Financial Breakdown: Renting vs. Buying [Infographic]

[accadacca]

http://www.moolanomy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Cost-of-Homeownership.png

[Deathcricket]

LoL. Is this a serious article? They are comparing living in a one bedroom apt to living in a 3 bedroom house and saying "short term, living in an apt is cheaper"? Hello, you are living in a 3 bedroom house vs living in a ONE bedroom apt! What about "lost opportunity" renting and not building equity in your house? After 5 years are up, you're going to be starting over at zero again. To be an accurate comparison, you must compare renting a house with buying a house, same sq footage, same area.

Looking forward to the next article where they come to the conclusion "Buying a used Honda Civic is cheaper than leasing a brand new cherry red BMW X6 suv".

:lol8:

[Spooky]

Too funny. I was the marketing and property manager for a company that owned apartment complexes, and I used articles like this all the time to show renters why renting short-term is better than owning.

But most definitely not in our case. Our mortgage is quite a few hundred bucks less than rent for a 3 bedroom apartment, utilities not much more, and what about the equity? It's worth a lot.

[Pelon1]

what about the equity? It's worth a lot.

WAS:cry1:

[Spooky]

WAS:cry1:

I live in landlocked Murray, and I think that because there's nowhere to built it's helped inflate property values . Of course, not right now. Baugh. :roll:

[cachehiker]

It would be interesting to see a comparison of a 3 bedroom apartment versus a 4 bedroom house.

Until now I was unaware that there were so may 1 bedroom apartment dwellers considering jumping into a mortgage.

All in all, this corresponds pretty well with everything else I've read. Unless you time the market extraordinarily well or find some other screamin deal at a foreclosure auction or elsewhere, houses don't make the best of investments. Houses are merely a CD-ish type return that you get to live in.

I feel pretty good about my situation though. I bought with 20+% down and the place has location, location, location it its favor. The sons of the previous owner who was being moved into a nursing home were in a huge hurry to sell and as one of only two conventional borrowers bidding on a non-FHA compliant house, I got the screamin deal too.