Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 256 posts

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#71

Post by tolmasky »

gibybo wrote: post #50
tolmasky wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rent, you can leave whenever the heck you want and then go live wherever the heck you want. That's true freedom and to some people - myself included - worth every penny. Its really interesting the different things people value. I value not fundamentally worrying if there were to be an earthquake and this place would be destroyed. I value one day waking up and deciding, hey, I think I want to go try living in P…

From what I've seen, you generally need a 12-24 month lease to rent a house. I can sell my house whenever I want (or leave and rent it out to someone else), but if I'm stuck in a 24 month lease I'm stuck for the next 2 years.

I speak solely from my experience in California, but I've been renting for like 10 years now (in a variety of places, houses and apartments), and the way its always worked for me is a 12-year lease followed by month to month. The penalty for breaking the lease was always pretty lenient too. May be different in other places though.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#72

Post by tolmasky »

larrys wrote: post #48
tolmasky wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rent, you can leave whenever the heck you want and then go live wherever the heck you want. That's true freedom and to some people - myself included - worth every penny. Its really interesting the different things people value. I value not fundamentally worrying if there were to be an earthquake and this place would be destroyed. I value one day waking up and deciding, hey, I think I want to go try living in P…

"If you rent, you can leave whenever the heck you want and then go live wherever the heck you want. " You can do that when you own as well. You have to sell your house. After all you can't just get out of a lease whenever you want it goes according to a fixed time period. You have constraints as far as lease renewal, term and things like that. If you own you can decide at any point to sell (although certain times of…

> Similar to the fact that some people would rather go to a different vacation spot each year rather than own a vacation home in the same place. In that case an argument can be made that it makes sense to actually pay more to rent than to own because you are deriving some other benefit from not owning that is actually worth more (maybe that is what you are saying..)

Yup, I think you've come up with a really helpful analogy, that's definitely how I feel. Like the OP, I wanted to show that there were some things I valued that would make me want to rent even if it proved to be more expensive in the long run.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#73

Post by greedo »

refurb wrote: post #47

The calculator is surprisingly accurate based on some math I did late last year when thinking about buying a house. A small (1300 sq ft) house in SF can be bought for $750K in some neighborhoods in the south of the city. The ones in between the fancy ones and the crappy ones. I did a pretty detailed analysis of what everything would cost. Loss of investment income on the down payment, insurance, property taxes, etc.…

I might be missing something, but if house prices rise just 1% annually, your differential would shrink dramatically in favor of ownership.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#74

Post by [deleted] »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #24
mbostock wrote: post #18

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 O…

[deleted]

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#75

Post by Shivetya »

I will tell you my reason to own a home, large at that, even though I am single. I have seen friends/coworkers have to move after leases were not renewed. I have seen friends/coworkers lose put up with stuff about their rentals I would not tolerate as an owner. Sure it go fixed, but damn. I have also seen them held hostage to rising rents just to renew.

Yeah it can be more expensive at times, more work definitely, but I never have to worry about someone else deciding they don't want me living here.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#76

Post by pessimizer »

mbostock wrote: post #18

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…

Your mentioning of this made me check out the graphs again - and I noticed that the graph depicting the size of a down payment was flat. That could only mean one thing: the cost of mortgage insurance (that you will be forced to get if your down payment is lower than 20%) hasn't been included. That's a major cost on low down-payment house purchases.

Intentional or oversight?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_insurance

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#77

Post by fspeech »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #24
mbostock wrote: post #18

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 O…

The main problem with owning is illiquidity and associated immobility. If you rent you can quickly down shift if you run into trouble. If you own the transaction cost is much higher if you need to move.

The main advantage of owning one's own residence is tax and stability (the flip side of the illiquidity problem). Owner's equivalent rent is not a taxable income. Capital appreciation works in your favor rather than against you when you rent.

In short owning one's own home is both economically and psychologically rewarding if you have long term stable income.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#78

Post by LandoCalrissian »

Dystopian wrote: post #42
dgabriel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

THIS. One of my co-workers bought a condo recently and remodelled the interior. Got a great gas grill island - with it, he needed an exhaust fan above. During the reno he got handshake approval from the board president, and ended up having a really inconspicuous grate installed above one of his windows. Long-story-short, a board member complained, they voted, and he ended up paying $5K to have it removed, and now has…

Condos are a complete nightmare, I don't know why people go for them. It's like having none of the benefits of home ownership with all the downsides of renting. Then you have HOA's on top of that. Also I hope no one on the board is crazy!

No thank you.

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#79

Post by blub »

millstone wrote: post #57

My wife and I found a great apartment to rent. It was spacious, quiet location, reasonable rent. We were happy for a few years. Then the owners sold the complex, and the new owners set out to remodel everything, very much against our wishes. Construction crews started entering our apartment. They came in while we were out, laying down plastic sheets and moving our furniture around. They sometimes came in while I was…

Which country was this in? I find it incredible...is it everywhere like this?

Re: Is It Better to Rent or Buy?

#80

Post by im_a_lawyer »

30 year mortgage is simply too long for me. I don't have that kind of stability. Mortgage term limit should be 10 years or maybe 15 with 20% down, that would solve a lot of problems. Before you say that I can choose to pay it off in 10 years - I can't. Too many dinks in my area are maxing out on their 30 year mortgages and inflating the cost of housing all around - I wouldn't be able to afford payments on 10 year term loan.
Post reply on HN