Re:Is It Better to Rent or Buy?
by cstejerean on Friday May 23, 2014 @01:28AM
(#7788109)
You don't need multi year leases. If anything that would be bad. If I rent and the city I am in goes bankrupt and has to cut public services which in turn affect my quality of life and local property values, I can pick up and move and let the owner of the property deal with the double digit hit on his property value. Meanwhile I can move in to the town next door that doesn't have those problems. The costs are not passed down to me.
That's fine when you're 23. When you have a couple of kids, and chasing the lowest taxes/rents means that you're uprooting them from school and friends, there is a high cost for that.
Ever get to know a military brat? It's a hard life.
You also need to factor in the value of negative impacts of renting. When you have kids, school selection is driven by location -- and a lease is more ephemeral than a mortgage. You also always need to deal with landlords, who can be good or bad, and often cannot make changes to the property that you would like.