My wife & I bought a house about 7 years ago, and we still like the house, but wish we hadn't bought it.
There are quite a few areas of expertise required to manage a property, and if you don't have them yet it can cost you (both in money and time).
Sure, you can hire someone else to do repairs. But how will you know what repairs are required (do you ask the roofer if this is a patch job, or if a new roof is needed)? How do you know what a given repair or renovation should reasonably cost? How do you find trustworthy contractors? The ones everyone recommends will be busy through next year, more or less, and the unknowns are exactly that.
What tasks can you reasonably do yourself (without experience) as opposed to hiring someone? I.e., shower grout, replacing a light fixture, installing a dishwasher/stove, installing shelving, replacing a door lock, putting weather stripping around windows, small painting jobs, etc..
My wife & I had a few years with significantly lower income. If we had been renting, we would have rented a cheaper place for those years. But we own a house -- so we basically just spent a few years unable to afford to maintain it properly.
More recently, we now have kids and have been thinking of leaving the area entirely -- moving to a different city, or possibly leaving the country.
But to sell or rent the house, we should finish renovation/repairs first. And the selling market isn't great now, but becoming a landlord -- especially remotely -- would require a whole new set of skills.
I've learned a hell of a lot (mostly through error) over these years, but these are not all skills I have wanted to learn, or how I've wanted to spend my time; the fact of buying the house forced an awful lot of experiences after it.
If you rent, you pay someone else to handle all that. If they do a poor job, you look for a better place (and it's not fun to find a new place and move, but it's not a huge deal).
I live in the UK and the place I currently live in isn't great so i've been looking to change up.
Unfortunately, every decent house i find is only available for purchase but not for rent. Seems the houses available for rent are for people that don't care too much for having a nice home. At least that's how it feels to me at the moment.
Ah, I guess it's a reasonable disclaimer: I live in cities, in flats, and prefer it strongly — I think that's also cultural, though I also think it makes for better cities, though I realize there's a bit of controversy here (and, also, it depends on having a good public transport/pedestrian/cycling infrastructure). I currently rent from a guy who rents out an entire building, and around here it's pretty common (but not so much to make single-flat landlords unlikely to encounter).
What this means is, renting out is at least a side-business to someone, and they usually either at least somewhat care for customer experience (YMMV, of course), and either do a lot themselves, or hire people to help along if they don't.
On the other hand, while in Poland renting is common, it's treated as temporary, and most landlords only have a single place that they treat as a side income, or just a way to keep the cost of having an empty flat "for later" down. That makes the entire experience way worse — for example, contacting them is essentially an emergency measure. OTOH, they usually care less about what you do to the flat (so, they're more likely to be okay with drilling holes or painting walls into odd colors — if you rent serially, you may have only a week or less between tenants, if you just kick people out and move in yourself you probably take a full redo into account).
> But to sell or rent the house, we should finish renovation/repairs first. And the selling market isn't great now, but becoming a landlord -- especially remotely -- would require a whole new set of skills.
Yes -- which means you have to find someone to do that for you, and figure out if they're asking the right price for their services. Then you need to keep track of how well they're doing it.
If they do a poor job by doing too little maintenance, your renter will let you know about it.
If they do a poor job by doing unneeded or unimportant maintenance, and/or charging you too much for the tasks they're doing, your renter will be perfectly happy... so how will you know?
Granted, it's important not to obsess about this stuff -- if they're cheating you just a little bit, it's not worth worrying about. But if you don't know what you're doing, they may be able to cheat you pretty seriously, and you won't know.
They can also screw up horrifyingly in a way that will bite you a year or two down the line once someone hooks up a washing machine and refrigerator to those power sockets and everything goes down in flames (or, more likely, just takes down every single fuse until the one out in the street).
You'd have to treat it like any other professional you're hiring where you lack expert knowledge. And yes, there is some risk - I was just pointing out that becoming a domain expert is not your only option.
There are quite a few areas of expertise required to manage a property, and if you don't have them yet it can cost you (both in money and time).
Sure, you can hire someone else to do repairs. But how will you know what repairs are required (do you ask the roofer if this is a patch job, or if a new roof is needed)? How do you know what a given repair or renovation should reasonably cost? How do you find trustworthy contractors? The ones everyone recommends will be busy through next year, more or less, and the unknowns are exactly that.
What tasks can you reasonably do yourself (without experience) as opposed to hiring someone? I.e., shower grout, replacing a light fixture, installing a dishwasher/stove, installing shelving, replacing a door lock, putting weather stripping around windows, small painting jobs, etc..
My wife & I had a few years with significantly lower income. If we had been renting, we would have rented a cheaper place for those years. But we own a house -- so we basically just spent a few years unable to afford to maintain it properly.
More recently, we now have kids and have been thinking of leaving the area entirely -- moving to a different city, or possibly leaving the country.
But to sell or rent the house, we should finish renovation/repairs first. And the selling market isn't great now, but becoming a landlord -- especially remotely -- would require a whole new set of skills.
I've learned a hell of a lot (mostly through error) over these years, but these are not all skills I have wanted to learn, or how I've wanted to spend my time; the fact of buying the house forced an awful lot of experiences after it.
If you rent, you pay someone else to handle all that. If they do a poor job, you look for a better place (and it's not fun to find a new place and move, but it's not a huge deal).