Affordable Housing

[MorelCabin]

Dh and I are actually midst of building such a cabin for our daughter. After all the reading and research I've been doing , I am thinking it might be feasable to move into it ourselves in a few years and rent our our main house. Voila, a $20 hydro bill, about $200/year propane heating or 3 facecords of wood, comfy, cozy, and an income from the main house rental...hmmm sounds good to me!

 

[FarmerChick]

I am leary on that type of situation.
Tony wants to rent out this house when we build the other, not sell.....but renters can be disasterous!!!! They can take a nice home and trash it very fast.

My MIL owns about 11 rental properties, some older homes and mainly singlewides...she gets shafted all the time and has to replace carpets, patch walls, and a million other things the renters do.

When people don't own, they don't care.

Now that is just a thought. Sometimes just cashing out and moving forward without that tow of possible trouble is the way to go......just to think about--

 

[poppycat]

Renting is a mixed bag. We have two rental properties. One of them has had nothing but lovely families as tenants and the other one is a disaster, evictions, damage etc.

But the real estate market being what it is right now, if you can rent for a few years and wait out the "slump" you might recover a fair bit of $$$. In our area the rental market is VERY strong.

 

[Beekissed]

When people don't own, they don't care

Hey, sweety, easy now....I rent!

Funny, but not funny....when we moved here noone would rent to us...we were "outsiders", plus noone likes to rent to a single mom...with teenagers....with dogs....and especially not chickens! Moved 6 times in a year, got shafted by 2 different landlords (the stories would take forever) and one real estate deal that fell through.
And even worse...someone stole my chickens...all 30 of them! Not a feather left! They were the most beautiful chickens and I was very fond of them.

My current landlord was told not to rent to us because "teenage boys are destructive". He took a chance and I think he is real glad he did! I always pay the rent a half month early, have painted and did repairs and a heck of a lot of work on the old place for free. We keep it clean and neat and get compliments from everyone about how nice it looks now. Everyone keeps asking me if we bought the place because we are always making improvements. When people ask me why we fix up on the old place if we don't own it and he doesn't take it off the rent, I always respond in the same way. "Because we live here."

(He decided to lower the rent by $25 and told me to add up my expenses and he would reimburse me for half...and would continue to deduct $25 off the rent for each year we stayed here! ) I like my landlord!

Sorry, you can have your thread back.....I put in a vote for strawbale/cob housing for cheap materials, longevity and energy efficiency.

 

[FarmerChick]

OH definitely beekissed there are great, wonderful, nice renters out there. Rachel had some of the best people renting.....but sadly most were so destructive.

Just something everyone must remember when thinking of renting vs. selling.

And yup, renting could give you time in this lovely market to recoup.

Didn't want it to sound like a blanket statement saying all renters are bad, not at all!!

 

[poppycat]

I would rent to you Beekissed. I would love for my rental properties to look half as good as the pics you post.

I don't know why people are so biased against pet owners. When people have a family pet it shows me that they can commit to taking care of something.

I guess you hear horror stories about pet hoarders, but those are few and far between.

 

[MorelCabin]

Well renters can't punch holes in my walls...they're log:>) Not a sheet of drywall in this place! Hopefully we'll be lucky and get renters like Beekissed:>) Our place will be rented out by the week in the summers as a cottage, so the extra expense for repairs will hopefully be worth it...in the winter hopefully some older couple who doesn't smoke will rent:>)

 

[Beekissed]

I happen to agree about most renters not caring.... That's why I wouldn't rent out my garage apt. on my other home.

They make it hard for people like me to get a decent place to rent, that's for sure. Sure I would like to own my own place again, but, for now, renting is the most SS for me and my family. We were going to buy a place when we moved here and I thank God each day that it fell through! Not what we needed in the long run...not with my current plans.

My landlord was walking through the yard with me and I discovered a "dog present" on the lawn. I turned around and said in my mother-voice, "Uh-Oh! Who did this?" Well, my older dog started slinking away and I knew instantly who the culprit was. My landlord looks at me with the "deer in the headlights look" on his face and says, "Where else are they supposed to do it?" I had to laugh! I told him the dogs were only allowed to poop up in one portion of the orchard where we rarely walk. He said, "How the heck did you teach them that?" I told him, "Well, I AM a MOM!" I think he was amazed at how strict I was about the property!

 

[Homesteadmom]

Hey, you're right, it's not for everyone. I posted this for those that are interested in downsizing into more efficient affordable dwellings:>)

We did do effecient thigns when we order our home(manufactured) like upgraded to 2x6 construction & heavier insulation. Added 2 solartubes 1 in the main bath & 1 in our closet(it has no window & we use no lights during the day then). A skylight in the kitchen which next summer we will have a shade for. No windows on the west side. We got 2 a/c units so one unit does not have to work as had & actually it helps to keep the bill down. Not to mention I keep the east end at 80 95% of the time & the other half at 79 except at night when it goes up to 80 also. We have ceiling fans in all but the kitchen. I added more shelves to my pantry for better storage capacity(it only came with 4 & now we have 10). The 4th bedrm(classrm) is closed off if we are not in there. We will be making our sunshades over the winter to cover all the windows for next summer. And we plan on putting on a roof over the patio area off the back(southside) this winter too. We will build it for passive solar as we will also be installing our dbl french doors soon. To which we will add screen doors too, so we can open them & let the air thru better when it is feasible.
Now if we could have afforded 2 mortgages we would have moved our small house up t our property up north & used it for weekends & summers as it would be great up there as we only need minimal items up there. But alas we can not afford that. Even though we more than doubled the size of our house our elec bill did not, thank goodness. It was only about $60 higher than the old house.