Buying a home. But not for any of the typical reasons.
If you told me back in February that I'd buy a home in 2020, I'd have told you to get lost. I lived alone in a small apartment, with a "necessities" mentality, and homeownership was on my radar for 5-10 years out. Why invest in exercise equipment when I go to a gym, a decent WFH setup when I work in an office, or kitchenware when most of my meals are eaten at work or meetups? Why buy a home, if I seem to just use home for a place to sleep?
The pandemic rapidly changed that mentality. "Necessities" was now synonymous with "going without".
The straw that broke the camel's back was the big trees out back being chainsawed down all day over three days (they needed to; they were hanging out by a transmission line). That changed the view from my porch from something resembling nature (and for much of the pandemic, that was my "nature"), to industrial buildings puking out vapor.
So I didn't buy a home for a partner, pets, kids, or otherwise - I still have none of those. But my overall health has increased considerably by having a backyard that won't change unless I want it to, a small home gym to prevent dropping even more muscle, a dedicated office space to delineate when WFH starts and ends, and an open-plan kitchen. And with the interest rates the way they are, I figure I've just saved future-me a ton of money anyway.
Good for you. Stories like yours should be a good example of WHY to buy a home. Now there are plenty of reasons why NOT to buy a home. Bottom line is that buy a home to Live, not invest (primary home at least). A lot of us are made to believe that one should buy a home because of equity/investments/saving rent etc etc. All that is true BUT you need to not buy for those reasons. You need to buy when you want your own space, can afford it reasonably and are not using it as a casino.
Buying a home for me as well. I bought mine in December '19 before COVID hit. Before that I had been living in a small apartment with thin walls, which meant I could hear my upstairs neighbor all hours of the day.
Going from a 1-bedroom apartment to a house has been huge during the pandemic. I actually have different rooms I can use to help break up the monotony. I think I would've gone crazy having to work from home in my old place since it was so small.
isn't it harder to socialize when you're not surrounded by people in gyms, an office, and so on? I personally would put that above home ownership, especially while I don't have a family.
It was definitely something I considered heavily when buying - and is actually the reason I chose to eat the cost of staying close to the city, rather than move to some far-flung place where the cost of living is three or four times cheaper. Yes, I got less space. Yes, my mortgage is larger than it could have been. But my quality of life will _continue_ to be much higher next year - it's not a short-term personal gain for a long-term social loss.
I did spend some time time making myself a map of the surrounding area, and choosing to buy within some geographic criteria: 1-mile radius of public transit (that doesn't end at 8pm, which some lines here do); 1-mile radius of a grocery store; sub-1hr commute to work. By sheer luck, I'm now closer to my gym than I was before. And while I'm now on the opposite side of the city from many social opportunities, getting home at 11 versus 10 afterwards doesn't faze me much.
Are those socialisations meaningful though? If so, you could meet those people elsewhere. If not, why waste time on them instead of actual meaningful friendships?
If you told me back in February that I'd buy a home in 2020, I'd have told you to get lost. I lived alone in a small apartment, with a "necessities" mentality, and homeownership was on my radar for 5-10 years out. Why invest in exercise equipment when I go to a gym, a decent WFH setup when I work in an office, or kitchenware when most of my meals are eaten at work or meetups? Why buy a home, if I seem to just use home for a place to sleep?
The pandemic rapidly changed that mentality. "Necessities" was now synonymous with "going without".
The straw that broke the camel's back was the big trees out back being chainsawed down all day over three days (they needed to; they were hanging out by a transmission line). That changed the view from my porch from something resembling nature (and for much of the pandemic, that was my "nature"), to industrial buildings puking out vapor.
So I didn't buy a home for a partner, pets, kids, or otherwise - I still have none of those. But my overall health has increased considerably by having a backyard that won't change unless I want it to, a small home gym to prevent dropping even more muscle, a dedicated office space to delineate when WFH starts and ends, and an open-plan kitchen. And with the interest rates the way they are, I figure I've just saved future-me a ton of money anyway.