The American Dream? More Like the American Nightmare, Am I Right?
So, Zillow's out with another report, this time telling us that the "hidden costs" of owning a home are now damn near $16,000 a year. Sixteen grand! That's like a whole extra mortgage payment... spread out over the year in fun little surprises. "Oh, hey, your roof needs fixing!" "Surprise! Your property taxes just doubled!"
And let's be real, "hidden costs" is a load of crap. They're not hidden, are they? We all know about property taxes and insurance. Zillow's just trying to scare the bejesus out of anyone still clinging to the idea of owning a home. Which, let's face it, is getting harder and harder.
Coastal Catastrophe
Of course, it's worst in the places you'd expect. New York, San Francisco, Boston... the usual suspects. $24,000 a year in New York City? You could rent a decent apartment for that much. Wait a minute – you do rent a decent apartment for that much. So what's the point of owning? Bragging rights? A slightly bigger closet to store all your existential dread?
Zillow's senior economist, Kara Ng, says insurance costs are "rising nearly twice as fast as homeowner incomes." No kidding! Give me a break. It's not just insurance, Kara. It's everything. Wages are stagnant, inflation's eating away at our paychecks, and now we gotta shell out an extra $16,000 just to keep a roof over our heads?
And Florida? Don't even get me started on Florida. Insurance premiums up 72% in Miami and Jacksonville since 2020. What the hell is going on down there? Is it the hurricanes? The alligators? The sheer, unadulterated weirdness of the place? Probably all of the above.
Maintenance? More Like Mayhem
But the real kicker is maintenance. Almost $11,000 a year on average. Eleven THOUSAND dollars! What are people doing, rebuilding their houses from the ground up every year? I mean, offcourse, some people probably are.
Thumbtack home expert Morgan Olsen chirps about "preventative maintenance as a safety net." A safety net? More like a money pit. Every season, something else breaks. The lawn needs mowing, the gutters need cleaning, the damn sprinklers are always clogged. It's never-ending.
It's like owning a boat, only instead of sailing the high seas, you're stuck in your backyard, knee-deep in debt and despair.
Are we really supposed to believe that buying new construction is the answer? That feels like a shill. What if the new construction is built like crap? Are we just kicking the can down the road to a different, more expensive can-kicking?
So, What's the Real Story?
It's a racket. The whole thing is a racket. They want us to buy houses, then they bleed us dry with taxes, insurance, and endless repairs. The American Dream is just a cleverly disguised nightmare designed to keep us all working until we drop dead. According to Hidden costs of homeownership reach $16K per year, these costs are only rising.