As noted, the discussion starts at 7:30 pm at Town Hall located at 1119 8th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101. Tickets cost $5 can can be purchased at the door beginning at 5:30 pm or by calling 800/838-3006. Get more information about the Town Hall Event by clicking this link. Hope to see you there!

This aspect of home ownership has been on my mind lately because since January I’ve had two deaths in my family — my father, my uncle — and part of the funk of these losses stems from the fact that my family wound up distributed all over the country, far away from each other. And this means that visiting each other, helping each other, and, well, resolving real estate choices made by other family members becomes all the more complicated when negotiated at a great distance.

My father, for instance, bought a piece of land in North Carolina in 2002. He’d been widowed a year, was in his 60s, and was facing retirement alone. So he thought he’d build a little house in the mountain town where he’d spent much of his childhood and where his father had been a Presbyterian minister. But before any hammers started swinging on the property, life presented other plans for him: He met a woman, remarried, and wound up moving to South Carolina, where she and her late husband had bought a lakefront lot and built on it. Fast forward to 2012, and my sister and I — who live 300 and 3000 miles away from my father’s lot in North Carolina, respectively — will have to sort out what to do with Dad’s property in a down market. Don’t get me started about his timeshare.

I asked my father earlier this year why he’d held on to the property.

“It’s a nice investment!” he said, pointing out that lots in the area had risen in value, but forgetting that all of that began changing direction in 2007.

A nice investment for whom? I wondered, since my father, in his late 70s, had clearly chosen to live elsewhere and my sister and I would one day have to choose what to do with the property. Ironically, the property he viewed as an investment is one we’d be inclined to price low and move fast, given the logistics of our situation, and so, in the end, we’ll probably get much less investment gain on it than is possible, simply because we live across the country and want to move it along as part of the posthumous organization you have to undertake when a relative passes.

I don’t fault my father for his dreams of his little house on a mountain, or his sentimental choice not to sell the land when he could. But sentimentality informed his purchase, which he then rationalized as an investment. Sentimentality and rationality… always at war!

Specifically, if homeowners can’t manage their own money, experience hardship (job loss, relationship status change, health expenses), mess with their home equity, or miscalculate the costs of ownership, they may wind up in trouble on their mortgage.  Owners should try to plan ahead and take responsibility for themselves after they buy, of course. But then, all the people who “sell” homeownership don’t really talk about the extent of the ownership-related costs that ultimately play a big role in homeowners’ post-purchase budgets. These costs aren’t central to the loan qualification process, but they are central to owners’ future budgets and financial positions.

What are these costs? They include the costs of furnishing the home, maintenance costs (projected to cost anywhere from 1% to 4% of the home’s purchase price annually–and that’s on a run-of-the-mill home, not a run-down distressed property), commuting (if owning costs so much you now drive a gallon a day to get to and from work), and utility expenses. Rent versus own calculators rarely ask owners to project these costs into their future housing expenses.  And there’s also remodeling–the ultimate discretionary spend.

But as of October 19, at least one of these rarely-mentioned costs–utilities–is now on the table in a new way: Indeed, two senators claim loan underwriters should factor utility spending into mortgage loan limits. The senators, Michael Bennet (D-Col.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) are pushing the Sensible Accounting to Value Energy (SAVE) Act, which would mean Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans would have to factor buyers’ projected future energy expenditures into loam limits. Housingwire covered the story today.

I’m unsure if factoring for utilities should be a legislated requirement for borrowers and underwriters. Once a person or family moves into their new home, they might drastically underperform or outperform prior residents with regard to energy consumption based on how much time they spend at home, how they set an adjustable thermostat, appliance mix, how many people live in the property, the energy efficiency of the home at move-in or post-remodel etc. etc. But I like that two senators are shining a light onto the notion that a home is a locus of multiple, future expenses that are rarely discussed in the pre-purchase phase. Their bill notes that utilities can cost about $2,000 a year. That’s a figure consistent with prior reporting I’ve done–and with what I spent when I made the move from renter to owner of this home pictured here. (Oil alone cost at least $1200 per year, with electricity, water, sewer, and garbage quickly toting my annual energy spend up to the $2k range.) I don’t know about you, but when I rented utilities cost about one-fourth of that.

Asking future owners to budget for utilities–and other expenses–isn’t a bad idea. Whether the legislation sinks or floats, it’s good there’s a new (and healthy) recognition about the true costs of homeownership.

We could walk everywhere — to diners, museums, the boardwalk that started near Gracie Mansion and ran south along the East River. The space was so small it required little upkeep: I had time to read novels, type up stories, sleep. My wallet got lifted right out front one night: I was walking home with a slice in one hand and my keys in the other, my wallet foolishly wedged into my armpit like a baguette. Once I realized it was gone, I ran down the block screaming obscenities at the sprinting guys who took it, what with its $20 in cash and  maxed-out credit cards. The mugging — and subsequent ride to the police station for a crime statement — didn’t deter me from my neighborhood. Perversely, it made me feel alive. It reminded me that however little I felt I had, I was privileged enough to live in a place people envied. And that after this place, there’d be another, and another, perhaps with improvements.

I went on to live all around, spreading my real estate seed with varying leases and, eventually, mortgages: The New York suburbs, two apartments on the Upper West Side, an apartment in Harlem, to a summer share in the Catskills, and then I moved across the country to Seattle, where I had four rentals and a house-sit before buying one home, then another. Most people move an average of 12 times in a lifetime, according to US Census data tossed around by moving companies. I’m up to 11! But leased or owned, you never forget your first place.