Often I am asked to call upon my life wisdom to help people. Besides my brother Malach, most of my friends are my age or younger and haven't quite settled down yet. Well, there's Spacefarmer, but he's like a bizzaro world Murk and only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
My friends often ask me about marriage, work, bills, stress, aging, health and wellness. I know I know. It's unfair for them to beat themselves up for not being me. Anyways, I do have one piece of wisdom that will benefit anyone who's not already settled in life:
A house is nothing but and entropy factory. By this, I mean, a house is less a shelter and more an aprenticeship in house fixing, house cleaning and storage maximization. You also get a minor is interior decorating and recreational management.
In short, buy a condo.
Why?
Because. Now, get a nice one with central air, lots of light and some measure of privacy. Here's the dirt: They fix and clean everything except the interior walls, ceiling and floor finish. They even mow the lawn. Who's they? A property management company.
Also, condos are cheaper and usually have ammenities like washer and dryer room, excercise space and sometimes a pool.
Often in my merry way of blogging I mention the Palatial Estate. It's half joke, half true. It's huge. Got a good plot of land. All sorts of nicey nice dog stuff. Bigger means more work. And with the economy the way it is, I had to cut the maintenance staff. I even had to cancel my massage therapist.
So, when Mrs. Dr. Murk discovers a defect in the plumbing (kitchen drain, luckily not toilet) I am forced to swing the hefty wrench. This is in addition to flaw after flaw after flaw I've had to fix since we bought the house. I just did a brief total of costs, not including labor: $40,000. Papa Murk will insist I exaggerate, so I itemize:
Septic System: $15,000
Water Heater: $1,000
Furnace: $3000
Floors: $7000
Pellet Stove: $2000
Appliances: $5000
Spray Lawn: $2000
Furniture etc: $5000
And that's a lowball.
Even new house have problems. In fact, new houses have lots of problems for the first ten years.
So, If you own a house, cry with me. If you don't learn from me.
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4 comments:
Just don't fix nothing . . . that's cheap, and world is ending anyway.
You want some real fun- buy a 100+ year-old house. It's like fun to the 10th power.
Good advice for the youngsters on condos, but let me add one further tidbit I learned the hard way back when we owned one- don't buy a condo in a building with fewer than 50 units. If you buy one in an association with, oh, let's just say five units, and one of the members turns out to be a whacko, you're in for a world of headaches.
I owned a house once. I swear I will never do that again. All the people say, "Buy a house!"
Those people are stupid and crying into their plunging market values right now. Meanwhile, I pay the rent. I know I won't live in one place long enough for the enormous money sink of a big box made of wood to ever turn a profit.
When I want a house, I will hew the logs into building materials myself and run the minor indoor plumbing I need myself and run off the local indigenous tribe myself, as God intended.
I feel ya. My Casa Doom Cake is only five years old, but shit happens.
Twenty American dollars for a six foot plastic hose so the dishwasher would drain into the septic again and not onto the floor.
A dead motherboard in the electric garage door opener.
The shit list never ends
TV
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