That's exactly what you already do if you're renting: you're betting that you will be able to work and earn enough salary to afford the rent, with your adjusted expenses. That's "pfft easy" when you're in 20's, easy in your 30's, okay in your 40's (kids need money, yo), doable in your 50's, oh shit when you're 52 because surprise! economic downturn / medical emergency / anything else that might happen. And now you don't have a place to live in and spending your retirement money to rent one, or take a dip in your quality of life.

If you're not paying for your mortgage, you're likely paying for one of your landlord.

As you say, keeping up with rent is easy (not necessarily, but for those in professional careers) early in life, but as your income plateaus later in your career it starts to become harder to keep up with relentless rent increases.

But then it's in retirement that a lifetime of renting really hurts. Suddenly you have no income anymore other than whatever small retirement benefits if any, but rents keep going up.

That assumes that the mortgage (+tax, +maintenance, +etc) is the same cost or less than renting is. That almost certainly isnt the case at first - at least in the area I live, I see houses renting for far less than just the interest on the mortgage would be (if purchased today, presumably the owners bought at lower prices and/or lower interest rates).

Agreed, at first the monthly cost of ownership is likely higher than rent. But my quoted comment was about retirement age, which is at the tail end, not at first.

It doesn't take long for rent to catch up and from there on rent will forever go up while the mortgage will either stay fixed or only go down via refinances. Even if refinancing doesn't work (in a rising rate market like right now) the mortgage is effectively going down via inflation while rents keep up with inflation.

In my case the first year of ownership was fairly painful as the cost was much higher than previous rent (although for a nicer place). By the second year was able to refinance so it wasn't bad anymore. By the third year, with rents rising, my mortgage was already about par with local rents.

Ever since then, rents have gone up massively (about 4x-5x) and my mortgage has only gone down (today about 30% of the inital monthly payment in absolute dollars, or effectively only about 15% considering inflation).

Most importantly, it will be paid off before I retire so once I'm on a limited fixed income that's one monthly cost I won't have to worry about. Having seen some forever-renter extended family reach retirement age with rising rents, it's a sad and painful situation.

My advice to anyone is that unless you hate your future self, buy a house in your 30s if at all possible.

Since 1980, in the US, rents have increased 9% per year. In 20 years, the rent will be 2-4x, whereas my mortgage will remain the same (modulo a lowered interest deduction).

Even if it's about as financially efficient (which I doubt), it's a very powerful feeling to have locked down a fixed cost of housing for as long as I want to live in California.

Same. Which is exactly why I bought a house in 2011. In hindsight it was the perfect time, but at the time the market was still bumpy. At the end of the day, I had a stable job and needed to live somewhere.

> I make enough money not to worry about rent, even if it should substantially increase

The house next door to me rents for 2.5x my mortgage.

My salary has continued to go up, while my cost to live has continued to go down (I refied at the rate bottom). If I want to take a year off I can either rent out my house or just carry the cost at this point. Buying this house gave my wife and I more flexibility because with some decent certainty (+/- small amounts for taxes/insurance fluctuations) I can tell you what my cost to live will be next month or 24 months from now.

Finally, buying a house with a mortgage is best way for a normal person to protect against inflation. Housing is typically a families #1 or #2 expense, and being able to mostly lock that cost is a huge win 3-5-10 years out.

And you were more likely to be able to because it was 2011. Fewer people can do the same today, at least at a similar comfort level of cost of house to income ratio.

Also, 2011 was still very uncertain. Would the market continue to go down, and would I keep my job were all real questions.

Is today a questionable time to buy? Probably, but what type of correction is needed in a ~7% inflationary environment for it to shift into an ok time to buy? 10%? 20%?

The point is there is always uncertainty and only in hindsight did 2011 look like a great time.

I didn't buy because it was a step onto the property ladder. I bought because it was less of a gamble than renting. I ended up staying in my first house for 17 years, whereas my record under a single landlord was 3.

> Maybe in 10 years I want a year off? What then? Maybe I want to change careers to something less intellectually demanding. Maybe I want to spend 50 hours a week with my kids. None of those are feasible if I need the salary.

During those 17 years I took at least two pay cuts, and multiple 2-6 month breaks between jobs, all affordable because I owned rather than rented. Lower outgoings made it possible to save more, plus my mortgage provider offers payment holidays. No landlord ever did!

> I opt for quality of life, which I don't achieve by giving it all to some property-owning entity who sells it to me at 3 times the price they paid a couple decades ago.

I mean, isn't "paying rent to a private landlord" doing just that? Except "sells it to me" is actually "allows me to live there, until they decide not to" and all the money you spent is gone.

† I lucked out with a lump sum/windfall through my employer; I'm making no claims that getting a deposit is easy/attainable

Indeed! I've taken a long break from working to be with my child, which I could afford to do only because I'd bought a home years earlier. If I'd been renting with ever-increasing rents I never could have done that.

Stange argument, all rights are legal contructs - how do I know my employer will pay me for work done, or my neighbour won't rob be in my sleep and slit my neck?

If we don't trust legal constructs, we can't have a civilisation.

Regardless, ownership is a useful legal construct the benefits of which seem to outweigh those of being a tenant.

[0] https://landlordknowledge.co.uk/ground-rents-banned-under-ne...

Property taxes in the USA go towards local government services like garbage collection and street maintenance, just like council rates. So I believe property tax and council rates are still analogous.

I don't know how things work where you are, but here in the US if you are renting, you are essentially helping someone else pay their debt. And they can kick you out when they please. The main benefit is that you can stop paying on a much shorter time scale (1yr lease contract?) or take time off, but if you don't rent you should require a smaller cash flow which should be possible to save up for.

One last thing, don't forget that you can sell the property in the future (or even rent it out, hence letting someone else pay YOUR debt). That should factor in your cost/benefit calculations. Even if it does not appreciate at crazy rates like the current insane market has led us to expect, it will very likely be a lot more than zero.

[1] https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093175?hl=en

Renting vs buying comparisons need to account for lot more than those two numbers but that's all I see posted most of the time.

"Realtor costs" are again different some estate agents in the UK charge a % of the sale price others a minimal fixed cost.

I'm sure that these things differ massively in different countries as well so it's hard to put an average number on that.

In terms of opportunity cost of the money again it depends on how you would invest that money you could put it in something very high risk and show a huge imbalance in buying a home vs investing in crypto or something like that. In the UK most low risk savings accounts will track lower than inflation on a property only the stock market will track higher but again that's higher risk and so not comparable. Also most savings accounts in the UK are capped at a max amount that can be saved per year.

As I said though if you try to compare mortgage vs something like stock market it's not really comparable. Also to note the large index funds in the USA track much higher on average than most other countries.

I've seen people use the S&P as an example that house prices don't track to the same amount and that you can compound any gains to make large sums of money. What's interesting about this is that the reason you make so much money with that model is that compound interest is non-linear in growth which means over say 40 years you make most of the growth at the end of the period (Literally in the last 20%). This also means that if the end of your growth curve ends on a bad few years for the S&P you'll do much worse than the average so the risk is still very high on even index funds.

Overall though my current mortgage cost is 2.5 x lower than rent for a comparable property. So you'd have to factor in the opportunity cost of that extra per month I save not paying into rent into your equation as well.

Not always, in some EU countries, some rental agreements have the tenant pay for certain maintenance, plus insurance.

The big unpredictable element is home repair costs.

This is generally true because prices generally go up. My brother almost bought a $200K condo in SF 30 years ago but it was slightly out of reach on his $60K Sun micro income, and his $500 room for rent was cheaper. The condo has gone up about 8X and rent (assuming market rate, it was under rent control) 5X. So as expensive as it is to rent in SF, it’s relatively more expensive to buy. It’s unknown if that trend will continue. It doesn’t seem rational but the city seems intent on continuing to severely restrict supply.

The rent/but dichotomy really comes down to what axis of “freedom” you want to optimize for, and if you want to stay in the house and area more than 10 years.

He can rent out the house and travel. And probably make money.

Aibnb or estate agents, managed properties, whatever.

No debt is indeed great freedom in general.

But housing is different. Do you plan to live somewhere? You still have to pay for it. For as long as you live you'll need to live somewhere and that means paying for it. Whether you call it rent or mortgage, you're still paying, there's no escape.

So, within those constraints, it is better to invest in a house than to enrich someone else for the rest of your life.