[anotherman554]

The more sophisticated calculators allow you to compare buying and spending more on housing per month vs renting at a cheaper price and investing the extra money you have in the stock market. (Although many people may not have such discipline, and renting costs verse purchase costs are going to vary from market to market.)

There's no advantage to passing on a house to kids verse passing on stocks. Also, similarly, there's no advantage to going mortgage free in retirement verse being rich on stocks and selling the stocks to buy a house 30 years from now, or paying rent by selling stocks.

[TomVDB]

> There's no advantage to passing on a house to kids passing on stocks.

Except for Proposition 13 in California, which allows you to pass on your real estate tax to your inheritors once.

In the case of my neighbors, that means their son will pay ~$1200 in taxes per year vs ~$30k for us who own an identical house.

[HWR_14]

Repealing Prop 13 seems like the most important single change that can be made to the California real estate market.