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Mix-Ansicht- Das Wort zum Samstag ;-) - ITOma, 03.08.2002, 14:57
- Re: Das Wort zum Samstag - sollte bei jeder Hypothekenbank ausliegen!:-) (owT) - Popeye, 03.08.2002, 16:36
Das Wort zum Samstag ;-)
The Myth of Home Ownership
or
The Futility of Lawn Farming
Copyright William G. Merriman
It has been a source of amusement, as well as frustration, (even embarassment), to me that so many of my human fellows have little or no comprehension as to why they do what they do. The vast majority of humanity seems to blindly blunder through life neurotically performing rituals and imitating others with no conception as to the purposes for their actions. This bewilders me because I, as much of the animal kingdom, am inherently lazy and usually need a damn good reason before I get off my ass and do anything.
One of these unthinking rituals is the phenomenon I refer to as"suburban lawn farming." At the heart of this ritual is the more basic concept of"home ownership", or at least that's what realtors and bankers call it.
The dictionary defines"own" as:
1. a) To have or possess as property. b) To have control over.
2. Belonging completely to oneself, independent of outside help or control.
As is often the case, there is a vast discrepancy between the realization of this concept of ownership and the legal interpretation of ownership, but then lawyers and legislators never let incidentals like truth or justice muck up their grand schemes. Thus one is left to consider how much does a homeowner really"own" his home?
As long as the homeowner keeps up on his payments, he is allowed to possess the home, but the same is true of a renter. If payments are missed the home is"repossessed" by the holder of it's mortgage, so in effect the homeowner is really renting from his mortgage holder, whom is less motivated than a landlord to satisfy his tenant. Then in the rare case of those whom have paid off their homes, the government taxes the property and will similarly take possession of a home with delinquent taxes, so property is always in effect rented from the government of it's host country.
Beyond repossession through nonpayment of mortgage or taxes, all homes are further subject to outside control by hundreds of laws such as zoning, building codes, licenses, ordinances, and other forms of legal subjugation. Size, shape, color, building materials, purposes used for, signage, upkeep, placement of trash, pets, noise, number of tenants, whom you must sell to; you name it and there's a law controlling every aspect of"owned","private", property. In addition, if the government wants to widen a road, build a dam, declare a wildlife preserve, or increase the size of a parking lot, you're ordered to move out and compensated on their terms not yours, by the declaration of"Preeminent Domain".
Then after you've struggled a lifetime to"own" your home, when you try to pass it on to your progeny, the government is their again confiscating such an exorbitant inheritance tax from your heirs, that the property usually must be sold to pay it.
So in the real sense of completely possessing and controlling property,"owning" a home is a myth. In actuality to"own" a home is to rent it from bank and government while assuming all maintenance expenses, legal liability, and unpaid custodial responsibility for the property.
Many would argue renting is throwing money away whereas owning a home is an investment. Well let's examine the return on homeowner's investment. The typical home now costs approximately 100,000 dollars. Bought on a 30 year mortgage, by the time the principle and interest on the mortgage are paid off, that home has cost over half a million dollars, far more than a lifetime's cost to rent. Add to that taxes, garbage pick up fees, snow removal fees, lawn care expenses, cost of replacing appliances, and costs off maintaining the building; and you're way into the red compared with renting. A renter gets all maintenance, taxes, and appliances included, and any problem is a mere phone call's effort to fix.
Then if your employment is, or becomes, located far from your house add all the time and money of commuting. A job 20 miles from home costs 1 and 1/2 hours a day commuting, that's 488 days of your life wasted in traffic over 30 years. If you factor in only the 16 hours a day you're awake instead of all 24, you waste 731 waking hours worth of days of life driving back and forth, over 2 years! At a conservative 15 dollars a week for gas to commute, in 30 years that's $23,400 dollars burnt up in polluting gas; not to mention extra car repairs and replacement, due to the added wear and tear, and additional insurance costs. I rent within walking distance of my employer, and invest 6 minutes a day getting healthy exercise with no transportation costs. Add 2 hours a week either mowing grass or shoveling snow and you can throw away another 195 days worth of waking hours over 30 years.
Then if you need to move, as in a career change, or if your nice neighborhood is swallowed by"urban sprawl" (another environmental hazard of home ownership) and becomes a slum, you are saddled with the time and expense of selling the home, paying realtors, and often waiting years paying on two homes for the old one to sell. Often the property values in city neighborhoods diminish, and coupled with inflation, you're lucky to get what you paid for it, which is a small fraction of the mortgage payments you've made and is tied right back up in your new mortgage. When a renter needs to move he simply packs up and goes to his new apartment, in a nicer neighborhood, within walking distance of his employment. With investment opportunities like home ownership, who needs bankruptcy?
The concept of owning real estate originates from our instinctual desire to establish a territory. Territorialism is an instinct in most all living creatures, that stems from the need of an organism to control that portion of the environment from which it attains it's sustenance. In agricultural societies, aquiring and controlling a peice of land is a valid territorial concern, as these people's sustenance comes from that land, and to own it is important. But for 100 years ours has been an industrialized society and our sustenance is provided by our professions. Yet still the habit of"owning" a chunk of soil in the suburban sprawl persists, though in most cases the lot is such a small little square it affords no real privacy and couldn't grow enough food to support it's inhabitants. Even more ludicrous is that after working all week at their professions, to finance this archaic tradition, these homeowners spend their few leisure hours farming grass, a non edible plant!
Every Saturday the ritual harvest begins, mounting their miniature tractors they head into their 50 by 100 foot fields to harvest their useless crop. As I sit on my apartment balconey sipping coffee and reading, I watch these suburbanite homeowners sweat and labor blindly imitating their forefathers, serfs harvesting the lord's wheat. Riding round and round in circles, mesmerized by the vibration and fumes of their fossil feul propelled harvestors, they perpetuate their excercise in futility cutting, weeding, and trimming a plant that has no use except to grow back again next week. Like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the king sentenced by the gods to eternally roll a huge stone to the top of a hill only to have it roll back down to start over; such is the fate of those who do without thinking.
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