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.

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.

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

There's no plausible deniability with oil down the drain. The landlord would just bill you for the damage.

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

More benefits of renting

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.

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...

Don't forget "flushable" wipes

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.

Stop treating your home like an investment. Can only end badly

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.