Renting vs Owning

Buying a house in Charleston, Mount Pleasant, or even Daniel Island is now cheaper than renting according to a new report from the real estate website Trulia. In virtually every U.S. city it’s better to buy a house then to rent. See latest Charleston, Sc real estate data to get an understand of home prices, and gain attained over the last few years.

“Despite the recent home rebound, rents continue to rise faster than do home prices, and mortgage rates are at record lows,” said J. Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist, in a news release by The Daily.

On average, buying is now 45% cheaper than renting in the 100 largest U.S. cities – a savings of almost $800 a month. With that said home prices are beginning to rise with lack of inventory available so people thinking about buying a home shouldn’t sit and wait around. With more and more homeowners having to leave their homes due to job loss, and a poor economy forces those same people to rent thus increasing the demand for rental properties forcing rent costs upward. Furthermore, mortgage lending is still very tight and less people are qualified to purchase.

These factors result in an almost 5% surge in rental rates in the past year and a glut of 30 yr mortgages around 3.5 percent. Trulia looked at the average age price of all homes for sale and the average rent of all homes for lease between the beginning of June and the end of Aug. It spread its search from the inner cities to the suburbs. Trulia also baked in various expenses like closing costs, maintenance, renter’s insurance, and taxes.

After the analysis was completed in the winter, it was better to buy in 98 of the top 100 markets including Charleston, South Carolina’s. Purchase mortgage rates have dropped while rents have increased. The study however, is built on some big assumptions, primarily that the hypothetical buyer puts down 20% and qualifies for a great mortgage AND doesn’t sell for 7 years.
With that said, even in a case where the homeowner got just a 4.5% mortgage and only stayed in the home for 5 years, the result was still almost the same. It was cheaper to buy in 96 markets.

Nevertheless, some 6 million properties remain close to foreclosure, and most potential buyers still find it difficult to save up the 20% for down payment. Although there are still loans that only require 3.5% down.

You should buy a house! If you are renting for a long time, compute your rent and you’ll be surprised that it can actually buy you a house that’s on sale. It’s a challenge but if you take a look at it, in the long run, its always better owning your own home than renting. I know it sounds easy but its not, especially generating the downpayment.

Buying is better than renting a new house. As charleskinard said, renting house for long time, total amount you spend for renting could exceed the total buying amount.

Thank you,

Owning is always good

Owning is always best than renting. I think whether renting is better than buying depends on many factors, particularly how fast prices and rents rise and how long you stay in your home.

Owning is not always better than renting. I live in southern California, and your average home is around $600K. I can rent the same home for less than I would be paying on a mortgage. I’d much rather put my money into real estate in markets where the cash flow makes more sense. In other markets, it may make more sense to buy than to rent.

I have been looking for more opinions on renting vs buying real estate.
I think you have to explain only to yourself why are you choosing one path over the other. You don’t owe an explanation to anyone else. If renting makes you happy right now, then why would you buy? In fact, in some cases, renting is something temporary, until you manage to save a considerable amount of money for the down payment.