For many, buying a home will be the largest purchase they’ll ever make in their lifetimes. Experts continually say it will be worth it. But what happens when it isn’t?
For Tyler Hanson, that’s a reality she had to reckon with when she poured tens of thousands of dollars into her Washington D.C. area traditional row home, but failed to see a return on her investment. Within days of moving in, despite it having been inspected, she noticed a score of repairs that needed to be made in her new home, including an infestation problem. Almost instantly regretted it.
She’s not alone. A recent study by Clever Real Estate found that 93 percent of home buyers had misgivings about their purchase. The report suggests that the respondents represent a large swath of Americans that has left many buyers in worse financial shape than they were in before buying their homes.
“I just couldn’t believe how hard homeownership has been,” Hanson shares with ESSENCE. Outside of her $1,900/month mortgage and utilities, in just three years she says she’s spent the high five-figures in repairs alone. And she’s had enough.
“I’m moving out,” she shared in a viral TikTok video earlier this year.
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Hanson took to social media document her frustrations about the homeownership experience not being the American dream she was sold.
“When I posted my video, I was so annoyed,” Hanson shares with ESSENCE. “I was in my room and looked up to see that I have water damage. And I thought ‘oh, my God, I have to get my roof replaced, which is probably going to be about $15,000.”
At that point, she said she’d already decided to move her and her young daughter into an apartment so they could be more comfortable.
“I was constantly worried about the other that was going to drop. What next? I couldn’t take it anymore and honestly, it just wasn’t worth it.”
Hanson is in the process of finding a complex suitable for her and her daughter with amenities that will make “their lives easier.” Her house will be kept as a potential investment property.
While homeownership has been touted as one the last bastions of prosperity, the experience is not created equal, particularly for Black people. And doubly for Black women. Despite them far outpacing homeownership compared to Black men, there are still some challenges the group that largely goes unacknowledged.
“I do think you should be wary of the mythos that accompanies the American institution of homeownership, and of a political environment that touts its advantages while ignoring its many drawbacks,” Jerusalem Demsas writes in a December 2022 essay for The Atlantic. “For many people, homeownership is a largely beneficial enterprise, but for others, particularly young, middle-income and low-income families as well as Black people, it can be risky.”
Hanson, who earns over $100k/year as a professional lobbyist and founder of consultancy She Impacts Policy, says despite the salary, the rising cost of living rates in an already expensive city like Washington D.C. has made upkeep of her home financially distressing. And as a single mom, nearly impossible.
“Can we normalize successful women not wanting to bear the burden of home ownership without judgment,” she says in a TikTok video. More than 300 affirming comments from users agreed with Hanson sentiments. “I just want a safe, quiet, peaceful, beautiful living space in an area that I want to live in without too many responsibilities. Because I know myself and I know that it’s hard for me to keep up with those types of tasks. And I think that that’s perfectly fine. Let’s normalize that in 2024.”
