Live data from Hacker News

Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

nytimes.com

21–30 of 256 posts

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#21

If you buy, you can do whatever the heck you want to with the house or your yard. That's true freedom and to some people - myself included - worth every penny.

Not true in many, many cases. HOAs, condo boards, zoning laws, and historical societies can control homeowners pretty well.

So don't buy where there's HOA, Condo Boards or Historical Districts. That leaves you with a lot of options.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#22

Two important adjustments when using this: "Investment return rate" -- Only 4%? An index fund will return higher than that. "Monthly common fees" -- Required if you are considering buying a condo. This changes the per month rent comparison dollar-for-dollar.

> Only 4%? An index fund will return higher than that.

Just like homes will always go up?

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you jest! The previous version was four years ago (in 2010) and was implemented in Flash. Screenshot: https://twitter.com/driven_by_data/status/469498632027537408

Congrats for a article on the NYT! I can't see whether D3 is used or not - can you shed some light on what did you use?

I think he's the guy that created D3, so I'm guessing that's what he used. (Or at least I'm pretty sure...)

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#24

Author here. Thought I’d highlight my favorite, perhaps non-obvious feature: the slope of the charts tells you whether the variable is positively or negatively correlated with the cost of buying. And depending on the settings, that slope can change from positive to negative. For example with the defaults, the down payment chart is flat. This means the total cost of buying is relatively unaffected by the size of your…

> Of course, there’s still a big intangible difference between having debt and not having debt,

Both renters and owners need a place to live in the future, assuming they're not dead. If we exclude those who live with mommy and daddy or mooch off of other people...

Well, then whether the debt is formal with a mortgage or not makes little difference. Even renters are on the hook to come up with $1000 for the month of October 2016. It's just not in writing.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#25

Author here. Thought I’d highlight my favorite, perhaps non-obvious feature: the slope of the charts tells you whether the variable is positively or negatively correlated with the cost of buying. And depending on the settings, that slope can change from positive to negative. For example with the defaults, the down payment chart is flat. This means the total cost of buying is relatively unaffected by the size of your…

I've been using the old version of this for a few months. Making it obvious to which parameters the result is most sensitive is a huge improvement, thank you and well done!

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#26

Two important adjustments when using this: "Investment return rate" -- Only 4%? An index fund will return higher than that. "Monthly common fees" -- Required if you are considering buying a condo. This changes the per month rent comparison dollar-for-dollar.

Get ready for lousy stock returns http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/21/investing/stock-returns-low-... "The Shiller price to earnings ratio was designed by Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Shiller to give investors a sense of whether stocks are cheap or expensive. It compares stock prices, as measured by the S&P 500 index, with inflation-adjusted corporate earnings over the past 10 years. "The magic number at the mome…

In the short-term, perhaps. Returns long-term are high than 3%-4%.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#27
zappo had a list of uk cities comparing rent prices with interest only mortgage price. Some cities eg. Edinburgh showed hardly any difference (for comparable sized properties).

What I'm not sure about though is how it compares to a traditional principal and interest mortgage. Obviously your interest payments fall as the mortgage amortises... So then how does total interest compare to money spent on rent in that case? That's what most people would be wondering when it comes to evaluating renting vs buying...

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#28

Author here. Thought I’d highlight my favorite, perhaps non-obvious feature: the slope of the charts tells you whether the variable is positively or negatively correlated with the cost of buying. And depending on the settings, that slope can change from positive to negative. For example with the defaults, the down payment chart is flat. This means the total cost of buying is relatively unaffected by the size of your…

Huge props for including things like the Marginal Tax rate for tax deduction and closing costs, which most of my peers that I've spoken to are unaware of or fail to take into consideration properly. I just recently had a conversation with a friend about renting vs buying, and I raced through many of the factors in this calculator to demonstrate that it's not such a simple question and that there are many factors that depend on one's financial (and other) situation, but it totally went over her head bc I was going way too fast. I'll definitely use this page when explaining things to my friends in the future. Thanks so much :)

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true in many, many cases. HOAs, condo boards, zoning laws, and historical societies can control homeowners pretty well.

So don't buy where there's HOA, Condo Boards or Historical Districts. That leaves you with a lot of options.

That's getting harder and harder to do in many places. If you like the neighborhood and the house, sometimes you just have to suck it up.

On the plus side, single family homes tend to have far less restrictive HOAs than condos.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#30
post #12

If you buy, you can do whatever the heck you want to with the house or your yard. That's true freedom and to some people - myself included - worth every penny.

Well, usually. You can still be subject to HOA restrictions if you agree to them by buying a house in a HOA. You'll also be subject to township/borough restrictions which you can't really opt out of short of excluding entire neighborhoods from your home search (and researching local ordinances beforehand).

I hate HOAs and would deliberately avoid neighborhoods with HOAs or other types of restrictions.
Post reply on HN