[cosmic_cheese]

On the other hand, renting comes with hidden (and some not so hidden) costs too.

The main one for me is the inherent precariousness that comes with renting. You don’t know how much longer you’re going to be able to stay in your apartment, whether that be due to rent hikes or the landlord deciding that they want to give the apartment to their nephew or any number of other things. The constant low level stress of knowing that you might need to go through the hell of apartment hunting and moving annually is awful.

It’s been much nicer to have a mortgage with more or less locked in monthly payment, even with the maintenance costs that come with the territory. It’s more predictable and frees up mental bandwidth for other things.

[sakopov]

I would argue against this. I'm not sure owning is that much better. At the very least it's just as bad as renting if you bought in the past few years... I bought my home in 2023 and since then my monthly HOA payments doubled, my insurance premiums (nearly) tripled and my property taxes have gone up about $1000. Homeownership went from 35% to 45% of my monthly income. If you bought in the past few years, owning has absolutely been nothing short of a liability.

[wat10000]

Buying into an HOA means you're effectively renting a portion of your living arrangements. And if the dues doubled in just three years then you bought into a mismanaged HOA, which makes it worse. There's not much you can do about insurance premiums (assuming you've shopped around for better rates) and property taxes, but definitely check the financial situation of the HOA before you buy, or avoid them entirely.

[sosborn]

> And if the dues doubled in just three years then you bought into a mismanaged HOA, which makes it worse.

Not necessarily true. Our HOA fees doubled precisely because of drastic insurance premium hikes. There wasn't much that could be done by them to avoid that, and in fact they worked hard to reduce some of those premiums the following year, which resulted in a lower monthly fee for everyone.

[hx8]

I own single family homes in a few different states. None of them are seeing the HOA + Insurance + Tax increases you are describing in the last 2 years.

I'm guessing you bought in a place that is seeing a rapid increase in property values, which I saw in 2020-2022 by owning in a zoom town. That would explain why insurance and taxes are increasing.

[itsmek]

It's probably Florida or some other gulf state with weather risk. Could be California with wildfire risk but then they wouldn't have tax increases. In both of these states insurance is going crazy without the property value cause you mention. If it's a condo then insurance can single handedly explain HOA rates (since they buy insurance too) as well as HO insurance rates.

[hx8]

Florida's median property tax is about $2,500, so it's unlikely to go up $1000/yr. Places with high property values within the state of Florida like Miami Beach are mostly seeing decreasing or flat home values in the last couple of years.

I don't want to speculate too much on this poster's property, and I'm not super familiar with gulf real estate. I just wanted to highlight that I have a very different experience even though the post made it sound like their experience was the overwhelming popular one.

[cosmic_cheese]

Comes down to area and luck. I bought in 2021 and while there have been increases, they’ve been modest. Certainly much less than I would’ve had to deal with had I continued to rent.

[sakopov]

For context, property values have gone up 40-50% since 2021. Additional expenses are much easier to digest when you're not already paying an arm and a leg for a house at much higher mortgage rates.

[tomjakubowski]

If the market can bear it, those increased costs typically get passed down to renters too. Landlords are usually averse to covering expenses that don't go towards equity. If they can get away with it, they want to charge rent greater than mortgage interest + insurance + maintenance + taxes.

[bombcar]

Basically, if you can rent in a place that landlords start suffering, you’re going to do well.

And if you buy in a place where renters start suffering, you’ll do well.

Every decision is easy when you have the future data now, which you never have.

[testing22321]

Rule number one is always don’t buy into a HOA. They’re trouble. Always.

[BirAdam]

The HOA is something I could fight, but mine is currently cheap. The taxes, however, are infuriating. I’m getting taxed on unrealized gains after having paid taxes when buying the home. There is nothing I can do about the taxes, and if I do not pay my home will be taken. Essentially, I cannot own my home in any meaningful sense.

[scoofy]

The road, water, sewer, and various other public services that make your house valuable are not free.

I would familiarize yourself with your city’s municipal budget before complaining about paying taxes. You’re likely being subsidized by urban dwellers if you live outside the city center.

[BirAdam]

I pay water, sewer, gas, and power to those utilities directly. The taxes to my county don’t pay for roads as that’s handled by the state DOT. The bulk goes to county police, fire, and schools. Yet, these haven’t seen increased costs, the people in those jobs haven’t received pay raises (which, my God, why not?) and overall, I can’t see why my taxes then got raised.

[scoofy]

Your water bill almost certainly is not pricing in the replacement cost of the infrastructure it relies on.

[UncleOxidant]

Buying a house with or without a mortgage is definitely a hedge against inflation. I have a couple of siblings in their 60s who are renting and the rents are going up much faster than their social security. Now in both of their cases the rent is about $300/mo higher than their social security. Adding in food, utilities and other expenses they're blowing through their meager savings.

[specproc]

I'm the UK at least, it's also common for the renter to pay council tax, which is analogous to property taxes in other countries.

I imagine this is also likely passed through in the cost of rent in other places.

That said, it's totally possible to have a legal and fiscal framework that makes renting affordable and safe.

The government, particularly in Western countries with insane pressure on the rental market, needs to act as a homebuilder and landlord of the last resort. It keeps supply up, prices and risk down.

We've had a couple of generations locked into the housing market as an investment, and it's causing demand crunches which have artificially inflated prices and are choking and dividing our societies.

I'd happily spend my life in a rental if it was affordable and safe, and part of a considerably more fair society.

[bombcar]

The government should build simple cheap houses, and “rent to own” them to people, thereby instilling a baseline.

[jandrewrogers]

I prefer corporate rentals precisely because there is less idiosyncratic risk. They boringly have a strong incentive to keep you renting the same place as long as possible.

The cost of owning absolutely does increase over time. The mortgage payment is just one part of the fully burdened cost. Furthermore, there is a real risk of an unexpected $20k expense that you have to pay for. Owning is less predictable than renting because the liability and risk surface area is much larger.

[AlotOfReading]

You can buy home repair insurance if you want to transform unexpected repair expenses into predictable monthly payments. It's a bad idea for exactly the same reasons renting is worse:

Someone else has to approve repairs and contract the labor.

My experience with corporate landlords is that they're incentivized to maximize income, which is emphatically not the same as keeping you renting the place as long as possible. Realpage for example optimizes for higher income at the cost of turnover and lower occupancy.

[bombcar]

The sweet spot is a landlord who used to live in the house and still considers it “theirs” and trusts you as a steward, so they repair quickly (or even trust you to get the repairs done and send them the bill) and don’t want to deal with vacancies.

They’re more common than you’d think.

[FireBeyond]

> You don’t know how much longer you’re going to be able to stay in your apartment, whether that be due to rent hikes or the landlord deciding that they want to give the apartment to their nephew or any number of other things.

Absolutely. I had three landlords in a row promise all manner of things. "We're never coming back, moving to the country" (followed by "my wife hates it, we're moving back"). "We're looking to do other investments, we'd happily sign a 5 year lease with you if we could" (WA law limits residential lease lengths. Just as well for them because they decided "the property market is so hot it'd be irresponsible of us not to sell").

[quantified]

Being forced to move in the middle of the school year because the owner want to sell the house kind of sucks, though 5 years of a month-to-month was a bad idea. More landlords are asswipes than not, being able to control your own destiny has advantages. After all, you are paying all of the costs plus a premium for the rental, and you don't even get the paint or floor covering you want, let alone nice things.

[em-bee]

that's the nice thing about renting in germany. there this would not work, the owner can sell the house but they can't kick out the tenant. so whoever is buying is taking over the tenant. and while you can ask a tenant to move out if you need the house for yourself, that too has to consider the needs of the tenant. if they have kids in school it is almost impossible to remove them unless you go out of your way to help them find a new place and they are not forced to switch schools.

[lnsru]

That’s a very nice theory. Decent real estate first buyer will not even consider rented property. But there are enough unscrupulous shady people who will buy the property at a great discount and get the tenants out. You will be right according the law, but still mistreated. Will you enjoy abuse waiting 3 years for a court? Probably not. It’s not their first rodeo.

[em-bee]

most rented property in germany is owned by large firms who make renting out homes their business. for them, that is not an issue. most homes that people buy for themselves are not even available on the rental market. as you say, people who want to buy a home for themselves will not consider rented property. i believe that is true in germany too. if it happens then it is a rare edgecase, and they will be able to find out in advance if the tenant is willing/able to move out.

[quantified]

When you inherit property, it comes however it comes. I've been displaced twice by heirs. A lot of rental houses in the Bay Area are second/empty nests.

[vel0city]

Is the landlord obligated to renew the lease at the end in perpetuity? Or does the landlord just need to wait for the lease to expire and then choose to not renew?

[em-bee]

in germany by law every lease for private homes is always in perpetuity. the concept of renewal does not even exist. it is always month to month until the tenant decides to move out. you can't not renew a lease. you can raise the rent, but only in small steps. exceptions are if the tenant fails to pay for a few months, damages the property or misbehaves in other ways.

[bigstrat2003]

That sounds like a really awful law, TBH. I would never rent to someone if it meant that I was powerless to decide to end the relationship. I'm all for protecting tenants to some extent, but that law strikes me as abusive of the landowner.

[em-bee]

see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48286641

i don't agree that it is abuse of the landowner, but you also have to consider that in germany private landowners renting out are extremely rare. always have been. maintaining rental properties was always a business.

as an individual home owner i would also not want to rent out either unless there are exceptional circumstances. but german cities do not have suburbs like in the US, and any popular area will build up multi tenant apartment blocks. people owning their own house are out in the countryside where noone wants to rent anyways. and any multitenant building is by definition a business. and that's the majority of all rental properties in germany.

you have to keep in mind that germany has the highest ratio of people renting vs owning. renting has become our culture. with so many people renting, laws have to be strict, otherwise we would have chaos. austria is similar. my mother in vienna lives in an apartment that has been rented by someone in our family since 150 years ago.

[vineyardmike]

Or you need to have decent tenant protection laws.

In SF, you can’t evict tenants because you sell the house, and you can’t evict tenants with kids during the school year (without a just cause).

[hawaiianbrah]

If the buyer wants to move in, isn’t that a just cause for eviction? If the new buyer just wants it as a rental, sure, carry on.

[elzbardico]

"Oh no!!! but this is communism!!!!!"

Said by the same people who asks: "Why the young are not having children?"

[elicash]

Most folks rent before they buy, and so they are aware of the hazards of renting.

[sowbug]

An important qualification: if you rented as a kid, and now your kids are old enough to rent, your maybe-not-horrible experience is dated and probably no longer applicable. Apartments have largely gone corporate, and I assume also been taken over by private equity. Even cell-phone companies could learn a thing or two from their tactics.

[zeroonetwothree]

I have had very good experiences with corporate apartments. They tend to have their shit together. Compared to renting from some random old guy that wants to “fix things himself”

[arwhatever]

Corporate apartments raise their rents in lockstep with the market, whereas at least some randos will leave it stable for some years in a row.

[Mezzie]

Also, if you're a marginal renter, e.g. can't make 3x the rent from a W2 and don't have a co-signer, credit issues, etc. then the randos are more likely to work with you.

My sister was a sex worker for a while when she was younger, and trying to do things like rent was difficult because her income fluctuated a lot (always enough to cover rent, but she'd save during good months for poor ones) and she was technically self-employed. Or if you're on any form of disability, or if you had a medical issue that trashed your credit, etc. People getting out of prison, and so on.

If you stray from the happy path, woe unto you when dealing with large companies.

[aidenn0]

Helped my daughter find housing recently and we ran into lots of these issues (also, nobody we talked to was willing to allow a co-signer).

We ended up finding a friend-of-a-friend who had a bedroom to rent, but she will not (at least in the near-term) be able to rent an apartment.

[arjie]

That's interesting. I suppose you can't run that kind of thing in an S-corp and pay yourself the regular salary. It's what I do. You have a W-2 and everything. But I'm doing the other kind of SW: software.

[a_e_k]

I had that experience with the last house we rented before we bought.

We were quiet, predictable, don't-rock-the-boat tenants, and the rando owner mentioned that they valued that enough that raising rents wasn't worth the potential risk of new tenants who might cause them more hassle.

[SirMaster]

I live in an apartment owned by a larger company, the rent raises really slowly in my experience, Like 3% per year. I have been at my unit for 15 years now, never had any problem or regret anything about it.

[carabiner]

Owning a house is a hedge against risk. You are paying a premium to have certainty, like insurance.

If that premium is too high though, you can be worse off than accepting the risk of variable costs.

[bee_rider]

If I could design society, we’d all live in RVs or other trailer type things, own the structure and rent/buy land as appropriate. But I’m aware this is an unusual opinion.

It just seems nice to be able to customize the structure without being tied to a particular location.

[c-c-c-c-c]

This is not universally true, my lease is indefinite and we have stayed here through ownership changes. My neighbor has rented the same apartment for close to 50 years. Vote for a better government who cares about you and provides you with proper rights.

[zeroonetwothree]

Why not just sign a longer term lease? Most landlords would love that.

[jandrewrogers]

It depends on the landlord and type of place. A long-term lease comes with additional considerations for the landlord, mostly in terms of a long-term lease often requiring slightly different legals and a loss of optionality.

While I've had landlords that were not prepared for a long-term lease, I've never had an issue getting one anywhere I've rented. I've also had this work against me i.e. rents actually decreased halfway through the contract.

[craftkiller]

Because as soon as you sign that longer lease, the landlord will only ever do the absolute minimum repairs because you're stuck in that lease. We have been reporting our leaking roof for years...

[cosmic_cheese]

It adds inflexibility with few benefits, and one doesn’t know that they’ll want to stay at any given place until they’ve lived there for a while.

[richardubright]

I have never lived somewhere that allowed longer than a 14-month lease.

[kylehotchkiss]

If you rent from an apartment complex (corporate owned), how big is the risk of being kicked out if you pay your rent?

[whywhywhywhy]

They tend to just keep increasing it until you leave then just dial it back a little and get someone else in. Far worse than individual landlord that if you're a good easy tenant is gonna prefer you to an unknown, corporate don't care about that.

[cosmic_cheese]

Yep. This was exactly my experience. You have to leave eventually just to keep monthly rent under control.

[I_dream_of_Geni]

Sounds exactly like car insurance. If you don't "move around", they keep pricing it higher every year until you wake up...

[leflambeur]

the property can always be sold to a new owner that has a different use in mind.

Another drawback, you're likely to have less negotiating power with a corporate-owned rental.

[SoftTalker]

There's not much else a new owner is going to do with an apartment complex other than continue to rent out the units, other than possibly tear it down and rebuild if it's very old.

You lease remains in force even with a change in ownership. So in most cases there will be no immediate impact to tenants.

[wl]

If you stay long enough, you might be forced to move to another unit for a renovation.

[vips7L]

Rent only goes up.

[zeroonetwothree]

Inflation means pretty much all prices always go up. This statement is not very informative on its own since we care about relative prices.

[tim-tday]

Mortgage is locked in for 30years

[bottlepalm]

Taxes goes up, insurance goes up, repair costs goes up, and with a 30 year mortgage you lose like 50% the value of the home in interest payments.

[antisthenes]

> with a 30 year mortgage you lose like 50% the value of the home in interest payments.

You don't lose anything. The interest is the price you pay for the time value of the loan given to you.

You also get a tax break on at least 200k in "profit" (really more like inflation) when you sell the home.

[bottlepalm]

Money spent that isn’t transformed into equity is considered lost.

[vips7L]

Those are all rolled into rent too.

[vips7L]

???? Do you know how mortgages work?

[fulafel]

"February 2026 Rental Report: National Median Asking Rents Hit Four-Year Low" according to https://www.realtor.com/research/february-2026-rent/

[vips7L]

Now extrapolate that over 3 decades (30 year mortgage) and not 4 years.