If you had $10,000 laying around...

[Porsche Chick]

Oh, lord.

I belong to a couple of real estate forums and the "rent versus buy" threads go on forever.

Pro-renters tend to use the "you could have made more in stocks" idea. Meanwhile, as we said at the top of this thread, most average people do NOT make more in stocks. They buy too high, sell too low, and their average return is very puny.

Pro-buyers tend to stick with the "in time, buying will be cheaper than renting". But I recently checked the value of the first house we bought 20+ years ago for $67K, and it's now worth $100K. If we had been paying a mortgage (at those rates) all this time, we would be into it for about $120K. Plus repairs.

So. . .

The sucker part of home ownership is the total of 30 years of mortgage costs (usually 2.5-3 times the original purchase price), holding on when the "fashion" of a particular house style or neighborhood fades, and choosing properties with high upkeep.

The sucker part of renting is there is no hope of any type of return, your neighbors are transient, and rental rates tend to only go up.

Point is, there are tradeoffs with both.

[TeamOxford]

Our house is paid for.

Don't know if it's an investment or not, but I can tell you that it feels wonderful not to have to write out a mortgage check each month.

We paid ours off early. In the final analysis, we paid 1.5 times the purchase price of the house. It is now worth that much.

Like I said, it feels DAMN good.

Gotta call my buddy Warren now..............

TO

[Perfectlap]

Originally Posted by Porsche Chick

Oh, lord.

I belong to a couple of real estate forums and the "rent versus buy" threads go on forever.

Pro-renters tend to use the "you could have made more in stocks" idea. Meanwhile, as we said at the top of this thread, most average people do NOT make more in stocks. They buy too high, sell too low, and their average return is very puny.

Pro-buyers tend to stick with the "in time, buying will be cheaper than renting". But I recently checked the value of the first house we bought 20+ years ago for $67K, and it's now worth $100K. If we had been paying a mortgage (at those rates) all this time, we would be into it for about $120K. Plus repairs.

So. . .

The sucker part of home ownership is the total of 30 years of mortgage costs (usually 2.5-3 times the original purchase price), holding on when the "fashion" of a particular house style or neighborhood fades, and choosing properties with high upkeep.

The sucker part of renting is there is no hope of any type of return, your neighbors are transient, and rental rates tend to only go up.

Point is, there are tradeoffs with both.

I agree a poorly informed investor and the stock market are a disastrous mix.

Poorly informed investors are the life blood of the real estate industry and banks.

The average worker is first fleeced by the bank holding their mortgage and the actively-managed mutual fund industry picks off what's left. Both fleecings can be avoided, the latter easily, the former a bit trickier but doable.