Re:The Five Biggest Myths About Saving Money, According to a...
by ghaff on Thursday November 12, 2015 @03:07PM
(#10555741)
Most sage advice about buying vs. renting boils down to "run the numbers but there are a lot of tradeoffs, many of them non-financial." The "Don't buy" sentence is deliberately provocative I think. The rest of what he says boils down to don't buy a house because you think you're supposed to. Which sounds like very sensible advice to me.
I certainly held off buying for a fairly long time because I didn't want to be locked down in that way. In retrospect I might have done things differently but hindsight is 20-20 and all that.
Re:The Five Biggest Myths About Saving Money, According to a...
by byoung2 on Thursday November 12, 2015 @04:00PM
(#10556077)
I certainly held off buying for a fairly long time because I didn't want to be locked down in that way. In retrospect I might have done things differently but hindsight is 20-20 and all that.
In my case foresight was 20-20 since I bought in 2012 and I knew that when interest rates on a 30 year fixed were the lowest they had been in 30 years that this was the time to lock in a mortgage. At the same time, housing prices in my city were the lowest they had been in 15 years so it made sense to buy. I knew if we didn't make a move then that we'd regret it once interest rates and prices started to rise.
I think it really boils down to what the relative costs are. There are many renters who pay as much or more as someone with a mortgage, and the person with the mortgage is obviously building up capital within that property (value Vs. current mortgage).