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My thoughts on renting versus buying
21–30 of 318 posts
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#22> People Tend to Overbuy
Any "house" would be too big for me by myself. And buying a condo apartment seems like a strange proposition to me; compared to renting the same space, it seems like just paying extra in order to accumulate some nebulous equity at the end of the term. I'd rather do that with more liquid asset classes.
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#23Imagine two things being able to be true at the same time
That sometimes under the right circumstances a home is both a great place to live, the best deal you can get in your area, and also an investment
You sort of alluded to it in your post, but it’s different for everyone, but then you go on ahead and speak as if there were one answer
Good for you you chose to rent - you don’t have to deny homes potentially being good investments to validate your decision
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#24The framing makes it seem as if valuing stability is somehow inferior while elevating financial growth. This makes me think our financial and housing systems have become so distorted that it has infected our thinking. Adult humans are often super resilient, but kids aren't. Moreover, even adults have limits. I don't want to live in a system filled with chaos just because it makes some intangible number go up. We're all going to die one day. What will we leave behind, material or otherwise? Stability seems very underrated.
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#25Home prices have dramatically exceeded inflation for a long time, so you're getting advice from people who reaped huge appreciation gains. Now housing prices are hitting affordability limits, interest rates are less appealing, so it's unclear if the future will look like the past.
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#26All I know is my mortgage is $1,800 a month and to rent my place now is at least $6K/month. I love knowing that my monthly payment can't go up.
Property taxes and insurance go up pretty much every year.
Not faster than rent. You can always challenge your property taxes and shop your homeowners insurance. If your rent goes up, you can only move, which isn’t really an option when all landlords are raising rents in lockstep.
Half of American renters are cost burdened, for example.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43119657
(own my primary US residence free and clear, my housing savings goes into investments, which grow faster than inflation)
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#27My spouse and I quite like where I am now, but I don't want to buy something here due to rates, insurance and future potential of the city. So, I've pretty much settled on buying something small in another city and renting it out while we rent here.
I think this might be a good balance to get us some type of flexibility while also diversifying our assets. But now the problem is trying to find a decent rental property in another city :p
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#28All I know is my mortgage is $1,800 a month and to rent my place now is at least $6K/month. I love knowing that my monthly payment can't go up.
Property taxes and insurance go up pretty much every year.
i guess it will depend a lot on where you bought
some parts of california have been affected by insurers more than others, but in those more minimally affected? prop tax is suppressed via prop 13 (for better or worse), and the cost of insurance is a drop in the bucket relative to what id be paying for a roof over my head otherwise tbh
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#29I am a home owner since 1998 I think that none of you arguments against owning make sense to me. To me your writing reads like following: due to the world gone crazy I can no longer afford to buy house so let's concoct some soul soothing reason and pretend that all is fine.
Yes and how about also people in older generations who are done paying off mortgages and now live paying just the real estate tax.
Because they purchased. And they stayed there. I think people forget that boomers bought their houses 20 30, 40 years ago, and they stayed there. It's not like they bought it 10 years ago and all of a sudden it went up dramatically. I don't think a lot of people consider that longer timeline, it's just easier to blame "boomers."
Re: My thoughts on renting versus buying
#30This is written from the perspective of someone who doesnt have kids or other ties that reduce flexibility (and from that perspective I agree a house is a huge liability in term of being able to make big life changes). It also sucks if you have neighbors you can't stand.
The main advantage of a house imo is that you can't typically rent something comparable, at least where I've lived. The rental market for 4 bedroom houses is tiny compared to the number for sale.