News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?. Parent comment

Re:How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? by sbenitoj on Friday September 08, 2017 @05:03PM (#15203938)
Rent is NOT throwing money away, it is HIGHLY dependent on where you're living. There are MANY sunk one-time costs you have to pay when buying a home, including:

--realtor commission (averages 6% of home price, or approximately 1.5 years of 30 year mortgage payments)

--title fees (frequently 1% of purchase price)

--other legal and bank fees

The NYT has a buy vs rent calculator that helps make decisions like these:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? by prklmn on Friday September 08, 2017 @05:13PM (#15204016)
The one time costs involved in buying a house do not refute the idea that renting is throwing money away.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? by pjc50 on Friday September 08, 2017 @05:20PM (#15204058)
A mortgage is just renting the money instead of the house. In both cases you're paying for the time value of money. It's just that in many (but not all!) cases you can get a much better deal renting the money than renting the house.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? by sbenitoj on Friday September 08, 2017 @05:41PM (#15204152)
Technically correct, but my point is that these costs are frequently ignored and in order to make home ownership more profitable than renting these costs must be amortized over a very long period of time.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? by refurb on Friday September 08, 2017 @08:31PM (#15204937)
No, but it highlights the fact that even when you own a home you're still "throwing money away".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? by throwaway30yo on Friday September 08, 2017 @05:26PM (#15204085)
You are not throwing it away. You are exchanging money for a place to live.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost? by monocasa on Friday September 08, 2017 @05:34PM (#15204120)
As opposed to exchanging it for a place to live, and getting some of that money back when you sell.
[ Parent | on HN ]