Posted on 06/27/2008 5:53:30 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Real-estate agents have been pushing the virtues of homeownership since homes were invented. Or since real-estate agents were invented, anyway. Paying a mortgage, they insist, is a can't-miss investment (the tax breaks, the appreciation, the thrill of fixing your own roof!). Renting is for simpletons who don't like keeping their own money. But does owning a home really trump renting?
(Excerpt) Read more at promo.realestate.yahoo.com ...
Renting sounds so Europeon if you catch my drift.
Answer: Yes, unless you bought your home last year ....
“Renting sounds so Europeon if you catch my drift.”
European as in the govt should just nationalize private property along with the oil companies?
This is non-sense. This is the time to buy. You are burning your money while you rent. You get no tax breaks from Govt. either. You have NO upside for equity. You don’t build credit history either. With a house, you can always take out some money because lenders trust you more if you are a home-owner.
Where were these crazy articles when there was a bull market?
We over-injected the equity in market, printed too many dollars, and looked away while shadow bankers were making money and handing out bad loans and then selling those bad loans to other banks. Thus the downturn.
This is a great time to buy. You may ride it down a little, but that’s OK.
Eventually rates would HAVE to be moved up. Right now Bernanke is holding them low because he wants W to get through his term or something. Once rates go up, then you would again be looking at 7-8% if not more.
That costs many more thousand dollars. Lock something below 6% now and you would be catching the bottom. Would obviously have to be patient.
There are advantages to renting as well as owning one’s own home. Each person must take into account their lifestyle, tastes, wants and needs before making this decision.
However one important thing always to remember about renting is that when one rents, he or she is at the mercy of the landlord. The landlord can sell the home and the new owner may not wish to rent anymore and one can be forced to move, even when they don’t want to do so; moreover, there have been numerous cases here in my state where the landlord/owner was collecting rent but not paying the mortgage and the bank foreclosed and kicked out the tenant, so another example of being forced to move. I heard of cases where the tenant didn’t even know he had to move until literally the last moment.
There are other reasons to own and not rent but for me, I like to be in control, or at a very minimum, know that the payments are being made.
Owning a home trumps renting when you buy a home you can afford and pay it off—as we did.
And we did it before we turned 50 years old.
I have no sympathy for people who got into homes they knew they couldn’t afford at the time, got ARM/no-interest loans and just hoped they’d be able to refinance. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Someone who basis major life decisions on a yahoo article deserves what they get.
Every friend of mine that told me I was crazy when I bought my house 20 years ago now wishes they had done the same thing I did. They are constantly having to move every year or two because the landlord sell the rental houses. As will probably be said many times in this thread, they tossed rent money down a rabbit hole and have nothing to show for it.
Exactly.
Don't EVER let ANYONE except your spouse get into your house-buying business. When something goes wrong, they'll be the first to criticize and the last to help.
Don't trust that realtor, either. Notice that the house she intends to sell you is the LAST one she shows you. There's a reason for it.
Yes, but they should have done it 20 years ago! I bought my first house when the market was down in my area (mid-Willamette Valley, Oregon in 1986). I was lucky - just happened to be ready to buy then. I was 30, had $20k in savings, the payment was going to be half of what I was putting into savings each month & the purchase price was $43K. The bank STILL required my mother to co-sign! (no loose credit then.) Made me so mad, I paid it off in 5 years. Then in 1997 I sold it for almost 3 times what I paid & bought another house which will pay off in five years. But prices are so high in our area now, I could never have purchased it if I didn’t have the proceeds from the first house. Folks making around $25k-$40k are essentially not ever going to own a home. Even an older mobile home (single-wide) is up over $125k now. Ridiculous!
You read my mind. Rates HAVE to go up, OR, they will become unobtanium. What good are officially published “4 per cent rates”, if nobody will in reality loan money at that figure?
“But does owning a home really trump renting?”
In the majority of circumstances, it absolutely does. My retirement account is testament to that fact.
Until there's no risk of the government taking your property if you can't cough up the property taxes, we are just serfs, renting from the government.
It currently cost 2.5 times as much to own as rent in Seattle. In places like S.F, its an even worse ratio.
And seeing as we are entering a slow drawn out correction in prices, it makes sense in many circumstances to rent. The flippers and speculators only have two choices. Foreclosure or rent it out for less than half the mortage and have enough income to cover the rest.
A basic 3 bdrm home in San Diego will start right now at
600,000+ other areas of the city are much more.
Some neighborhoods start at 1 million to 30 million+
Tens of dozens of high rise condo bldgs, 1 million to over 12 million a unit.
A 1 bedrm apt rent starts at 1,200 + a month.
I love the author of the article saying to put your down payment money into a mutual fund that pays 8% instead of buying the house........What planet does this guy live on , let me know where I can get 8 on my money and I’ll do it.
8% now that is really going back in time.
IMHO it currently makes (far) more sense to be renting than buying, in any of the high-wage, high-house-price metro areas.
If the economy tanks, the “high wage” portion of that balance could be in jeopardy - not only a primary risk to the new owner making mortgage payments, but also there is a significant risk that a turn down in the economy, could impact enough other home buyers to turn prices into a downward spiral.
What good is it to be paying mortgage payments — on an asset which is decreasing in value?
IMHO. YMMV.
So Correct.
The folks who are now looking for the bail out are no different than collecting welfare.
If you don’t have enough backup for just in case, and put you life in the hands of a mortgage, loan or whatever co.
You shouldn’t play in the large coinage field.
So many people are sucked into the - you have to own.
“Rent, don’t buy your beer!!”
Or is that, “You don’t buy beer in the first place, you rent it!”
In either case, renting Beer or renting a house, all that monthly rent gets p****d away, anyway.
IMO, there is no cogent argument for renting over buying a house. Now, isn’t that a brave stance to take?
;^)
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