Last week we got to talk about how landlords fuck you. Today, a real estate friend of mine (Sup Tyler!), found this place in his listings and asked if I thought it was Bachelor Uncle material. And the answer is yes with an asterisk.
I have friends who live in New York and California who read this blog and will laugh at the dollars I’m tossing around here. But try to keep your depressed elitism to yourself and think in terms of ratios for a fucking minute okay?
We’re gonna look at two patio home/town homes for rent in downtown Phoenix. They’re pretty close to each other, so as to eliminate the “location” factor and let’s look at the difference.
The first place we’re going to look at is a patio home with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It’s about 1400 square feet and it’s gorgeous. It comes furnished and they did an amazing job. In my “Fuck Your Landlord” article, I talked about how landlords have no pride of ownership, clearly this guy or gal does.
But, I also said, if there are any nice luxury touches or flashes of personality, you can bet you’re going to pay for them. And this is where that fuckery comes into play. It’s infuriating, but we need to discuss it. This house is for rent (not purchase) and they are asking $2,900 a month for this home that shares a wall with someone else.
Let’s go up the street.
Our next home for rent is a 3 bedroom, two bathroom affair also around 1400 square feet. It looks nice and modern. It’s a cool place, for sure. It’s also a patio home with a shared wall.
This is what you see these days. White walls, cheap flooring, stainless steel appliances. Boring. Boring. Boring. Yes, it’s a blank slate, but because it’s a rental you’ll be compelled to never to do anything with that slate. Just, sit in your white box, staring at your white walls, dreaming of what you would like to do if only you had a pair.
But this boring house isn’t without it’s own neat features.
It has a rooftop patio that you can enter from the hallway or from the master bedroom. This is really nice. I love how modern and unique this space is. It even has a brick accent wall and some exposed beams to break up the monotony of the white wall.
But apples to apples, this house has an extra bedroom that you could sublease out or turn into an office. The rent on this white box? $1,950.
That means that that beautiful modern home with the blue and silver walls. With the rad ass track lighting and contemporary art? It’s $1,000 more per month.
So, if we take the average length of time someone lives in a rental home, and extrapolate the difference in rent out, it will cost you an extra $84,000 over that 7 year span. Look, the shit in that house is nice, and some of it is probably pretty expensive. But none of that shit in that house is worth $84,000. That’s a 20% down payment on a $420,000 house. And for that kind of money, you wouldn’t have to share a fucking wall with some dingbat. And if you wear any of it out, or break any of it, I wonder who’s gonna pay for it? Hmmm…
This is a real world case that proves, if a landlord makes something nice, they’re going to charge you through the nose for it. So rent the white house, make it however you want and when you move out, let him keep your $1,900 deposit. You’ll be so far ahead of the doofus who moved into that blue space. And you got an extra bedroom the whole time.
I guarantee you, you could make that white house just as modern and cool for less than 15 grand. Easy. I wonder what you could do with that extra 70 grand. I wonder.
