[fairity]

I don’t get articles like this. It’s arguably a better financial decision to NOT buy a home, and park your downpayment in a broad based index fund. I get that there are arguments for or against, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear financial advantage to home ownership. So, what’s the big fuss about? Just pay rent and carry on? Surely, there are better things to focus on?

[deergomoo]

No-one can kick you out of your own home because they want to rent to someone they can charge more. No-one can tell you you can’t change the wallpaper in your own home, or remodel the bathroom, or get a dog.

Not everything is a purely financial decision. A home is primarily a place to live, not an investment opportunity.

[lpapez]

> Not everything is a purely financial decision. A home is primarily a place to live, not an investment opportunity.

I am always shocked at how many people simply don't understand this.

For example: no matter how many index funds I buy, I will still have to find a landlord who allows pets in their home if the current landlord decides to kick me out for a better tenant (whatever that means for them).

I don't have to deal with that in my own home. My home, my rules. And this is worth more to me than knowing I optimized my investment portfolio.

Human dignity has value. Shelter security has value. Knowing that you won't be moving in the next few months has value. But the value of these things cannot be measured in dollars.

[jajko]

A very US-centered view for sure, I see just tons of insecurity and other negative emotions. Europeans don't have this with such ferocious intensity.

One of happiest countries in the world - Switzerland, has minimal home ownership, people simply focus on more important matters in life (and rules and their actual enforcement are on next 10 levels compared to general US, yet nobody does biggest financial move in their lives based on those).

In this thread, I mostly see young folks frustrated that their easy investment chance evaporated, although it was never actually easy but people owned and desired to own radically less in the past. A bit of greed, a bit of FOMO, a bit of emotions described above. And an intense sense that a big, well-located house (not an apartment, hell no) is not everybody's right, but their basic human right enforced by some Geneva convention and UN forces. They will happily accept brutal communism with whatever else it brings just that they can get it too.

Or its one of those few topics where HN really isn't the best place to look for balanced opinions. I get it, I would maybe feel the same if I was in such situation bound with such mindset.

[elevatedastalt]

No, it's the other way round. Wanting a place you can call your own is a basic fundamental human desire. It's the insanity of the world today that such a basic thing is viewed as a luxury and people engage in semantic gymnastics to justify permanent renting.

[jajko]

Sure desire but not right, and then almost everybody engages in exactly same desire, in exactly same self-centered perspective (I want best possible location, biggest house, ideally biggish land around, convenient to work and fun and schools etc.).

Its physically impossible to satisfy everybody who wants that, we don't (yet) build cities in 3D with this in mind. Such demand will literally every single time outstrip supply unless given society is in deep demographic spiral.

There used to be times when people thought about buying houses when they reached cca 40. Worked their way to it, patiently. These days, 30 year old will complain to you how world is unfair since he already doesn't have it all since he wants to retire at 50. Or how they are priced out of some great place since almost everybody wants to live there too, including boss of his boss of his boss. Working class was priced out places like Manhattan maybe 50 years ago in much higher numbers, and nobody bat an eye.

[elevatedastalt]

> Such demand will literally every single time outstrip supply unless given society is in deep demographic spiral.

I am not sure that is the case. Or at least there is no natural law that would mandate this. And why is it less of a problem in say, India? In India, big cities see massive growth in terms of number of livable units built. They don't have the NIMBY culture of the US or the oppressive zoning restrictions, and many more people can aspire to own a flat by the time they are in the late 30s or 40s.

I think most people people would be fine if they knew they would be afford to buy in their 40s. But I don't see that happening for a lot more of the Zoomer generation.

[JumpCrisscross]

> No-one can kick you out of your own home because they want to rent to someone they can charge more

Property tax isn’t voluntary and as exogenous as a landlord. (Also eminent domain, to say nothing of most peoples’ mortgages.)

> Not everything is a purely financial decision

Making the largest leveraged purchase of your life for an emotional comfort object is irrational. That doesn’t make it wrong. But it ceases to be a policy concern. (I might feel secure having a Fabergé egg in my possession, that doesn’t mean the public needs to give a shit about it.)

The reason home ownership is a public priority is various and I agree with it as a goal. But it’s a bad financial decision for many people, and there is legitimacy to questioning if we can duplicate the forced-saving and civic engagement benefits more simply.

[dahart]

You pay property tax either way, it just might be rolled into your rent. You probably have years to pay missing property taxes, while landlords will wait nowhere near that long. Eminent domain is only exercised rarely, and doesn’t even compare to how often rents are increased, or how often people are evicted.

[JumpCrisscross]

> You probably have years to pay missing property taxes

Anywhere that gives a delinquent property owner years also tends to have strong tenant protections.

[dahart]

That’s misleading and mostly irrelevant. My sampling of states so far yields an answer in years, looks like around 2-5 years depending on state. Rental evictions are measured in months, typically perhaps 1-3.

[JumpCrisscross]

> misleading and mostly irrelevant

This entire discussion is as it's ignoring mortgages, where the entire security argument for homeownership breaks down beyond being an emotional comfort object.

Homeownership is statistically more secure because home owners are richer. The home doesn't make a homeowner more secure, their wealth does. Remove the wealth effect and homeowners are about as precariously perched as renters. In the past decades, home-price appreciation contributed significantly to that wealth. Someone making the smae purchase today is less likely to similarly benefit. Particularly if they're conceding they're making a bad financial decision for emotional reasons.

[rcpt]

> You pay property tax either way, it just might be rolled into your rent.

No you don't. Property taxes are not incident on renters.

Extreme example in California

https://prop13.wtf/2023/05/06/prop13-is-not-passed-on-to-ren...

[dahart]

Right. Property taxes are paid by landlords, who then charge it back to you in rent. Your example article indirectly says the same thing: tax cuts were not passed on, landlords kept them.

[rcpt]

Rent is set by supply and demand. If you give landlords a tax break they don't cut the rent.

Not all taxes are passed on to consumers

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence

Edit: ok it looks like you're editing your comment to change what you had earlier. So I'll just leave you with a ton of reading on this exact topic https://gameofrent.com/content/can-lvt-be-passed-on-to-tenan...

[intended]

You are mixing up a few things somewhere.

Wants are infinite.

Home ownership is effectively enshrined as a value in most economies. The emotion is part of society’s design. Conforming to this incentive or belief is not unusually irrational,

[JumpCrisscross]

> Conforming to this incentive or belief is not unusually irrational

Agree. But if that feeling of security is all it’s about, it’s still irrational. Even if it’s conditioned and thus common.

If you’re buying a home to feel good about yourself, you’re making a financially ruinous decision.

[deergomoo]

> Property tax isn’t voluntary and as exogenous as a landlord

I live in the UK. I have to pay the same rate of council tax for the property whether I own it or rent it.

However that’s completely beside the point: my council tax isn’t suddenly going to double overnight because a single person decided they can extract more money.

> Making the largest leveraged purchase of your life for an emotional comfort object is irrational

You are completely missing the point. A place to live that is truly your own is not like buying some luxury good.

I could buy your argument were it about buying a mansion vs a small family home, but the article is about people being unable to buy any home.

[baobabKoodaa]

> No-one can tell you you can’t change the wallpaper in your own home, or remodel the bathroom, or get a dog.

Yes, the housing association absolutely can tell you not to remodel your bathroom. Unless you literally own a house rather than an appartment, you really don't have a lot more rights than a renter would have.

I am speaking as a Finnish homeowner.

[deergomoo]

Two points:

Firstly I am legitimately surprised that Finland has HOAs. I had always assumed they were a largely American construct (I’m British).

Secondly I was absolutely talking about owning a house rather than an apartment. I feel an apartment is a slightly different situation by virtue of being an inherently shared space.

That said, I still it baffling that someone would try to exert control over what you do with the inside of your own home.

[baobabKoodaa]

> Firstly I am legitimately surprised that Finland has HOAs. I had always assumed they were a largely American construc

The Finnish HOAs are a uniquely Finnish construct. They are in many ways different from the American HOAs, even though the name is the same.

> That said, I still it baffling that someone would try to exert control over what you do with the inside of your own home.

In the Finnish system, as a "homeowner" in a HOA, you actually don't own things such as... the walls inside your apartment. The HOA owns the walls. You own a piece of the HOA and the right to live inside the walls. But if you want to fix damage inside the walls, for example, you need the HOA to do that, because they own the walls.

[dgfitz]

Strange they call it an HOA when it sounds like the basic concept of “home ownership” doesn’t actually exist.

First thing I did when I bought a house was smash a nail in the wall and hang a picture. Well I guess the second, I ripped down walls and painted first.

[baobabKoodaa]

I don't know if I'm translating to English correctly. I mean, technically it does not have an English translation, since the construct does not exist in countries where English is a native language.

The direct translation would be "house company", but that sounds wrong.

[elevatedastalt]

Most Single Family Homes don't have HoAs. Don't buy one with an HoA. They suck.

[bamboozled]

Not sure how long the parent has rented for but there is definitely a point, especially if you have children, where you realize having your own home is really important so you can express yourself without fear of eviction.

I always wanted to build a home gym and have a workshop, I have these things now, I never could before, I'm happier now than I was before, it was something I really wanted to do with my life, rent doesn't allow you to do those things, most of the time anyway.

[tossandthrow]

The parent commenter spoke explicitly about it as a financial decision. Your counter comment directly contradicts their assumptions (financial decision), which makes it inappropriate.

[arp242]

People just want a house to live in. That's it. They don't want a "broad based index fund" or investments or anything else. They just want a house to live in. With all the stability that comes with it. And then spend their free time doing more useful things. Also it doesn't scale; we can't all be investing all the time.

This kind of reductionism where everything boils down to financials is exactly how we ended up in this mess to start with. Maybe we shouldn't have structured everything around that because ... people just want a house to live in.

[tossandthrow]

Parent commenter is talking about a financial decision.

You can have a place to live without buying.

Your comment is malplaced.

[CRConrad]

And GP told GGP why buying a house isn't just a financial decision.

As many others also told GGP, you cannot have a place you're certain to live in on your own terms without buying.

So yeah, someone's comment was malplaced, all right... But it wasn't the GP.

[Carrok]

I have rented for the past 20 years, the vast majority of my adult life. We are buying soon.

Could I make more in an index fund? Sure, probably. But I can’t make a rental into what I want it to be, you are often not even allowed to paint the walls.

I can’t plant a garden in an index fund.

[nradov]

Home ownership isn't a good financial option for everyone, but for most consumers who aren't accredited investors it's the only way to make highly leveraged trades. You can't buy an index fund with 20:1 leverage. Of course this occasionally blows up, but even then the downside is limited.

Even if ownership doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint it's still somewhat essential for parents of school age children. Renters can be forced to move on short notice if the landlord declines to renew the lease, like if they're planning to sell or redevelop the property. This instability has a cost that goes beyond financial concerns.

[spacemark]

People always talk about how buying a home is the only way for the common person to obtain leverage. Please excuse my ignorance, but how does the common person use that leverage, exactly?

[NoLinkToMe]

Leverage in finance is the concept of buying an asset with money that's not yours (i.e. a loan).

So suppose you have $100, and you believe a stock will increase by 10% in value, then borrowing $900 and buying $1000 of the stock, will leave you with $1100 if your prediction is true. When you pay off the loan, you'll be left with $200, and you will have doubled your money.

The loan thereby acts as a leverage multiplying the 10% return on investment to in this case a 100% return on investment.

Now imagine that instead of having $100, you have $50k, and instead of borrowing $900, you borrow $450k, and instead of buying stock, you buy a home with the 50k deposit and 450k mortgage. The same applies, the home appreciates 10% to 550k, but your equity increases from $50k to $100k. Again, the mortgage loan acts as a lever.

The difference is that most consumers do not have large and cheap capital available to them, say to borrow $450k to invest in the stock market. But most people do have such opportunities to invest in the real estate market with a mortgage.

Anyway, wether it's a good investment really depends on many factors. The NYT buy or rent calculator is still one of the best sources to get an intuition on what is best for your circumstance. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-cal...

[baobabKoodaa]

Example:

House costs $100k

You buy house with $20k savings and $80k debt

In this example that $80k of debt is called "leverage".

Is this what you mean with your question or did you mean to ask something else?

[spacemark]

Right, my question is more about how the average person can actually use that leverage. So you've got $80k in leverage, it grows (presumably), but how do you actually use it?

You have to sell the house, right? So you can only cash in on that leverage when you reverse mortgage or otherwise downsize, right?

[baobabKoodaa]

Correct. Just like any leveraged investment, you realize the gains (or losses) after you sell.

(And yes you are also correct it's possible to realize the gains without selling by taking a reverse mortgage.)

[elevatedastalt]

Yes, but thanks to leverage you have effectively created higher returns for your retirement portfolio than you would have been able to without the leverage.

[spacemark]

Higher returns than what though? It sure sounds like the only financial advantage to owning a home vs other investments is the leverage. Yet the S&P will return far more even considering the 80% leverage in most cases.

[elevatedastalt]

Not only that, it has better terms than a leveraged loan, since you can't get margin called! As long as you are making your mortgage payments you can't be foreclosed even if the value of the underlying property has plummeted.

[Tiktaalik]

Even aside from the many places where there has been a clear financial advantage to home ownership, a core value that drives desire of home ownership is stability of tenure. The control over ones destiny and the nigh impossibility that one could be forced to move has strong value.

[baobabKoodaa]

That "control" is mostly a fantasy. I own an appartment and when I found mold damage I wasn't able to just fix it, I had to take the housing association to court and fought with them for 2 years. It's now fixed and I'm trying to sell the appartment and nobody wants to buy it. Then I read articles like this and it just makes me laugh at the absurdity of it.

[gwbrooks]

In the U.S., only about 30% of homeowners are subject to housing associations.

I get how that seems odd if you live in a big city, a multifamily building, etc. -- associations and their problems are ubiquitous there. But it's not the experience of most American homeowners.

[carlosjobim]

> nobody wants to buy it.

Of course there are tons of people who want to buy it, but not for the price you are demanding. You are unrealistic about price.

[baobabKoodaa]

Great! Why don't you tell me what I should price it at, then?

[carlosjobim]

Go lower on price until somebody wants to buy it. That's how buying and selling works.

[baobabKoodaa]

No, that's not how it works. The housing market is not like the stock market. Houses are not fungible assets. I could list my house for $1 today and by tomorrow no one would have even made a single phone call to enquire about it. A house is not sold until a motivated buyer is found, no matter how low you drop the price.

[madmask]

Independent house is the way

[onion2k]

That definitely wasn't the case in the 1990s through to about 2020. House prices doubled about every 10 years in some areas while interest rates were about 2% on average. Housing has been by far the best small investment open to most people.

The problem now is that property buying at scale for the long term is a model private funds are trying, interest rates are going up, and housing supply at the lower end of the scale is constricted because there's no profit building those houses. All of which means people who want to buy a house rather than pay a landlord are basically screwed.

[listenallyall]

Not disagreeing with the general assessment however let's stick with facts... mortgage rates decreased during much of that period but were still above 6 through most of the 90s and even at the lowest, didn't get all the way down to 2.0%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

[onion2k]

I didn't say mortgage rates. I wasn't saying it was cheap to buy a house. I was saying that buying a house was a better investment compared to interest rates eg putting the money in the bank. I could have made that clearer.

[Sohcahtoa82]

It really depends what the rent-to-mortgage ratio is, which apparently varies a lot by area.

Where I live, rents are often about equivalent to the mortgage + property taxes, plus a little more. In other words, in the house I live in right now, my mortgage + property tax is about $2,500/month. If I were to rent it out, I could likely get $2,600/month for it, possibly up to $3,000.

In this scenario, if you plan on living somewhere permanently, there's not a single way to do the math that it works out that renting ends up being the better choice. Not only do you pay more now, but rent nearly always goes up.

> but there doesn’t seem to be a clear financial advantage to home ownership

Just the simple fact that money paid to rent goes into a black hole whereas money paid towards a mortgage that builds equity should be a clear financial advantage to home ownership.

Opting to rent is insanely short-sighted. Like, even if I could rent the house I'm in right now for $2,000/month ($500 less than the monthly cost of buying), over the next 10+ years, rent will very likely go up over time. And again, that money is just being burnt. When you buy, eventually, you don't have a mortgage anymore.

I think the only way renting ends up working out better is if you live in some crazy place where a mortage+tax is double the monthly cost of renting.

[djbusby]

My favorite features of mortgage vs rent is that mortgage is constant.

So, in 10/yr I'm still paying $2000/mo while rents have moved to $3200/mo

[sunshowers]

This is a creation of the US federal government — a 30 year fixed makes no sense without government intervention, since that is an absurd level of interest rate risk the bank would need to take. I don't know of any other country with 30 year fixed mortgages — most have something similar to the 5/1 ARM as the main option.

edit: Seems like Germany has fixed mortgages but makes it hard to refinance.

[Panzer04]

The fixed prepayment is what makes them insane. Fixed interest instruments are common, at least at the institutional level, but no penalty prepayment option is the crazy part, because it exposes the lender to all the downside if rates go up and none of the upside if they go down.

[sunshowers]

That makes sense. Refinancing is essentially that.

[MEMORYC_RRUPTED]

Belgium and The Netherlands have it too, though it's optional. Most mortgages have a 30 year runtime with a 10 year fixed rate. The longer your fixed rate, the higher the rate becomes.

For the Netherlands: While it differs per bank, legally you're allowed to pay up to 10% of your mortgage extra per year (some banks offer higher rates, I can do 20% for example) without extra costs. When the rate changes (due to going from fixed to variable, or variable with a large change in a year) you're allowed to pay back as much as you want, without extra costs.

If you want to pay back more/faster, the bank calculates a fee ("loss of income due to lost interest payments") that you have to pay, which is still cheaper than just doing your regular payments.

The above statement also applies if you want to refinance if, for example, your home went up in value. They can and will drop your rate but you have to pay a fine. That being said, in the past, when rate drops were really large, you could go to a different bank, have them take over your mortgage pay the fine for you just so they can get you to come to them (though I'm assuming they're no longer so keen on that).

[refurb]

But insurance, property taxes and maintenance costs keep going up

[dahart]

I’ve heard this argument a lot on HN, and yes it can be argued, there are valid points, but personally I think it ignores some realities. First, the article is pointing out that housing prices are high enough that a growing number of people can’t afford the down payment. Second, for people who barely have the down payment, it takes a lot of discipline (and faith) to park all your money in the stock market and not spend it. It’s one thing when you invest disposable income, and another entirely to gamble your life savings. Plus index funds aren’t always outperforming real-estate, so you can’t base the argument on only the last 5 years. Usually this argument has come in the form of suggesting that the best stock market returns out there exceed real estate inflation, and so you have to be a savvy investor and stay on top of your stocks day-to-day, which is a very tall order for the bottom half of the population.

Okay on top of all that, a down payment is 20% of the cost of a house. Buying the house is perhaps a little more like a leveraged loan. If the stock market and real-estate were to both inflate by the same amount, your investment in a house gets you 5x the return that your down payment investment makes. In the mean time, all the money you pay in rent goes down the drain, whereas all the money you pay into the house above the down payment comes back to you when you sell the house. From my point of view, a house seems like a far better investment, when you factor in the rent you lose. And historically home ownership has been the single most important wealth-building tool for the average US citizen.

It is legitimately concerning that the median house price is so high, and the trend is continuing upwards. Some of the fuss is concern over the future potential of a crashing economy, and yes that certainly will give us bigger things to worry about.

[MisterBastahrd]

Every person should be able to have a right to say "This is me. This is where I live. I belong here." It's all fun and games until you've lived in one place for 15 years and your landlord decides to sell the place out from under your feet because a developer wants to build a high rise.

[pompino]

Convince enough people that this should be a right, and its automatically a right. Rights are just made-up constructs that only exist in our head.

[IAmGraydon]

>Every person should be able to have a right to say "This is me. This is where I live. I belong here."

Why do you think every person should have an “right” to own property? It’s a nice utopian idea, but that’s not how a capitalist economy works.

[MisterBastahrd]

Why do you think we need capitalist economies? It's almost as if you've just decided that the other thing must necessarily exist.

[jandrewrogers]

Same thing happens to homeowners with eminent domain. No one has unlimited entitlement to where they live.

[baobabKoodaa]

I had the exact same thoughts as you when reading the article. It seems that many people are irrationaly fixated on home ownership as some kind of magical pathway for wealth. When you ask these people to put some numbers on paper, that magic goes POOF pretty fast.

[rpigab]

If it was a universally better financial decision to not buy a home, then who would you rent a home from? Someone who made a bad financial decision?

If this was the case, then there would be more and more renters, and less and less tenants, so rent would increase, and make homeowning a better financial decision. There's a stable equilibrium there, even taking into account the various taxes involved.

[alex_duf]

Surely you can see the difference between giving away a significant portion of your income to your landlord, or paying towards your mortgage.

In one case you can sell your property and get your money back, so you can decide to do whatever you want with it (like index fund if you so chose). And in the other it's your landlord who's either paying their mortgage with your money, or placing it in said index fund...

[xur17]

While true (the landlord is obviously making money, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it), there are other variables worth considering.

If you decide to move, you pay 6% in real estate fees (extortion) to sell / buy. If you rent, the house never changes hands, and hence this fee isn't paid.

[jandrewrogers]

At least in many parts of the US, the financial loss of renting is currently less than the financial loss of a mortgage, after subtracting contribution to principal. In Seattle there are places where renting is $2k+/month cheaper than the non-principal carrying costs of the same place. Buying it instead of renting it would literally be lighting $2k/month on fire that you don't need to. A renter can invest that extra $2k/month, so they come out ahead.

The cost structure of landlords is often very different than the cost structure of new homeowners. They can make a tidy profit charging rent that is significantly lower than your mortgage payment.

[LouisSayers]

I have this feeling too and recently started making a calculator which I intend to add a comparison for (housecalculator.co.nz)

Of course reality is nuanced - a friend of mine for example is building out essentially his own apartment in his garage and having his sister pay rent for his house.

I'm still not sure how best to add a "compare buying to renting" feature for the calculator, so any ideas are most welcome!

[cm2187]

Depends when. A home is a leveraged investment, plus often exempt from capital gain taxes. If you bought it at the beginning of a large real estate bull market you probably did better than an unleveraged investment in the S&P.

[tossandthrow]

Then you pay property tax instead.

I My calculations (for Denmark) the property taxes are roughly equivalent to kapital gains tax.

[jb1991]

It's not as simple as that. Home ownership can be a lucrative investment long-term, it depends on many factors. When property values appreciate a lot, as they have been recently, home owners have done very well.

[IAmGraydon]

The recent rate of appreciation is not typical. Homes generally appreciate at 3-4% per year. Subtract from that taxes, insurance and upkeep. They’re a terrible investment unless you own rental property, at which point your tenants are paying down the loan.

[Carrok]

So, the alternative to buying, which is a terrible investment according to you, is renting, where you pay down the loan of the landlord. That’s better, how?

[IAmGraydon]

I didn’t say you shouldn’t buy if you need a place to live. I said they’re a terrible investment. Also keep in mind that while you may be paying down the landlord’s loan when renting, you are also paying a massive amount of interest when buying. At today’s rates, you’ll give the bank $565,000 in pure interest over 30 years to borrow $400,000, making your total outlay $965,000. Either way, a large amount of money is going up in smoke.

[listenallyall]

This opinion doesn't take into account the optionality of the mortgage and the opportunities provided to the borrower. American mortgages generally allow prepayments - if the value of your house increases rapidly, you can sell, pay off the mortgage, and pocket the profit. You can pay additional principal at any time to reduce interest payments. If rates fall, you can refinance. If the economy is great, you're borrowing at 7 percent while your investments are earning 10+.

[jb1991]

If the value of your house rises rapidly, you cannot just sell because then you have to buy another house to live somewhere, which has also appreciated. See the other comments about this.

[jb1991]

In many countries, mortgage interest is tax deductible, while rent is not.

[dgfitz]

It’s not. This trope is repeated on this forum all the time.

Some people prefer the freedom of not being stuck in one place. Super duper. That’s excellent, they prefer renting.

Trying to convince the rest of the world that it is a sound financial decision in lieu of buying a home and establishing equity is where the argument over “renting is better than buying from a financial perspective” falls apart and the absurdities start getting thrown about.

[Panzer04]

How do you figure?

Its heavily market-dependant, but assuming rent expenses = the cost of interest, from a financial perspective they are close to equivalent. If you take the money that would be paying off the mortgage to invest, you should be in a similar financial position at the end.

1-1 compariaons are hard, though, because in practice houses are huge levered bets on a RE market, so they can have huge returns if chosen well. Those are usually the kinds of markets where rents tend to be lower than the mortgage payment, however, so things might net out more even than you'd expect at the end.

[jb1991]

> assuming rent expenses = the cost of interest

But you cannot make even this simple assumption because rent is not tax deductible but mortgage interest usually is.

[superkuh]

The issue is that you are approaching this from a financialization perspective. The point of homes is not to be an investment. The point of homes is to provide shelter and a place to live.