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I looked into this a few years ago when I was trying to see if we were really in the worst housing market ever, and came to the opposite conclusion. https://arriens.us/articles/housing.html
I get good flexibility and value for my dollar. The savings over renting is insane.
Home 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.
The argument the author makes about the returns in stocks being higher than returns in real estate does not really hold when taking leverage into account. In my country, buying a home is the only way to get cheap debt for the vast majority of people.
This means that, generally, no matter where you buy, you won't want to have bought anywhere else after a few years. There are cases where you might hate it, of course, but you could still sell/rent to someone else and buy/rent elsewhere.
My mortgage is $1900 a month and I am extremely grateful for that, because it's been that for three years. I chose to buy so that I could have more predictability in my housing costs, and maybe someday I'll move, but then I'll rent it out. All that to say, if you can buying is infinitely better.
only because you got lucky to buy at that interest rates. Thats like saying it makes sense to buy tesla stock because i bought it at $10
https://www.realpage.com/storage/files/blog/posts/images/202...
From a purely financial perspective, I think you could say: the more protections you as a renter receive, the more renting makes sense.
Living in Germany, I do have quite a few protections as a renter. My landlord can't arbitrarily hike prices, etc. In my current city, it would be absolutely impossible to get a mortgage anywhere close to my current monthly rent (even with substantial equity)
