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Having a landlord be responsible for home fixes and appliances is pretty nice to be honest, provided they aren’t a shit landlord. I have a mortgage now which is nice, but the additional headaches are real.
Personally I really like doing my own home repairs and such, I get a lot of satisfaction and even though I’ll grumble and curse the whole time and will often procrastinate on some of my projects, I do really enjoy myself the whole time I’m doing it, even if I don’t always admit it. It kind of drove me nuts when I lived in my apartment and I wasn’t allowed to do a lot of the little repairs and upgrades I wanted to do myself.
But I can definitely appreciate that it’s not a thing for everyone, and because of that it really pisses me off that a lot of landlords, property managers, HOAs, condo associations are so shitty because there’s a lot of people who it frankly doesn’t make sense for them to own a home and be responsible for the maintenance when they don’t have the skills, time, or desire to do it themselves.
We bought my mother in law’s house, she had a whole bathroom that she basically didn’t use because the toilet had a small leak and the aerator on the sink faucet was clogged up with lime and sediment. That took me maybe $20 worth of materials and an hour and a half to fix counting the time it took me to drive to the hardware store with some built in time to wander around gawking at tools I don’t need. She’s someone who probably shouldn’t own a house and would be better served with a decent rental situation, but that’s a lot easier said than done, so now I get roped into doing little repairs for her at her new place is addition to handling my own stuff.
It’s a generational thing. Back in the day, most knew common car, plumbing, electrical issues and their solutions. Nowadays, people consult YouTube and promptly forget it 5 minutes later.
The abundance of information, sadly, doesn’t mean everyone can discern good and bad advices. On top of that, there are a lot of bad advices.
It could also be the fact that a Mon-Fri 9-5 job just isn’t the norm and often isn’t enough for one to live for a majority of Americans, so they have less time to learn, then make those repairs. In addition, prices for tools and materials have obviously gone up, making those repairs more expensive than “back in the day.”
Say your AC stops working at the height of summer. You go online and download the manual from the manufacturer, follow the directions to diagnose the issue. Awesome! You know what’s wrong, you just need to make a special trip to the hardware store (maybe where you live isn’t close to one since brick-and-mortar is more and more rare) and you can’t afford to wait for it to be delivered. So you buy the part and tools required at whatever price they’re selling for there because you can’t shop around. You don’t have another day off until next week, so you try to work a little bit every day on it, but you’re tired from your two jobs and only have a few hours free every day really. You’re having to stop and start constantly so you never get any momentum going on the work and it’s taking forever and the whole time you don’t have air conditioning so it’s hot as fuck. You don’t really know what you’re doing so it’s slow going. You’re losing sleep because it’s so hot and at least one of your jobs is physical and tires you out before you spend an hour tinkering with it every night. The little time that you normally get to spend with your kids is taken by this repair, and it takes almost a full week, and you have to hope you didn’t make a small mistake, because again, you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re just going from the manual, like “back in the day.” Or you could just dip into the savings and hire a guy to come out and fix it in an afternoon.
But you’re right, it’ probably just kids these days.
One should discern between things that do require a technician, and stuff that doesn’t. I’d argue fixing an A/C unit is more on the professional side of things. But yeah, I agree with you - it’s cheaper to hire a technician than spend the time yourself.
Will you come fix my creaky floor? I have no money left and I’m too tired.
Right after I fix my creaky floor.
I also don’t know how to fix creaky floors.
It really depends on what part is creaking, but somewhere there’s a gap near the creak between the joist, subfloor, and/or floor that’s letting things flex. Gotta close that gap to stop the squeak.
Owning a house is definitely not for everyone, and having a savings account for emergency repair is a must. I tend to do most repairs myself, but I know my limits and will pay someone when I know I might screw it up.