Is Making the House Payment Reminding You of that Cheapo Apartment?
Friday, March 20th, 2009
Does renting a cheapo apartment still beat buying a home? Writer Jack Hough thinks so. He claims that nowadays renting a cheapo apartment makes more financial sense than owning a home. He may be right, but it doesn’t take living in the apartment next door to OctoMom for most people to realize that saving a few dollars isn’t always worth it. After all, quality of life matters too. Here are five reasons why it sometimes makes more sense for a homeowner to modify his loan than resort to a cheap apartment.
1. Safety. One reason why an apartment manager might offer cheap or free rent may have to do with the way the place looks at night. Some places here in Los Angeles, for example look beautiful in the dayligt but then become hella-scary at night. Yes, one might find cheap rent that beats a house payment by 50%, but the question is, how many times will you have to enact your dental/medical/insurance plan? And how much will that cost?
2. Privacy. Most cheap apartments offer little privacy. Whether it is the scream of a newborn baby crying in the middle of the night, or the sound of passionate lovemaking, or just the tattooed stranger glaring at you while you are doing your laundry; privacy is something that one generally foregoes in cheap apartment living.
3. Pride. A friend bought a clothing item on TV called a Snuggie. But when her friend Susy borrowed it, she burned a hole in it yet refused to pay for a new one. Why? Susy said she could not afford to pay good money for a backwards bathrobe. Many cheap apartment dwellers (not all) have a similar Susy mentality. If my friend, for example, breaks the faucet. I will not pay to fix it. Why? Like Susy, the landlord should fix it. After all, this place is only a rental. It’s really no different than borrowing the Snuggie if you think about it. Which leads to Reason #4.
4. Freedom. The other night I visited a friend who lives in an apartment who received a loud knock on his door. It was the apartment manager who complained that a car had been parked in the wrong space earlier that day. Nevermind that this car belonged to my friend’s handicapped mother and there are no handicapped parking spaces; my friend lives in a complex where a strict set of rules are imposed by a Nazi-like apartment manager. He alone determines what the occupants and their guests can and cannot do. Most homeowners don’t have this same kind of power-hungry manager hovering over them which leads to Reason #5.
5. Security. Fail to pay the new higher rent on time or break the rules and regulations and a tenant will usually receive a 3-day notice to Pay Rent or Quit (Move Out). In the event of foreclosure, however, the maximum time to removing a non-paying homeowner is closer to eight months. Additionally, if a homeowner can arrange to come up with a large lump sum, (up until the seventh month) he can reinstate his loan and not be forced to leave. The lender will always accept the late payments whereas a Landlord can decline to accept the late payments which makes a home a more secure and stable place.
Unfortunately, sometimes renting a cheap apartment (or guest house) may be the only thing a family can do to survive these tough times. And yes, there are kindly landlords who do offer cheap rent who don’t meddle with tenants and even landlords not interested in bumping the rent anytime soon. But safe, quiet and inexpensive apartment buildings? As Joan Rivers would say, “Can we talk?” Those kinds of cheap apartments are not so easy to find any more. In my experience, any monetary gains from receiving cheap rent are usually quickly offset with an unhappy feeling of having to live in a noisy, semi-dangerous, over-crowded beehive filled with a group of inconsiderate idiots. But maybe that’s just my neighborhood. Why do many people bite the financial bullet and pay through their teeth for homeownership? Sometimes the dollars you save by being frugal is not worth putting up with all the crap of daily apartment living.
