Saturday, February 24, 2018

Ownership or Access? - House Edition

The same goes for housing.  Home ownership is a fine thing and sometimes cheaper than renting.  However, how many times do people buy an enormous house with a spare bedroom or two that only gets used 40 or 50 days a year at most?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to rent a bigger house for a weekend when extended family comes?  We have a big house now for a very good rental rate but it still bothers me somehow that we have a spare room that goes unused the majority of the year.  When we first moved in I said it was the biggest culture shock I had experienced up to that point of living in Spain (after 7 months.)


I’m not saying owning a car or a big house is a terrible thing, simply that it’s inefficient.  Now, we just bought a car thanks to the generosity of a couple donors in particular and we’re incredibly grateful for it.  However, as my wife and mom both have said several times over the years I do tend to be idealistic.  Quite frankly I hope I never lose that.  There are certain areas where I have become much more realistic and I feel like something is lost when that happens.

I may very well end up owning a home myself someday, I have been known to do a 180 degree turn several times in my life already (marriage, baby in particular come to mind.)  I would just hope it’s smaller rather than larger and that we just pitch in on the cost of a rental house when people come to visit.  Who knows though, my parents bought a rental property in Sarasota for a couple years and I rented out a spare bedroom on AirBnb and made a nice side income with it.  Perhaps that would be a feasible option in the future if we had an unused spare room the majority of the year.

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