I’m just gonna say that where I live, it’s a criminal offense to pour oil down the drain.
You’re not just affecting your landlord. You’re affecting your entire neighbourhood.
Add enough lye and it’s non longer oil. Pouring soap down the drain isn’t illegal, is it?
I didn’t say pouring soap down is illegal, did I?
Got 'em.
Depends if it’s an OSSF system or municipal wastewater.
If it’s septic, it just fucks the landlord.
That effects everyone downstream. If you must dispose of grease without a grease trap but you don’t want to deal with like a trash bag situation: pour it into a disposable container and throw it in the trash.
Or just pour it on the lawn somewhere. Don’t keep using the same spot.
I wouldn’t recommend pouring it on a lawn unless you’re handling very small amounts of near room temp grease or you know you have a lawn that has properties good for filtration. Even then I’d avoid it because dogs or animals might try to tear up the lawn.
If you have a fenced compost pile with proper cover material it shouldn’t be a problem as long as you have enough cover material (such as straw or wood chips) to absorb the grease.
There’s no plausible deniability with oil down the drain. The landlord would just bill you for the damage.
Your primary residence is a poor investment for several reasons, but the biggest concern is that the investment is not properly diversified.
All that money behind a single home, in a single location, subject to the local regulations, neighbors, climate conditions etc. carries significant idiosyncratic risk that is not compensated for by a corresponding risk premium. You are not paid for taking on avoidable and unnecessary risks, like betting on just one home, when institutional investors can own thousands and diversify away those investment-specific risks. You accept a much higher variance in outcomes for no additional expected value on your investment returns.
That’s on top of the reality that it costs money to own a home, there is significant upkeep and maintenance which can occur unexpectedly, and most home purchases require a mortgage which charges you interest which is typically paid in preference to putting money towards the principal. Landlords can get lower rates for upkeep than an individual can because of their significant bargaining power, such as through negotiation of support contracts.
By all means, buy a home, but don’t buy it because it’s a good investment. Disclaimer: I am a tool, and this is not financial advice.
I will never rent and buy instead just on principle. I don’t want the entirety of the fucking housing market do be owned by a single fuckface that has no idea what paying ridiculous rent prices while working minimum wage feels like, all to be renovicted one day because they have to increase your price SOMEHOW otherwise oh golly their investment returns.
A house should never have been a fucking investment instrument. EVER.
Buying is still miles better than being constantly abused by a landlord.
I mean… people treat badly everything that is theirs only for a time. Renters and their flats, leasers and their cars, politicians and their countries, borrowers and the tools, leaseholders and the fields…
The oil doesn’t necessarily just make a problem for your landlord. Fat/oil can clog sewers way down the line, causing problems for entire neighborhoods over time and requiring costly maintenance, which increases the costs of sewer service for everyone
So it will affect multiple landlords? 😈
/s
that’s what my tax dollars pay for, damnit!
I can’t speak for every municipality, but where I live sewer service is definitely a portion of our water bill and is (at least mostly) not tax-funded
And even if it creates a problem for your landlord only, it is you, who is going to pay for it, anyway. They will not just eat the loss - why would they? - they will increase the rent even more, than they would otherwise, to cover the costs.
The whole idea of willingly causing damage somewhere and somehow not being held accountable for it because it’s not your property is wild.
If you have your landlord send a plumber to declog a drain clogged by a bunch of grease or wet wipes or some other garbage that shouldn’t go down the drain there’s no way you won’t get the bill for that where I live.
There’s renters protection but not against your own acts of misuse.
It also means that if the home is ever put back onto the market and purchased by a family instead of a landlord, that person will end up dealing with the issue years down the line. It’s just overall kind of an edgy, poorly thought out idea.
“I’m not paying for that. I didn’t put any wipes or grease down the drain. The last tenant must have done that. If you thing you can prove it was me, you can take me to court.”
They can’t charge you money unless you agree to it. Drains are always the responsibility of the owner. Ask the city of you don’t believe me.
Wow, you are very wrong. The landlord simply does a pipe check and clean out after changing tenants, this proves it was you… You know… Legally. That is pretty standard practice. After that, the plumber assesses the cause of the clog. Based on the assessment, misuse can be determined. You have a right to your option, but legal proceedings are independent of your opinion.
But good luck with that approach, and cheers if it has worked so far.
Taking people to court over a plumbing bill is not a thing here. And even if you make a point of not paying it they’ll just take it out of your deposit and then it’s you that’ll have to fight them over those 200 bucks or so. Who has time for that crap.
Also the practicality of it. Blaming previous tennants might fly if you’ve just started living there, but there’s no way that is a reasonable defense after two years.
it is you, who is going to pay for it, anyway.
Common misconception. If they could raise prices more over time, they already would. Costs are irrelevant.
Stop treating your home like an investment. Can only end badly
If only this were true we probably wouldn’t have a housing supply crisis.
I mean, individually it’s just a poor investment choice. But individuals trying to live in their investment properties isn’t really the problem.
The modern housing supply crisis is definitely egged on by a handful of mega-funds that can snap up houses en mass at prices which are already inflated. I’m living next to an aspiring AirBnB landlord’s newest acquisition as I speak. Very unlikely she’s coming out ahead after a year of renting relative to just holding NVIDIA or Tesla. She’s definitely not getting any extra houses under her belt at this rate.
But I might suggest that the “supply crisis” is much more an “unemployment crisis”, as the gross supply of housing isn’t in shortage. It’s the location of the housing, relative to the centers of new commerce.
Case in point, Elon Musk is dumping billions of dollars into Bastrop, to rapidly develop an area that’s been overgrazed farmland for centuries. Then, when neighborhoods in Cincinnati and Detroit and even San Antonio have a relative glut of saleable real estate. The… ethnic composition of Bastrop has provided a level of appeal. But so has the pliability of the local government, which has historically been run by libertarian dipshits who spend all their time complaining about the neighboring Austin, TX college kids and granola crunching hippies while insisting deregulation and tax cuts are the only viable pathways to growth.
Now Musk has delivered on the growth, but he’s cut out all the locals from its benefit. He’s standing up his own little Network State of employee-exclusive bars, storefronts, and housing stocks, while driving long-time residents out with the sudden flood of noise and traffic.
Big investors and employers are engaged in all sorts of regulatory arbitrage and capital flight, often for very shortsighted ego-stroking gains, in order to secure an ideological end goal rather than a profitable business model. The end result is massive shiny new suburban development sometimes directly neighboring areas blighted by economic neglect. People complaining about skyrocketing housing costs who live spitting distance from some of the cheapest real estate available, entirely because of modern day redlining and private segregation.
My landlord must be in shambles
How so?
What @gaiussabinus said.
But the math of it is two-fold. Firstly - unless you’re deeply in the know - you’re always going to do better putting money into an ETF than real estate. Especially true since COVID, when the market’s been doing 20-30% annually. Secondly - the real financial benefit of home ownership is the locked-in mortgage rate, with some knock-on benefits when you make capital improvements that pay off against utilities or transportation costs long term.
The cost of flipping a home is enormous - easily 3-6% of the house’s sell-value - so the people who benefit the most from turnover tend to be the real estate agents not the homeowners. And the risk that you’ve bought into a flat or deflating housing market far outweighs the anticipated returns from short term housing flips (unless, again, you’re already a real estate agent who can eat the administrative cost of title transfers).
As a general rule, you want to buy a house with a mortgage note you can afford, keep it in good repair to minimize utilities, and then simply enjoy the fact that you don’t have a landlord threatening to raise your rents every year. Minimizing future outlays, not speculating on the future value, makes owning a home an attractive financial decision.
Loses value, maintenance, tax burden, regulatory over sight. It is a liability and always pencil it in as a liability. Only the land holds value. If you don’t live in it, its not worth it.
inflating prices for one
I mean, if I put hundreds of thousands into my home over the course of 20+ years I expect the value of my home to be more than what I bought it for.
The problem is when people just buy homes, barely upgrade any of it, and expect to double what they paid for it.
The homestead we have now u bought for $225,000 about 5 years ago. We just built a new deck extension on it. I should expect to get more than what I paid for since we have put money into this home. It’s not worth what it was 5 years ago as it’s since been updated both inside and out over those five years.
bought mine for $150k around the same time period, and added a carport to it the second year that increased the value to $189k. each year since it has increased a bit to be today worth $220k which is in line with values of other properties in this area. not a huge amount, true, but i am not here for the roi. this is my home that i will be dying in one day
Yup. Someone could offer us $1 million for our property and we’d turn it down.
We’re never leaving where we are. 14 acres on a rural dirt road and essentially one neighbour
The benefit of renting is that when shit breaks, maintenance fixes it so that you don’t have to muddle your way through trying to replace the oven or some shit. Also you don’t have to do yard work. A good landlord is one who understand that his job is to provide housing and maintain the property, and not sit on his ass collecting passive income/hoarding wealth.
You can also up stakes and leave if something goes horribly wrong, and not repeatedly rebuild your house because of natural disasters or be stuck living next to the worst neighbor in history because you still owe $200k on the dirt you’re anchored to.
This is unfortunately only true when a landlord fixes things beyond the absolute bare minimum (massive globs of caulk on caulk everywhere is my experience).
A good landlord is one who understand that his job is to provide housing and maintain the property, and not sit on his ass collecting passive income/hoarding wealth.
I will go ahead and plug Georgism here.
There is no such thing as a good landlord. There is no benefit of renting in capitalism. It is strictly exploitative. Go away with your bourgeois drivel
I like our landlord.
He lets me into his pool, I offer my IT skills for their upkeep.
He keeps the rent relatively low.
Everyone is more or less happy.So: You are wrong.
Edit: For the downvoter. Stay mad at your shitty landlord. But not everyone is a horrible landowner and human.
You could have the same relationship with that person, with a similar mortgage payment, while building equity.
I could.
If I had said equity.
But life is unfair and I don’t have it. And until then, I can do my share of repayment he offers me by free entry to the pool.
More benefits of renting
Pissing in the sink! Classic move
It’s better to piss in the sink than to sink in the piss
These are all benefits of owning though. Youre gonna pay for damages when renting.
I got an email like two weeks ago that there had been an increase on car break-ins recently
Then when it came time to re-sign they decided to increase rent
Nothing from stopping everyone from coming together to leave the property in mass if they increase rent.
except having to find a new place to move all your stuff to.
I’m definitely biased, I keep only about what I can move in my truck. Also around here it’s almost trivial to furnish a two bedroom place with used and free stuff for like $300 to $500.
Moving is incredibly expensive and unrealistic for most people in the US unfortunately.
It costs a lot more to move into a cheaper place than it does to absorb the increase.
I guess because of the choices I’ve made that’s not really been the case personally. Usually I get my deposits back in full or nearly in full. I’ve never hired movers or rented a truck so far. I guess if I needed I would get a trailer and sell it when I’m done with it. As for labor, there’s always cheap labor around. Two dudes who want $50 each is probably enough if I couldn’t physically move my stuff but irl I would probably have my family help.
You sound very young and without much baggage to move around. You are not the average American family then.
I’ve known families who’ve been more mobile than myself, but you’re right, definitely not average. I used to have a lot more stuff but it gets heavy on the mind.
I just moved. it was hella expensive.
security deposit + first + last month: ~5k
movers: ~850 (and don’t tell me movers are optional - my wife is disabled and I have a lot of chronic pain).
uhaul rental + moving supplies: ~300
so total that’s over 6 thousand dollars. that’s the same amount as if they increased the old rent by 500$ and we lived there another year.
That’s a lot. I just break down my stuff and pack in my truck. Last time I moved in the states it was a security deposit and first months rent so like $1800 (or $500 more than I was going to pay anyways in rent) and I guess gas. If needed I would buy and sell a trailer for like $400 so it would work out to $0 after being sold. My furniture is all very light and breaks down or otherwise can be easily moved by my little metal dolly and held with my straps. If I needed labor I could probably find two guys for $50 each for like those few hours, lunch included of course. It’s really not much stuff.
you have no idea what depreciation is I guess. and idk where you’re finding an apartment for 900$ a month that doesn’t want first + last + security deposit.
is it possible that our situations are different? that not everyone has the same needs, is in the same location, or has your braindead math? or perhaps things have changed since you last moved?
(in case it’s not obvious, that last paragraph is dripping with sarcasm. youre an idiot spreading misinformation at best. kindly go fuck yourself and enjoy the rest of your day)
Don’t forget “flushable” wipes
Everything is flushable as long as it’s small enough to fit in the hole
Very very bad for the water cleaning system (depurator?)
If the housing market goes into the shitter…
… the renter pays less rent.
… the home “owner” still has to pay the same mortgage, and will continue to pay so they can eventually own the house (actually own it) worth a fraction of what they paid for it.
Unless you have cash on-hand to buy a house, you have to get a mortgage. So it’s actually the bank that owns the house, they just let you live there while you pay back a large debt.
The reason why houses are so expensive is because they are considered investments, not just places to live. That creates a politcal incentive to keep housing prices high because a lot of people will lose that “equity” if the price of housing decreased. Most of the benefits listed under home “ownership” centers around a house being an investment.
The boomers aren’t getting any younger, as more of them die, more houses go onto the market while the incentive for maintaining that equity for people that already own a house decreases. That “stability” thing listed as a benefit of “owning” a house may not hold true forever.
If the housing market goes into the shitter…
… the renter pays less rent.
In nearly 30 years of renting, the rent has never gone down, regardless of what the market is doing.
Depends on location. I had a rent drop in Knoxville once. Excess units in a bad local economy will do it.
Now the key question is did it drop below the price the owner would have been paying? Assuming the owner had it for at least 3 or 4 years, the rate drop was probably still not below their loan payments based on the purchase price.
If the housing market goes into the shitter…
The owner probably still comes out ahead, no matter what.
Think of the 2008 housing crash. Must have sucked to be paying a fixed mortgage when the market went down. Except the person bought the house in 2004 and was paying the same mortgage they were then, and that’s still less than typical rent after a crash calmed things down a bit.
You don’t pay the mortgage of the house as it would sell right now, you pay the mortgage based on the purchase price that over years almost certainly trends lower. So as the landlord prices according to current market, the owner costs are largely based on the prices from years ago (except property taxes and insurance).
That’s of course assuming you have a mortgage at all, and ignoring the fact that the mortgage goes away entirely at some point.
One thing I will say where renting wins hands down is if you are going to only be there a couple of years. You probably would have needed the mortgage, the property value wouldn’t have increased by that much, and the loan origination fees, interest, and various other closing costs means you likely would lose money selling it that soon. The renter may be no worse off financially, but they are no better off then either. Except they can just leave and not worry about finding a replacement.
The boomers aren’t getting any younger, as more of them die, more houses go onto the market
Problem being that many of those houses suck. They are likely to be where there’s no housing shortage already, because no one is interested in living there. They tend to be old, and not charmingly over a hundred years old but still standing; like 50 years old with questions of asbestos and polybutylene; with dubious insulation at its best and likely decayed a bit. Terribly in need of maintenance with busted HVAC, rodent destroyed ductwork, dangerous wiring, and moldy crawlspace. Cracked foundations and sagging structures suggesting the wrong storm could just ruin it. They also tend to be relatively tiny compared to houses built in the last couple of decades. I had a boomer relative die, and what did their children manage to get for the house, after months and months on the market? $60k. We were shocked but that was actually a bit higher than houses in their area went for.
So it’s actually the bank that owns the house, they just let you live there while you pay back a large debt.
Ackshually you own the house, the bank just has the right to take it if you don’t keep up payments.
Making large principle payments significantly reduces the paid interest.
Also for the average price of a home and the average interest rate monthly payments are cheaper than average rent.
I will say that at least right now in my area, renting is actually a bit lower than the expected mortgage payment for comparable housing. However, that advantage would shift after 2-3 years as rent goes up but the mortgage would have stayed the same.
Having an interest rate significantly lower than high yield saving account returns significantly reduces my interest in making any extra payments.
Congratulations, though a lot of folks are certainly not in that boat.
And the principle and interest can’t change (unless you did something like an ARM). Escrow and insurance might go up, but that won’t remotely pace inflation.
Making small principal payments significantly reduces paid interest, nevermind large.
But on the other hand, if market does not go to shit, the rent increases, while your mortgage stays the same, on as asset that increases in value.
Houses may be considered an investment, but at the same time they are a place to live.
And when boomers die, their house gets inherited by a family member, not just going to a ‘pool of houses’. I think the inheritor either moves in, or sells because they already have a house
Exactly. I roll my eyes at the idiot home owners who are happy when real estate prices are going up. If the only real estate you own is the one your are living in, a price increase has zero benefits for you. You can sell it for a higher price, but unless you want to live on the streets, that means you buy another, which has also gone up in price. Congrats, I guess.
The only people benefiting are real estate investors, which 99% of people are not.
It mostly just means higher property tax.
Now there are opportunities to get better interest rates by taking a loan out on your house, but that’s depressing. It is, however, a common thing for older people who can’t live on their retirement benefits otherwise.
Jokes aside. What do you do with the oil?
Throw it in the trash.
People talk about recycling and that makes a difference for restaurants, but at home quantities? Just put it in the trash.
Store it in the balls.
Apply directly to the forehead.
Then where do you store pee ?
Your mom
Dump it in a 5l canister that I call my ‘waste oil’ canister. When its full, I take it to the recycling plant whenever I’m going there anyway.
Alternatively, make your own soap.
Also use paper towels to wipe grease an oil.
For anything water-based, using a cellulose rag is almost always better (as in cheaper and better for the environment). For grease and oil, it is worth it to mop it up with paper and throw it in the trash.
Put it on a bottle, and when the bottle is full take it to the used oil recycling bin in my neighborhood.
And if you don’t have used oil recycling, the next best thing is just throwing it in the trash
You should collect it and dispose it at the waste management facility of your city
Put in a plastic bottle and throw that away when it’s full. Alternatively there is a powder you can buy to harden the fat so you can chuck it in the trash.
Pour it in my compost with all my non-meat food leftovers.
If you’ve ever had to buy and sell a house, it’s a real pain in the ass. If you’re not really sure about a city yet, renting for a year makes more sense than buying, especially if you’re sure you want to stay longer than a hotel would make sense
Ummm that’s the only situation I can think of where it’s not just the picture on the right
Also if you have no intention of staying in the city at all. If I take a 12 week contract it would be ridiculous to stay in a hotel for all 3 months.
Maybe depends on the contact. I’ve seen travel contracts for healthcare where they’ll sometimes put you in a hotel and cover the cost.
they’ll also cover a rental and I can have a living room and a washer and depending on the type of stipend pocket the rest.
