Living Car Free - Do you rent or own?

I was renting, until my condo went up for sale. Being the tenant, I had first rights of refusal, and since I was able to snag a mortgage that I could afford (and, with condo fees, it's no more than my rent was), I decided to purch.. put myself in debt another thirty years.

Better than throwing money into the black hole of rent, honestly. A family friend had to leave his condo out in L.A. because the owner put it up for sale and he couldn't afford the rent hike. He had lived there for maybe a quarter century, but because he was renting the whole time, he had zero equity to show for it.

Anyway... whether I rent or own has nothing to do with being car-light. It's the LOCATION. I could try living in the 'burbs where some of my coworkers are and have a house with a yard, but I'd be in the same situation as they are, making it necessary to drive to work (public transit doesn't help much when it can't even get me to work early enough).

I've never worked more than fifteen minutes from home. If I had an hour-long commute, I'd absolutely lose my mind. I'm going to enjoy being single and childless as long as I can.

claire is a member of BFs but posts mainly on Long Distance. She lives/d in the middle of Paris, and if you want to see how the French can squeeze so many into the city, then her tiny apartment was the classic example.

She very kindly offered us the place to stay for several nights before PBP while she went to stay with her then-boyfriend.

The place had a tiny ensuite, a tinier kitchen area (like a nook in the wall), and she had a futon. Squeezing bikes in was a challenge, but it could be done -- she had that well and truly sussed out. Overall the place probably measured five metres by five metres -- about 240 square metres.

The only inconvenience was that it was up four flights of a spiral staircase. This was more than balanced out by the fact that the Seine River was just down the street, there was rail service close by, there were nice cafes and restaurants close by, a supermarket as well, and our favourite retail therapy medicine, Decathlon, was also a short bike ride away.

I own and i'm car free. I live in a major city and I rather use that extra 5-7K a year towards mortgage. If you can live well without a car in your location then it's an easy choice.

I always use to take on rent instead of buy. Because the main problem is parking problem.

stuartdenley (www.yahoo.com)

claire is a member of BFs but posts mainly on Long Distance. She lives/d in the middle of Paris, and if you want to see how the French can squeeze so many into the city, then her tiny apartment was the classic example.

She very kindly offered us the place to stay for several nights before PBP while she went to stay with her then-boyfriend.

The place had a tiny ensuite, a tinier kitchen area (like a nook in the wall), and she had a futon. Squeezing bikes in was a challenge, but it could be done -- she had that well and truly sussed out. Overall the place probably measured five metres by five metres -- about 25 square metres.

The only inconvenience was that it was up four flights of a spiral staircase. This was more than balanced out by the fact that the Seine River was just down the street, there was rail service close by, there were nice cafes and restaurants close by, a supermarket as well, and our favourite retail therapy medicine, Decathlon, was also a short bike ride away.

I loved claire's place!! :) I could have lived there very comfortably ... and I wanted to find a similar place in Edmonton last semester. Places like hers in Edmonton are few and far between ... but I was fortunate enough to find a similar one, and lived there for 4 months. The place was perfect ... it had exactly what I needed. Sadly, the building is being sold so I won't be able to go there again next semester.

And more on small dwellings ...

Maud Lewis was a Canadian artist who became quite well known. Her collection ... and house ... are located in a museum in Nova Scotia. She lived, with her husband, for 32 years in a house that was about 16 square metres ... from 1938 to 1970. It consisted of one room on the main floor, and a sleeping loft upstairs. It did not have indoor plumbing or electricity.

http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/home/collections/maudlewis/marshalltown.aspx
http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/home/collections/maudlewis/biography.aspx

I own my home ~$9,000 left on the mortgage. I only make $15,000 a year(before taxes), but since I live car free & pay on average $300 a month for mortgage & utilities(yes, that includes dsl). I find that as long as I stick to my diet & don't go overboard buying toys, I'm good.

Just because I'm 30 doesn't mean I quit playing with toys, I just get more expensive ones now:)

I live quite comfortably, all I really have to watch out for is that I space out my major purchases enough to keep from depleting my savings account. I always try to have three months worth of emergency cash in the bank. Hell, WaMu's already gone belly up and I've still got my cash. So, I don't even have to worry about that. :P

My biggest concern in life is getting enough sleep; I'm a chronic insomniac.

And more on small dwellings ...

Maud Lewis was a Canadian artist who became quite well known. Her collection ... and house ... are located in a museum in Nova Scotia. She lived, with her husband, for 32 years in a house that was about 16 square metres ... from 1938 to 1970. It consisted of one room on the main floor, and a sleeping loft upstairs. It did not have indoor plumbing or electricity.

http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/home/collections/maudlewis/marshalltown.aspx
http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/home/collections/maudlewis/biography.aspx

That is awesome.

And more on small dwellings ...

Maud Lewis was a Canadian artist who became quite well known. Her collection ... and house ... are located in a museum in Nova Scotia. She lived, with her husband, for 32 years in a house that was about 16 square metres ... from 1938 to 1970. It consisted of one room on the main floor, and a sleeping loft upstairs. It did not have indoor plumbing or electricity.


Another small dwelling (10' x 12') formerly occupied by someone obsessed with the simple life in a museum:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0812081unabomber1.html

I rent with roomates which allows me to live pretty comfortably and spend way more and put more away in my 401K on meager pay as a copy clerk. I would love to purchase a condo here but I would have to get a real job and probably work 8-5, when I love my 2nd shift. Though after living two years with roomates it can be hard to share space with others and can be a real test of tolerence sometimes. Though I really can't complain they always have thier part of the bills.

I found it is realy impossible to be car free and try to maintain my commutes to one livable place. So I rent and move often.

In Britain, rents are rarely, if ever, less than the cost of a mortgage. A friend of mine bought a new flat; his mortgage is just over half the rental for the identical flat next door. It was an easy decision for me 5 years ago when I bought my house, and in another 10 or 12 years, my mortgage will be paid off - I expect to live another 40 or so years after that, all of them rent free. What do renters do when they retire?

In Britain, rents are rarely, if ever, less than the cost of a mortgage. A friend of mine bought a new flat; his mortgage is just over half the rental for the identical flat next door. It was an easy decision for me 5 years ago when I bought my house, and in another 10 or 12 years, my mortgage will be paid off - I expect to live another 40 or so years after that, all of them rent free. What do renters do when they retire?

They live off all the money they've put into savings instead of dropping it into a house.

Times may have changed, but when I lived in Winnipeg I paid between $500 and $600/month on rent for a nice 2 bedroom apartment, and that amount included everything but phone (yep, even cable TV).

Meanwhile friends of mine decided to buy a house and got one for about $100,000. All of a sudden they were paying approx. $200 in property tax each month, $200/month in utilities, etc., and about $400/month in interest. They were paying out about $800/month, and not even touching the actual cost of their house.

And in Winnipeg, housing prices didn't change for years. If you bought a house for $100,000, you'd sell it for $100,000 twenty years later ... so it wasn't even an investment (I think prices have gone up a little bit in recent years, but nothing like it has in other parts of the country).

And in Winnipeg, housing prices didn't change for years. If you bought a house for $100,000, you'd sell it for $100,000 twenty years later ... so it wasn't even an investment (I think prices have gone up a little bit in recent years, but nothing like it has in other parts of the country).

That goes back to my post -- "location, location, location." When I bought, the local market -- I'd say VERY local, as in within a square mile -- was still going up quite strongly, with property values tripling over a decade or so.

Now, of course, it wasn't sustainable, and started to level off probably a year or two ago. But, I got in while it was still rising, and probably gained 15-20% of equity.

However, if I were living somewhere else, I don't know that I would have been so quick to buy. Things are still on the up-and-up here, and the only risk I fear is a terrorist attack.