Have you ever sold your home and moved into an apartment ?

[NYCgrrl]

Yes, she kept a ledger of everything and that is averaged into that cost per month I mentioned. And she kept a running total. As I recall over 53 years she spent about $50,000 on roof replacements/water heater replacement/painting/new well pumps. Averages out to about $80 a month over 53 years. My dad was a bookkeeper and kept records of every penny they spent and she kept that up. When she passed away in 2013 I found all those ledgers, every payment from 1950 to 2012 when she got ill written in. The $1,850 they paid for their brand new 1957 Chevy 150. The 25 cent fine my dad paid for a parking ticket in 1953. The hospital bill for when I was born. My mom finally decided in 2000 that she no longer needed to keep EVERY canceled check back to 1950.. Took her months to shred them all.

DD has been house/condo hunting for nearly a year now. HOA fees here are way out of line with the services they provide. A realtor told her for a lot of property managers, HOA fees they collect for associations are a profit cash cow for them.

LOL to the cancelled checks! My mother gave up on a personal checking acct when ATMs first came into common usage in the '80's and one "ate" her money. Wild horses couldn't get her to open another account so now I'm throwing away decades of money order receipts as well as her original lease for the apartment rental in a building we lived in during the '60's that doesn't even exist anymore. Oh and so far I haven't found the papers that prove she owns this aparment. Sighhhhhhhhh.

I owned a property managing firm until a few years back so will say as objectively as possible...ehhhhhhhhh..realtors and property managers have different needs/objectives and like to talk trash about the other. I hire a real estate lawyer (and monitor them closely, LOL) when listening to the chattering of those two always backbiting groups.

 

[barkley]

we did it for a period of 6 months in between the sale of one home and the completion of construction on another. i didn't care for it. i didn't like dealing with repairs when the landlord didn't think something was of an emergent or pressing nature but it was directly negatively affecting our day to day lives. i also don't like sharing walls or my outdoor space.

OP, one thing to keep in mind with an apartment is annual rent increases. Depending on your local housing market, these increases may make the apartment unaffordable within several years. Ask any complex you are considering for historical rent increases going back 10 years. It can be quite shocking when your rent goes up several hundred dollars a month.

A rental apartment within 10 miles of our home is less expensive than for us to own a home.

my concern would also be with the 'known' of a mortgage (if the op still has one) vs. the ever increasing costs of renting.

a home can be just 10 minutes away but in a different tax area (i'm in a different one than less than 5 minutes from my home)-if there are higher levies/bonds then that gets passed on to the renters so i would look into the property taxes (current and new bonds/levies starting the next year) for any area i was considering moving to. if property taxes are a concern as a homeowner then make sure to review your assessors website to see if you currently/at a future date may qualify for a senior exemption (seniors of a certain income level in some areas qualify for exemption from some portions of the bill).
likewise-repairs and upkeep ultimately get passed on to renters in the form of increased rent. unless someone rents in an area that has rent control or at least caps on how much rents can increase at the end of leasing periods it can be a pretty significant shocker to a budget (10% per year is not uncommon where we live b/c there's no rent control).

the other factor is to look at how your other expenses may be impacted. i live on acreage so i don't pay for water/sewer-the apartment dwellers near us do-and it's a decent little chunk of change each month (and their complexes set the rate for garbage-no opting out of it, and it runs the individual renters more per month than it does us to get personal pickup). i would also speak to my insurance agent to find out if my auto coverage was going to change-i know ours did during the 6 months we lived at an apartment complex (higher risk w/no private garage).

 

[tvguy]

LOL to the cancelled checks! My mother gave up on a personal checking acct when ATMs first came into common usage in the '80's and one "ate" her money. Wild horses couldn't get her to open another account so now I'm throwing away decades of money order receipts as well as her original lease for the apartment rental in a building we lived in during the '60's that doesn't even exist anymore. Oh and so far I haven't found the papers that prove she owns this aparment. Sighhhhhhhhh.

I owned a property managing firm until a few years back so will say as objectively as possible...ehhhhhhhhh..realtors and property managers have different needs/objectives and like to talk trash about the other. I hire a real estate lawyer (and monitor them closely, LOL) when listening to the chattering of those two always backbiting groups.

My mom cut up her ATM card and told her bank she didn't want one after she accidentally booked a cruise and the debit card instead of the credit card. She had enough money in the checking account to cover it, but it just annoyed her. The Grocery Store was her bank. Buy groceries, write a check for whatever she wanted over the purchase. She used WALK to the bank and give them a check to pay her credit card bill even though she could have had the transfer done over the phone. Her excuse. The walk was good exercise and they had cookies out for customers. But, she was healthy enough to walk 5 miles a day until a month before her 89th birthday.

 

[Floridaman999]

I've sold a home and rented a house for a while but never an apartment. I don't think I could do the apartment thing anymore.

 

[tarheelmjfan]

We rented a condo years ago & saw how much their fees increased, after needing roof replacement in the complex. If we ever move out of our home, we'd move into another rental property. We wouldn't buy a condo based on personal experience. I wouldn't presume to know what is best for everyone.

 

[neverlandsky]

We sold a couple of years ago and we are renting a 3 bed apartment. There’s pros and cons. Yet we feel this is the best move for now and the pros outweigh the cons given DH’s job, me re-entering the workforce after 13 years, and the kids are now teens.

We don’t want buy into a hoa/co-op again. Our goal is to have a small cottage like single family residence with xeriscape.

 

[MaryLovesPoohBear]

I've never done it, but I helped my parents move from their house to their apartment.

They had a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house on just over an acre of land, with tons of land around them. That extra land couldn't be built on. They basically lived in the middle of nowhere.

They liked that they didn't have to worry about anything, no grass to cut, no maintenance to worry about.

But it was loud. They called the woman that lived upstairs, "Thumper."

They also couldn't recycle. Everything went into the dumpster. And Dad wasn't happy about that. He started to keep it out of the trash so he could take it our house and put it out with ours.

They were there for two years and they got used to it. But there seemed to be a bit of a learning curve.

 

[smiths02]

Have you talked to an estate planner about this as well? Long-term care insurance purchased?
Doesn't Medicare look differently at a house as an asset versus cash/stocks?