I have an announcement: I will never own property. By that I mean, I will never buy real estate. I simply have no interest in doing so. There are a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that if I owned this apartment instead of merely renting it I’d have to pay someone to repair the air-conditioner instead of being able to call maintenance, as I did, and tell them “it’s broke, come fix it.” Another reason is the fact that once you own something, you are responsible for either looking after it or getting rid of it. Especially nowadays getting rid of unwanted real estate isn’t easy. Even foreclosure is a long, drawn-out process involving tedious things like paperwork and talking to legal departments. I am thankful that I have nothing more to worry about disposing when I move than some crappy, beat-up furniture and old books, and I plan to keep it that way.
It used to be that people like me were looked upon as somehow deficient, as having failed at life. After all, one of the bastions of the American Dream™ was owning your own house. But now that the fever dream of “a house in every pot, even if that pot could barely afford to scrape up rent every month and worked part time at McDonald’s” has ended and everyone who participated in the great Mortgage Grab is nursing the resultant hangover, I wonder who’s the failure now?
Anyway, everything that I could say about this fun crisis was said fourteen years ago, in 1994, by Florence King, who wrote about the attitude towards renters in this country and why she prefers to rent. The essay can be found in the collection Stet! Damnit! which I highly recommend to Florence completists. Anyway, her theory is that Americans are encouraged to tie themselves to home ownership because that way they’ll be so preoccupied with the constant maintenance the family homestead needs that they won’t have any time to give the government any trouble. Or as she puts it: “Being a home owner transforms him from a thinking reed into a tinkering, puttering, dull, distracted, small-minded bore, and that’s just the kind of citizenry the government wants.” Governments want power, and one of the easiest ways of getting it is to get the people you want power from in debt to you.
I think this could also explain the fits of condo-mania that have always perplexed me. When you sit down and think about it, what sort of home-ownership is buying a few rooms in a building, which is what apartments are? How deep through the drywall to the next apartment does your ownership go? How many inches of the pipes are you supposed to be responsible for as opposed to your downstairs neighbor? Sure, it’s supposed to build up your credit or something, but I never could get past the fact that people bought apartments as if they were houses. But when I read Miss King’s essay and come to the part where she describes how carefree she feels when she can simply call maintenance and have them fix whatever is broken, so she could go back to her writing in peace, it came to me: apartment renters weren’t being reined in enough. Sure, they had to sign a lease, but then when that lease was up they were free to move on. Can’t have that — get them to buy their hole-in-a-building! Tell them it will build them “equity” and they’ll be Real Home Owners at last, grownups just like that guy with the 5 BR 3 BTH McMansion. And of course, this drives rent prices up as actual apartments become scarce, and the meme gets passed around that renting is just “throwing money away every month.” As if you could take it with you, maybe line your coffin with it when you collapse of an early-onset stroke brought about by the stresses of owning a home.
11 Responses to “Property”
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October 2nd, 2008 at 5:17 am
You’re not wrong. A some-time colleague of mine will not, as a matter of principle, rent. Trouble is, the industry we are in is rather specialized, so to keep in work one must be prepared to move around (we have crossed paths a number of times in different companies). So, every where he goes he buys and sells a house, straight away. Kah-Razy! Doubly so, because renting is very cost effective here (Australia) compared to the often astronomic house prices in the major cities.
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:08 am
I must say that at least as a home owner you do have more freedom to alter your living space to your liking. Over here you can’t even paint the walls (well, you can, but before you move you have to repaint them the same color that they were when you moved in), and you have to put up with the crappy cabinets and such. On the other hand, if you have better things to do than devote yourself to home renovation, apartments are just fine.
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:34 am
The other side of the coin – and perhaps this is a complaint particular to living in a college town – is that apartment and/or condo living gives you no opportunities to either say “hell, no” to what the rest of the residents want, or to have recourse against a tyrannical management (well, you could MOVE, but in my town, moving apartments would have meant moving from the one nice complex into drug-dealer central).
I was told by the manager of the complex where I used to live:
a. There were no “quiet hours;” my neighbors could play Grand Theft Auto at 2 am with the volume set on 11 for all she cared.
b. Even though the posted laundry room hours started at 9 on the weekends, if she felt like sleeping ’til noon, it would get opened at noon.
c. I owned too many books and they presented a fire hazard; she wanted me to rent a storage unit for them which her company just conveniently happened to rent out.
Personally, I’m much happier as a homeowner. There are fewer people from Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates I have to deal with.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:51 am
It’s a civilizational upkeep thing. I would note that neither you nor Ms. King (a national treasure) have children. That’s fine, but it’s not really a viable choice for everyone, not if keeping our civilization going is a goal. Home ownership is the same way, if the populace in general is not tied to local improvement, then it’s far more difficult to sustain a liberal democracy. Does that mean everyone should own a home? No, but I think we should aim for a majority.
I would also dispute Ms. King’s thesis, in that home owners are more likely to care about local government, as it is enormously more difficult / expensive for them to move away from the local stupidity (it’s the other side of the coin of ricki’s comment).
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 am
You can raise children just fine in an apartment. Of course, that means you have to teach them manners: such as no playing wall-basketball in your bedroom at 2am, walk quietly like a civilized human being instead of thudding around on the floors of your upstairs apartment, play speakers at lower volume than the average Pink Floyd concert, etc… I think the reason no one seems to teach their kids these types of manners is because they all have visions of giant homes dancing in their heads, where everyone gets their own huge room to be alone in. Anyway, it’s not the fault of the existence of rental property that people are raising their kids to be boors. And in any case, at least in this area there are noise laws (I once called the cops on some upstairs neighbors because they refused to turn down their loud music after midnight, which was against ordinances).
One other thing I’ve noted is that homes have gotten larger while yards have shrunk to a pocket of “xeriscaped” dirt between the driveway and the front door. If you watch shows like “House Hunter” on HGTV you can see how this current fad for huge homes is clashing with peoples’ desire for older homes that have “character.” The problem is, those cute, character-filled Arts and Crafts bungalows were all built to the scale of their time, which did not suppose that the home’s inhabitants should have to take half an hour to cross their own living room, or that furniture should be built on a scale that suggests apatosaurs, not humans, live within.
Anyway, I wouldn’t be happy owning a home. Heck, I’m going through all my clothes in preparation for getting out of here, which through five or so moves have been reduced five times, and I’m still cursing about all the stuff I own.
Anyway, I didn’t say “no one should own property,” or even that the majority should not — I said that people who should not own a home shouldn’t be pushed/coaxed into buying one, for “civilizational upkeep” or otherwise. I don’t think all the massive foreclosures we’ve had around here have done much for the local civilization.
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I am indeed fortunate in that the mathematics of ownership worked out favorably for me. But this is due mostly to where I live: in a place where $600 a month buys a better place than the same $600 a month can lease. Not a whole lot of such places, I am told.
October 3rd, 2008 at 10:38 am
Those are valid points. My homeowner friends are getting slammed by the costs of ownership. Renting stinks in that you pay so much per month and don’t get any return on it, but I have it easy, in perspective. Plus, with property taxes, it’s like paying rent twice.
Best of luck on the move! St. Louis is my hometown.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
Thanks! I’m truly champing at the bit to get out of here, but right now it just isn’t financially feasible (in other words, I’m broke). Hopefully I’ll be ready by spring. I’m already packing and getting rid of stuff, but I’ve been wanting to get rid of more stuff anyway.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
When I was single, I felt safer in an apartment. I just liked having other people close by without having actual roommates. But I was also lucky that I didn’t have loud, obnoxious neighbors. I lived in a small building with two nuns from a nearby college, two retired widows, and a handful of other single women. There was no Grand Theft Auto at 2 am.
But it is true that you’re kind of throwing your money away with rentals. So I’m glad we own now. But we didn’t overbuy. Our house in small and manageable.
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I used to say that if I ever did buy, it would be one of those little post-war concrete block homes with the carport and only one bathroom that are common all over Florida. What would a single woman need with a 5 BR 3 BTH house? Also homes like this have a real yard. People would come back at me with “but they were built before all those hurricane codes!” And I’d reply: “Yeah, and they’ve survived through decades of hurricanes.” But I’m not going to be staying in Florida, and I don’t like yardwork anyway.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
[…] the Ownership Society and all its presumed benefits. With regard to ownership of real estate, well, Andrea Harris isn’t buying: There are a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that if I owned this apartment […]