Apartments and moving

[rowyn]

For four months, two thirds of my apartment has not had a functioning thermostat, which annoys me greatly. I asked Lut to call the building owner (as opposed to the building manager, who has, after all, been blowing us off for four months) and complain to him. I suppose when that doesn't accomplish anything, I'll send letters to the health department and the Better Business Bureau.

But as inconvenient as the issue with the thermostat is, it's not what's really bugging me about the apartment situation. We use the room with a functioning thermostat most of the time, and for most of the summer, we've been able to get comfortable by opening windows, and having them switch the semi-permanent setting around. It's been off for the last couple of weeks, which has been fine. And I know how to turn it back on, if I do risk electrocution in doing so, and if Lut doesn't want me to because he thinks it might give the building manager an exuse to blame the troubles on us.

Anyway, what's bugging me today is that a couple of weeks ago, the office received a package for us and didn't tell us. Normally they leave a note on our mailbox. This time, Lut only found out because he happened to check the site he'd ordered it from, and they said it had arrived. The office had had it for more than 24 hours without notifying us, before Lut picked it up.

We rarely get packages. But it's been eating at me, this morning, that if the office hangs onto my packages, I have no way of finding out short of marching in there and asking them periodically. I don't know if their failure to notify us was malice or incompetence. I don't know if they're going to graduate to outright stealing packages; I don't know what would possess them to do so, but, quite frankly, I have zero faith in them. They've been lying to me for months about the thermostat issue. Why should I assume they wouldn't lie about other things?

The logical thing to do is move and escape these creeps. The thing is ... I don't want to move. I hate moving. I hate spending money and I hate everything else that attends moving. And if I'm going to go to all the trouble of moving, I want to move somewhere I can spend the rest of my life, because I don't want to ever have to move again. And I don't know where I want to spend the rest of my life.

Maybe I should buy a motorhome and live in it. Then if I wanted to move, I could just start the engine and drive there.

Sure would be a lot easier than packing and unpacking.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, motorhomes have their own hassles. For one thing, they exert a mysterious attraction on tornados in the midwest, I hear tell. ;)

Well, of course, you could always move down to Orlando! Sure, it'd be hotter in the summer, but it's generally a given that everyone MUST have a working A/C.

(It's fair to mention, though, that I had problems with the A/C in my apartment down here, but it wasn't for lack of attention from maintenance: they'd always get in the same day or the next day after I would report a problem, and it would work a while. The trouble was that it just kept breaking down. =P Hmm. Okay, so that's not the best sales pitch, eh?)

If I were to pick a spot to move to, with all the accompanying hassles, I think that my first choice would be back to Asheville, North Carolina. Boy, I had a great deal when I had an apartment there! It was $400 a month, and that included water. The owner would check by on occasion to make sure everything was working just fine - and it always was. The apartment wasn't especially big, but it was well laid-out, and the kitchen was wider than the one I have now. (I could actually do big cooking projects in it.) The back yard had a hiking trail that went into the woods and all the way around the mountain. The front yard had a great view into the valley. It was just a short hop from the main highway that would take me anywhere worth getting to in the area. (10 minute drive, during rush hour, to and from work in the downtown area.)

(Sob!) I miss that place. Only real drawback (aside from, well, that it was small compared to what I've got now) was that you'd be out of luck if you had a banged up old vehicle that didn't have enough "oomph" to get up the steep roads leading up the side of the mountain to get there.

Fortunately, I never had any problems with it, except when my truck blew up and caught on fire trying to get up the hill. And that only happened once. And it was a death trap hunk of junk anyway.

[rowyn]

I know. I wouldn't want to live in a motorhome in the midwest. But there's something really appealing about the notion of never having to pack up my stuff to move again. :D

And think -- I could go to get groceries in it, and just unload everything directly into the kitchen. No more carrying stuff upstairs for me!

I know, I know, I'm being silly. But a girl can dream, right?

Ideally, I'd like to retire to someplace cheap, near some small cluster of my friends, and write for living. But first, I ought to prove that I can write for a living, or at least for some small amount of income. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, I remember when I was a kid, I imagined that I'd never get a house. Instead, I'd have this oversized van that would have all these clever things that could fold out, including mounting brackets for a tent canopy to attach to the side, and I'd have the ultimate mobile home.

And then I got older and more boring. ;)

[rowyn]

Yeah. What the heck *are* we thinking, getting staid like this and giving up on all those cool childhood ideas, just when we're able to afford them? :D

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Afford? Suddenly, I recall just why it is I never do any of those crazy cool things....

Some Perspective

[telnar.livejournal.com]

I probably don't like moving much more than you do, but if ever a problem screamed out to be viewed from the perspective of enlightened laziness, this is it.

Where you live has a tremendous effect on how happy you are. It controls what places are within convenient range (by whatever traveling method you prefer) and forces a lot of the decisions of everyday life by greatly influencing what it's convenient for you to do from home.

It's certainly true that moving is a hassle and it's hard to imagine any short run problem that would be important enough to solve by moving. That's not the right perspective, though. The problems that moving solves are almost never short term.

Imagine, for example, that it would take 200 hours of effort for you to move (including the time required to earn any money you spend on the move). This is a massive amount of time and effort which exceeds even what my last move cost me, and I knocked down a load-bearing wall among other optional things -- by comparison, my move from Colorado took only about 60 hours. Let's say that as a result of this move, each of you would be happier by 15 minutes per day (a fairly modest estimate assuming that you like the new place enough to be considering a move). This 15 minutes might be time saved by being closer to some place you have to go anyway or the value that you place on increased comfort and new options that the move gives you. Using these assumptions which aren't very kind to the move, you will break even in about 13 months.

13 months is long enough that I can understand not wanting to move lightly, but it's hardly such an imposingly long time that you need to be happy in the new place forever to be making your life easier by putting in the effort up front. Now, if the problems you have with your current apartment aren't really bad enough to be worth solving, that's a whole different story. If they are that bad, though, just find a place where you're confident that you can be happy for two or three years. Forever can take care of itself in due course.

P.S. I once did a back of envelope calculation of cost of owning a motor home to travel around to short term projects and learned that it would be cheaper to fly first class and stay in 4 star hotels than to own and operate a motor home the size of a hotel room (say, 300 square feet). Needless to say, I abandoned the whole concept. Unless you like very small spaces, a motor home is just not going to cut it.

Re: Some Perspective

[rowyn]

I'm actually quite happy living in a small space, and the typical trailer/motorhome would do me fine. Lut, however, would not be happy at all, I expect.

As far as the apartment goes -- I dunno that my problems here are bad enough to be worth solving. Or, moreover, that moving will solve them. Anyone can be a crappy landlord, or sell the building to a crappy landlord (as was the case here.)

I could, however, conceivably get a place closer to my job, which -- using your "time saved daily" analysis -- might be justifiable. But Lut's not keen on living near where I work (I can't blame him; frankly, I don't want to live near where I work, either). Still, we could look around the area and see if there's something somewhat closer than my current place.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

What about actually buying a house, if you don't foresee moving anytime in the future? You still pay some big amount per month, but at least it's going toward your own equity instead of someone else's.

[rowyn]

To start with, that hinges on "not forseeing moving any time in the future", which is certainly not the case for me. While I'd like to never move again, I don't like the idea of never moving again enough to commit to living in KC for the rest of my life. Or even for the next five years.

Second, home-owning carries a lot of its own risks. If I buy a house, I have to pay real estate taxes, insurance, yard maintence, and repairs -- all of which are variable and could rise at any time. I'd also have to pay for utilities, which I don't in my current building.

Third, the difference between the rent that I pay in Emerald City, and the cost of interest on a home loan, is not necessarily going to be very different. I haven't made much of a study of the housing market in this area. However, new houses, at the low end, go for at least $120,000. At 6% interest, that's $600 a month (not counting the cost of buying equity in the house). Once I add the cost of utilities, real estate taxes, homeowner's insurance, repairs, etc., odd are I won't be saving anything over what I currently pay in rent. It's not really "your rent money could be going to home equity!" It's much closer to "your rent money could be going to servicing a debt!"

Of course, any money above the level of monthly interest that I pay down on the loan will go to home equity. But since that's money above my rent payments, it's money I could be investing elsewhere if I were renting -- in my 401k, for example.

Home equity is subject to market risk, the same as investments in the stock market. Housing is somewhat less risky than stock, but it's also got a smaller upside.

Of course, there are advantages to home ownership (even being responsible for my own repairs has an upside, as the current situation shows.) And a new $120,000 house would be nicer than my current apartment. I could also find a cheaper house -- but that would carry an increase in the likelihood of needing home repairs.

I might be able to make home ownership work and be cheaper than renting, but it's got a lot more variables, and it's hard for me to judge how much risk I'm taking on with it. And as obnoxious as it is to move out of an apartment, it is ten times worse if you've got to sell a house in order to move.

My natural inclination is to want to own a house, but I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense from an economic perspective, especially given that I'm not wedded to the idea of living here forever, or even for the next five years. As Telnar put it in his case, "It's like buying a $30,000 anchor." ;)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Agreed, if you're certain that you're not moving, a house makes sense, otherwise, well, you can certainly make efforts to sell the house so you can move, but that's a bit nervewracking in that you don't know if you'll succeed.

In my case, I am pretty sure I'm going to be staying in the San Francisco south bay area for the foreseeable future, so... House is fine by me.

Helps a lot that my mom's a real estate agent and that my parents helped with the loan cost, so it's much smaller than it'd otherwise be, by about 30% or so.

[rowyn]

Yup! Being able to save on the real estate agent's fee alone is substantial. :)

Even the devil needs a lawyer -- nm -- he probably is one

[telnar.livejournal.com]

You already know that I basically agree with you, but since I don't think that you're being particularly fair to the house option, I'm going to step in and play devil's advocate. There are at least 2 significant financial benefits of owning a house which you didn't mention:

1) You get a tax deduction. It's true that if you otherwise wouldn't have itemized, this isn't as big a deal as it sounds. Even adjusting for this, it is worth something. The standard (federal) deduction for a single person in 2003 is $4750. By comparison, the mortgage interest deduction for 6% interest on a $108,000 mortgage (assuming 10% down) is $6,480, or a gain over the standard deduction of $1,730 times your marginal (federal + state) tax rate right there even if you have no other deductions (and you probably have some even if only state taxes and charitable contributions).

2) Comparing rent with interest payments by looking at the first year's payments is deceptive because of the very different ways renting and buying work. Renting means that your payments go down or (mostly) up as the value of the property changes. The longer you stay, the more you'll probably be paying. Buying locks in your payments so that adjusted for inflation you'll be paying less each year. In exchange for the obvious risks (leaving early, property value declines, illiquidity or interest rate declines -- partially mitigated by refinancing), you also get the opportunity to hold a highly leveraged asset which figures to rise in value over the long run. On average, this will lead to significant capital gains over the long run which (if only because of the leverage) represent a rate of return on your downpayment which is competitive with what you could get in the stock market.

A house is an investment which comes with certain risks that get larger the less time you expect to live there (don't forget the leverage when you're deciding how risky housing is -- no one lets you buy stocks on 20% margin even though that's considered an ample down payment). A good rule of thumb is that you will make a profit on average if you stay for 5 years. That is not the same as saying that you need to be able to sign in blood that you're staying for 5 years for it to make sense to buy. If you have the necessary risk tolerance, then, for example, a 20% chance of staying 30+ years, a 20% chance of staying 5ish years, and a 60% chance of staying 3ish years would still yield a sizable expected profit even though you're a 3-2 favorite to be gone in 3 years (since your gains when you stay 30 years are more than triple the size of your losses when you stay 3 years).

Of course, you already know that I didn’t want to go anywhere near that anchor. In my case, it was easy, though, since it seems unlikely that I’ll end up staying here more than 5 years, and quite likely that I’ll be here less. Hmm... downside but no upside ... what shall I do? Your situation is more complicated, and it’s probably still wrong to buy, but it’s clearly more complicated. If you’re interested, I can toss around some numbers with you next time we talk and simulate some of the risks so that we can move from numbers pulled out of the air to assumptions pulled out of the air and their mathematically provable consequences :)