If you are considering the possibility of buying your primary home, but you’re not exactly sure what exactly to buy, here you will learn the pros and cons about buying a house or an apartment.
What we’re going to do is just simply do a comparison of what are the pros and cons of having a house or if you are deciding to buy a house or an apartment.
This way to compare the pros and cons will only work if you’re comparing a house and an apartment in the same area. For example purposes, let’s say you’re considering investing or buying your primary residence in Orlando, Florida. What are some of the great things that people will typically say about having a house?
In terms of a house, some pros are:
- It’s more private. You’ll have more privacy because it’s your own house.
- You’ll have more space. You get to do whatever you want and you have more land.
- A third pro will be the parking. You could have your driveway and your garage.
- The land is yours. Perhaps you might share the funds with your neighbor but the structure of the house itself will be just yours.
- You have more freedom. Because it’s your own house, you are free to do whatever you want with it on the indoor or the inside of it.
In terms of an apartment, some pros are:
- It’s smaller in space. Having a smaller space could be better in the sense that there’s less to furnish.
In fact, Steve Jobs went through something similar. He ended up living in a big house, but because he was such a perfectionist, most of the time that he lived in the house, it ended up being unfurnished. He would rather come home and just sit in the living room than to have a couch that he disliked because then that will create a distraction for him.
- There will be less painting to do and less decoration to worry about.
- Another perk is that you have fresh air or a better view. Why, because if you live on a higher floor, there’s less of a chance for you to experience any sonic contamination from the cars around you honking or even the dust that some of the cars could leave behind.
- It is cheaper. Apartments tend to be a little or slightly cheaper than houses.
- You have common areas, which means it has to be maintained by the building itself.
- You won’t have to shovel the snow if you live in a state where it snows almost every day during the winter.
Some Considerations:
1. The fact that you have more space and more land, might not necessarily be the best of the best because you might have to spend a lot of time cleaning it and if you’re a busy person, sometimes cleaning might not necessarily be one of your main priorities.
Having more space means you’re going to have to worry about a couch or maybe a chair, a desk, and that eventually when you start adding all of that expenses up, it winds up being expensive.
2. Another thing is the maintenance, because now you have your own space, you have more land, you have more parking, then that’s more things for you to maintain. You have to maintain the grass. Then you’ll have to hire somebody to come in, which means more money for you, or you’re going to have to do it yourself and cut the grass and then that means maybe sacrificing your weekends or sacrificing your evenings to do that.
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3. Another thing is the parking: You will be responsible for the garage. You’re responsible for maintaining the driveway. That costs you money and time.
Because you have too much freedom in terms of owning a house, then everything is going to run on your own. You always have to stay on top of everything. You’re always going to remind yourself to pay your property taxes because otherwise, you can lose it in a tax lien.
What about taxes?
Cities and counties need money. That’s why they collect taxes. They need the money to pay for the firefighters, for the cops, for the public parks, and all of that stuff. In order to make that happen, they need you as a homeowner to also pay your property taxes and when you don’t do that, they can also take your house away.
Yes, when you’re living in a house, you have freedom and that’s great, but you’re also expected to act responsibly and to also remember a lot of the things.
That’s definitely something that you should consider to keep in mind. In essence, everything will be running at your own expense because you don’t have to share that with anything, you’ll have your own privacy, but you’re also responsible for everything.
When it comes to an apartment, these are some of the cons that you can experience:
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Apartments have HOAs and that’s something you cannot run away. That’s not something that you can negotiate. HOAs are a set fee that you have to pay every single month in order for the building staff to continue to perform their duties, cleaning up the pools, taking out the trash to the main road and any maintenance activities that are needed in order to keep your beautiful building from looking unpresentable.
What was originally portrayed to you as a benefit now you can see that it could also be a disadvantage for you because there are other hidden fees or hidden costs that you might have not considered in the first place.
- Another thing is that you lack the privacy, because since you live in a building, you are somewhat cramped with one another. You have your neighbors next door, you have your neighbors above and below you. In terms of privacy, you will have less of that because you can basically hear everybody. You can hear the loud music from above. You can hear the TV that you’re having next door.
If you’re the kind of person who wants absolute silence and no interruption whatsoever, then perhaps the apartment might not be the best route for you. If you don’t mind feeling like you have people in your vicinity and having people around makes you feel like you have some company, then that is definitely a great option for you.
- Another disadvantage of having an apartment is that you don’t get to enjoy the freedom. Why? Because when you decide to buy a house, you can do pretty much anything you want to it in terms of renovations and fixing. All you got to do is just to simply go down to city hall and apply for the permit so you can perform the renovations that you want in your house.
That is not going to be possible in a building because you will need board approval. The board needs to approve the renovations that you’re doing depending on the building bylaws, and the board also needs to approve the contractors that you bring in.
Sometimes they have a list of pre-approved contractors and perhaps the contractor that you originally pick might not even make it to the list. Those are definitely things that you want to consider.
Those are definitely some of the key items that you should take into account. If you love to have a yard so that your children can run around free or that you could have family come over and host parties because you have a much larger space. That will be completely up to you.
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