. Since there were no building code requirements then, there's no record of the plans at the town office. Our building code officer wanted to do an inspection of our house in order to have record of it on file, but we refused to let him in. There was nothing in it for us, since he is a jerk. Without a record at the town office, I can do pretty much whatever I want on the inside without a permit. One story has it that our house was built as a boarding house for millworkers, as the one across the street clearly was, since his house has multiple stairways leading to parts of the house that are not accessible from the same floor. Another story is that our house was built for one of the mill supervisors, and was turned into an apartment building in the 1940s. That makes more sense to me because in making three apartments out of it, they had done weird things, like placing a toilet under the stairwell and turning what had clearly been a closet into a small bathroom. Plus, we had two bedrooms in the back that looked to have been a porch that had been separated and closed in, to create the two bedrooms. Plus, they had an odd piecemeal door halfway up the stairs. When I still had the energy and the money, we turned it back into a single-family home again, removing two of the three kitchens, as well as the toilet under the stairs. We removed the wall between the two back bedrooms and made a long library out of it. We removed two of the walls to a shower, to enlarge another room, and I put a floor on the attic, and had someone build a stairway to it. Actually, we didn't like the first stairway, so we later had someone else rebuild it. We removed other walls, and added walls. I still have to find the energy to finish the attic. We also own our camp, which has been paid for too. For most of my life, however, I have rented - and I hate renting.
For me it was just the opposite @Ina I. Wonder when I was raising my children I liked knowing we were buying a home so that our kids would not have to be uprooted and leave friends behind or change schools, etc. My whole childhood was spent moving from one place to another because my dad was in the Military and then he became a Salesman who traveled too. I never got to make and keep friends, was always changing schools, etc. and I knew that I absolutely did not want that for my own children. Once my children were married and had homes of their own though I found I did not want to be tied down to home ownership anymore.
That bowl of squash is actually a bowl of bananas Frank but it could have been yellow squash...since we often have that too. We do love our cozy Acadiana Cottage that is definitely "Home" to us.
Your cottage would be my dream size home! Perfect for me and Pickles but it's impossible here in a decent area to get that for $450! My housing issue is complicated. Bought the house in 2003 for $255,000, it's almost 2,000 sq ft. Next year my husband died...daughter took over paying the $2,000 mortgage and taxes and insurance. 2 years later I could have sold for $455,000 then the market crashed and crashed badly here. Now we've put the house in a trust, I don't pay anything except utilities and maintenance which eats up about $1,000 a month depends on the season. The house is in a trust so that if I end up in god knows what situation it can't be taken away...