I’ve seen others recently, but the two I saw today are a Capital One commercial and a Progressive commercial.
In the first, the Capital One guy is talking to a couple of people. He is asked what he does for fun, and he does not know what to say. Then, they cut to him getting ready to sleep at the bank.
Another is the Progressive commercial where Flo talks with another woman about vacations. The other woman doesn’t seem to know what a vacation is. Flo begins describing what one is. In the end, she says she doesn’t really know, gives up, and says she’s never been on one either.
I was thinking about them while driving and came to the title thought.
I mean, that’s one of the downsides to home ownership. If it’s not yard work, there’s always some sort of maintenance that needs doing.
You can either put it off until it becomes an emergency, pay someone out the ass to do it, or you can find some way to force yourself to do it.
I say this as I’m taking a break from climbing in my attic to replace the AC condensate pump line that I’ve been putting off for 3 months, so I don’t have to keep dumping 5 gallon buckets of water out twice a day. The quote to have a pro do it was $750
I love the example you used–i have battled with the condensate drain system in my cramped crawlspace on numerous occasions… I had the misfortune of discovering it stopped working on at least 3 separate occasions, leading to standing water in the crawlspace until i figured out a way to get rid of the water and fix the problem. I’ve luckily come up with a solution each time (first 2 times was a clogged line, most recently it was a bad GFI outlet–curveball!) but i can’t imagine how much I’d be paying other companies to get rid of the water and fix the problem each time. No doubt it’s better than renting in certain respects but just like someone else here said–you can have a $20k problem happen, and you are the person responsible for putting up the $ or figuring it out yourself (which isn’t always possible, or a good idea to attempt)…
I feel that. Ex-wife and I called it the “Home Depot tax”.
Crappy power washer took a dump washing the living room area rug. Well fuck. Haven’t figured it out yet, can’t afford a new one.
Wife: “I’ll scrub it by hand.”
That’s not the problem! We have to have a power washer to keep the house clean. I am no clean freak, not by a long shot.
Dated a girl with kidney issues. She couldn’t get out and work at all. The outside of her house was disintegrating for lack of cleaning.
Where do you live where you need to power wash your house on the regular? Also, that can’t be good for the paint.
I’ve got vinyl siding. A couple areas of my house never get direct sun. It doesn’t take long for mildew to grow. It’s easy to clean just a hassle. I do it a couple times a year.
Anywhere with a lot of pollen and/or high humidity. Building exteriors can become covered quickly.
I live in an area with lots of pollen and high humidity and I just rinse the house off every so often. A pressure washer absolutely isn’t a requirement.
Wow so it’s like renting but you get to fix things before they become a big issue, and you get something to show for it at the end?
No, it’s nothing like renting because you’re financially responsible for literally everything. Need a new roof? Better be prepared to shell out $20k minimum. Need a new HVAC system? Yeah, it’s not much cheaper.
You don’t necessarily build as much equity in a home as people seem to think. With the costs of maintenance, insurance, property taxes, etc. it’s entirely possible to lose money with a house.
Sure, if you’re only looking at the purchase price vs selling price it looks nice, but there’s tons of costs that only serve to keep the selling price from dropping.
And it’s an act of constant, willful effort by yourself and your community.
One neighbor is a rental, they are a large immigrant family and are barely getting along. Property owner lives out of country. Another neighbor thought it would be a fun idea to feed neighborhood stray cats. They wound up creating a very healthy breeding family of raccoons out the run-down garage of the rental. For years their offspring have wreaked havoc in our neighborhood. Every fall I’ve had to call a pest control company to trap the tiny raccoons that are small enough to climb downspouts (the big ones aren’t) and destroy the siding and soffits of my neighbors houses. The cat food guy moved away, I figured out how to occlude the raccoons from my downspouts with ample and unsightly flashing, and along with other neighbors, have built or repaired fencing in in our backyards (mostly because of pets and trespassing neighborhood kids, honestly).
It seems like the raccoon misadventure has finally concluded. I’m now stuck with damaged soffits that squirrels have moved into (on account of a looming walnut tree that lives in a neighbors yard and is so large it overhangs my roof), and a repair estimate that was $5k a year ago, when I had the garage roof redone but wasn’t sure I’d gotten the raccoon problem licked, so I didn’t want to proceed with those repairs. Who knows what it’ll be now. … yay.
If a rental turns a profit, the renter ends up paying more for the property than the landlord does.