Look at the volatility (and especially the upward trend) in the last ~20 years of rents here. Renting is a fine strategy if you accept:
- That your stay here is temporary, you will be priced out within a few years, and any lease renewal could be the one that necessitates a cross-country move.
- That until you reach that breaking point, your "anything but housing" budget will decrease rapidly as rents rise much faster than wages.
It's a fun thing to do in your early twenties when your only worldly attachments are a backpack and a laptop, but people are not AWS spot instances. I do not intend for my eventual children to be scheduled onto communities preemptibly.
Owning is desirable because even if the payment is a stretch, it can get no worse, so barring catastrophe, your life is indefinitely sustainable. Renting in any volatile market is a bad idea if you're looking for a stable, long-term home rather than a short-lived adventure. Of course, there's nothing wrong with doing some adventuring while young and single.
This is generally terrible advice in the US. The tax breaks for ownership (mortgage interest + property taxes) is huge, and it is likely - although far from guaranteed - that your real estate investment will become more valuable over time.
Rent - generally - never goes down, you have no tax breaks, and you have no asset.
There are many lifestyle reasons to rent but few financial (in the US).
This has been argued ad nauseam, but there absolutely are financial reasons to rent, especially in cheaper regions.
My yearly rent is twice what the property taxes alone would be on the condos across the street. I considered getting one of them, but after doing the numbers, it didn't make since. After interest, taxes, maintenance, and HOA fees, there's no way these people are coming out ahead until they've been there 10+ years.
It's all well-and-good that some of that is tax deductible, but the standard deduction on a couple is still more than taxes+interest on a 250k loan. So it really doesn't matter unless you have many more deductions.
Now go from the mid-west to a west coast boom city, and you'd be a fool not to buy.
- That your stay here is temporary, you will be priced out within a few years, and any lease renewal could be the one that necessitates a cross-country move.
- That until you reach that breaking point, your "anything but housing" budget will decrease rapidly as rents rise much faster than wages.
It's a fun thing to do in your early twenties when your only worldly attachments are a backpack and a laptop, but people are not AWS spot instances. I do not intend for my eventual children to be scheduled onto communities preemptibly.
Owning is desirable because even if the payment is a stretch, it can get no worse, so barring catastrophe, your life is indefinitely sustainable. Renting in any volatile market is a bad idea if you're looking for a stable, long-term home rather than a short-lived adventure. Of course, there's nothing wrong with doing some adventuring while young and single.