When I first moved to Minneapolis back in 2007, I was fresh out of college and definitely not ready to own a home. So I found a cute little apartment in St. Paul just south of I-94 between the Lexington and Dale exits. The rent was $800.00 per month split two ways between myself and my roommate. The two bedroom, one bath, fully updated unit we were renting honestly seemed too good to be true for the price. So much so, that 6 months after moving in we received a notice that the building was in foreclosure and we had 30 days to move out. And there it began…the housing crash of ’07-’08.

Thankfully as a renter, the repercussions that most homeowners faced during that time minimally had an effect on me. Sure I got a pay-cut at work and I was forced to move out of my apartment on short notice, but I still had my job and supportive parents that helped me pay my rent for a few months. Years later I watched The Big Short with Steve Carell, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling, which brought so much more clarity to why the economy and housing market took such a big dip. Highly recommend seeing that movie if you haven’t.

Over the years after moving out of that place, I hopped from rental to rental. I lived in Uptown, St. Paul, Longfellow, Downtown Minneapolis and Northeast (where I currently live). My habits as a tenant during the first 6 years of living in the Twin Cities showed that I was destined to become a homeowner. Time and time again I’d leave apartments in better shape than before I moved in. I did yard work, planted gardens, etc. In one instance I actually styled and staged my apartment and sent my landlord photos so that she could advertise it on craigslist before I moved out. LOL

Why Buy?

A lot of people consider renting more desirable than owning, for plenty of different reasons. Millennials want flexibility and freedom to move on a moment’s notice, and those who were underwater and are finally recovered from the crash may still feel weary, as a couple of examples. I think it’s fair to say that homeownership may not be for everyone, and living outside your means is never a wise thing to do. But as someone who’s rented for 6 years and owned a home for 4, I’d like to explain why I think owning a home has more advantages than renting.

1. Tax benefits: This is two fold – you can deduct your property taxes as well as your mortgage interest. Then, if you ever decide to sell your home and you’ve occupied it for two of the last five years than the gain is tax free. (Assuming the return is less than 250k (for singles) and 500k (for married couples filing jointly).
2. It will pay off: Not only are you making a dent in your mortgage every month (kind of like a little savings account) but you’re also building equity. With rates as low as they’ve been, it’s a great time to get locked into a 30 year fixed mortgage that acts as a savings account. And on top of it all, your mortgage can’t increase over time like rent can.
3. Freedom: Renting doesn’t give you the creative freedom owning a home does. If you’re a renter and you decide to paint your room and hang a few pictures on the wall, you could be forfeiting part of your security deposit. There’s a good chance too that your landlord won’t upkeep the property to the same standards you have.
4. Second income stream: Lastly, homeownership gives you the opportunity to use your home to make money. Maybe you want to rent out your home for the Super Bowl or do Airbnb in your basement. These are all viable options that renters can’t take advantage of.
5. Building community: Feeling invested in the neighborhood is more typical for homeowners because they tend to stay put in their home for longer periods of time than renters.

So there you have it. Those are my top 5 reasons. I’d like to add that I’ve taken advantage of all 5 of those points. I bought it at a low period in the market and it was a foreclosure, so the improvements that have been made will certainly pay off in the long run. I’m currently running an Airbnb in the half story of my home bringing in an extra $800-900 a month. I also have the BEST neighbors and absolutely love my neighborhood.

If you’re a renter and have a different opinion on owning a home please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

We last left you (hopefully) in suspense of what happens next in our kitchen! But man what a crazy busy summer we’ve had (hence the 6 month fall-out on the blog). Between house projects, visiting friends and family in Iowa, selling baked goods at the NE farmer’s market and both acquiring new jobs, we just couldn’t find time to make our blog a priority.

But we’re BACK!!! And I really want to kick things off right where we left last time.

Kitchen work in progress part two!

After we got that wall down, we decided we needed to do something with the back doorway trim. With layers and layers of paint we had two options. 1. Take it down and start over, or 2. strip it. At this point in the project, we were a little limited by the amount of tools we had on hand. Plus, we figured because the house was old and had settled it’d be easier to just strip the paint and work with what we had.  So we opted for stripping it.

Stripping paint is overrated. Seriously, it’s shitty work that always takes longer than you’d expect. Not only were we dealing with some pretty dangerous chemicals, we found ourselves repeating the process at least 4 times from so much paint build up. By the time we bought a gallon of stripper and put all the labor into it, it would have been cheaper just to start from scratch. Lesson learned.

After the woodwork was finished, we pulled everything behind the cabinets down to studs and painted the upper cabinets white. If you’ve ever done a kitchen remodel before you know at this point it’s HUSTLE MODE.  So, we both took a few days off work and spent the next 5 days getting everything ready for our plumber and electrician.

Cabinet prep

The black lower cabinets we talked about in our last post would go back exactly where they were. First we needed to rehang the uppers to their proper height from the lower cabinets. We also built a little bulkhead above the uppers. This would create a seamless transition between the white cabinets and the ceiling. Now that the wall was down, we decided to utilize the extra space and wrap the countertops to create a little seating area.  This also gave us an extra cabinet for storage space!

After hanging drywall and getting the cabinets back in place the next step was to finish mudding in preparation for tile and countertops. Things were going so smoothly at this point we’d projected to have our kitchen finished in less than a few weeks. All that was left were countertops, plumbing, electrical and some flooring. Easy right?

In our next post we’ll share one of our first big mistakes! Stay tuned.