Should I Be Renting?

Father Miser spent the entire last weekend cutting the grass, trimming it, cleaning up on vegetable patch, demolishing our old deck, transporting the deck to be disposed, cleaning up the rotted remnants, painting door frames, etc.  We hardly saw him except for meals.  

After this weekend of hard work, he had to go away on business in Vancouver.  There, he spent an extra day to catch up with an old friend.  This friend, and his family live in a rented townhouse (in VanCity).  The house was really nice, and the rental value was much lower than the associated mortgage payments, condo fees and property taxes that would have come with an owned house.  To make matters better, the friend’s furnace had crapped out, and the property manager dispatched a technician to repair the furnace, which required a new thermostat.  The thermostat was replaced, although it was not programmable, and the tenants pay for heat.  The best part of all this was the relaxed atmosphere.  All the friend’s time was spent with his family – no maintenance, no trips to Home Depot or Rona.  There was no grass cutting because it’s covered in the rent (which covers the condo fees). 

Are we chumps for owning a house?

MM