Hacker News Reader

Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

> most people don't want to live in apartments forever.

I believe this would not be the case if we built apartments better.

For my personal take I'd need a communal workshop / garage to store and work on my motorcycle, far better sound deadening, equivalent square footage of personal space, a nice playground for my kids, affordability to move to N+1 bedrooms when N+1th child arrives, and that fresh clean air feeling that the suburbs has which downtown SF's crap and urine infested streets do not... oh and as affordable as the suburbs (net of benefits of being central)

View on HN

Apartments could definitely be a lot better, but at least personally speaking, I don't think I would likely want to live in one again, even if it was one of the super luxury ones.

I have a full sized private garden that I can grow plants in, keep a large bunny enclosure, shed, and let my dog run around in unsupervised. I spend a lot of time in my garden.

I can just drill holes in my walls without asking anyone and never have to share a lift with neighbours. I can hand out keys to whoever I want without building management getting on my case, or indeed replace the keys with a non-key entry system. I don't need to spend 2 minutes waiting for a lift to get downstairs, or longer if someone's decided to block the lifts while they move in/out, or climb 15 floors because they broke the lifts.

Personally, moving from an apartment to a house has been the biggest QoL improvement in my life since I left home 15 years ago.

There is a significant portion of the population that believe that everyone wants to own a home, nobody wants to rent ever, and all landlords are direct relatives of Satan. I'll note from personal experience that, on places like Reddit, mentioning that some landlords are great and sometimes renting is a good option... has a fair likelihood of causing an outpouring of downvotes.

yeah that's a decent point, it's completely possible to amass the same amount of equity in a different asset class and use the proceeds from that asset to pay your rent. That's approximately the same as being mortgage free & having the taxes & maintenance covered...

You do get less freedoms as a renter though. Like I've never had the option to choose any kind of paint, tile, carpet, on demand water heater, reverse osmosis water line etc etc.

> You do get less freedoms as a renter though

But you get other freedoms, like being able to move without having to go through the pain and cost of selling you house. That being said, I do agree that "all things being equal", it's better to own than rent; but there are certainly cases where renting makes more sense.

Plus I don't think all landlords are evil. I've had a number of them that were fantastic people; more than the number of bad ones I've had.

> it's completely possible to amass the same amount of equity in a different asset class and use the proceeds from that asset to pay your rent.

It sounds like a Fat FIRE concept that is out of reach of most people. Or at least something the average person would only be able to access later in life.

> You do get less freedoms as a renter though.

But you also aren't responsible for all the things that can break. And natural disasters.

I have heard of many renters painting their apartments.

> It sounds like a Fat FIRE concept that is out of reach of most people. Or at least something the average person would only be able to access later in life.

It's not that far off the amount sunk into a equity+interest view of a mortgage ... eg a $500K house would be about $1M after interest. A $1M portfolio would provide about $2500-3300 a month in passive inflation proof income[1]. A quick rule of thumb is a place should rent annually for about 1/19th - 1/20th the purchase price which conveniently is about ~2200 a month...

So overall if someone could afford to buy, they likely could also afford to choose a portfolio and a reasonable rent.

[1]: we'll have to wait and see how true this remains through the kind of inflation we're seeing lately though...

> I have heard of many renters painting their apartments.

Yes, but they likely either were renting a place that had terrible paint (doing their land lord a favor) or had to return it to the original colors at the end of the lease, else face "repair" costs

Reply on news.ycombinator.com