Sarah just told me that people worry about house maintenance because it is about having something of high value to leave to your heirs. Holy shit. That explains so much!
Sarah just told me that people worry about house maintenance because it is about having something of high value to leave to your heirs. Holy shit. That explains so much!
I am turning this over in my head.
From the other side of the question (the “young, no heirs, not thinking about that yet” side), I want a house (and want to make it nice) in order to experience it with my family. That is, for present (currently future…) purposes, not for posterity. I can certainly see buying a “starter home” big enough for me and Lina and the cats and our first (potential) baby in the next 5-10 years, and possibly selling it to purchase a larger ones as the (potential) kids grow. Or we could find something slightly larger and pay more/longer for it, but keep that one. With a certain amount of time and experience invested in a house, I can see not wanting to leave it.
Then again, the thing that will make it possible for me to make a down payment would be the sale of my grandmother’s house and the portion of the proceeds that is my inheritance. So even though she left us the house, I won’t be using it directly. I’ll be using the value that it will fetch on the market. So that makes sense…
*returns to house hunger*
i worry about house maintenance
’cause i don’t want to live
in a shit hole.
screw the kids.
Sure. But you do it differently if you want the house to go to them than if you’re fine with it degenerating into a shithole ten minutes after you’re gone.
That’s only true if you think you have reasonably good knowledge of when you’re going to go.
But there’s a different level of maintenance required if you want to keep the house fundamentally sound, and if you want it to remain valuable. Think of “redneck engineering” – most of that sort of repair *work*, but they’re *ugly*, and on a house, would lower the property value.
I’ll be dead and (I hope) I won’t care anymore.
Besides, my kids are the only ones of their generation on both sides of the family.
I’m betting,
if they’re nice to all us in our dotages,
they’ll inherit a whole shit-load of, uh, shitholes.
There’s us.
Both sets of grandparents.
My brother.
At several childless cousins.
Seriously.
They’re looking at easy, a fortune in property.
I hope they’re smarter than I am….
Some people also view it as a retirement plan. Either they’re going to pay it off, keep it in shape and live in it till they die or they’re going to keep it in shape till it’s time to sell, then use the money for a new place (or traveling) in retirement.
i worry* about it mostly because if i don’t do it, then it becomes a bigger, more expensive problem.
*worrying generally does not lead to taking action, unfortunately