Battle of the Perks

Lately, I have been reminded daily of the fact that we are in a rental house. I never really thought about it when we lived in Lubbock, but I loved that house, and the fact that we had no homeowner responsibilities was icing on the cake.

There is a blatantly obvious gap between the Lubbock and DFW markets when it comes to the cost and quality of housing. When we first started house hunting out here we thought we were being open minded by setting our price ceiling to be roughly 8% higher than our Lubbock rent. But we soon learned that if we wanted to move into a house of equal quality that we'd have to a LOT more open minded. Sure there were homes in our ideal price range but there were deal breakers at each one and I soon learned how spoiled we had been in our wonderful Lubbock home.

Isn't it adorable?? (I know I have a better picture but CAN NOT find it, sorry)

One of my biggest pet peeves with our current house is how obvious it is that no one has ever fixed problems as they occurred but rather lazily just patched it up to worry about another day, or if it’s always been occupied by renters like us, then until they move out and it’s not their problem anymore. 

 Apparently a 2x4 is an acceptable quick fix threshold. 

 Safety at it's finest

Sure, THIS is where someone put forth the effort to properly cover something, and then decided tah-not-tah

Tyler and I arent’s on top of every problem, but we respect things being done right the first time around. Sure, I rewash a load of laundry occasionally because I forgot about it and left it in the washer overnight, but I’m breaking that bad habit! From broken gate latches to mismatched locks, doorknobs & fixtures to sliding closet doors with handles on the same side (think about it…doesn’t work very well) our house is one giant modge podge of leftovers and dishonest laziness, which is exactly why I’ve caught the Home Owner Bug.

 

One big reason we continued to look at rental houses instead of houses to buy when we moved to the metroplex, is because Tyler’s company keeps choosing 1 yearlong projects to assign him to. Now that we’re in Dallas, where his company has a much larger market and many jobs going on all at once, we feel more confident that we might get to stick around for a while, but are still waiting for some confirmation before getting making that leap. The bright side of all this, is that in order to really see the pros and cons of a situation, it’s best to experience each side. So here’s a list what I’ve learned these past two years.

Renters vs. Owners

Repairs

Winner…Renters! Example - After a decent rain (for Lubbock, that is) at our last house, I noticed there was a leak coming from a rather large water spot in our office ceiling. I called Tyler first, freaking out because like any reasonable person, I thought the ceiling was mere moments away from collapsing. He, casually, told me that was NOT going to happen but offered to come home from work to assess the damage anyways. I then called our landlords to alert them (in a much calmer manner) of the issue via voicemail. We watched it closely until, later that evening, it finally stopped dripping, but still had yet to hear back from the landlords. I tried contacting them again the next morning and finally just walked over (they conveniently were our next door neighbors) and knocked on their door. We couldn’t believe how little they seemed to care about a problem that we deemed much more important than they did. Seeing as a leak in the roof is nothing we were responsible for, all we had to worry about was moving our furniture out from underneath the water drip. Anything that happened further was either covered by our insurance or the landlord’s.

Losers…Owners. That anecdote isn’t the best example since the landlords didn’t DO any repairs besides paint over the water stain where the sheetrock was soaked (I told you people are lazy!) but if it’d been our house, we would have had it fixed right and it would’ve cost a pretty penny to do so!

Payments

           Winner…Owners, for two reasons:

1.       Their payments are actually going towards something, building up over time so that eventually you can cut ties with the bank and have full ownership, whereas rent payments are never to be seen again

2.       I hear that mortgage payments are lower than most rent payments (when talking about closely equal homes, that is). Now I don’t know this for sure because I’ve never had a mortgage and it’s not exactly nice to go around prying into people’s budgets. So forgive me if I’m wrong, but I’ve heard it more than once:

Paying a Mortgage > Paying Rent because Mortgage payments < Rent payments

           Losers...Renters, see above.

Landlords

Winner...Owners. Duh, they don't have any.

Losers...Renters, because no matter how crappy the landlords are, you can't tell them you think they should find another career path, at least not until after you've moved out and gotten your security deposit back. Unless of course you got ripped off, in which case burn that bridge! Don't worry, I'm not at all bitter ;) 

Freedom

Winner…Owners. It’s yours. Do whatever you want (within your HOA regulations, of course).

Losers…Renters. Don’t paint, don’t remodel, don’t upgrade (unless you can take it with you when your lease is up) and don’t even think about leaving those nail holes unfilled.

It was much worse than that July 29 picture when we first moved in, and although we wanted to have the grass more than we were looking for a reimbursement, we expected to at least be able to use it as a leverage point for making sure we got our deposit back. Wrong.

According to this little list, Owners win 3-1, which is going to make the 8 months we have left on this lease last FOR.EV.ER. I know we're blessed to have what we do, but in the end, we'll find a house that we will fall in love with so that it's post is a happier one.