Americans generally promote homeownership. Owning a home might prove to be an unsatisfying experience:
“We have two kids, two full-time jobs. We don’t even have time to talk about the repairs we need to make or what we should do,” she says. “We don’t make nearly enough to hire a house manager or nanny or anything like that, so even when things do go wrong, we don’t have time to figure out how to handle it or even who we would need to hire to outsource it.” A house manager may sound like a luxury (and it is). But the share of couples with children in which both parents work full time is now 52 percent, up from 31 percent in 1975. When both parents work outside of the home, the labor of taking care of the home, in ways large and small, doesn’t simply disappear…
Thomas, in Seattle, echoes this sentiment. He was in his late 30s when he bought, feeling that it was “just what a person does.”…
So, sure. He, in true millennial parlance, “did the thing.” But what did he lose in the process?
This is a common refrain in so many of the stories I’ve heard about homeownership: We gave up the things that made our lives meaningful in order to have the thing we thought we were supposed to want…
A house is meant to be the foundation of stability and safety in our lives. Instead, ours is a high-pitched stress alarm.
Owning a house does require maintenance and resources. This has always been true. Even newer homes that might appear to require few repairs might need a lot of time to maintain.
So what has changed that the work that goes with homeownership is problematic? A few ideas based on this article:
- A cost/benefit analysis approach to life is an interesting way to live. Is this everything about being efficient and opportunity costs? People today have some different ideas about how they would like to use their time and what they find meaningful.
- There are more older homes for people to purchase. Many homes have survived decades. The single-family tract homes built in the postwar suburban boom decades are largely still around. They may need substantial repairs. Our standards for what is needed in homes – certain appliances, how kitchens should look and operate, great rooms, etc. – are now different.
- American society as a whole may have shifted toward consumer goods that should be great or are broken and disposable. How much maintenance can we do with smartphones or appliances or vehicles or homes? How much patience do we have for repairs and restoring and preserving when it is easier for many items to simply replace?
- The high cost of homeownership influences all of this. If people are going to make such a significant financial investment (and also expect certain financial returns), any decisions about or additional resources needed are notable. Buy a house, even with help, in a really expensive housing market like Boston and Seattle and it is frustrating when that really expensive housing is difficult to maintain.
Thinking further, I could imagine homeownership that requires no maintenance through either (1) built-in repair and maintenance services from the beginning (factor it into the purchase and mortgage costs) and/or (2) switching homes regularly to avoid major repairs (similar to how cars have points where costly repairs are likely such as 60,000 miles or 100,000 miles).
