One year of home ownership. um, yay.

I have been rent-less for about one year now. While anyone that even remotely knows me has probably heard all about the different interesting bits of the house and all the work that has gone into it thus far, I guess I should say, get used to it, because this is a seemingly neverending project. I look back on the last year and see everything that has been done for the house (months of painting, new light fixtures, new front door, new water heater, regrading, planting stuff, day to day maintenance) and think: is it really worth it? There's so much more to do: tearing out the upstairs bathroom shortly, hardwood floors on the main level hopefully by the end of the year... I do think I have over-reached myself on this one. It's just way too much for one person to deal with, especially with work and on call and grad school happening at the same time.

No, the house won't fall down if I leave it alone for a year or two, but the whole reason I did this was to have an investment as well as a place to live. Any of the real cities that are on the list of 'next places I want to live' are all seriously expensive, and for someone starting from $0 (or negative numbers counting student loan debt, which has since been paid off), it seems like the only way to get there is to leverage any income toward the current house to both pay down the mortgage and prepare for resale in 2-3 more years, and contribute lots of labor to the process as well. Between double paying the mortgage (one normal bill each month, and the equivalent amount to principal) and contributing some of the extra to house projects I hope to pay off the mortgage and be able to sell for $250k in a couple years, which would be a respectable down payment on a place, though it still may not be enough for Vancouver, DC or New York - it seems you have to have generous wealthy relatives (none here) or the lucky lottery numbers to buy places in those cities.

Thinking economically - the return on the investment won't be that great, the house is more of a giant piggy bank that I happen to live in - even considering that I got a decent deal on the house originally and plan to pay off the mortgage way ahead of time - the actual value of what I put into it will probably earn less than a normal index fund investment account over the same period, but it does provide shelter in the mean time, which an index fund won't do. Well, the house will provide shelter as long as I replace the unsealed double pane window on the top story.

Where I'm going with this - is regardless of what you hear on HGTV or 'oh this one guy I know bought a place in an up and coming neighborhood, fixed it up and doubled his money in one year' - in the real world houses are just a lot of work.