Comment by Gigachad
3 days ago
To some extent but there are differences. You have housing stability, a fixed price going forward, the ability to renovate most of the internals, and the ability to affix things to the walls without worrying about marks when you have to move out.
I don’t disagree, my comments was about the logistics of throwing a party.
Well… mostly fixed price. Property taxes go up every single year, and are now the largest single payment I make every year.
This is a detail conveniently left out by home owners justifying their purchase, especially if they overpaid and have a higher interest rate on their mortgage on top of it. With a mortgage, the amount you pay is the expected floor you'll encounter, whereas with rent, the amount you pay is the maximum you'll deal with, at least for the duration of the lease agreement.
Renting honestly can be a better deal, especially if you have the discipline to stick excess money in the market consistently. In fact, your returns are likely better than just using a house as a forced savings account. In my neck of the woods, we have seen rental inversion too.
> This is a detail conveniently left out by home owners justifying their purchase
I mean you can phrase it this way. Or you can phrase it as homeowners are willing to play a premium for stability / forced savings. (And to be less generous, homeowners may be getting cheaper access to capital than otherwise available to a renter; espsecially as the homeowner locks in ~2% interest rate while a margin loan has increase to 10+% [1]).
However, for markets with low construction and strong demand I'm pretty sure home ownership comes out ahead. Like look at housing prices in the bay area historically vs current rents. That said, you need a handicap'd rental market for renting to be worse so the general situation is it's better _iff_ you invest the difference.
[1]: https://www.schwab.com/margin/margin-rates-and-requirements
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a fixed price going forward
Property taxes, HOA fees, maintenance, appliances randomly breaking and resulting in bills of thousands of dollars...
the ability to affix things to the walls without worrying about marks when you have to move out
If you care about the sale price you will worry about that, among many other things.