You have two Rottweilers, you raise bees for the honey you sell, and you are planning on installing a trapeze in your bedroom.  I get it.  You want to own your property.

You are filthy rich, so rich that you pay absolutely no income taxes.  You want to buy a house because, well, you can.

You want your 2.5 children to grow up on a big plot of land that they can see out the window as they play video games.  This is a lifestyle you probably need to buy.

But if you are young, and you don’t have much money, or you are old, and want to hang on to your money, rent!

Does your luggage have more miles on it than your car? Rent!

You don’t want to prune anything but your hair or your nails?  Rent!

The only tools you can master are a knife and a fork?  Rent!

Here are 10 compelling reasons to rent:

1-Flexibility

Eight years ago, we put our house on the market because we knew we wanted to live a different way.  We had a beautiful home on a lot of land in a safe neighborhood.  We weren’t unhappy, but we were just so over the yard work, the space, the mountains of stuff.

Most of our friends who were downsizing were buying condos, but we didn’t want to be stuck someplace if we didn’t end up liking it.  (It took thirteen months to sell that beautiful house, and by the closing, home ownership seemed like a ball and chain.)  We didn’t know where we wanted to live or how much space we’d need, but we sensed that change, not stability, was what we needed to stay young – well, not so much young as still-kinda-hip elders.

So we rented a high rise apartment with a deck overlooking the river, and we loved everything about living in 1200 square feet within the city limits.  After a couple of years, we wanted to try moving downtown, and it was as simple as waiting out one lease and signing another.

Someday our circumstances may change. We may have less or more money.  We may have grandchildren in Norway.  We might find this apartment feels too big.  And, frankly, there will not always be two of us (with two pensions, two televisions, and a queen size bed).  It is comforting to know that we need or want to move we won’t get stuck waiting till our home sells.

2-Diversity

Our last three homes, over a span of about thirty years, were in the Delhi suburbs.  There were so many kids in one subdivision that it took an entire school bus to transport them.  My kids could just walk out the door and find someone to play with.  That’s a kind of happiness money can buy.

And we enjoyed the diversity in our neighborhood; there were a few Methodists and Presbyterians amidst the Catholics.

In our apartment building, we have racial, ethnic, economic, marital, and age diversity. In our building we have students, professionals, retirees, and one priest.  We have singles, couples, roomies, families.  We often have folks here on contract from other countries.

I enjoy meeting young people just starting out, and I am especially thrilled to meet anyone older than I am!  On the tenth floor where I live, we have residents representing every decade from the twenties to the seventies. 

3-Connections

This is often the arc of suburban living: 

When our kids were little, we pushed strollers, then when they were toddlers we walked behind their Big Wheels.  And we talked to our neighbors who were out pulling weeds or sitting on their porches or also pushing strollers.

When the kids were teens, we neighbors shuddered as our kids got drivers’ licenses.  We watched over each other’s children and tattled when one of them was speeding in their cars (or in their lives).  I remember a 1:00 AM phone call from a neighbor who informed me that my daughter and the six kids we we were hosting at our UNslumber party were throwing pebbles at his (cute) son’s bedroom windows.

We watched as stretch limos tooled down our middle-class street transporting high schoolers to proms, and witnessed parents loading U-Hauls with lava lamps, mini-fridges, and posters for the trek to college.

But once our kids were gone, we came home from work, pushed the garage remote, and were ensconced in our tomb until the next day, when we once again pushed the remote to leave.  We were empty-nesters in our last subdivision for seven years, and I could only call a couple neighbors by name.

I now talk to folks in the hall, the elevator, the gym (well, that’s just a lie!), and we often gather for casual happy hours.  I never dreamed I’d make a whole new set of friends after I retired!  It’s kind of like a dorm, because my friends are living under the same roof.

4-Safety

I know this isn’t true in all apartments, but in high rises like ours, it is not easy to get in.  (I should know because I’ve

lost my key fob a number of times.) The cameras trained on all the exterior doors deter crime and provide evidence.  Our maintenance man, who has been here since our apartment building opened about fifteen years ago said that there has never been an apartment break in.

Nobody comes to my door to campaign, sell, proselytize, or bludgeon me to death.

In a large apartment building like ours, the managers, maintenance staff, and neighbors notice my yawn-worthy comings and goings.  They would worry if they didn’t see me for a while, and would report any suspicious strangers in the building.    And if I need help, I can just text a neighbor whose door is 15 feet for mine or call the office.

5-Bugeting 

I know within a few hundred dollars, allowing for variations in my electric bill, what my housing is going to cost for the next eighteen months of my lease.

One day, I saw our maintenance man in the hall and mentioned we could use a new toilet seat.  A half hour later, I had one, and it was free!

Once, as I was leaving for the grocery, I reported a leak under my sink.  When I returned, I found a note on my counter saying my disposal had been replaced, and it was free!

One Sunday night, we sat in our matching La-Z-Boys watching The Good Wife as a plumber was putting his finger in the dike to stem the flood emanating from our water heater.  And it was free!

No canceling a vacation because you have to buy a new furnace.

6-The Money Myth

Have you heard this? “When you rent, you’re just throwing money away.  When you buy, you are investing in a home.”

Now, I know there are tax advantages to owning a home, and there are algorithms using the quadratic formula, cosines, vectors, RPMs, and such that you can use to see if you will come out financially ahead by buying.  But those formulas don’t tell the whole story.

We built a contemporary two-story where our kids were raised.  We paid about $100,000 and we sold it, nineteen years later, for $200,000.  That sounds very impressive, until you factor in the improvements and maintenance:  We replaced the heat pump, dish washer, carpet (three times in the family room), roof, and the ceramic tile.  We painted the all-wood-sided house four times, and the interior several times, too.   We finished the basement, landscaped, wallpapered twice, built a wall (and tore it down five years later), added a deck.  We paid for repairs on a leaky skylight, leaky toilet, leaky water heater.   And then there was the time we had to pay a man (cue banjo music) with a pillowcase to get a dead squirrel out of our attic.

And if you have a mortgage, take a look at how much equity you actually have after a decade.  You don’t own the house for a long time; you are borrowing it from a bank.

If you stay long enough to pay off the mortgage, you still have maintenance (on an aging house), taxes, and utilities.

7-Travel

When we owned a house, we worried about it when we were gone.  When we went on vacation, we set a timer on the lights, asked neighbors to pick up circulars that were hung on our mailbox or thrown on our porch, hired someone to cut and water the grass, and hid our valuables.  We waited until we got home to post pictures on Facebook so we didn’t alert the world that the house was vacant.

My husband loves to travel, and I like it.  Now when we vacation, all we have to do is lock the door.  (Once we even forgot to do that, so we just called the maintenance man.)

8-Anti-Hoarding

When we sold our big house, we sold almost everything in it.  We got rid of a lot of pretty whatnots and thingamajigs. We sold or gave away our lawn mower, rakes, shovels, fertilizer spreader, garden hoses, wheelbarrow, trowel, pruner, edger, string trimmer.  We emptied our tool box, taking only pliers, a hammer, two screw drivers, and some duct tape.

Tanzanite from Tanzanian Mines

We still buy stuff (who am I kidding?  I buy the stuff), but we are always aware of our limited space.  When we were on safari in Africa, our fellow tourists bought masks, bowls, and gourds. I was tempted, but I thought, “What will I have to get rid of to make room for this?”  Instead I bought a little box and bowl for my collection.  (Even though a Tanzanite bauble wouldn’t have taken up too much room, I couldn’t convince my husband.)

I can never accumulate the mountain of stuff my parents did, because there just isn’t room.

My tiny souvenirs from Africa

9-No Keeping Up With the Joneses, or HGTV

Our last home had everything we needed, but if we were still living there we would have replaced the carpet with hardwood, the brass fixtures with nickel, the Formica with granite, the white appliances with stainless.  And I’m sure we would have repainted numerous times with the current color palette.

I love my apartment, but I have to admit that the carpet is pretty crappy, the refrigerator is dinky, and my daughter informed me that the bathroom light fixtures

My light fixure is sooo 80s, but tomorrow the burned out bulb will be replaced for free.

are “so 80s.”  Every once in a while I’ll wish for updates and upgrades, but mostly I don’t notice it.  The hundreds of people living with me have all that same stuff.

When you can’t change the floors, walls, doors, fixtures, and appliances, you stop caring so much.  After all, these things have nothing to do with who you are; they never did, but somehow I didn’t realize that until renting.

10-Debt-Free

We’ve bought five houses, but we never kept them long enough to actually own them.  The mortgages always weighed on me.  I mean, a six-figure debt!

It is so wonderful not to owe any money to anyone, except our rent, which is due tomorrow!

Copyright © 2016 Sandy Lingo, All Rights Reserved