Houses! Apartments! Boxes! Where do you live and why?

[theimage13]

I thought this could be an interesting discussion, given that a lot of people I know are now in the "maybe I/we should buy a house" phase. What's your living situation? Renting and want to buy? Renting and happy to keep doing so? Owning and loving or, or wishing you'd never bought that damn property?

I'd eventually like to own a place - not a townhouse, condo, or anything that shares a wall with another tenant. I don't want to worry if I'm being too loud, I want to be able to repaint or refloor a room as I see fit, and I actually enjoy things like yard work and gardening. Where I'm at career-wise now, though, it doesn't make much sense for me to actually own a place, so I'm not really rushing into it.

[richardp]

Renting a house here in KC right off the plaza next to a local College Campus. It's a block away from the campus so we get campus security patrolling our neighborhood 24/7, and our rent is only 875 a month for three bedrooms. Cheap as fuck and it's quite a nice house. I fucking love being able to watch blurays and listen to records as loud as I want. And I definitely don't have to listen to an abusive guy beat his girlfriend and his dog all the time, a crackhead bringing home trashy dudes every night, and a 40 year guy obsessed with Pop-Punk who sat around and played Simple Plan and New Found Glory on an acoustic guitar all day and all night, like I had to at my last place. Not sure I'd ever go back to being in an apartment.

[Big Fat Matt]

I live with my family (mother, younger sister and maternal grandparents), and the reasons are numerous.

1: Rent is cheap, as in, all i have to do is play the electric bill and throw 50 bucks at groceries a week. I would feel bad if I didn't pay ANYTHING.
2: My grandparents are 84 years old, and my grandfathers dementia and general health is rapidly declining. My mother, grandmother and I essentially "take turns" taking care of him when he gets in "one of those moods."
3: I'm the man of the house. I fix stuff, i mow the lawn, take out the garbage, lift heavy stuff, reach high shelves, etc.

[ManBurning]

I Rent a basement suite with my girlfriend now, and we're looking at buying. We're mainly sick of the obnoxious neighbors upstairs (they're not the landlords, they rent the top floor of the house as well, landlord lives off site). The upstairs people are just getting increasingly on our nerves as time goes on. They do laundry 24/7, and when they're not doing it, they leave their closes rotting in the washer for about a week. Never quite met a family like them before... They are a family of 4, and the kids are brats. One of them is on his last year of high school, so he's in that rebelling phase where he blasts shitty loud rap when his parents go out and skips school to smoke dope with his friends outside our door.

I could go on... but you get it.

So yeah, we really want to get a place of our own, but for those that know, Vancouver is not exactly cheap. It's actually one of the most, if not the most expensive market in North America. (Canada for sure). Stand alone houses are anywhere between $700,000-A million dollars. And that's for something tiny! So for that reason we have basically kissed our dreams goodbye of being a house owner. We're thinking of getting a condo. I know with condos you are still living close quarters with other people, but you can find places that have thicker walls than what we have now. The walls are just so thin. Have I mentioned the pile of garbage the people hoard in our backyard living space? I said I wasn't gonna go on about anymore, but god... it's such an embarrassment when we have people over and there is piles of junk right by our back door. Their new schtick is to just mow 1 strip of grass right down the middle of the lawn and leave the rest long... WTF? it's like a reverse mohawk for the lawn. I don't understand...

Speaking of yard work, not a fan. Another incentive of owning a condo. I've always hated cutting the grass. Been a pet peeve of mine since living with my Grandmother when I was a teenager. I think it's because she wanted me to mow the lawn EVERY 3 days. And the grass hadn't even grown much. I tried explaining it to her, the grass doesn't need to be cut every 3 days. Once a week, sure... 3x a week? NO... I never won that battle. She always made me cut it 2-3 times a week. So I think that's where my hatred for cutting the grass stems from.

Also, we'd like to get cats. And where we live now there are no pets allowed, so another reason we want to get our own place. Also, with Canada Post's new rules of no more home delivery, we figure a condo is the best option as the post is still required to deliver to a multi-dwelling unit like an apartment or condo. Only stand alone houses are getting fucked over with no more home delivery. Hell, we barely get out mail as it is now. Upstairs people steal it all the time.

Our game plan was to stay at this house for 1 more year and save as much money as we can. By this time next year, we hope to have enough of a down payment to be able to get our first condo. Our rent is kinda on the cheap side here, not super cheap, but cheap for Vancouver. So saving won't be so hard. The hard part will be cutting out spending on luxury items, like video games, travelling, concerts, events, fancy dinners. Gotta try and scale that stuff back.

[icklekitty]

I own a flat three blocks from the river in central London. I bought it six years ago thanks to my granny, and it has a pretty awesome view of London's sights from the front balcony.

I've been on interest only for a while though and my mortgage lender is taking its sweet time to cross me back over to repayment. My repayments will be less than the interest-only when I initially got my place, which is bananas.

My flat is ex-social housing but it's half the price of the fancy new builds up the road (closer to the river), and most of those face railway tracks.

I'm opposite two train stations and 30 mins away from a train to France/£10-15 away from the city in a taxi at 3am. It's pretty good. They're redeveloping the area nearby with shops, gyms, and a new tube station, so I'm planning on staying here because it's going to be ££££££ in five years' time.

**smug**

[Fixer808]

Pretty sweet. I live in a one-bedroom next to very loud Vietnamese family and below Angry East Indian Dad. First week or so of living here I had to call the cops on him for getting in a fistfight with his teenage son.

But it's relatively cheap and I despise moving.

[onthewall2983]

Apartment, with mostly old people and no families. Relatively quiet and peaceful for being in the middle of the city. I've even seen some deer wander the grounds early in the morning. It was perfect until the gym I could walk to closed. I'm thinking of moving but everything here is just so perfect otherwise it would be a very hard decision.

[ophelia_]

I own a flat three blocks from the river in central London. I bought it six years ago thanks to my granny, and it has a pretty awesome view of London's sights from the front balcony.

I've been on interest only for a while though and my mortgage lender is taking its sweet time to cross me back over to repayment. My repayments will be less than the interest-only when I initially got my place, which is bananas.

My flat is ex-social housing but it's half the price of the fancy new builds up the road (closer to the river), and most of those face railway tracks.

I'm opposite two train stations and 30 mins away from a train to France/£10-15 away from the city in a taxi at 3am. It's pretty good. They're redeveloping the area nearby with shops, gyms, and a new tube station, so I'm planning on staying here because it's going to be ££££££ in five years' time.

**smug**

... Can I please live in your laundry or something?