Once you factor in things it mentions like insurance, taxes, upkeep along with others like a down payment then it’s very easy to see where the 14% numbers comes from. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s only 14%. There’s a lot of additional and hidden costs with home ownership.
The property tax on my house is $7000/year… and that is with a fixed assessment from 12 years ago. If I were to buy my house today, my tax would be $21000/year.
Only $1k/year in property taxes? I found this really hard to believe, then looked it up to find that Boston has one of the lowest property tax rates in the nation at an average of .49%. Consider yourself lucky I suppose, most of us are paying quite a bit more yearly. If the home you own is in fact a condo, I guess this makes more sense.
These are very region dependant. My state has no income or sales tax, but the property taxes are higher, my 1 acre with a mobile home is basically 3k. It’s almost certainly cheaper than renting, but you can’t just make sweeping statements like that.
Once you factor in things it mentions like insurance, taxes, upkeep along with others like a down payment then it’s very easy to see where the 14% numbers comes from.
So you’re agreeing with me that they’re only comparing the first month of ownership of the house with the last month of renting? There’s no factoring in the long term rise in rents to their math?
There’s a lot of additional and hidden costs with home ownership.
There certainly are, but its very situational. A 100 year old home will have very different upkeep costs than a 10 year old home. A home in a hurricane zone will have different upkeep than one that isn’t.
I mean neither of us know how they arrived at the 14% number. So your comparison is not really relevant and I would say it’s not a good one even. But in a generic/average month-to-month overview, home ownership is almost always more expensive.
I had a long reply typed out exploring the various aspects and raising questions to the methodology and applicability of the advice in the article to different groups of people in different geographies and stage of life. However the tone of replies seems to just want to accept the article as is. Its a yahoo finance article, so the depth is pretty shallow and only speaks in broad generalizations. Your reply is doubling down on exactly that. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but it looks like the there isn’t a desire in this thread to explore it any further.
So we’ll just accept the article answer which you summarize well: “generic/average month-to-month overview, home ownership is almost always more expensive.”
Conventional wisdom says keep renting folks and don’t question it.
Did you not read the comment? Property tax, insurance, and upkeep are all perpetual costs. The down-payment, closing fees, and potential mortgage insurance are the only up-front costs.
Did you not read the comment? Property tax, insurance, and upkeep are all perpetual costs. The down-payment, closing fees, and potential mortgage insurance are the only up-front costs.
I read the comment. It doesn’t address the question. “Over what period of time?”
Are they judging on owing a house for 30 years vs renting for 30 years or are they judging owning house for 1 year vs renting for 1 year?
The difference is those “costs” are going towards buying equity that you then get to keep. Maintaining a house is expensive but it is an asset that maintains value. This article really doesn’t seem to understand that which shows a very basic misunderstanding of the wealth math that goes into home ownership.
Renting may be cheaper month to month but you’re literally pouring that money down a black hole never to be seen in your hands again.
Granted, building equity doesn’t matter when you’re already have no cash paycheck-to-paycheck for either.
I rent a house for $4600/mo. To buy this same house in the same neighborhood, it would be roughly $1.6m, tho prices are starting to fall a little on these higher cost neighborhoods, so let’s say $1.5m for a deal.
With a 20% down-payment on a 30 year fixed rate loan, it would be close to $10000/mo (including insurance and property taxes).
Also, the lions share of your mortgage goes to paying down interest for the first decade or so.
So let’s say $1k goes to principle per month. You’re still burning twice as much money owning as renting.
The only financial upside is that you may be able to sell for more than you paid. Minus Realtor fees, whatever renovations / maintenance you made over the years, etc.
The current market is insane.
Edit - so I’m not talking in complete generalities, I glanced at the interest/principal ratio. No idea how accurate this is.
After a year of mortgage payments, 31% of your money starts to go toward the principal. You see 45% going toward principal after ten years and 67% going toward principal after year 20.
https://www.americanfinancing.net/mortgage-basics/mortgage-payment-explained
I don’t know what the ratio is in the first year, maybe 100% interest?
So at a monthly payment of $9800, $7864 of which is towards mortgage, that’s $2437 / mo towards principal from years 2-9.
So essentially you’re burning $7363 instead of $4600 for the hope that your house increases in value when you sell it.
Fiscally speaking. There are a lot of other pros and cons to owning.
That is the state of the buy v rent trade-off on that house TODAY. In 10 years, the rent on that house will go up but the mortgage will stay the same. Regardless of the equity you build in owning (which can be leveraged for other things even if you don’t sell), your “rent” stays fixed while renting goes up every year.
Companies are able to take longer term stances and can sustain short term losses. They buy a house and keep it for 10 years, long enough that those losses transition to profits.
No, not all of them. Insurance, property tax, and maintenance do not go to equity.
Property taxes are still partly tax deductible. Also even at my low mortgage rate of 3%, I get about $450/mo. back via the mortgage interest tax deduction, worth about $300/mo. over the standard deduction IIRC. I am not sure if they factor these things into the 14% number.
