[bearbawl]

I am not disagreeing with you. I don’t know all the numbers for your case and I don’t want to compute everything for your specific scenario.

But I’m just saying that there is a general assumption in most discussions around buying versus renting that buying is always better. It’s not.

It’s the general argument « when you buy you don’t throw your money out the window ».

In reality you do throw money out the window when you buy, only differently, and I’m highlighting the numbers people usually do not take into account when they make their comparison.

Comparing mortgage payments and rents is usually not the good way to do that, because the costs when you buy are only partially monthly based.

One other number I didn’t mention above: real estate agency fees.

[ryandrake]

Another thing to consider: You should not compare to your entire mortgage payment--only to the interest portion of the payment. The principal portion of the payment is not an expense: It goes from one of your pockets to the other because it is your own home equity. Also you need to apply any tax advantage you get from mortgage interest(in the USA it's deductible), so subtract your effective tax rate. You also need to add to that your estimated property taxes / 12 (and that's often tax deductible), and add any expected yearly expenses / 12.

So mortgage_interest * (1-T) + property_taxes/12 * (1-T) + home_expenses/12. Compare that to rent payment.