A property mainly does one thing: immobilize. At the end of the day, a property is always a ball and chain and binds you on various levels.
That sounds so negative?
On the one hand, you become significantly less mobile: Yippee - found a dream job with 10k more annual salary. Oh, but it’s 200 km away with no home office. Oops - just packing up and moving is difficult.
Difficult yes, impossible no. We did that recently, so I can vouch for it. You can sell properties again. Of course, it’s not convenient, but you can’t live in [Willnicht-Straße].
On the other hand, a property binds you to a chunk of money every month anew.
A rental apartment does that too, namely in the amount of the rent.
Another aspect is that a property constantly demands time. Whether it’s filling out the new property tax declaration, gardening, small repairs and renovation work, scheduling appointments with craftsmen. And honestly: something always breaks and you have to take care of it.
One’s pain is another’s pleasure, I guess. I have to admit honestly that in two years of homeownership, I have done more (voluntarily!) garden work than in 10 years living in a rental house. Every plant and seed there would have been “for the landlord.” In my own home, I really enjoyed gardening and for the first time started to like it: maybe it was because of my increasing age, maybe also because I felt for the first time that it was my own choice to do it.
I don’t quite understand the small repair work thing. Most of these small things are done because the result gives joy, right? I actually like doing that. Having your own house as a “permanent project” is a plus for me that strengthens my commitment to the investment. Scheduling appointments with craftsmen never took a significant place in my life. I haven’t spent 5% of my life on the phone because I owned a property. That really doesn’t make sense to me.
Next generation - what? I honestly can’t imagine my child as an adult ever wanting to take over our apartment when we (at the latest possible moment) are dead.
My sister wanted that. And why only after you’re dead? There is also the scenario that a parent dies unexpectedly earlier. My sister gladly took over the parental home. My mum got an apartment with a separate entrance. That way everyone was together; my sister always had someone to look after the kids at home, my mum saw her grandchild growing up and wasn’t always alone. You can’t always project your own views onto others. Many children want something like that.
With the current life expectancy of my wife and me, she would be about 55 years old at that time. The only thing she would still be interested in the place is the sale proceeds.
I would be happy to leave such sale proceeds to my children. And even if they only use it to regularly make special repayments on their own property at that time and be debt-free earlier. Then I would know that my offspring might be out of their mortgage by 50 and still have a few nice years with lots of holidays. There’s nothing bad about building capital for the next generation.
Next generation – again, what? Who says in our networked and globalized world children will even stay anywhere near their own place of residence? My wife lives 400 km away from her parents and her sister lived in England for the last five years and has only been back in Germany for a few weeks. Interest of both ever moving back into the parental home = 0.0. So why a house for the next generation?
As I said before - a) capital building, everyone can use money. And b) you never know in advance if the child might want to take over the house after all.
I find the very idea of living in the same property until death totally absurd.
You don’t have to.
First you live in it with your spouse and children and later just two of you or alone in a completely oversized living space, whose ongoing maintenance costs are significantly higher than those of an apartment, whose outdoor area maintenance does not overwhelm you because it is outsourced and therefore not becoming derelict. But hey: a house is after all a feeling of life and quality of living...
Or you sell it in old age and move into one of the then massively available retirement villages modeled after AUS/NZ. :cool:
Or you are really close with your children and you turn it into a multi-generation house.
Or you sell it and build a small bungalow from the proceeds.
Or you sell it, rent again somewhere in old age, and blow the proceeds for your own pleasure.
Or, or, or.