[zabatuvajdka]

I think there is because “rent” and “lease” implies your intent is to stay there short-term. “Buy” says you literally are buying the home whether it’s with your money or someone else’s via some mortgage terms.

With an Apple device it certainly is muddy waters because you purchase hardware while simultaneously in some weird lease agreement for the software.

I guess it’s like buying a house in a gated community with very strict home owners association. You can purchase the house but if you want to put a new door on it you gotta go through the motions to ultimately get denied the color you want, etc.

And if Apple was the association they’d have a neighborhood watch ensuring 8PM curfews.

[smichel17]

In a home owner's association, the home owners are part of the association. You have to play by the rules, but you are also part of the body that makes the rules.

In this case, the party setting the rules is more like the rich person who originally built and "sold" the houses (but still enforces curfew, and changes the rules whenever they feel like it).

[IanCal]

> . “Buy” says you literally are buying the home

As they said, with leasehold or some things with freehold it's not quite so simple.

I used to have a leasehold house, which I "bought" but also sort of rented, or at least rented-ish the land while owning-ish what was within the bricks.

I have a freehold house now, but there are restrictive covenants which technically govern what I am allowed to do to my own property (these are not council/etc permissions but private ones).

[iso1210]

Indeed, until recently I lived in a freehold house which had a covenant saying my hedge could be no higher than 4' high, couldn't change the colour of my front door, couldn't park a van on my drive, that I had to pay a specified private company money each year to do various things, with no say over that company.

The term "buy", at least in the UK when it comes to housing, is a sliding scale.

[anticristi]

I nominate Sweden to be the weirdest country when it comes to housing ownership.

When buying a flat or a non-detached house, you usually fall into an ownership law called "bostadsrätt". In essence, you don't buy a house. You buy stocks in a housing association, which grant you the right to use the chosen flat/house. The housing association is pretty much run like a company, with a yearly board meeting, a CEO, a CFO, etc. Your ownership is proportional to the surface area you bought.

[alistairSH]

It’s not much different in the US. Leasehold arrangements are less common, but still possible, particularly when dealing with “mobile” homes (that generally aren’t mobile at all once placed).

[iso1210]

> I guess it’s like buying a house in a gated community with very strict home owners association

So it is buying then.

[beardyw]

When the lease runs out it reverts to the freeholder, though often after a considerable period of time. So not owned forever.