Yeah, they don’t really work. There are citronella versions as well that also don’t work. The only answer is training, training, and proper environment.
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The problem with all of it is how to frame our attachments to needs of the present vs. needs of the future.
When you rent, you don’t get any of that equity back, ever. When you buy, you might.
But when you buy, you go in for a long haul, usually 30 years to pay that place off. This can lead to all kinds of thoughts about staying there so the kids can go through high school there, growing old there, retiring there, dying there, etc. And then, of course, there is no equity in that.
And then, to sell a place requires a massive re-investment of time and capital to “fix the place up” to meet the demands of the real estate market.
But if you buy less house than you need, or in a cheap area, you might not like what transpires over the time you live there as the neighborhood might grow up around you or degrade into a poor neighborhood.
If you buy more house than you need, your ass is over a barrel and you have to do all kinds of shenanigans to maintain being employed so that you can keep out of foreclosure.
It’s so hard to know what to do, and the entire equation is different for each person or couple.
For me personally, I feel that buying is superior. We just bought a house in a middle-upper-middle neighborhood, paying about $100k more than surrounding areas for the same 3000s/f type of dwelling and small patch of land in Suburbia, USA. And if you’ve been reading other threads, you’re aware that I spent most of my life in the woods, cutting trees and having a perfectly normal day when Chickadees land on my shoulder and say hi, and I know all the deer by their gait, personal features and family structures.
So what made me switch to being suburbanite? Believe me, I thought long and hard about this.
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Living so far out in the country meant that nobody visited. It was an act of Congress to get anybody to come over, since I was so far out a long, confusing dirt road.
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I wanted an upgrade to the house itself, and I did not want to sink hundreds of thousands into my old house. I did what I could on my own, because I’m handy. But I also work and have 3 kids, so I don’t have endless time to do construction. I have weekends and the occasional evening and vacation time. That’s not enough to renovate everything on my own. So, I spent many years wanting a nice kitchen, nicer bathrooms, etc., and strove for that when we decided to buy a house in the burbs.
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I wanted a swimming pool. I was willing to buy a house without a swimming pool, but after looking at houses with pools, seeing some crappy pools, some nice ones, I realized how much I wanted a pool. I knew I would be doing all the maintenance, and it’s been a few months and the maintenance is no big deal. The worst part of it is cleaning the big filters but that’s no big deal. I love having a personal relaxation space, and it’s salt water, too.
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Where I used to live, my wife commuted over an hour each way to work. She had no alternatives for employment, so it was what it was. I really wanted to relieve her of that burden and now she drives all of 7 minutes to get to work.
Could we have rented here instead of buying? Sure. There are houses for rent/lease scattered all around us. But it is a decent neighborhood and in a few years if we want to upgrade again, or move towns or anything we want to do, our house is finished well enough that it would sell in a jiffy and we will probably make money.
All houses have their problems, though. For example, our air conditioners are the original 20-year old models and our roof is near the end of its life. That’s tens of thousands we are on the hook for pretty darn soon and there’s stress about needing to save up to cover those expenses and possibly also have to buy a car because one of our two cars is getting long in the tooth. Oh well, them’s the brakes. We are doing our best to be frugal. One thing we do not have to worry about is renovations! The house is finished inside and we have all our furniture and stuff of life.
So, I don’t look down on people for renting or buying: each sitch is different and I’m sure each and every one of you does this same kind of personal inventory when thinking about your housing strategy.
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Yeah - people look down on suburbanites, but it’s not as though there’s good alternatives most times. Additionally, renting is just hard to get away from in some cases and like you say - when you buy you might get your equity back, or you might end up in a shitty situation.
My parents bought a house when I was growing up that seemed great, until the housing market fell out from under them and they ended up owing an additional 100k on top of their equity - with my mom owning her own business (not rich, indepdent insurance sales) this basically meant they had no flexibility and a ton of debt. So they went bankrupt.
My wife and I rent right now, and not having to care about things like roof repairs or heating unit maintenance, or any of that is incredibly liberating, considering how stressful our jobs are right now. I’d love to own so I had more control and emotional investment in the place, but nothing nearby is even remotely reasonable.
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Just my experience with these devices:
Claim 1: Humans don’t hear it!
Truth: Yes, you do. It’s that little whine you hear like an old TV.
Claim 2: Drives (ad-targeted animal here) crazy!
Truth: Maybe if it were loud enough for them to notice.
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That was the 15625 Hz of horizontal frequency (for PAL; for NTSC it is 15734 Hz, close enough). I’d say the ultrasonic generators are a bit higher. Some, especially younger, can hear it.
Maybe needs to be a focused beam then. Thought: a phased array of speakers to send an ultrasonic beam in the direction the barking comes from. Could work for open areas without many reflections.
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This might be a fruitful approach, but in my experience these are not high tech…they’re Chinese electronics bin shovelware with a piezo buzzer at the heart of it. I bet your first try would be closer to really working than their finished product.
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Take a look at this collapsing house going for $700k, for each side of the duplex.
$700k gets you a house that you can’t really live in, and unless you buy the other half, you can’t even really tear it down and replace the foundation.
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I know that house, it’s not too far from me! A propos of the initial idea of the $300 house, I did find this listing for Toronto which sold for $410 in the East End (ie not downtown)
In case it’s unclear, it’s a small lot with nothing on it.
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Stoke-on-Trent, to where central London councils are shipping out their homeless families, has 3 and 4 bedroom houses at around $300K. No that you’ll get that if you’re homeless. Instead, it would be a rough terraced house in the rough part of the six towns.
Yeah, but Stoke-on-Trent has houses for £1 (okay, not really)
Guess I’ll just rent forever. Oh, wait…
How much for sharing a dumpster with a coyote in the Don valley?
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I was just looking at a house on Craven road for $459k!! On Craven Road!! Thats bonkers!!!
For the non-GTA peeps, Craven Road is an alley, it has houses on it sure, but its an alley, and because its an alley it has lots of overhead wires so the houses are short, and because its an alley, the lots are not deep. Its an ALLEY and houses are nigh on half a million dollars!!! Bonkers! (You used to be able to get a house on Craven for under $200k. And then everyone decided the east end was where they wanted to raise their kids and Starbucks moved in, and property values skyrocketed.)
We managed to buy in Leslieville 6 years ago. Our house has doubled in value. We wouldn’t be able to afford a house in our area now, not by a long shot.
I did an MLS search for 300k and the closest ones were Oshawa? So… I guess move to the 'Shwa?
That would be a reasonable assumption for someone not familiar with the madness that is London real estate. It is so crazy that it makes New York city seem reasonable. I would imagine the only reason they show a garage is because they literally could not find a $300k house for sale anywhere in London. In fact, they would struggle to find a studio or one bedroom flat in all of central London and most of the closer suburban areas
Ensenada, Mexico. 1000 sqft 2 bedrooms, worth about 45K when I bought it.
Relatively upscale if you ask my neighbors. Its a crazy world we live in.
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Your house has doubled in PRICE. Whether that equates to better value is a different discussion.
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I’m not talking intrinsic value, just property values. 
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Anyone I’ve ever heard for taxing property value increase as capital gains only wants to do so at time of sale. The proposals I’ve seen even account for deducting costs of improvements and are quite reasonable.
are there people for arbitrarily collecting money from people while they are still living there? i’d agree that doesn’t make sense, but I’ve never heard that.
Right now there is a capital gains loophole for buying and selling property which is what I believe people want to close.
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Yeah, I was (half) joking. I’m always bemused by claims that a the “value” of property has increased, when all that has happened is that prices have inflated. The value of a property increases due to things like connection to transit alternatives, the shutting down of the crack-house next door, renovations, etc. You know things that make the property a better place to live, rather than a simple supply/demand-driven price increase. I know we tend to equate value and price in everyday language, but they are often far from the same thing.
(For laughs, the next time jeweller gives you a “valuation” for something you’ve just purchased, try to turn that into a price!)
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Back in the 1980’s Duluth, MN sold giant Victorian houses for $1. You had to fix it up within a certain time and couldn’t sell for x years. My art teacher got one.
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